UTOPIA

Sir Thomas More

Characters

More - In service to King Henry VIII of England, he travels to Antwerp where he

meets Peter Giles and Raphael Hythloday. More is a fictional character sharing the
same name as Utopia's author, Sir Thomas More. However, More the fictional
character should not be assumed to be a transparent mouthpiece of the opinions of
the author. For the purpose of this review, in the Summary and specific sections'
analyses, the name More will be used only in reference to the fictional character,
while Thomas More will identify Utopia's author.
Peter Giles - Friend of More and acquaintance of Raphael Hythloday. Once again,
Peter Giles is an actual historical figure, a friend and intellectual companion of Sir
Thomas More. Peter Giles, in fact, helped More to get Utopiapublished. The fictional
Giles shares nearly all of his biographical history with the real Peter Giles, but like the
fictional More, should be understood to be a fictional character.
Raphael Hythloday - A philosopher and world traveler, he lived for five years on the
island of Utopia before returning to Europe to spread the word about the Utopian's
ideal society. Hythloday's last name, in Greek, means "talker of nonsense," a clue
from Sir Thomas More to his reader that the island of Utopia is a fiction.
Cardinal John Morton - Actual Chancellor to Henry VIII. Hythloday once spent a
fictional evening discussing the societal problems of England with Morton and an
unnamed lawyer. The real Morton was instrumental in furthering Sir Thomas More's
education at Oxford.
Lawyer - An unnamed man who once spent an evening with Hythloday and
Cardinal Morton. He is defensive of England and unwilling to find fault with anything
in English society.
General Utopus - Ancient warrior and founder of Utopia. He conquered the
savages who once lived on the isthmus Utopia now occupies, and then set his army
and new subjects to work cutting the land away to make Utopia an island. In his
wisdom, Utopus set up the Utopian society that Hythloday finds so immensely
attractive.

Note: The characters of More, Giles, and Morton all correspond in biographical
background to actual historical people, Sir Thomas More (author of Utopia), the
Humanist thinker Peter Giles, and former Chancellor of England Cardinal John
Morton. The fictional characters of the book, however, should not be considered to be
direct translations of these historic personalities to the page. In particular, the
character of More should not be taken to hold the same views as Sir Thomas More
himself. For the purpose of the following Summaries and Commentaries, the name
More will refer to the fictional character while Sir Thomas More refers to the author.

Summary

More travels to Antwerp as an ambassador for England and King Henry VIII. While
not engaged in his official duties, More spends time conversing about intellectual
matters with his friend, Peter Giles. One day, More sees Giles speaking to a bearded
man whom More assumes to be a ship's captain. Giles soon introduces More to this
new man, Raphael Hythloday, who turns out to be a philosopher and world traveler.
The three men retire to Giles's house for supper and conversation, and Hythloday
begins to speak about his travels.
Hythloday has been on many voyages with the noted explorer Amerigo Vespucci,
traveling to the New World, south of the Equator, through Asia, and eventually
landing on the island of Utopia. He describes the societies through which he travels
with such insight that Giles and More become convinced that Hythloday would make
a terrific counselor to a king. Hythloday refuses even to consider such a notion. A
disagreement follows, in which the three discuss Hythloday's reasons for his position.
To make his point, Hythloday describes a dinner he once shared in England with
Cardinal Morton and a number of others. During this dinner, Hythloday proposed
alternatives to the many evil civil practices of England, such as the policy of capital
punishment for the crime of theft. His proposals meet with derision, until they are
given legitimate thought by the Cardinal, at which point they meet with great general
approval. Hythloday uses this story to show how pointless it is to counsel a king when
the king can always expect his other counselors to agree with his own beliefs or
policies. Hythloday then goes on to make his point through a number of other
examples, finally noting that no matter how good a proposed policy is, it will always
look insane to a person used to a different way of seeing the world. Hythloday points
out that the policies of the Utopians are clearly superior to those of Europeans, yet

adds that Europeans would see as ludicrous the all-important Utopian policy of
common property. More and Giles do disagree with the notion that common property
is superior to private property, and the three agree that Hythloday should describe the
Utopian society in more detail. First, however, they break for lunch.
Back from lunch, Hythloday describes the geography and history of Utopia. He
explains how the founder of Utopia, General Utopus, conquered the isthmus on
which Utopia now stands and through a great public works effort cut away the land to
make an island. Next, Hythloday moves to a discussion of Utopian society, portraying
a nation based on rational thought, with communal property, great productivity, no
rapacious love of gold, no real class distinctions, no poverty, little crime or immoral
behavior, religious tolerance, and little inclination to war. It is a society that Hythloday
believes is superior to any in Europe.
Hythloday finishes his description and More explains that after so much talking,
Giles, Hythloday, and he were too tired to discuss the particular points of Utopian
society. More concludes that many of the Utopian customs described by Hythloday,
such as their methods of making war and their belief in communal property, seem
absurd. He does admit, however, that he would like to see some aspects of Utopian
society put into practice in England, though he does not believe any such thing will
happen.

Sir Thomas More wrote Book 1 of Utopia in two parts. The first version served only as an
introduction to Book 2, while the second version is far more subtle and explores many issues
of More's day. The first version of Book 1 ended just before More's final sentence explaining
that before going into a description of Utopia, he thought it would be worthwhile to describe
the conversation leading up to that discussion.

Discuss the status of women in Utopia.

Utopia is based on egalitarian principles, and these principles extend to issues of
gender. Utopian women are allowed to work, vote, become priests, fight, and
generally have just as much influence over Utopian affairs as do men. True, some
pragmatic constraints are placed on women. For example, they are not expected or
allowed to engage in heavy labor since in general they are not as strong as men. But
these pragmatic constraints do little to alter the staggering degree of freedom that
Utopian women are afforded in contrast to European women. However, while Utopian
women hold a basically equal secular standard as the men, Utopian religion, with its
demand that women prostrate themselves before their husbands, is formulated in
such a way that it implicitly holds men as more religiously pure. There does not seem
to be any way to reconcile these differences in the status of Utopian women as
secularly equal but religiously inferior. Rather, the differences seem to betray the
underlying influence of sixteenth century Europe; Thomas More creates a society in
which women are given more rights and power than any in existence, and yet even
he cannot completely escape the European conviction that women were inferior.

What is the nature of Utopian society? Is it an ideal society? If so, is

it a society made up of ideal people?
Utopia is the most perfect embodiment of humanist rational ideas. But because it has
not received the direct revelation of Jesus Christ, and, furthermore, simply because it
exists in the kingdom of Earth rather than the kingdom of Heaven, it cannot be ideal.
Utopia, then, is not ideal, but quasi-ideal. It demonstrates that Christian tenets can
only truly be the basis of an egalitarian society, and it simultaneously shows that
supposedly Christian Europe drastically fails to follow these tenets in the formulation
of its own political processes.
It would be incorrect to assume, however, that Utopia is as close to ideal as it is
because its inhabitants are ideal. In fact, the opposite is true: Utopia is close to ideal
because it assumes that its population is not ideal. Utopia has built its laws to make
acting immorally irrational, and then uses its schools to teach its inhabitants how to
think rationally. In other words, Utopia operates with the understanding that people
act in their own best interests, and then formulates its laws and institutions so that an
individual's best interest is also the best interest of the community .