The Flaws of More's Fictional 'Utopia'

The so-called ‘Living Hall’ is the only room of The Frick Collection that has been left entirely unchanged since Henry Clay Frick moved into the mansion at the turn of the 20^th Century. With its engaged columns, broken pediments and Victorian architraves, the room is typical of the Gilded Age mansions built in 19^th century New York. It was Mr Frick himself who supervised the arrangement of the room, so it’s no surprise that, having purchased in 1912 Holbein’s portrait of Thomas More, he set his eyes on another of Holbein’s great works: his depiction of Thomas Cromwell. The portraits hang on either side of the Living Hall’s grand neoclassical fireplace, the two Thomases facing each other in apparent antagonism. Though painted five years apart, the portraits are seen as a pair, representative of the friction between these two royal advisors. Indeed, their roles in Henry VIII’s reign couldn’t have been more conflicting: Cromwell was one of the architects of England’s break with Rome and the Act of Supremacy, whilst More was martyred for his commitment to the Roman Catholic Church. Cromwell, along with Lord Richard Rich, was actually one of the major driving forces behind More’s execution, making the juxtaposition of these two portraits even more evocative.

It is testament to Holbein’s skill as a portraitist that, not only has he brought these figures so fantastically to life, he has also hugely influenced the way we view both More and Cromwell. More, who hosted Holbein on his first visit to England, is presented as affluent, wise, and confident. Cromwell, by contrast, is jowly and clad in black, looking cold and indrawn. More certainly comes out on top in this comparison, a wise and kindly man compared to a grim political fixer. This is how, until very recently, the two men have been regarded. There is, though, a darker side to Thomas More, a side that should not be ignored. Though Hilary Mantel’s depiction of More as a heretic hunting misogynist may be slightly extreme, it is perhaps more apt than Robert Bolt’s description of him as ‘A Man for All Seasons’. He was undoubtedly a great politician and an intelligent Humanist scholar, but that should not obscure completely an appraisal of the more questionable aspects of his character – he did, after all, think it acceptable to burn Protestants. The same can be said for More’s Utopia: though it has long been heralded as a great progressive work, there are features of the fictional world that lead us to ask uncomfortable questions. Hence, Utopia is one of the most hotly-debated works ever written, with critics wondering not only what More actually believed, but also whether Utopia comes anywhere near to the perfect commonwealth. And so, with reference to More’s life and work, I intend to explore the more unsavoury aspects of the Utopian world, present a nuanced view of the commonwealth, and thus unravel the enigma of Utopia.

There certainly are parts of the Utopian vision that were significantly ahead of their time. The abolishment of private property serves as the obvious example – because Utopia is a proto-communist state, (almost) everyone is equal. Nobody ever goes hungry or without a home, and the Utopians have no reason to be proud, greedy, or jealous. It was for this ideal that the Soviet Union honoured More when they placed his name on Moscow’s Stele of Freedom. And yet, even this aspect of Utopia must be questioned – after all, as Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn argued, communism needs enslavement and forced labour to survive, something ‘...foreseen as far back as Thomas More, the great-grandfather of socialism, in his Utopia’. Hence, in order to ensure that the Utopian regime works, the Utopians have almost no freedom – they are, in effect, slaves. Hythloday explains to More and Giles that in Utopia, ‘wherever you are, you always have to work.’ Even more sinister is what he says next: ‘Everyone has his eye on you, so you’re practically forced to get on with your job…’ Reading this, we can’t help thinking of Orwell’s dystopian Nineteen Eighty-Four and, in particular, the omniscient figure of Big Brother controlling the mass-surveillance of Oceania. Like the characters of Orwell’s novel, the people of Utopia are deprived of much of their liberty. Even their sleeping patterns are governed by the state, and it’s hard not to imagine More chuckling to himself when he wrote: ‘They go to bed at 8 p.m., and sleep for eight hours…’ With the naming of Utopia after its founder, Utopos, we are also reminded of the disastrous attempt at a utopia known as ‘Jonestown’, also named after its leader and almost cult-like in its worship.

Along with this deprivation of freedom comes an undeniable lack of fun and excitement in Utopia. People are not allowed to travel without getting a passport, and even then they still have to work their normal hours. There are no ‘wine-taverns, no ale-houses, no brothels, no opportunities for seduction, no secret meeting-places,’ perhaps a good thing, though it still demonstrates how restricted Utopian life is. Moreover, there is complete uniformity amongst people, destroying almost any sense of individuality: everybody wears the same clothes (distinctions only made between sex and marital status), and every house on the island is identical. We cannot help doubting whether Utopia really could be the perfect commonwealth, given its lack of freedom, excitement and individuality. Hythloday himself seems to point out this flaw in Book I: ‘he who cannot reform the lives of citizens in any other way than by depriving them of the good things of life must admit that he does not know how to rule free men’. It would be hard to deny that the Utopians have been deprived of excitement: the game of virtues and vices, for example, sounds almost like More making a little joke.

Another aspect of Utopia that causes concern is the use of slavery. Just as in Plato’s Republic there were those who counted as citizens and those who were slaves, so Utopia can claim equality even whilst it uses slaves to hold its commonwealth together. If these slaves don’t count as citizens, then the Utopian egalitarian model has no responsibility to them. This was one of the premises of Greek utopias, the goal of the commonwealth being the happiness of its citizens, rather than the happiness of all. As Aristotle said, ‘the state is an association of equals… But… this is not for all’. The slaves in Utopia seem to be almost dehumanized: ‘The slaughtering of livestock and cleaning of carcasses are done by slaves. They don’t let ordinary people get used to cutting up animals, because they think it tends to destroy one’s natural feelings of humanity.’ There is a sinister quality to the distinction it makes between slaves and ‘ordinary people’. By dehumanising the slaves of Utopia, it seems acceptable that they should be enslaved and thus not regarded as equal. True, slavery is better than capital punishment, and the slaves of Utopia are treated relatively well – but is it really ethical to enslave someone for committing adultery, for example? Along with the use of slavery, there is an ominous sense of Utopian superiority reminiscent of the Aryan ideal in Nazi Germany. Hence, rather than risking the lives of their own citizens in war, the Utopians use ‘foreign mercenaries – whose lives they risk more willingly than their own.’ These mercenaries are the savage Zapoletans, who the Utopians have absolutely no concern for. Thus, Utopian policy towards these savages is inconsistent with the concept of universal human brotherhood depicted in the New Testament. As H.G. Wells argued, a real utopia requires a world state – every human in the world must work together and be equal for the concept of a utopia to be fulfilled.

Linked to this xenophobic sense of superiority is the questionable practice of Utopian colonisation. The Utopians govern according to their own values, and very often they force their own values on surrounding states, most notably the ideal that all land should be cultivated as much as possible. When natives won’t allow the Utopians to invade, colonise and cultivate their soil, the Utopians go to war, ‘for they consider war perfectly justifiable, when one country denies another its natural right to derive nourishment from any soil which the original owners are not using themselves, but are merely holding on to as a worthless piece of property.’ This argument seems logical, since the additional produce gained from newly cultivated land could improve the lives of Utopian citizens. And yet, this same argument could have been used against the Native Americans who protested the Dakota Access Pipeline. Donald Trump could very well have claimed his ‘natural right to derive nourishment from any soil’, ignoring the fact that, not only does the land belong to the indigenous Native Americans, but also that the land is sacred and thus non-expendable. So, just as with Trump’s approach to the Native Americans, there is clearly a sense that the Utopians know better, and thus they can excuse themselves for invading and exploiting the land of others. As George M. Logan suggests, the same is true of Plato and Aristotle, whose ‘attitude toward foreigners resembles their attitude toward slaves and artisans.’ Though they try to minimise death and destruction during times of war, and though they kindly give one seventh of exports to the poor of other countries, there is still the menacing sense that the Utopians are superior.

So it’s clear then that, just as with every imagined or attempted utopia, the fictional state created by More is undeniably flawed. The question we must now ask ourselves, though, is whether More actually believed Utopia was a perfect commonwealth. Many would like to think so, and thus proclaim him as a great communist thinker. But as Anthony Kenny points out, ‘Wherever we turn in Utopia… we find something which is contradicted in More’s life.’ It’s hard to imagine that a staunch Catholic, who strongly opposed the annulment of Henry VIII’s marriage to Catherine of Aragon, would ever advocate divorce in any form. We question, too, whether a man who spent much of his life as a lawyer and as Chancellor (the most important legal figure in the land), would have created a world without lawyers and attacked the length of legal codes: ‘it’s quite unjust for anyone to be bound by a legal code which is too long for an ordinary person to read right through, or too difficult for him to understand.’

But these are relatively small contradictions: the major inconsistency involves the treatment of religion in Utopia. Hythloday praises the Utopian tolerance of other religions and the fact that ‘no one is held responsible for what he believes’ (unless, of course, they are atheists, who are despised by Utopians). There is also a modesty in Utopian belief in that their prayer involves a confession of human ignorance: they ask God to show them ‘the truest religion,’ admitting that theirs may not be the best. The question is, would Thomas More ever have questioned the truth of the Catholic religion? Would More, who referred to himself as grievous to heretics and who burned six protestants during his reign as Chancellor, really preach religious tolerance? Well, perhaps. What qualifies the Utopian tolerance of religion is that religious trouble-making is not allowed. One man is arrested for disturbance of the peace because he ‘started giving public lectures on the Christian faith, in which he showed rather more zeal than discretion.’ Conversion attempts are permitted, but Utopians are ‘not allowed to make bitter attacks on other religions.’ Perhaps More viewed the likes of Tyndale and Luther as troublemaking heretics rather than simply people with different beliefs, and as they threatened to disband Christendom, he felt he had a duty to fight them: they must be ‘oppressed and overwhelmed in the beginning.’

These are, of course, debates that will never end. It’s most likely, though, that More’s final words on the matter can be used to summarize his point of view: ‘But I freely admit that there are many features of the Utopian Republic which I should like – though I hardly expect – to see adopted in Europe.’ Given that Hythlodeus means ‘dispenser of nonsense’ and that Utopia means ‘no place’, it’s unlikely that More really believed that the Utopian ideal could ever be fulfilled, let alone perfected. Rather, he was simply exploring various different ideas for the construction of a new commonwealth or the improvement of his own, and by speaking through Hythloday, he could be ‘like the ‘all-licens’d fool’ in King Lear’ and ‘tell home-truths with comparative safety’. As Logan argued, ‘Utopia is partly More’s ideal, and partly not.’ So just as we must avoid idealising Thomas More as ‘a man for all seasons’, so we must take Utopia for what it is: a work that includes many progressive ideas (euthanasia and communism, for example), but that also includes many ideas grounded in the mores of the past – hence, colonisation, misogyny, and the keeping of slaves, are seen as acceptable. And we cannot blame More for his strict views on adultery or for his belief in colonisation – these were mainstream views of the time and, after all, More never said he was attempting to create a better world, only ‘the best condition of the commonwealth’. Just as with most things, we need to take a nuanced view of both More and his work. Indeed, this use of nuance has never been so vital given the current political landscape, dominated as it is by partisan arguments and bigoted beliefs. Human beings are flawed, complex, and individual. The inevitable consequence of the human condition is that our policies and views will always be problematic, and the commonwealths we create will never be perfect.