Erewhon · Chapter
XIX: The World of the Unborn explained
The narrator describes the Erewhonian conception of the unborn, who are disembodied souls living in a ghostly world.
What happens
The narrator describes the Erewhonian conception of the unborn, who are disembodied souls living in a ghostly world. They can only enter the living world by 'suicide'—a voluntary act of leaving the unborn state. The unborn must accept harsh conditions: loss of memory, random assignment of dispositions and bodies, and the risk of being born to wicked or unsympathetic parents. Wise elders lecture them on the misery and risk of birth, but only the foolish choose to be born. The chapter includes a philosophical reflection on time, the past and future, and the inevitability of death.
Themes in this chapter
Inversion of Morality
Erewhon inverts conventional morality by treating birth as a capital crime and suicide as the means to enter life, challenging the reader's assumptions about good and evil.
Family and Parent-Child Relations
The chapter critiques the arbitrary and often harmful nature of parent-child relationships, with the unborn forced to 'pester' random adults who may be unsympathetic or abusive.
Truth and Deception
The unborn are warned about the deceptions of life, yet the entire system of birth is presented as a trap that the foolish willingly enter, blurring the line between truth and illusion.
Characters to notice
- Narrator
The narrator recounts the Erewhonian beliefs about the world of the unborn, having 'waded through many chapters' on the subject.
- Erewhonians
The Erewhonians are the source of the elaborate philosophy and mythology about the unborn, including their theories on time and birth.
- Chowbok
Mentioned in passing as one of the races among whom the unborn might find their future parents.
Key passages
“To be born is a felony—it is a capital crime, for which sentence may be executed at any moment after the commission of the offence.”
Being born is treated as a serious crime punishable by death at any time.
This encapsulates the Erewhonian inversion of morality, where life itself is criminalized.
“If any faint remembrance, as of a dream, flit in some puzzled moment across your brain, and you shall feel that the potion which is to be given you shall not have done its work... fly—fly—if you can remember the advice—to the haven of your present and immediate duty.”
If you ever have a vague memory of your pre-birth existence, immediately focus on your current responsibilities to avoid being overwhelmed.
This advice mirrors the Victorian emphasis on duty and work as a remedy for existential doubt.
“Strange fate for man! He must perish if he get that, which he must perish if he strive not after. If he strive not after it he is no better than the brutes, if he get it he is more miserable than the devils.”
Humanity is cursed: seeking knowledge of the future leads to misery, but ignoring it reduces one to a beast.
This reflects the paradox of human curiosity and the limits of knowledge, a key theme in the chapter.