Master
Samuel Butler recalls, “His (Mr. Pontifex's) wife was said to be his master; I have been told she brought him a little money, but it cannot have been much. She was a tall, square-shouldered person (I have heard my father call her a Gothic woman) who had insisted on being married to Mr Pontifex when he was young and too good-natured to say nay to any woman who wooed him. The pair had lived not unhappily together, for Mr Pontifex’s temper was easy and he soon learned to bow before his wife’s more stormy moods.” The allegorical master gathers that Mrs. Pontifex was principal in their matrimonial. Therefore, she was the prime party whereas her husband who was the servant who had to kowtow to her ultimatums.
‘The Day of Judgement’
Samuel Butler cites the allegorical ‘Day of Judgement’ when describing Mrs. Pontifex’s paralysis, which climaxes in her demise: “The Day of Judgement indeed, according to the opinion of those who were most likely to know, would not under any circumstances be delayed more than a few years longer, and then the whole world would be burned, and we ourselves be consigned to an eternity of torture, unless we mended our ways more than we at present seemed at all likely to do.” The ‘Day of Judgement’ is a spiritual credence integrated in the Bible which transmits information regarding the denouement of the earth whereby persons would receive verdicts for their degeneracies.
