The History of Rasselas: Prince of Abissinia

Overview

Samuel Johnson’s The History of Rasselas: Prince of Abissinia follows a young prince who leaves a life of curated ease to discover whether any “choice of life” yields lasting happiness. Framed as a philosophical tale, the narrative moves from the secluded Happy Valley of Abyssinia to the bustling world beyond, letting its travelers test courts, cloisters, cottages, and studies. The story’s plain episodes carry weighty reflections on desire, disappointment, and the limits of human wisdom, returning again and again to the refrain that perfect felicity cannot be secured by station, fortune, or design.

From the Happy Valley to the World

Rasselas grows restless in a paradise designed to prevent want and sorrow. He meets Imlac, a poet and former traveler who has seen the breadth of the world and found its splendors mixed with vexation. Persuaded that experience is the only tutor, Rasselas enlists Imlac to help him escape, bringing along his sister, the Princess Nekayah, and her companion, Pekuah. Once beyond the mountains, they settle in Cairo as observers and experimenters in life.

Experiments in Living

They sample and scrutinize conditions people praise from afar. Rasselas visits courts and finds ceremony hollow and power attended by envy and dread. He imagines pastoral simplicity but discovers labor, weather, and want gnaw at contentment. He admires learned retreat only to see that study multiplies doubts and cannot shield the heart. Nekayah examines households and schools, comparing marriage to single life; she notes that domestic joys are real yet precarious, and that every arrangement carries its own pains. Their inquiries strip illusions but do not yield a formula for happiness.

Failures of Systems and Solitude

They consult sages whose lives promise answers. A philosopher lectures on tranquillity until bereavement breaks his composure, exposing the frailty of stoic precepts against grief. A hermit extols retirement, then, stirred by company, admits that solitude breeds its own miseries and returns to society. Johnson lets scenes overturn maxims, showing that even admirable schemes falter when pressed by passion, chance, and time.

Pekuah’s Abduction and Return

Near the pyramids, Pekuah is seized by wandering Arabs, and the party is plunged into fear and remorse. Ransom and negotiation restore her, and she recounts captivity marked less by cruelty than by constraint and uncertainty. She has learned new tongues and customs yet carries a lingering terror of the place where she was taken. Her story reframes the travelers’ quest: even without extreme suffering, life cannot be made safe from anxiety, and the mind’s apprehensions often outlast outward harms.

The Astronomer and the Burden of Power

An aged astronomer in Cairo confides that he controls the weather and motions of the heavens. His supposed omnipotence gives him no joy; he lives in dread of misjudgment and cosmic ruin. Imlac diagnoses a noble mind overborne by solitary thought. By steady companionship, they wean him from the delusion, and he gratefully surrenders his imaginary stewardship. The episode warns that reason, untempered by community and common life, may wander into tyranny or madness.

Return and the Unchosen Choice

At length, the travelers resolve to go home. Each drafts a plan, Rasselas to choose a calling wisely, Nekayah to foster learning among women, Imlac to practice piety and prudence, Pekuah to cultivate quiet usefulness. Johnson closes by noting that such projects remained unrealized. The ending does not scoff at purpose; it shows how hope perpetually outruns attainment, and how the desire for a perfect state is the very engine of disquiet.

Themes and Tone

The tale balances sober skepticism with humane consolation. It insists that no condition guarantees happiness, that expectation breeds discontent, and that the world resists remodeling by system or will. Yet it honors companionship, reason moderated by faith, and modest duties as balms within the limits of mortality. The Happy Valley proves a gilded prison; the wider world proves instructive but not curative; and the heart, always aspiring, learns to seek contentment without demanding perfection.