Social satire in Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels
CONTENTS
Introduction
I. Life and work
II. Cultural, social and political context
2.1. The Enlightenment
2.2. Literature of the Enlightenment
2.3. Political context
III. Gulliver’s Travels
3.1 Plot Overview
IV. Satire
V. Conclusion
Introduction
This paper takes a look at a book enjoyed by generations of readers, a multi-sided book which is still relevant to today’s society.
The topic under discussion is: “Social satire in Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels”. Swift’s masterpiece is a sophisticated satire on human nature, often criticized for its apparent misanthropy. Each of the four books has a different theme, but they are all meant to deflate human pride. Some of the critics consider this unique work to be a satiric reflection on the shortcomings of Enlightenment thought.
The author’s early years had a strong impact on his whole life. This is why the first section deals with Swift’s background and career.
Swift’s life was closely connected to politics and church. His religious and his political preoccupations have their roots in his personal history and in the history of his time. He wrote Gulliver’s Travels, his greatest achievement, at the height of the Enlightenment. The author’s work can be fully understood only if placed in the cultural, social and political context of the time. This is what the second section does in the three subchapters it contains.
The third section contains a plot overview of Gulliver’s Travels while the fourth section aims at studying the particular aspects of social and political life, the actual events in British society at that time which are being satirized in the book.
The fifth section draws conclusions on the above mentioned issues and the importance of Swift’s work in British and world literature. At the same time it attempts to decide whether Swift was a ferocious misanthropist or his work proves his deep concern in understanding human nature and explaining human behavior.
I. Life and work
Jonathan Swift was born on November 30, 1667, in Dublin, of Protestant Anglo-Irish parents. He was an Irish author, clergyman, political pamphleteer and satirist, a major figure in literature and politics in both Ireland and England as he spent part of his adult life in England. He returned to Ireland in his mid-40s and became an advocate for the independence of Ireland.
His father had died a few months before Jonathan was born. Left without a steady income, his mother had to accept aid from relatives. She struggled to provide her son with the best upbringing possible, so she gave him over to Godwin Swift, her late husband's brother, who sent young Jonathan to Kilkenny Grammar School (1674–1682), the best school in Ireland at the time. Later he was sent to Trinity College and obtained a degree only by "special grace”.
Jonathan was an unhappy young man and did not excel in his studies. He hated academic scholasticism and pedantry. He detested the curriculum, reading only what appealed to his own nature. The fact that he had never known his father and he had rarely seen his mother contributed to the resentment he later expressed towards his relatives and authority figures.
In 1689 King James entered Ireland after being dethroned in England. All members of Trinity were given permission by the college authorities to withdraw from school on grounds of security. Swift then moved to England, first to stay with his mother, who was living in Leicester, later on at Sir William Temple’s house in Moor Park.
Sir William Temple, a retired diplomat and member of the Whig party, who was also a distant relative to Jonathan, gave him the position of private secretary, largely on account of the relationship. Swift soon became acquainted with many politically influential figures of the day in Temple’s household near London. Later on he was bestowed a great deal of responsibility by Temple, who was impressed by the young man’s abilities. Jonathan spent ten years in Moor Park as a private secretary, reading and studying widely.
It was during his stay at Moor Park that the twenty-two year old Swift met the young daughter of Temple's housekeeper, Esther Johnson. When they first met she was 15 years Swift's junior. He became her friend, and mentor. When she was a child, he acted as her tutor.
When she was of age, some critics say they would become lovers for the rest of their lives. There is much controversy over Swift’s relationship with Esther, but anyway, it is known that their friendship was profound and affectionate, as evidenced in Swift's series of letter-diaries which he entitled Journal to Stella.
When Swift returned to his home in Ireland, in the autumn of 1701, Stella came over to Ireland to reside in his neighbourhood together with her companion, Rebecca Dingley, to continue that bond of untiring and unselfish affection which was to link the name of Stella for ever with that of Swift, in a close and mysterious tie.
It was rumored that they married in 1716, but there is no reliable evidence to support this story. In speaking of Stella, Swift always expressed friendship, attachment and devotion, not romantic love.
His Journal to Stella contains the letters he wrote to her as well as very touching poems. Apparently Swift kept a lock of her hair in his possession at all times. Other critics maintain that the two had a close but ambiguous relationship for all Esther's life.
Nevertheless, Swift also had a romantic relationship with Esther Vanhomrigh (Vanessa), who inspired his long poem, "Cadenus and Vanessa." In 1723 Swift broke off the relationship and she never recovered form his rejection.
Anyway, Stella seems to have been the only shiny star in his tormented life. He rushed to her bedside and was overcome by grief when, on January, 28, 1728, Esther Johnson died. In Gulliver’s Travels Stella was embodied by Glumdalclitch, the daughter of the giant farmer in Brobdingnag, one of the few characters whom the author and the main hero admired.
As Sir William Temple was a scholar and former Parliament member, a powerful and influential figure, he assisted Swift in gaining entrance to Oxford University, where he earned his M.A. in 1692. Under his influence, he also began to write, first short essays and then a manuscript for a book.
In 1694, he took religious orders in the Church of Ireland and then spent a year as a country parson. Busy with clerical duties, Swift was also immersed in Dublin society and politics. He became an outspoken critic of many social aspects.
He wrote several religious and political pamphlets on the side of the Whigs. In 1709 he went to London to campaign for the Irish church but was unsuccessful. The Whigs rejected his suggestion concerning the removal of taxation on the income of the Irish clergy.
Under the influence of his mentor, Sir Temple, he started his political career as a supporter of the Whigs, who opposed absolute rule, but by 1709 the Whig closeness to the Dissenters (i.e. Presbyterians, Congregationalists, Baptists and Quakers) disturbed him greatly. He switched to the Tories, the conservative supporters of Charles II, who endorsed a strong monarchy as a counterbalance to the power of Parliament as he didn’t want the Crown to be entirely dependent upon Parliament.
The restoration of the Catholic monarchy was a real threat during Swift’s lifetime and he was afraid that it would lead to loss of liberties and privileges that the Protestants had been given. He was highly interested in politics mainly because it could affect the strength of the Anglican Church of which he was a member
The Tories invited Swift to support their cause as editor of the Examiner when they came to power in 1710, which opened an advancement perspective in Swift’s c
areer. When the Tory ministry replaced the Whigs, the Tory Prime Minister promised Swift that Queen Anne would offer him a bishopric in England for his endeavors and he became the chief Tory pamphleteer in the struggle between the two parties. According to F. P. Locke, Swift is “Whiggish by nurture but Tory by nature.1”
However, he refused to accept the Tory belief in the divine right of kings, and continued to believe that political power in England derived from the people, and manifested itself in a carefully maintained alliance between King and Parliament. That was, in his opinion, the only system which protected individual liberties and avoided tyranny. As the Whigs feared his satire and the Tories feared the loss of his support, Swift became one of the most important figures in London. As publicist of the Tories, Swift attacked the Whigs, especially Walpole, in many pamphlets.
The Queen finally rewarded him for his efforts but it was with the deanery of St. Patrick's Cathedral in Ireland, an important Irish post, but not a position which would allow him to remain in England. It was not what he wanted, but it was the best he could get because, after his merciless satire on religion in The Tale of a Tub, any ecclesiastical position in England became impossible to get.
Swift had still been hoping to be assigned a position in the Church of England, but in 1714, when Queen Anne died and George I came to the throne, the Tory government fell and out of power and he fell out of favor despite his fame. The Whigs reestablished their power and the best thing for Swift to do under the circumstances was to leave England, as his position became uncertain. He understood advancement in his career was no longer possible and he returned to Ireland in great disappointment.
There are many contradictions in Swift’s life and in his writing. The Walpole administration in London suspected Swift of having connections with the Jacobites and Catholic Irish, although he was an Anglo-Irish, Protestant and pro-English. That is why he had to burn many of his documents and letters before leaving.
Probably Swift finally realized that in England he would have always been an outsider who did not benefit personally, whether the Tories or the Whigs were in power.
The preferment in England that he had hoped for never materialized, not even when the Tories were in power. Swift came to understand that he actually belonged to Ireland and decided to play a greater role in Irish politics. After making this decision he committed himself to the Irish cause and his writing after 1720 increasingly focused on Ireland.
He spent nearly all the rest of his life in Ireland, where he devoted himself to exposing English unfair treatment of the Irish.
As part of this effort, he took action to support the Irish against English attempts to weaken their economy and political power. His satire turned against the exploitation of his fellow-countrymen, whom he tried to stir out of their passivity.
The political pamphlets which he wrote while living in a strange kind of exile in his native Ireland made him extremely popular in a country where actually he didn’t want to live. In satires like "A Modest Proposal" he defended the interests of his church and his country against what he had denounced as English colonialism. He was loved, respected and appreciated by a people the vast majority of whom, since they were Roman Catholics, he would have denied religious and political freedom.
His writings on the unfair treatment of Ireland, his preaching and his generous contributions to charity made him very popular in Dublin. He became a national hero ever since his lifetime and was perceived as having been a nationalist leader.
In 1742, Swift suffered from a stroke and lost the ability to speak. He died in 1745, and he left all his property to found St. Patrick's Asylum for the mentally ill. He was buried beside his beloved Stella in St. Patrick's Cathedral and was mourned by everybody.
Swift wrote throughout his life on matters relating to the Anglican Church, religion, worship, and discipline. He lived in a kingdom the overwhelming majority of whose inhabitants were believing, observing Christians. In England the greater part were baptized and practicing members of the Anglican Church, the church established by law (the case in Ireland was both demographically and politically rather different). And Swift, for virtually all his adult life, was an ordained member of the Anglican priesthood, engaged in its daily duties and its high political interests and for three decades, Dean of St. Patrick's Cathedral in Dublin.
Actually, works of theology and biblical commentary were, in the seventeenth century and through most of the eighteenth century, the class of writings best represented in Britain.
Swift defended the causes he believed in (mainly literary, religious and political) by making use of biting irony. He wrote satires on the political and religious corruption surrounding him. Swift could not remain silent at the sight of what he perceived as any kind of indignity or injustice. His pen proved to be his most efficient weapon.
He wrote essays, pamphlets, tracts, poems and remarkable sermons. Here are some of the best known of his works:
A Tale of a Tub (1696-97) is a satire against the Presbyterians and Roman Catholics. Three brothers share an inheritance (Christianity) but they all betray their father’s will that the clothes bequeathed to them (the Bible) should not be altered. The author supports the position of the Anglican Church against its critics on the left and on the right.
The Battle of the Books, published 1704, is his contribution to the quarrel between the Ancients and Moderns. Swift argues for the supremacy of the classics against modern thought and literature. The dispute is transformed into a burlesque battle between an ill-tempered spider (the Moderns) and a bee (the Ancients) that got entangled in its web in the King’s Library.
A Proposal for the Universal Use of Irish Manufacture (1720) made Swift a national hero.
The Drapers Letters (1724) is an exposé of a patent to introduce a new copper coin that would have devalued Ireland's currency. It is also a model of political harangue which prevented the politicians' plan of debasing the Irish coinage and strengthened Swift’s image as a national hero of the Irish. The Drapers Letters kept alive the memory of an episode of Irish politics.
A Modest Proposal, published in 1729, is a satire in which the author ironically makes absurd suggestions with apparent sympathy. He suggests that the Irish problems of famine and overpopulation could be easily solved by having the babies of poor Irish people sold as delicacies to feed the rich English landlords. The general tone of this absurd plan is businesslike; it sounds like the author believes he has a credible solution to Ireland’s problems. The author denounces the weakness of the Irish people and the tyranny of English oppression. The satire forces the reader to look at the world from an intolerably uncomfortable perspective as Swift is trying to mend the world by vexing the people in power into realization. His purpose is to reveal the horror of the Irish situation in a way that will make people question their own morals.
Gulliver’s Travels or, Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World, by Lemuel Gulliver, published after Swift’s return to Ireland (1726), is his masterpiece. It is a culmination of his active years in politics, laden with symbolism and rife with socio-political commentary, a timeless illustration of the pettiness of politics and people. The book was in instant success which entered the popular culture iconography.
II. Political, social and cultural context
2.1. The Enlightenment
Social satire in Swift's Gulliver's Travels Page 1