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CHAPTER IV
The Ephemeral Pride of a Nation:
Gullivers Travels
When I behold a Lump of Deformity, and Diseases both in Body and
Mind, smitten with Pride, it immediately breaks all the Measures of
my Patience; neither shall I be ever able to comprehend how such
an Animal and such a Vice could tally together. (Swift 1983: 315)
Vain human kind! Fantastic race!
Thy various follies who can trace?
Self-love, ambition, envy, pride,
Their empire in our hearts divide.
(Verses on the Death of Dr. Swift, D.S.P.D., 1731, Lines 39-42, from
Swift 1813)
If Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe (1719) has been called a
"prophecy of empire" (Mcleod, B. 1999: 177) then Jonathan Swift's
Gulliver's Travels ( 1726) can perhaps be seen as a demonstration.
of the vanity of the empire. What Defoe saw at the beginning of the
eighteenth century England was the birth of a new economy based
on acquisitions of new lands. It was a period of intense competition
with the continental rivals - the Portuguese, the French and the
Dutch, to establish supremacy both on land and water. By the time
Swift was writing Gulliver's Travels England's own standing in the
wider European world had changed - it had definitely made a niche
for itself to be reckoned as the supreme European power and was
exhibiting its claim as the greatest imperial authority. At the same
time the definition and dynamics of nationalism was undergoing
change in this period. There were two competing positions - the
notion of an emergent and inclusive 'British' identity that was useful
108
for external colonialism, and the notion of English internal
colonialism in relation with its peripheries, Scotland and Ireland.
Swift's position, as a political character and writer, as a Whig and a
Tory, and his conflicting allegiance towards England and Ireland, is
a reflection of the contradictory and often paradoxical stance of the
English government in its internal and external policies. To
understand Swift's writings, it is necessary to analyze his conflicting
positions - his reactionary and libertarian strands in his political
ideology, his orthodox yet disaffected ecclesiastical sentiments, his
commitment to an exclusive English monopoly of public office and
his support for a non-interventionist foreign policy for Ireland, and
finally his eagerness to gain the favour of the English crown and his
sense of a dispossessed Irish patriot. Moreover, in order to seek
the 'meanings' of such an ambiguous and extremist writer, the full
complexity of contemporary political, polemical and ideological
contexts within which his texts were composed and received have
to be determined. In fact, Swift's writings are so intrinsically linked
to his biography that as Louis A. Landa points out, "it is rare indeed
that a commentator appraises any work of Jonathan Swift without
reference to biographical facts." (Landa 1970: 287)
It cannot be overlooked that .the terms of cultural and ideological
engagements in Swift's writings, whether antagonistic or affiliative,
emerge from the overlapping domains of identity that he shared
with both England and Ireland. An Englishman born in Ireland by "a
perfect accident ... my mother being left here from returning to her
house at Leicester ... and thus I am a Teague, or an Irishman, or
what people please, although the best part of my life was in
England." (Fox 1995: 3) Born in Dublin in 1667, Jonathan Swift
witnessed the profound impact the Civil wars had on the lives of the
109
Irish people that led to the crushing of the Irish Catholics and the
supporters of the Royalist cause.
Swift's father, the elder Jonathan Swift had immigrated to Ireland
from England around 1660 and there he married another English
immigrant. They settled in Dublin and Swift was born posthumously
in 1667. During his lifetime, Swift witnessed frequent Anglo-Irish
troubles emerging from the differences between a Protestant
England and a Catholic Ireland. The Glorious Revolution of 1688
brought the Protestant William of Orange to the throne to replace
the Catholic James II. James fled to France in 1688 but in 1689 he
sailed to Ireland and made campaigns to reclaim the English
throne. He suffered a decisive defeat and went into permanent exile
in France. William's victory and the subsequent Act of Settlement of
1701 secured the position of the Protestants in England and sealed
the fates of the Catholics in Ireland. Internally also, Ireland was
divided by various religious factions. The Roman Catholic
population constituted the vast majority, and the rest of the
population was divided between the Presbyterians (the Dissenters)
and the Anglicans.
A look at Irish history would show that in language, religion, land
tenure and social structure, Ireland had always been 'another'
world. In the early 1600's a group of daring pioneers had sailed
across the sea to settle and· to civilize a primitive country inhabited
by a 'barbarous people' of Ireland. Since Henry VIII's proclamation
of himself as the King of Ireland in 1541, English power had been
limited to earlier settlements and fortresses in and around Dublin.
But Ireland being a Roman Catholic country, it could be used by
Spain as an entry point to attack Protestant England. The only
remedy for this danger, as the Tudor queens Mary and Elizabeth
110
ordered, was the confiscating of Irish estates and the proposal to
make systematic settlements on the island. The idea was to make
the 'waste', 'desolate' and 'uncivilized' land flow with 'milk and
honey'. Estates of the prosperous landed gentry were confiscated.
James I made it clear that the natives would be removed and the
agriculturally valuable land was given the civil people of England.
The lands or "plantations" as they were euphemistically called,
were parceled and reallocated to "undertakers" who would build
Protestant churches and fortifications. A wall protected the new
Protestant community and the Catholics had to live outside the
walls. The subjugation of Ireland was based more or less on the
same principles that were to be adopted in building an empire -
segregation based on ethnic and religious superiority. By 1673 an
anonymous pamphleteer could confidently describe Ireland as "one
of the chiefest members of the English Empire". (Ferguson 2002:
62)
These strategies of cultural segregations and representations were
bound to affect any literary engagements of this period, especially a
politically conscious writer like Swift. But in Swift's case the
articulation of social difference, and of discrimination and
deprivation, was a complex on-going negotiation that expressed the
deep schism in his identity. On the one hand he had a 'received'
tradition of identity -an Englishman, and on the other hand he
faced the contradictoriness that affect the lives of those who are the
minority- the Irish. This characteristic of the in-between identity, or
as Renee Green says, "the interstitial space between the act of
representation" is to use her architectural metaphor, "a stairwell"
which bridges the polarities of identity. (Bhabha 1994: 3) It provides
temporal movement up and down which allows passage between
fixed identities. Such a borderline engagement of cultural
111
differences would bring forward a recognition that either of the
polarities of the fixed identity is only a partial form of identification.
There is always a to and fro movement, a fluidity of identification,
without being able to make any claim to any one specific or
distinctive Self.
Caught in these competing claims of identity, Swift's work reflects
antagonistic and conflicting engagements with nation, identity, race,
history, values and religion. Seen from the unique perspective of a
quasi-colonial relation that Swift shared with England and Ireland,
Gulliver's Travels reflects the attempt to redefine and reformulate
the contradictory claims of 'national' identity.
When Swift wrote Travels, he was about sixty and had seen a·
lifetime of warring religious and political divisions in his country and
its ambiguous relations with England. He was also by then an
established political figure and a satiric writer. When Gulliver's
Travels was published, it received tremendous response and was
"universally read from the cabinet council to the nursery''. (John
Gay's letter to Swift, Nov. 17, 1726, in The Correspondence, Vol.
Ill. 182). Ever since, it is undoubtedly Swift's masterpiece and
indisputably occupies a high place among the 'great' books of
English literature. So much so that we often forget that "Swift's
career as a writer was distinctly that of an Irish writer." (Fox 1995:
3)
When we read Oroonoko or Robinson Crusoe, the text seldom
allows us to forget the national identity of the narrator. In fact, the
popularity of voyage literatures written at this time depended on the
'realism' of its main character, its 'authentic' portrayal of the settings
and its 'recognizable' features of action. The identity of the traveler
112
going on a voyage to far off exotic places was unambiguously
familiar and identifiable as the Englishman. But the identity of
Gulliver has been ingeniously manipulated. Gulliver, a sailor and a
surgeon whose family comes from a small estate in
Nottinghamshire, begins an account of his travels, adopting the
same recognizable deadpan pedestrian method of narration of
popular adventure travels. The beginning lulls the reader into
believing that the familiar pattern would be followed here too - the
Englishman not able to make his fortunes in England, setting off on
a voyage to far away places like the East Indies, facing a terrible
storm en route, getting ship wrecked, being marooned on an
unknown island and finally coming in contact with the exotic
specimens who inhabit the island. The unceremonious factual style,
the shower of circumstantial details, the nautical jargon, the letter
from the publisher to the reader are all attempts to lend
verisimilitude to the 'travel literature' which the eighteenth century
public were eager to read. Captain William Dampier, whom Gulliver
claims as a "cousin" was the foremost voyager and explorer of his
times whose scrupulously kept journals stimulated the
unprecedented rage for travel books in the late seventeenth and
early eighteenth centuries.
But Swift's Gulliver's Travels is no ordinary run-of-the-mill travel
book out to impress gullible readers with exotic tales of far-away
places. Swift's opinion of writers of such tales is very clear when
the Captain suggests to Gulliver at the end of his travel to
Brobdingnag to let the world know of his experiences.
My Answer was, that I thought we were already over-stocked with Books
of Travels; That nothing could now pass which was not extraordinary;
wherein I doubted, some Authors less consulted Truth than their own
Vanity or Interest, or the Diversion of ignorant Readers. That my Story
could contain little besides common Events, without those ornamental
113
Descriptions of strange Plants, Trees, Birds, and other Animals; or the
barbarous Customs and ldolatory of savage People, with which most
Writers abound. (164-5)
The Gulliver, who writes then, has an abstract factual style. He is
committed to realistic reporting, almost appropriate of a scientist.
He records events, characters and conversations with a detached
accuracy. The lack of modulation is striking. The predominantly
declarative sentences represent the concrete particularity of things.
Even the King of Brobdingnag is struck by Gulliver's impassivity of
sensibility:
He was amazed how so impotent and groveling an Insect as I (these
were his Expressions) could entertain such inhuman Ideas, and in so
familiar a Manner as to appear wholly unmoved at all the Scenes of
Blood and Desolation, which I had painted ... (151)
The impassioned, matter-of- fact style of presentation, very akin to
what Bertolt Brecht would experiment later in the theatre, effectively
produces the alienation effect. The character, his emotions, his
identity, ceases to matter. So, unlike Oroonoko or Robinson
Crusoe, Gulliver has no identity. He is a commentator, an observer
and a mouthpiece for ideas, than a character in his own right.
The advantage of having a persona whose character remains
effectively unchanged is that he can be a safe guide through the
strange countries that he visits. His vein of comments on the
people, their way of life, wars, politics, law, religion, is "cold,
analytical, impersonal ... the unimpassioned tirade slide
imperceptible between indirect and direct discourse, between the
imperfect and the historical present tense, producing sometimes a
feeling of dramatic immediacy, sometimes a feeling of rapid
survey." (Brady 1968: 50) He reports on the vices and follies of
mankind, the depraved human nature, the pride and vanity of
114
nations. But his disproportion makes him the oddity, the alien, the
outsider wherever he visits; the giant in Lilliput, the small man in
Brobdingnag, the peculiarity in the land of the Yahoos and the
Houyhnhnms. The reader does not identify with this character,
Gulliver is none of us; so we can safely laugh at his mistakes, take
a jibe at his pompous and egocentric outlook and distance
ourselves from his morbid pessimism. Gulliver is both a comic and
an ironic figure; the mouthpiece to voice his ridicules at what he
observes, and himself an object of ridicule. As readers we
apprehend and respond to the Travels simply by following the story
and drawing such inferences from it concerning ourselves as it is
calculated to produce in us. Swift was capable of producing a satire
where the object and the subject of satire are the same - one man,
some men or all mankind. We laugh at ourselves at the expense of
Gulliver. For Swift, "SATYR is a sort of Glass, wherein Beholders
do generally discover every body's Face but their Own." (Preface to
The Battle of the Books in Williams 1982: 140) The reader is
Gulliver, proud, treacherous envious and cruel, and as defiant, silly
and petulant as Gulliver in accepting this truth.
Seen from a philosophical point of view, the reader can be
representative of Everyman, and Gulliver's Travels can be read as
a fable or an antithesis of the state of Man as propounded by Locke
and Hobbes. Or it could be seen as a specifically Christian allegory
of the Fall. Ever since the publication of this book, critics have
"busied" themselves "with the problem of what Swift was trying to
do". (Crane 1970: 331) The diversity of interpretation to which the
Travels is subjected to is no doubt proof of the richness of Swift's
thoughts. Or it could conversely be the result of obscurity in Swift's
ideas. And the obscurity could have been deliberate with the
purpose to hide behind a fa<;ade. This is where Swift's political
115
ideology, his views on nationhood and national identity, and his
contradictory allegiance to the Crown and his homeland get
reflected. We cannot ignore the importance of the historical forces
and the power relations of the time, nor the colonial experience that
shaped Swift's world. As Edward Said says about Swift, what he "is
doing above all is writing in a world of power." ('Swift as
Intellectual', Ashcroft 2004: 87)
Whether it is Aphra Behn, or Defoe, or Swift, each author, to begin
with, sets out on his/her 'travels' with the intention of reaffirming
what is already known back at home. Their protagonist is the lone
Englishman who braves hardships to discover exotic places which
he has heard of, in search of riches, facing naked terrifying savages -· .,,
who inhabit these places, and finally erecting in that strange land·
the edifice of the English Empire and turning the primitive island
into a profitable commercial venture~ Swift too adopts the familiar
outline of the innumerable travel writings of the period but unlike
Behn, or Defoe, or the other travel writers, Swift's. genius and
ingenuity lies not just in asserting the greatness of the Empire, but
more importantly in revealing the petty, sordid, egotistic and often
inhumane face of the nation. He unmasks the ugly, prejudiced,
dogmatic ideas of nation builders, particularly of the 'greatest'
nation on Earth, Great Britain.
It would not be an exaggeration to say that we cannot understand
the full impact and significance of Gulliver's Travels without
Oroonoko or Robinson Crusoe. Swift's work can be seen as a point
of departure from the other two. Considered side by side they
present two entirely disparate views of a nation in the making. In
fact, Swift's work can be said to begin from where Defoe's ends.
Defoe's Robinson Crusoe portrays the advantages ofindividualism
and capitalism. His island is the manifestation of how free
116
enterprise aided by divine sanction can prosper and become an
example of successful imperialism. Defoe's savage is the outsider
who has to be tamed and educated. He believes that colonization
confers civilized benefits on the savage. From the English
ethnocentric perspective, these exotic places are legitimate objects
for conquest and subjugation. On the contrary, the purpose of
Swift's satire is to deny the validity of this perception. His islands
are already populated by the so-called civilized, cultured people
who reveal their gross and ugly side. Swift's satire presses forward
from where Defoe left to reveal the worm at the core of eighteenth
century English Empire.
Swift holds up for the readers, especially the eighteenth English
readers, a mirror in which they can see their image. But the picture
shown to them is deliberately distorted, so that like Gulliver the
reader too observes the picture with an air of condescending
superiority. But sometimes the reader is shocked to realize that the
image of the monster is his own.
When I happened to behold the Reflection of my own Form in a Lake or
Fountain, I turned away my Face in Horror and detestation of myself, and
I could better endure the sight of a common Yahoo, than of my own
Person. (298)
But the shock tactics comes only after the reader has been lulled
into a state of 'willing suspension of disbelief. From the start, we
witness Gulliver, the representative Englishman, fallen into the
hands of the midgets of Lilliput. These little people immediately win
our hearts with their fascinating little city and their efforts to feed
Gulliver. At first they are scared of the 'Man Mountain' but Gulliver's
gentleness and good behaviour dispels their fears. They endeavour
to show their talents, rope dancing being one of the skills in which
they surpassed any nation for their dexterity and magnificence.
117
When an office at the Emperor's court falls vacant, several people
try to get the position by showing their dexterity and whoever
jumped the highest on the rope without falling succeeded in the
Office. Again, the Emperor rewarded those who could best
complete the feats of leaping and crawling under a stick that he
held out to them. Gulliver then presents a detailed account of the
functioning of their Court and the Cabinet, the rigorous laws of their
country, in short "a general Description of this Empire, from its first
Erection, through a long series of Princes, with a particular Account
of their Wars and Politics, Laws, Learning, and Religion ... " (29)
When Gulliver sends a number of petitions to the King for his
liberty, a long list of the Articles of Law is handed to him.
The first book is a magnificent and imaginative satiric
representation of specific persons, especially Walpole, Nottingham,
Harley, Queen Anne, Oxford and Bolingbroke; and policies like the
Treaty of Utrecht and the Whig policies before and after the War of
the Spanish Succession. The topical meanings of these allusions
have emerged bit by bit over the years, brought to our attention by
literary critics and researchers on Swift. As a satirist, Swift
expressed his meanings through references to contemporary
politics and people and therefore we have to read his work as far as
possible in the light of the happenings of eighteenth century
Europe. Moreover, Swift was deliberately obscure and ambiguous.
He himself had to perform a fine balancing act between not
displeasing the English Crown and voicing his displeasure at the
functioning, policies, and traditions to which he was altogether
hostile. His material and method of satire, the content and form,
had to be artfully disguised. The readers of Gulliver's Travels are
enabled by analogy, allusion and echo to make topical connections.
Swift could not risk publishing explicit anti- government political
statements against the Court and the ministry. Despite the Whig
118
associations and influences in his life, particularly that of Sir William
Temple, in his early political career, Swift professed to be a 'natural'
Tory of the Queen Anne and Hanoverian period. During the
Hanoverian period Swift was a bitter critic of Whig political policies,
especially the government's Irish and ecclesiastical measures. Yet
in his Correspondences to Richard Steele and Thomas Sheridan
written in 1726, Swift professes to have been always a member of
the Whig party. (Correspondences of Jonathan Swift, Vol. Ill) He
hides his contradictory political position behind fictive characters
and the use of irony, allusions, ambiguity and concealments. The
radical political critique of the Whig establishment was deliberately
disguised and sufficiently indeterminate so as to confound any
attempts by the authorities to convict the author of seditious libel.
Gulliver's Travels was published pseudonymously in London by
Benjamin Motte Jr on 28 October 1726. Alexander Pope in his letter
to Swift wittily alludes to the clandestine way the manuscript was
delivered to the printer:
Motte receiv'd the copy (he tells me) he knew not from whence, nor from
whom, dropp'd at his house in the dark, from a Hackney-coach. (Carr.,
Ill, 181)
The plea of ignorance attributed to Motte here was the standard
response of contemporary publishers when inquiries were made by
the government about th~ authorship of objectionable or subversive
writings.
The first voyage seemed apparently to be as Johnson thought
about big people and little people. Both Pope and John Gay in their
letters to Swift reflect on the immediate response to the book. Pope
wrote:
119
I find no considerable man very angry at the book: some indeed think it
rather too bold, and too general a Satire. (Corr., Ill, 181)
And Gay observed:
... nothing is more diverting than to hear the different opinions people
give of it, though all agree in liking it extreamly. From the highest to the
lowest it is universally read, from the cabinet-council to the Nursery. The
Politicians to a man agree, that it is free from particular reflections, but
the Satire on general societies of men is too severe. Not but we now and
then meet with people of greater perspicuity, who are in search for
particular applications in every leaf; and it is highly probable we shall
have keys published to give light into Gulliver's design .. (Corr., Ill, 182)
Swift's purpose of writing the brilliant political satire was, if we are
to take his words seriously, "to vex the world". (Corr., Ill, 178) The
statement is typically Swiftian in its heightened exaggeration. But it
is true that his book did manage to vex the Augustan readers,
especially those, as Gay pointed out, "people of greater
perspicuity".
Modern scholarship on Swift, especially the notable work of Sir
Charles Firth in 1920 (Firth 1920) have identified the events and
figures in Lilliput as allegories of politicians and political events in
the England of Walpole's time. For over six years prior to the
publication of the Travels, Swift was primarily writing political tracts
voicing his displeasure at England's policies towards Ireland.
Carole Fabricant's Swift's Landscape (1982) has given further
impetus to study his Anglo-Irish experience and the reflection it has
in his works. She looks at Swift's most outstanding work defending
the cause of Irish nationalism, The Drapier's Letters. In this he
protested against not just England's unjust political and economic
policies but also wrote passionately on the implicit ideological
impact of colonialism. In the person of the Drapier, Swift espoused
120
his anti colonialist views and denounced England's stance of moral
superiority and political assertion over Ireland. Addressing "the
Whole People of Ireland" Swift wrote that the English "look upon us
as a Sort of Savage lrish ... and if I should describe the Britons to
you as they were in Caesar's Time, when they painted their Bodies,
or cloathed themselves with the Skins of Beasts, I should act as
reasonable as they do" (Prose Works 10: 64). What is notable here
is Swift's feeling of non-belonging and the deep schism that exists
between the 'us' and the 'them'. He further attempts to reveal the
falsity of stereotyping any national identity when he writes:
As to Ireland, [the English] know little more than they do of Mexico;
further than tlfat it is a country subject to the King of England, full of
Boggs, inhabited by wild Irish Papists; who are kept in Awe by
mercenary Troops sent from thence... I have seen the grossest
Suppositions pass upon them; that the wild Irish were taken in Toyls; but
that, in some Time, they would grow so tame, as to eat out of your
Hands: ... And, upon the Arrival of an Irishman to a Country Town, I have
known Crouds coming about him, and wondering to see him look so
much better than themselves. (Prose Works 10: 103)
This reminds us of the early parts of Gulliver's travels where he is
an object of awe to be gazed at by curious onlookers. He is the
Outsider who has to depend upon the whims and fancies of the
Court to get his food and shelter. He has to learn their language
and their way of living. But however hard he tries to ingratiate
himself with the King, his position is clearly subordinate·and inferior.
Thus Gulliver at first finds himself an object of awe, then suspicion,
and then abject hostility. He is kept a prisoner, his pockets
searched and all belongings are confiscated. He cannot leave their
"celestial Dominion", and a long list of articles are drawn, to which
Gulliver had to subscribe to "with great Cheerfulness and Content"
if he was to have his liberty. Gulliver's desire for liberty represents
121
the plight and anguish of the Irish desirous of their independence
from the domination of England.
But what is evidently the focus of Swift's satire is the vanity of a
handful of people who consider themselves as the greatest power
on earth. It reveals the moral degradation of any nation where petty
struggles for power dominate and which inevitably lead to
hypocrisy, egotism and meanness. Book I exposes man in his
myopic self-esteem whereby man in his pride is reduced to the
stature of an insignificant insect and yet thinks of himself as the
most powerful force on the earth. Gulliver's description of the
Monarch of Lilliput reveals the comic conceit of people in power
and the ludicrous effect of their arrogance and short sighted ness.
GOLBASTO MOMAREN EVLAME GURDILO SHEFIN MULL Y ULL Y
GUE, most mighty Emperor of Lilliput, Delight and Terror of the Universe,
whose Dominions extend five Thousand Blustrugs, (about twelve miles in
circumference) to the Extremities of the Globe: Monarch of all Monarchs:
Taller than the Sons of Men: whose Feet press down to the Center, arid
whose Head strikes against the Sun ... {58)
Also, the episodes where the little people, less than six inches, are
divided into two struggling political parties, the High Heels and the
Low Heels, distinguished by the heels on their shoes; or the bloody
wars and massacres which have taken place because of the
religious controversy of breaking the egg at the big end or the small
end, demonstrate the absurdity of such situations.
Whereupon the Emperor his Father, published an Edict, commanding all
his Subjects, upon great Penalties to break the smaller End of their
Eggs. The people so highly resented this Law, that our Histories tell us,
there have been six Rebellions raised on the Account; wherein one
Emperor lost his Life and another his Crown ... It is computed that eleven
Thousand persons have, at several Times, suffered Death, rather than
submit to break their Eggs at the smaller End. (64)
122
The English are the pygmies, insignificant creatures in the larger
plan of mankind, involved in the ludicrous political disagreement
between the Whigs and the T aries, and their pointless argument
over their religious faith. Swift's allusion to Henry VIII who broke
with Rome over the question of papal authority, throws light on the
acrimonious religious dissent between the Catholics and the
Protestants that was to plague Europe in between 1688-1720. Swift
relates the folly of religious wars between Lilliput (England) and the
neighbouring Blefuscu (France) to immediate European politics.
The war between the two over the religious question of egg
breaking symbolizes the long series of wars between Catholic
France and Protestant England. Not only does this show the
absurdity of religious dogmas, but it also reveals how quarrel over
material objects like land and wealth can be garbed to make it look
like a 'holy war'. And unfortunately, the ordinary people are caught
in their ruler's battle of preposterous pride.
And so unmeasurable is the Ambition of Princes, that he seemed to think
of nothing less than reducing the whole Empire of Blefuscu into a
Province, and governing it by a Viceroy; of destroying the Big-Endian
Exiles, and compelling that People to break the smaller End of their
Eggs; by which he would remain sole Monarch of the whole World. (68)
Swift's views are clearly "That all true believers shall break their
Eggs at the convenient End: and which is the convenient End,
seems in my humble Opinion, to be left to every Man's
Conscience."(64-65) Also, Gulliver's attempt to dissuade the
Emperor's design to destroy Blefuscu because he does not want to
be instrumental in "bringing a free and brave People in
Slavery"(68), is suggestive of Swift's fight to protect the interest of
the Irish (once a free and brave people) from the political and
religious pressures of England. This is how England rules its
colonies, including Ireland, is what is being resonated here. Unlike
123
Defoe's work, Robinson Crusoe, which demonstrates a belief in the
superiority of Christianity and therefore becomes a justification for
the subjugation and colonization of the non-western world, Swift's
work can be read as an opposition to colonization based on
religious and moral superiority.
What is so remarkable about Swift's satire in Gulliver's Travels is
that the focus is not just the reader, or the nation, or Mankind, but
sometimes Swift himself. Swift directs the spotlight of his irony and
ridicule frequently on himself. Acutely aware of the marginality of
his position as an Irishman asking for the English Court's favour
and patronage, Swift lampoons his contradictory and ambiguous
situation. The fire fighting episode where the Queen is offended
with the method Gulliver adopts to put out the fire in the palace, can
be seen as Queen Anne's displeasure with Swift for trying to
defend the Church of England against its Puritan and Roman
Catholic enemies. Because of this she was unwilling to confer the
position of a dean or bishop on him in England. Within the context
of the palace politics, Swift was clearly never accepted as their
own. He was regarded as the outsider and to be frequently treated
with hostility and suspicion.
The ambiguous position that Swift occupied as Anglo-Irish, the
insider-outsider, the us and them, the colonized and the colonizer,
has shaped Gulliver's Travels to a considerable extent. Critics like
Richard Sympson, Terry Castle and Peter Wagner have pointed out
the linguistic and generic instability in Travels, which gives an
illusory sense of reality to the text. In Place, Personality and the
Irish Writer, Andrew Carpenter feels that this position produces a
curiously "double vision" in Travels that "operates outrageously on
the reader's sensibilities." (Carpenter 1977:183) Whether the
'double vision' affects the reader's sensibilities or not, it certainly
124
has shaped Swift's own perspective of a displaced person. He was
caught between the traditional ideal of service to the government,
and the failure of that system to reward him.
When Gulliver describes the laws and customs of Lilliput, he
laments, "I told them that our Laws were enforced only by
Penalties, without any mention of Reward." (74) The Lilliputian
society has a set of excellent laws and customs, method of learning
and education, which is very utopian to say the least, and yet it is
evident that both the ruler and the ruled are corrupt, treacherous
and ungrateful. Gulliver, in spite of his projected naivete, is sharp
enough to perceive this.
In relating these and the following Laws, I would only be understood to
mean the original Institutions, and not the most scandalous Corruptions
into which these People are fallen by the degenerate Nature of Man. (75)
The ideal laws of the nation exist only on paper to be exhibited to
the outside world as an exemplum; hence a justification for a nation
that God has ordained would rule over the entire world. The
Lilliputians validate their actions as just, civilized and rational
though to an outsider these are gross and sometimes violent
crimes. When Gulliver offended the King by violating his orders to
capture Blefuscu, it was decided keeping in view the well-known
friendship between His Majesty and Gulliver
That his Majesty, in Consideration of your Services, and pursuant to his
own merciful Disposition, would please to spare your Life, and only give
order to put out both your Eyes; he humbly conceived, that by this
Expedient, Justice might in some measure be satisfied, and all the World
would applaud the Levity of the Emperor, as well as the fair and
generous proceedings of those who have the Honour to be his
Counsellors. (86)
It was argued that the act of blinding Gulliver would in fact be
beneficial to both parties.
125
That the Loss of your Eyes would be no Impediment to your bodily
Strength, by which you might still be useful to his Majesty. That
Blindness is an Addition to Courage, by concealing Dangers from us ...
and it would be sufficient for you to see by the Eyes of the Ministers. (86)
Swift underpins the constructedness of all 'objective' truth and
defines the fine line that demarcates what is and what appears to
be. What the world considers the 'true' image of England is what
England chooses to project to the outside world. The mental
colonization can be complete only when the colonized is blinded
and can see by the eyes of the dominant power. In its economic
policies towards its colonies in general and Ireland in particular,
England adopted this outrageous method. The colonial mercantile
policies were guided by selfish interest, profit at any cost, even if it
meant exploiting the colonies and resulting in their severe
economic hardship. The purpose was clearly the uncontested
monopoly of the English for which they banned· all exports from the ~
colonies except to English ports. The economy of the colonies were
systematically strained and destroyed. The English government's
philosophy was clear: "You shall in all things endevour to advance
and improve the trade of that our kingdom so far as it shall not be a
prejudice to this our kingdom of England, which we mean shall not
be wronged how much soever the benefit of [Ireland] might be
concerned in it." (Fox 1995: 6)
But the argument of the ruling government was that they were
doing this for the benefit of the ruled. When the Monarch of Lilliput
orders Gulliver's eyes to be impaled, he has to "gratefully and
humbly submit to it." Gulliver observes:
It was a Custom ·introduced by this Prince and his Ministry, (very
different, as I have been assured, from the Practices of former Times)
that after the Court had decreed any cruel Execution, either to gratify the
Monarch's Resentment, or the Malice of a Favourite; the Emperor always
126
made a Speech to his whole Council, expressing his great Lenity and
Tenderness, as Qualities known and confessed by all the World ... it was
observed, that the more these Praises were enlarged and insisted on,
the more inhuman was the Punishment, and the Sufferer more innocent.
(88)
Swift relates the vices, ambitions and passions of the Lilliputians to
the power politics that existed in contemporary England. When
Gulliver is in Lilliput he is the observer who gives the reader his
views and perception of the kingdom. As Allan Bloom points out, "in
Lilliput and Laputa, he tells nothing of his own native country. He
need not, for the reader should recognize it." ('An Outline of the
Gulliver's Travels', Greenberg 1973: 648) The characters are
indeterminate but clearly identifiable as personages in British
politics. Gulliver's perspective is literally that of a gigantic tall man
who can see the miniature kingdom from above.
When Gulliver travels to Brobdingnag, his perception is inverted.
He is the small man in the land of the giants. He is the Englishman
in an alien land, and the Brobdingnagians are the standard against
whom the English are being measured. According to Aristotle, big is
synonymous with strength. Men whose bodies are physically
superior, resembling the statues of Gods, would readily be
accepted as masters. (Aristotle, Politics, 27-39) In Man therefore,
pride is usually proportionate to his stature; the bigger his size, the
higher his position in society, the greater his arrogance and vanity
over the rest of the world. But by making Gulliver disproportionate
to the strange creatures in the first and second voyages, Swift
highlights the absurdity of Man's pride. The diminutive Lilliputian
thinks he is the "terror of the universe", and similarly Gulliver
appears to be contemptibly petty when he boasts of his strength in
front of the Brobdingnags who are ten times the size of the
127
Europeans. Swift echoes Pascal's idea of man's position in the
great chain of being: What is man in nature? What is his position
when compared to the Infinite?
I reflected what a Mortification it must prove to me to appear as
inconsiderable in this Nation, as one single Lilliputian would be among
us ... As human Creatures are observed to be more Savage and cruel in
Proportion to their Bulk; what could I expect but to be a morsel in the
Mouth of the first among these enormous Barbarians who should happen
to seize me? Undoubtedly Philosophers are in the Right when they tell
us, that nothing is great or little otherwise than by Comparison: It might
have pleased Fortune to let the Lilliputians find some Nation, where the
People were as diminutive with respect to them, as they were to me. And
who knows but that even this prodigious Race of Mortals might be
equally overmatched in some distant Part of the World, whereof we have
yetno Discovery? (103)
All perceptions are then relative, depending on the perceiver's
insight and position. Big, small; grand, vulgar; good, bad; civilized,
savage; and all binary oppositions are relative terms. Nothing exi~ts
per se; nothing is a reality; nothing can act as the standard
yardstick for comparison. No person or nation can claim to be the
greatest, wisest or the fairest. Such a claim is absurd and
hypocritical. When Gulliver gives an account of the customs,
religion, laws and government of 'my own beloved country' to the
King of Brobdingnag, the King, "could not forbear taking me up in
his right Hand, and stroking me gently with the other; after an
hearty Fit of laughing, asked me whether I were a Whig or a
Tory."(123) Gulliver cringes to hear the King's opinion, and his pride
shrivels through the humiliating knowledge of his insignificance.
He observed, how contemptible a Thing was human Grandeur, which
could be mimicked by such diminutive Insects as I. (123)
... I cannot but conclude the Bulk of your Natives, to be the most
pernicious Race of little odious Vermin that Nature ever suffered to crawl
upon the Surface of the Earth. (149)
128
And thus he continued on, while my Colour came and went several
Times, with Indignation to hear our noble Country; the Mistress of Arts
and Arms, the Scourge of France, the Arbitress of Europe, the Seat of
Virtue, Piety, Honour and Truth, the Pride and Envy of the Worlds, so
contemptuously treated. (123)
Unlike the Lilliputians the Brobdingnagians are not arrogant or
malicious. But, when it comes to power, the strong will dominate
the weak, or at best treat the weak with pity and sympathy.
Gulliver's treatment in the hands of the giants vacillates between
these two extremes; he is either bullied, ill-treated and humiliated,
or ignored as "a Creature who had no sort of Consequence"(135).
The Queen's Dwarf feeling jealous of the importance given to
Gulliver, misses no opportunity to dunk him in a bowl of cream,
push him down a bone marrow, and a number of such deeds which
could prove fatal for Gulliver. The Maids of Honour complete their
dressing and toiletries with total disregard for his presence. Even
the animals, birds and insects either ignore his presence or show
their strength and power over him.
The farmer, who had found Gulliver in the field, decides upon the
advice of his friend, to exploit the potential of money making by
showing Gulliver in different cities. On Market-Days, he is taken in a
box and his frolicking is shown to the public for a fee. Gulliver is like
the animal in the circus, to be exhibited, without any consideration
for his discomfort or exhaustion. "My Master finding how profitable I
was like to be, resolved to carry me to the most considerable cities
of the Kingdom" and Gull liver was forced to show the same antics,
"till I was half dead with Weariness and Vexation." (114-5) His
nurse and companion, the farmer's daughter, who truly has
Gulliver's welfare in mind, weeps with grief at the indignity he has
"to be exposed for Money", and realizes that her parents "meant to
129
serve her as they did last Year, when they pretended to give her a
Lamb; and yet, as soon as it was fat, sold it to a Butcher." (113)
The power equation between the strong and the weak always
remain one of exploitation and suppression, be it in the relation
between Gulliver and the giants, or between England and her
colonies. Gulliver's mistreatment in a way alludes to the step
motherly and insensitive treatment of England's dependent
colonies, especially Ireland. England would always consider these
lands as alien, only 'to serve her', to be fattened and then fleeced
for its worth. Swift had, in his earlier writings, complained against
the "contemptuous Treatment of Ireland" (Prose Writings 9: 20),
especially England's mercantile policies towards Ireland. Through·
the Woolen Act in 1699, Ireland was prohibited from exporting its
woolen goods to any place other than England. This gave England
virtual monopoly over Ireland's economy. Moreover, most of the
Irish estates were owned by English landlords. Ireland's
dependency on England was to such an extent, that Swift later in
his Modest Proposal (1729) suggested in his characteristic way,
that in order to survive the Irish should sell their children to the
butcher;
... a young healthy Child, well nursed, is, at a Year old, a most delicious,
nourishing, and wholesome Food; whether Stewed, Roasted, Baked, or
Boiled; and I make no doubt, that it will equally serve in a Fricasie, or
Ragoust ... I grant this Food will be somewhat dear, and therefore very
proper for Landlords; who, as they have already devoured most of the
Parents, seem to have the best Title to the Children. (Prose Works 12:
111)
Much before he had written Gulliver's Travels, Swift had become a
national hero by attacking the English government in his Proposal
for the Universal Use of Irish Manufacture, (1720) where he called
130
for a complete boycott of "Every Thing Wearable that comes from
England." The final culmination of his resentment can be seen in
Drapier's Letters (1724-25) when William Wood, an English
manufacturer got the patent to provide Ireland with a new copper
coinage. The patent had been granted without the consent of any
Irish representative, and the Irish were apprehensive that the
massive increase in copper coins would drive out all the gold and
silver from the kingdom. Swift's anguish is very evident:
We are at a great distance from the King's Court, and have nobody there
to solicit for us ... he [Mr. Wood] is an Englishman and had Great
Friends, and it seems, knew very well where to give money ... (PW 10: 5)
More than the political or economic issues, Swift was concerned
about the broader psychological and ideological impact of such
dominating treatment. Like Gulliver who is constantly being carried
in the hands of the Brobdingnagian Queen, the colonies are putty in
the hands of the Imperial power. Swift is distressed at the inability
of his people to protest. In the Drapier's Letters, Swift rebukes the
Irish for their indifference:
It is your folly, that you have no common or general interest in your view,
not even the wisest among you; neither do you know or enquire or care
who are your friends, and who are your enemies. (PW 10: 5)
In fact, the constant state of subjugation and enslavement becomes
so much of a habit with those who have been colonized, that after
sometime It is accepted as normal. Apathy then leads to
acquiescence. As Gulliver says in his second voyage:
But as I was not in a Condition to resent Injuries, so, upon mature
thoughts, I began to doubt whether I were injured or no. (123-4)
The Brobdingnagians derive their strength, Swift seems to imply,
not just from their giant physique, but also because the weak is
meek and compliant. Gulliver, as can be seen from the first and the
131
second voyages, is eager to ingratiate himself with the rulers and
the authorities. The physical size is therefore not the main issue in
computing the strength of any person or kingdom. Gulliver's desire
to conform, abide and follow, almost bordering on sycophancy,
stems from wanting to demonstrate on which side of the fence he
is. Gulliver is clearly eager to be assimilated into the dominant
group. But at the same time Swift acutely understands the position
of the colonized and how useless it is to try to be even accepted as
one of the powerful 'Other'. Gulliver points this out:
This made me reflect, how vain an Attempt it is for a Man to endeavour
doing himself Honour among those who are out of all Degree of Equality
or Comparison with him. (140)
What Swift's satire seems to point out is that inequalities would
always exist, disproportion in strength and intellect would be
evident in man, but w~at is comically tragic is Man's great pride and
pretension that make him oblivious of his faults and deficiencies.
The Brobdingnagian king; who can think rationally and practically,
can unveil the defects of the English nation in Gulliver's grandiose
description of the society, laws, institutions, history and military
glory of England in the seventeenth century. In spite of Gulliver's
best attempts to "hide the Frailties and Deformities of my Political
Mother, and place her Virtues and Beauties in the most
advantageous Light" (150), the King's contempt is evident in his
devastating pronouncement:
... it was only an Heap of Conspiracies, Rebellions, Murders, Massacres,
Revolutions, Banishments; the very worst Effects that Avarice, Faction,
Hypocrisy, Perfidiousness, Cruelty, Rage, Madness, Hatred, Envy, Lust,
Malice, and Ambition could provide. (148)
The contradiction between Gulliver's discourse on the British
institutions and the Brobdingnag king's contemptuous response,
reflects the disagreement that existed between the political parties
132
of the 1720's. The controversy that divided Walpole and the Whig
party from the opposition Tory was the issue of the contemporary
constitutional settlement. According to the Whigs, England's
prosperity lay in continuing with the virtues of a mixed and balanced
government; whereas, the opposition pointed out that recent
political events prove that the powers were not upholding a
balanced constitution. Gulliver presents one side of the debate
when he presents "an Account of the Government of England',
(144) and how its Parliamentary system runs on the three pillars of
the Prince, the Legislature and the Courts of Justice. He
emphasizes the balance and separation of power, and the fact that
the members of each of the powers are distinguished by wisdom
and worthiness. When the King of Brobdingnag questions Gulliver
and seeks clarification and details, he presents the other side of the
coin. He exposes the inescapable discrepancy that exists between
what appears to be politically correct and what the reality is. He is
able to single out the huge disparity that exists between the rich
and the poor, the strong and the weak, the private interest of the
corrupt rulers and general good of the public. Swift's own opinion is
clearly what the King of Brobdingnag pronounces at the end:
I observe among you some Lines of an Institution, which in its Original
might have been tolerable; but these are half erased, and the rest wholly
blurred and blotted by Corruptions. ( 149)
The extent of degradation is so complete that there is no institution
or occupation that is free from ignorance, idleness or vice, and Man
has been reduced to the "race of little odious Vermin." In much the
same way that vermin and parasites survive on the hosts' body, so
the various corrupt institutions eat into the body politic of a nation.
The King's insight exposes the hypocrisy and anarchy that exists in
such parasitic bodies that threaten to consume a society originally
based on order. The scrounging sycophant that crawls, clings and
133
sucks is clearly more dangerous than those who pursue their self
interest. Kathleen Williams has drawn attention to the large number
of references to insects and creeping creatures in the second part
of Swift's work. (Williams 1958: 165-77) Frequent allusions to
spiders, weasels, toads, mice, louse, and equating Gulliver with
these "hateful Creatures", show Swift's disgust with that class of
men whom he equates with the lowest strata of creation.
The Brobdingnagian government, as the King tells Gulliver, is
based upon consent and not on coercion. He expresses his
amazement upon hearing Gulliver talk of a
Mercenary standing Army in the Midst of Peace, and among a free
People. He said, if we were governed by our own Consent in the
Persons of our Representatives, he could not imagine of whom we were
afraid, or against whom we were to fight. (147)
The Brobdingnagians choos~ their government 'by Ballot', but as is
likely to happen to any country or political system, they too have
faced Civil Wars and troubles arising from the ambitions of kings
and their desire for power. But their solution lay in maintaining
equilibrium. Political conflict
... was happily put an End to by this Prince's Grandfather in a general
Composition; and the Militia then settled with common Consent hath
been ever since kept in the strictest Duty. (156)
In the modern political framework when conflicts are endemic and
in fact inevitable to any political system, Swift is debating for an
alternative way of approaching strife, warfare and dissent. Force
and intimidation will not work in ensuring political stability. A strong
powerful monarch, like the king of Brobdingnag who works with the
consent of his people and keeps their interest in mind, is required to
maintain political peace and solidity. Hence, the king is horrified to
hear the "impotent and groveling an Insect" like Gulliver, propose to
134
impart the knowledge of gunpowder and its potential power which
can "batter down the Walls of the strongest Town in his Dominions
in a Few Hours; or destroy the whole Metropolis, if ever it should
pretend to dispute its absolute Commands." (151) The King's
disapproval, and his strong denouncement of such methods as the
idea and work of "some evil Genius, Enemy to Mankind" (151 ),
reiterates Swift's idea that the use of force and fear with complete
disregard for limits, would only lead to an impermanent state of vain
glory.
Swift's angst is evidently directed at what he saw to be a weak
English monarchy with pretensions of autocratic power trying to
level political, cultural and religious differences and obliterating
boundaries and identities. As a Tory and a conservative, Swift
distrusted the absolute power of government. He disapproved of
experimentation in politics, favoring a royalist government that was
concerned with human welfare. He was against the new moneyed
class which would have meant an imbalance of financial, and
concurrently, political power. As a champion of the Irish
nationalists, Swift fought for the cause of the oppressed and those
exploited by the English Parliament, Court and the Church. A
kingdom that rules its dependents on the principles of mastery and
subjugation, force and fear, and absolute power without mass
consent, is surely heading towards unrest, dissent and ultimate
breakdown of civil order.
Firmly believing that a system based on intimidation and coercion
will not mean any progress for the country and its people, Swift
reposed his trust in the traditional agrarian practice. As the king of
Brobdingnag very succinctly puts it, the need of the times is not
gunpowder, but
135
Whoever could make two Ears of Corn, or two Blades of Grass to grow
upon a Spot of Ground where only one grew before; would deserve
better of Mankind, and do more essential Service to his Country, than the
whole Race of Politicians put together. (152)
Based on Swift's views and ideology, it would be unjust to dismiss
him as an unenlightened, unprogressive reactionary. What Swift
was probably emphasizing was a system that would maintain
equilibrium between personal interest and public good, between
tradition and progress, and between science and art. The learning
of the people of Brobdingnag is "wholly applied to what may be
useful in Life" (153), an education which is simple, practical and
sensitive to moral values. Hence they excel in Morality, History,
Poetry, Mathematics and Agriculture, and have no conception of
Ideas, Entities, Abstractions and Transcendentals.
Gulliver fails to conform to the Brobdingnagian principles.
Physically he is an anomaly, a paradox - a strange creature
resembling a small animal or a dwarf, but nonetheless possessing
the features of a human being. He lacks the capacity for self
preservation. He cannot climb trees or dig holes in the ground nor
can he sustain himself by eating other animals. He is therefore an
amazing object, an exotica. The Brobdingnagians make an effort to
domesticate the weird creature found in the fields, and to transform
it from an object of fear and disgust into a marvel, "a Curiosity." The
King was even "strongly bent to get me a Woman of my own Size,
by whom I might propagate the Breed." (156) Gulliver too makes an
effort to be like them, to ingratiate himself with the them:
I was indeed treated with much kindness; I was the Favourite of a great
King and Queen, and the Delight of the whole Court. (156)
But what Gulliver dislikes is the ignominy of being in a subjugated
position, the unequal treatment
136
... upon such a Foot as ill became the Dignity of human Kind. (156)
His desire to escape from the confinement of the Brobdingnagian
empire, is because
I should rather have died than undergone the Disgrace of leaving a
Posterity to be kept in Cages like tame Canary Birds; and perhaps in
time sold about the Kingdom to Persons of Quality for Curiosities. (156)
Gulliver, like Swift, resents the dehumanizing treatment and the
deprivations of a quasi-colonial existence. He wants to "be among
People with whom I could converse upon even terms" (156} and to
live freely without fear, Gulliver is finally delivered by an eagle,
which carries away the box in which he lived, and subsequently
rescued from the ocean by a Captain of a ship.
Back in his country, Gulliver has problem in adjusting with his fellow
beings. Having seen gargantuan creatures for such a long time, he
is "confounded by the sight of so many Pigmies." He thinks he is a
giant and "they" were "the most contemptible Creatures I had ever
beheld." (165) Gulliver clearly belongs nowhere; he is a misfit both
in Brobdingnag and in his own country. In Brobdingnag, he did not
look at the mirror, "because the Comparison gave me so
despicable a Conceit of myself'(165), and back at home he is
looked upon by his wife and daughters as someone who has lost
his wit. Like Swift who was never comfortable with his Angle-Irish
identity, Gulliver too represents the fragmentation of the Self, a
disjointed personality, someone who is neither accepted here nor
there. Ashis Nandy in The Intimate Enemy has reconstructed the
psychological structures and cultural forces that shape colonial
consciousness. Nandy points out how the colonial :
ego and his vaguely defined authority can lead to a
weak
of the
self - "a self from whom one is already somewhat abstracted and
alienated." (Nandy 1983: 1 08-9). The duality of the self therefore
ensures that the humiliation and violence that the subject suffers is
137
not his. To protect his dignity and sanity he disaffiliates the
humiliation on his 'other' self. Hence Gulliver transfers the
Brobdingnagians contempt for him on to his fellow beings. The tone
of condescension and derision that Gulliver uses for the 'Pygmies'
and 'the contemptible Creatures' indicates his alienation from his
own people. He is in this world but refuses to recognize that he is a
part of it. The full psychological impact of what colonization can do
to an individual's and a nation's sense of identity is to be seen in
the final voyage that Gulliver undertakes.
But before this, Swift has to show in the third voyage, the complete
disintegration of the political, social, cultural- and religious fabric of
not only the nation that is subjugated, but also the nation that
. dominates. The colonial ideology was handled in two mutually
inconsistent ways. The .first method was to legitimize colonialism
both in the eyes of the colonizer and the colonized as a
machination of progress and civilization. The promoters of
colonialism tried to project the benefit of material products, new
land and cheap labour. The second, and in general the repressed
notion among the eighteenth century British public was that
imperialism could not be completely beneficial for England without
having some reductive side effects. The obvious grievance was the
depletion of the taxpayer's money which was being diverted to
foreign shores and in the upkeep of the navy and the army. But the
main threat to the colonizers, it was popularly believed, was not just
the heat, dust or alien culture, but what a constantly hyper
competitive, achievement oriented and aggressive machismoism
would ultimately do to the mental health of the settlers. Writers and
psychoanalysts like Franz Fanon, Albert Memmi and Octave
Mannoni have demonstrated the broad psychological contours of
colonialism. They echo the sentiment of the minority of British
138
intelligentsia who felt that the subject communities were not the
only losers, but that the colonizers are as much affected by it and
their degradation can be as much horrifying.
The problem of colonization did not only concern the overseas countries.
The process of decolonization - which is in any case far from complete
in those countries - is also under way at home, in our schools, in female
demands for equality, in the education of small children and in many
other fields ... If certain cultures prove capable of destroying others ... the
destructive forces brought forth by these cultures also act internally ...
(Mannoni 1972: 93-4)
The internal political, social and moral degeneration that is the
inevitable by-product of colonization is the main theme of Gulliver's
third voyage. The conflicting and ambivalent relationship that the
dominating and the dominated nations share, their interdependence
and yet mutually antagonistic attitude, the give and take of power,
are some of the issues which Swift highlights in the Voyage to
Laputa.
Laputa, the flying or the floating island is apparently isolated from
the main land, suspended above it. A magnet that acts as a
loadstone can be manipulated to allow the island to move up and
down, to come closer to the earth below or away from it. The
loadstone is under the care of astronomers who control and
position it as the Monarch of Laputa directs them to do. And yet,
there are topographical limitations:
But it must be observed, that the Island cannot move beyond the Extent
of the Dominions below; nor can it rise above the Height of four Miles .. .
the Magnetic Virtue does not extend beyond the Distance of four Miles .. .
and in the Sea about six Leagues distant from the Shoar, is not diffused
through the whole Globe, but terminated with the Limits of the King's
Dominions. (188)
139
Riding above its principal cities, the kingdom of Laputa from its
aerial realm can control and subjugate whatever country lay within
the attraction of the magnet. But, of course, the ridiculous part of it
is that "the Advantage of such a superior Situation" (188) does not
extend beyond four miles. From its advantageous position they
seek to maintain their authority by cruelly suppressing those below
them. By operating the loadstone, the island itself becomes the
ultimate weapon. If any town should rebel or refuse to pay tribute,
the King had his methods of "reducing them to Obedience." (190)
The "mildest" method would be to position the island in such a way
that those below would be deprived of sun and rain thereby leading
to disease and death. Next, the rebellious subjects would be pelted
from above with stones and their houses broke. As a final
demonstration of his authority; the king would let the island drop
directly upon the heads of his subjects which would ruin their men
and houses completely. The reluctance of the King and his
ministers in taking recourse to this extreme action is a matter of
self-interest, as (a) "it would render them odious to the people", (b)
"it would be a great Damage to their own Estates that lie all below'',
and (c) the broken rocks, pillars and the fire in the city below would
destroy the adamantine bottom of the island and then "the Load
stone could no longer hold it up, and the whole Mass would fall to
the Ground." (190-1)
Arbitrary, cruel and rigidly hierarchical power can reduce the
dependent country to submission, but absolute authoritarianism
would ultimately lead the superior edifice to crumble to the ground.
The very existence and survival of both the powerful and the
subject nations depend on each other. Being cut off from the main
land below, the Laputans have to depend on the Balnibarbians for
food and wine, which are drawn up by pullies. But they are
140
completely divorced from the community on whom they are
dependent for their sustenance.
It was not difficult for Swift's readers to recognize the many political
references and allusions in this tale. Laputa is easily identifiable as
contemporary England and the King of Laputa is a close caricature
of George I. Like George I who patronized Music and Mathematics,
the King of. Laputa and his Court are preoccupied with abstract
speculations upon the subjects of "Mathematicks and Musick".
(181) The English Court's squabble over political parties and the
arbitrary Hanoverian reign is lampooned as the Laputan Court's
"strong disposition ... towards news and Politicks ... passionately
disputing every inch of a Party Opinion". (182) The King's desire to
"be the most absolute Prince in the Universe" (189), the
considerable number of strangers from the Continent present in his
court, and the King's inability to leave the country is analogous to
the rule of George I. The over bearing and tyrannical attitude of
Laputa over Balnibarbi parodies the English crown's policies
towards Ireland. Oliver W. Ferguson in his Jonathan Swift and
Ireland presents a clear picture of the severe prohibitions inflicted
by England on Ireland.
Though in title a kingdom, eighteenth-century Ireland was in fact virtually
an English colony. Almost all important government and ecclesiastical
positions were held by English appointees. In addition, a number of
minor posts, pensions, and sinecures held by nonresident Englishmen
were a constant drain on the nation's economy. The country had its own
parliament, but its powers were so curtailed as to make it little more than
a rubber stamp for measures enacted in England. (Ferguson, 0. 1962: 7)
Laputa, too is seen as a kingdom that constantly drains the
resources of its subjects without being politically or morally
responsible for their welfare. The Laputans are oblivious of their
141
surroundings, deeply immersed in their own self, so much so that
they require flappers to slap them and awake them from their
reverie; otherwise, there was the "manifest danger of falling down
every precipice, and bouncing his Head against every Post."( 177)
They are a race of odd looking mortals with "their Heads all reclined
to the Right or the Left; one of their Eyes turned inward, and the
other directly up to the Zenith."(176) Their distorted physical feature
is obviously an allegory of their intense egotistical behaviour on the
one hand, and their concentration on abstract ideas on the other.
Their lives are predominated by two subjects - Music and
. mathematics - the most intangible sciences. Their clothes,
furniture, and even food are in the shape of triangles, rhombuS';
cones, and cylinders or shaped like flutes, harps and fiddles. Of all
the beings that Gulliver has met in his voyages up till now, the
Laputans are the most dehumanized. They are like mechanical
clockwork toys that are completely isolated from the realities of the
outside world. They have lost the human qualities of feelings and
emotions. "Imagination, Fancy and Invention, they are wholly
strangers to, nor have any Words in their Language by which those
Ideas can be expressed."(181) Ignoring all that is creative,
constructive or beautiful, they are absorbed in their own abstract
world of speculations. In turning away from the ordinary concerns of
life, they become purely emblematic of all that is abstract, abnormal
and inhuman.
The Laputans obsessively absorbed in speculative sciences and
divorced from the realities of life, are dismal failures in whatever
they do. They are devoted to music, but cannot play music well.
They are fanatically immersed in mathematics, but cannot figure
accurately enough to build houses or even tailor clothes. They are
142
completely incompetent in practical affairs, or in reasoning or
appreciating the beauty of nature .
... in the common Actions and Behaviour of Life, I have not seen a more
clumsy, awkward, and unhandy People, nor so slow and perplexed in
their Conceptions upon all other Subjects ... ( 181)
They are abject failures as workmen, intellectuals, philosophers,
and even as men, so that the men are even blind to the needs of
their wives and daughters who in turn amuse themselves with
strangers from the continent below.
Swift's satire is directed towards societies that strictly run on the
principles of reason and calculation, with their sight fixed on new
discoveries. Being completely insensitive to the needs of its people
and not caring for what is practically happening in the present
moment, would hasten the degeneration of the individual, society
and the nation. It would eventually lead to a complete collapse of
the very system which supports it. That the system is falling apart
under the repressive and indifferent rule of the king of Laputa is
plainly evident when Gulliver visits the subject country of Balnibarbi,
whose capital city is Lagado. During his perambulation of the
metropolis, Gulliver is shocked to see the sad state of the city and
its people:
... 1 never knew a Soil so unhappily cultivated, Houses so ill contrived and
so ruinous, or a People whose countenances and Habit expressed so
much Misery and Want. (193)
Gulliver's observation of the plight of Balnibarbi, echoes Swift's
comments on the condition of Ireland dominated by an apathetic
and exploitative England:
Whoever travels this country [Ireland], and observes the face of nature,
or the faces, and habits, and dwellings of the natives, will hardly think
himself in a land where either law, religion, or common humanity is
professed. (Nokes 1985: 267)
143
The only place that was flourishing in the barren land of Balnibarbi
was the estate of Lord Munodi, the former governor of Lagado and
Gulliver's host. His land was a pleasant contrast with its neatly
arranged houses and farms lush with corns and vines. When
Gulliver expresses his surprise, Munodi explains that about forty
years ago, a group of Balnibarbian inventors and promoters went to
Laputa. Upon their return they disliked everything that they saw in
their country. They had new theoretical schemes for improving their
island but the plans never worked; the island became a miserable
waste and the people lived in penury. The reason why Munodi had
a thriving estate was because he refused to follow the new
innovative methods of the 'experimentalists'. He believed in and
practiced the tried tested traditional methods.
That, as for himself, being not of an enterprising Spirit, he was content to
go on in the old Forms; to live in the Houses his Ancestors had built, and
act as they did in every part of Life without Innovation. (196)
But for this he has to incur the wrath of the King and face a lot of
pressure from the people who wanted that
... he must throw down his Houses in Town and Country, to rebuild them
after the present Mode; destroy all his Plantations, and cast others into
such a Form as Modern Usage required. (195)
Swift's aversion to pointless experimentation is quite evident here,
and more than that, the incident alludes to the fight between the
moderns and the ancients during Swift's time. Sir William Temple
had written an essay defending the ancient authors, which was
bitterly criticized by the "moderns" who dismissed the ancients and
praised the new wave of science and technology. Swift wrote the
Battle of the Books to defend the position of the ancients. In the
Battle, the Spider and the Bee are the advocates of the Moderns
and the Ancients respectively. After the debate between the Spider
and the Bee is over, the decision is:
144
He [the spider] displays to you his great Skill in Architecture, and
Improvement in the Mathematicks. To all this, the Bee as an Advocate,
retained by us the Antients, thinks fit to answer ... Erect your Schemes
with as much Method and Skill as you please; yet if the materials be
nothing but Dirt, spun out of your Entrails (the Guts of Modern Brains)
the edifice will conclude at last in a Cobweb. As for Us, the Antients, We
are content with the Bee, to pretend to Nothing of our own, beyond our
Wings and our Voice: that is to say, our Flights and our Language ... The
Difference is, that instead of Dirt and Poison, we have rather chose to fill
our Hives with Honey and Wax, thus furnishing Mankind with the two
Noblest of Things, which are Sweetness and Light. (Williams 1982:151)
In the failure of the experiments undertaken by the Laputan and the
Balnibarbian inventors, Swift reiterates the same argument stated
above. The experiments fail because they disregard and transgress
the boundaries of natural laws. Instead of living on nature's terms
and trying to use the advantages of nature for Mankind's benefit,
they defy, degrade and denounce nature.
In his visit to the Balnibarbian Grand Academy, Gulliver presents
before the readers, the ludicrous attempts of their scientists to
extract sunshine out of cucumbers, to reduce human excrement to
their original food, and in their method of building houses from the
top to the bottom. These projects not only violate natural laws, but
are absolutely useless - the equivalent of the dirt and the poison
that the spider spews, as compared to the natural gift that the bee
presents to Man. Here too in this voyage, Swift uses the symbolism
of the spider and the bee to emphasize the. usefulness of the latter
over the former. At the Balnibarbian Academy, the scientists are
involved in trying to extract silk threads from the spider's cobwebs.
As Kathleen Williams points out, "The experiments and their results
allow Swift to collect together various images which, as so often,
express his meaning through producing a certain atmosphere
145
which must affect our response to Laputa and Balnibarbi. These
projects leave an impression of uselessness, dirt, ephemerality, or
death ... thus turning the useful into the unusable and the vital into
the atrophied." (Kathleen Williams, 'Gulliver in Laputa', Brady 1968: 65)
The Grand Academy of Lagado is a burlesque, based as it is in part
on actual experiments conducted under the auspices of the Royal
Society of London, founded in 1660 for the improvement of Natural
Knowledge and Sciences. It supported the 'new' or 'Experimental'
form of philosophy. The Royal Society strove to establish an
"Empire of Learning" to remove language barriers within the
sciences. (Source: Internet, Wikipeidia) In 'A Voyage to Laputa'
Swift's satire is directed towards inventors and promoters involved;.·
in impractical scholarship, absurd and pretentious schemes, and
"Speculative Learning".
The first Professor I saw was ... employed in a Project for improving
Speculative Knowledge by practical and mechanical Operations. But the
world would soon be sensible of its usefulness ... Everyone knew how
laborious the usual Method is of attaining to Arts and Sciences; whereas
by his Contrivance, the most ignorant Person at a reasonable Charge
and with a little bodily Labour, may write Books in Philosophy, Poetry,
Politicks ... without the least Assistance from Genius or Study. (201)
Again when the Academy attempts to start a "scheme for entirely
abolishing all words whatever" (203), the focus of Swift's ridicule is
Thomas Sprat, the first historian of the Royal Society who tried to
evolve a new prose style. Under Sprat, the Royal Society came up
with
The only Remedy that can be found for this extravagance: [ornateness of
style] and that has been, a constant Resolution; to reject all the
amplifications, digressions · and swellings of style; to return back to
primitive purity, and shortness, when men deliver'd so many things,
almost in an equal number of words. (Hammond 2003: 63)
146
~---
Sprat's recommendation of a 'primitive' plain style seems to Swift a
wish to avoid language itself. He therefore suggests the comical
impracticality of carrying around sackful of objects to represent
things and to communicate with others.
An expedient was therefore offered, that since Words are only Names for
Things, it should be more convenient for all Men to carry about them,
such Things as were necessary to express the particular Business they
are to discourse on. (203)
Swift's hostility towards these experiments cannot just be attributed
to the fact that he was against empirical science, or innovations in
mechanical fields. These experiments fail not because they are
scientific but because they depend upon theories which are
misguided, and based on irrational premises. Laputa and its
dependent countries remain a wasteland because its innovators are
busy putting in decades of aimless effort in creating meaningless
things. The implication is that since not "one Ear of Corn, or Blade
of Grass" (194) grows in this desolate country, it would be more
sensible if like the King of Brobdingnag, they could put in their
efforts to "make two Ears of Corn, or two Blades of Grass to grow
upon a Spot of Ground where only one grew before."
Next, Swift directs his scathing satire towards the political projects
of the country which reflects the structural infirmity of the society.
By showing the "strict universal Resemblanc.e between the natural
and the political Body" ,(206) and their afflictions by diseases, Swift
proposes that it is essential to preserve the health of both. The
"illustrious Person" at the School of Political Projectors is employed
In finding out effectual Remedies for all Diseases and Corruptions, to
which the several Kinds of publick Administration are subject by the
Vices or Infirmities of those who govern ... (205)
147
Having observed all this, Gulliver conveys a mood of pessimism
and bewilderment. The political institutions are diseased by bribery,
corruption, dishonesty, inefficiency, strife, and duplicity to such an
extent that these have become endemic with no hope of being ever
corrected. It is the rampant corruption and vices from the ruler
down to the people that has turned the Kingdom of Tribnia where
Gulliver "had long sojourned" into a people of "Discoverers,
Witnesses, Informers, Accusers, Prosecutors, Evidences,
Swearers." {209)
Swift's relentless and unending tirade against the functioning of
such empires and people is carried forward with Gulliver's visit to
Glubbdubdrib, the island of sorcerers and magicians. Here, the;~
governor of the island, who has some magic powers, calls up the
dead of famous people like Hannibal, Alexander, Ceaser, Socrates,
Homer and Descartes. What Gulliver learns from these visions is
that the basis on which Europe claims its superiority over the rest of
the world is entirely baseless, a sham. The Englishmen's assertion
of greatness based on the divine rights granted to the rulers is a~.
myth, an attempt to justify and legitimize power which was in most
cases based on murder, duplicity and vices. Power was just not
granted by the Heavens to the chosen few, as the ideology of
colonialism perpetuated, but was rather the result of manipulation:
... the Roguery and Ignorance of those who pretend to write Anecdotes,
or secret History ... how a Whore can govern the Back-stairs, the Back
stairs a Council, and the Council a Senate ... I hope I. may be pardoned if
these Discoveries inclined me a little to abate of that profound
Veneration which I am naturally apt to pay to Persons of high Rank, who
ought to be treated with the utmost Respect due to their sublime Dignity,
by us their Inferiors. (217 -9)
148
It leads Gulliver to sadly ponder on the radical and pervasive
degeneration of Man. By comparing the present with the past,
Gulliver laments the loss of "pure native Virtues" (220), and how the
simplicity, justice, valour, love and the spirit of liberty found in the
English Yeomen of the past has been "prostituted for a Piece of
Money by their Grand-children."(220)
Gulliver gets further removed from reality and enters a world of
illusions and darker somberness when he meets the Struldbrugs of
Luggnagg. Up till now, Swift has ridiculed the transitoriness of the
causes of man's vanity, be it regarding his position, strength,
stature, wealth or achievements. Whether it was the Lilliputians,
Brobdingnagians or Laputans, pride is always to be ridiculed
because the reason of pride is shown to be ephemeral; position,
strength, power will not last for ever. More over, no achievement
can be considered the greatest per se. In Luggnagg, Gulliver pays
obeisance to the King by following "the Court Style", which was "to
lick the Dust before his Footstool" (222). He then proceeds by
"striking my Forehead seven Times against the Ground" and
pronouncing the compliment, "May your Celestial Majesty out-live
the Sun, eleven Moons and an Half." (223) Gulliver's understated
opinion that the Struldbrugs were not without some share of pride
makes the satire on Man's arrogance more cutting and inexorable.
When Gulliver learns that some Struldbrugs were immortals
I cryed out as in a Rapture; Happy Nation, where every Child hath at
least a Chance for being immortal! Happy People who enjoy so many
living Examples of antient Virtue, and have Masters ready to instruct
them in the Wisdom of all former Ages! But, happiest beyond all
Comparison are those excellent Struldbrugs, who being born exempt
from that universal Calamity of human Nature, have their minds free and
149
-I
disengaged, without the Weight and Depression of Spirits caused by the
continual Apprehension of Death. {225)
But Gulliver learns that the ancient wisdom and counsel of the
immortal Struldbrugs are disregarded, as the Court and the young
men are too opinionated and conceited about their knowledge and
ability. The invaluable experience of life, maturity of understanding
and judgment of these wise men go completely wasted whereas
they could have become the "Living Treasury of Knowledge ... and
the Oracle of the Nation."(227) Instead, immortality makes them
horrible specters, "the most mortifying Sight I ever beheld." (231) It
was not only the deformities of age that made them so repulsive to
look at, but "many more which arose from the dreadful Prospect of
never dying. They were not only opinionative, peevish, covetous,
morose, vain, talkative; but incapable of Friendship and dead to all
natural Affection ... " (229-30) They are envious of the young and
particularly of those who die. Ironically, the longetivity of Man is a
curse for himself and the society; the longer Man lives the more
degenerate he becomes physically and morally. Swift therefore
shows the last bastion of Man's pride crumbling to dust- the desire
for immortality. Man aspires to be immortal by his deeds and
actions and there is rarely a "Man who died willingly", yearning to
"put off death for sometime longer." Swift has shown Man's vain
pride upon the conquest of less powerful creatures, weaker nations
and people, but what the great satirist seems to imply that even if
Man can conquer life and death it would be a futile and insignificant
achievement in the greater plan of Life.
Gulliver's fourth and last voyage 'A Voyage to the Houyhnhnms'
has been the subject of intense speculation ever since it has been
published. If the first three voyages have been relatively easy to
interpret in terms of contemporary politics, religion, education and
150
science, the last voyage has commanded most attention and
provoked most debate. Thackeray thought that it was
A monster gibbering shrieks, and gnashing imprecations against
mankind - tearing down all shreds of modesty, past all sense of
manliness and shame, filthy in word, filthy in thought, furious, raging,
obscene. (The Dean and the Drapier, p. 318)
T. 0. Wedel in his essay 'On the Philosophical Background Of
Gulliver's Travels' (1926) thinks that the underlying emphasis of the
voyage is to show the contrast between Men in Hobbes' and
Locke's state of Nature. Men in Hobbes' state of Nature are like the
Yahoos, "in that condition which is called war. .. as is of every man
against every man ... with no arts, no letters, no society ... and the life
of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short." Men in Locke's
state of Nature are like the Houyhnhnms, "living together according
to reason, without a common superior." (Wedel 1968: 30) R. S.
Crane in 'The Houyhnhnms, the Yahoos, and the History of Ideas'
(1962) thought Swift was exploiting the idea present in the existing
Latin textbooks of logic which emphasized Man as "Homo est
animal rationale." Enest Tuveson believes that when Swift
pronounces that "the whole building of travels is erected upon this
great foundation of misanthropy", it is perfectly in keeping with
Swift's theological views and his belief in Man's Original Sin. ('Swift:
The Dean as Satirist', 1953) Maynard Mack's view ('Gulliver's
Travels', 1961) that the Houyhnhnms and the Yahoos are "only a
part of the whole. Neither extreme answers the actual human
situation", was seminal in determining the trend of recent criticism
of Swift's work. While Ricardo Quintana disapproves of the
"sensationalism" of the fourth voyage, John F. Ross considers the
last voyage to be "concerned with the springs and causes of action,
in other words, with the inner make-up of man." ('The Final Comedy
of Lemuel Gulliver', 1941) For Louis A. Landa (Landa 1970: 287)
151
the principles embodied by the Houyhnhnms are normative ideals
to be universally followed, and for Kathleen Williams the
Houyhnhnms and the Yahoos are the dual nature of man and in
between these two extremes "stand Swift's examples of fulfilled
humanity." (Wiliiams 1958, conclusion)
The various and varied readings of Swift's voyage to Houyhnhnms
only indicate the often ambiguous and diverse interpretations,
leading Swift to be labeled as a misanthrope, misogynist, insane,
and Gulliver's Travels to be seen as a spiritual biography of Man, a
philosophical treatise, an exemplary fable or a neurotic phantasy~
Of course the brilliance of Swift lies in the multiplicity of
interpretations, as there cannot be a single conclusive meaning of
the last voyage, but at the same time no modern critic or reader can
disregard the previous views and readings of this work. Hence, my
attempt to read the last voyage in the light of the effect of
colonialism on the identity of the dominant group and its subjects
would invariably be dependent on preceding interpretations of the
journey.
The first three voyages have typified a logical progression to
demonstrate what colonization can do to an individual's and a
nation's sense of identity. The fourth voyage carries the theme
forward to a heightened climax. In the Voyage to Lilliput and
Brobdingnag, the Body became a symbolic manifestation of the
Matter within. Hence, the miniature Lilliputians stood for the
smallness, pettiness and meanness that their body indicated. The
exaggerated vanities and ego of these tiny creatures becomes the
object of ridicule. In Brobdingnag the mind- body dualism is carried
forward when we see the perspective from the other end of the
magnifying glass. The giants are magnanimous, fair and possess a
152
largeness of vision; and Gulliver who appears as a 'pygmie' now
emerges to be mean, petty and ludicrously boastful of his powers.
The third voyage further emphasizes the dichotomy between Body
Mind-Matter. The scientists experimenting at the Academy of
Lagado, are apparently great minds but they are involved in matters
which are absurd, foolish and sometimes highly dangerous for
Mankind. The immortal Struldbrugs are caught in their decaying
infirm bodies and are the most melancholy indictment of man's vain
attempt to transcend his mortal limitations. The three voyages have
thus condemned man's pride, be it his arrogance of power, wealth,
land or greatness, and shown its comical effect on man - reducing
him to a petty, selfish, blabbering idiot.
Whereas in the first three voyages the literal becomes
metaphorical, in the fourth voyage Swift inverts this expectation and
reduces the symbolic to the physical. The Houyhnhnms who are
the "Perfection of Nature" (253) epitomizes Locke's Man in the state
of Nature. At first Gulliver is awed by the physical perfection of the
horses, their "Strength, Comeliness and Speed".
I was amazed to see such Actions and Behaviour in Brute Beasts; and
concluded with myself, that if the inhabitants of this Country were endued
with a proportionable Degree of reason, they must needs be the wisest
People on Earth. (243)
Then the Houyhnhnms impress Gulliver with their mental faculty.
" ... the Behaviour of these Animals was so orderly and rational, so acute
and judicious, that I at last concluded, they must needs be Magicians"
(244),
who Gulliver thinks must have metamorphosed into the shape of
horses. Finally, we are told that the Houyhnhnms lead a perfectly
moral life, so that lying, deceiving, and controversy are unknown to
them. They lead austere lives devoted to hard work, temperance,
153
J
and cleanliness. They know no vice, lust or passions; they are
solely governed by reason.
The Yahoos on the other hand are a beastly and degenerate
species of man. When Gulliver first beholds the ugly and deformed
Yahoos he is filled with "Contempt and Aversion" (242) for, as he
says,
I never beheld in all my Travels so disagreeable an Animal, or one
against which I naturally conceived so strong an Antipathy. (241-2)
They closely resemble Man as Hobbes described him. They are
nasty, brutish, jealous and lustful. They have an insatiable desire
for things; they hoard their possessions and fight for other's
belongings. They eat the dead and diseased flesh of animals which
they hold in their claws and tear with their teeth.
There can be no doubt that Swift portrays two contrasting and
extreme sides of Man -the benevolent and the depraved. If the
Houyhnhnms are the embodiment of goodness, then the Yahoos
are the extreme examples of the bestial. In this last part, Swift
therefore represents the symbolic through the physical attributes.
Virtue, reason, and goodness are embedded in a beautiful body,
appropriately a horse which was a familiar eighteenth century
emblem for strength, loyalty and gentleness. The degenerate
animalism, the appetitive passions, the corrupt nature is housed in
the body of surprisingly Man, considered the most rational of all
creatures.
By extrapolating two extremes, Swift is presenting here the
dichotomy between good and evil, the rational and the savage, the
god and the beast. Perhaps Swift wanted to deconstruct the
prevalent eighteenth century belief which formed the basis of
154
imperialism, that while the Europeans were the embodiment of
rationality, the rest of the world were primitive savages. The
Houyhnhnms and the Yahoos, like any other binary oppositions,
represent the positive and the negative, and a close reading would
show Swift's attempt to destroy all such preconceived stereotypes
of the positive.
Gulliver abhors the sight of the Yahoos whom he considers to be
disgusting brutes. Their heads and chests were covered with hair,
the rest of their body was bare. Their nails on their fore feet were
longer and their skin was coarse and brown. When the
Houyhnhnms compare the countenance of both the Yahoos and
Gulliver, the latter recognizes with "horror and amazement" that the
"abominable Animal" was "a perfect human Figure". (248) Gulliver
realizes that the Yahoos are not too different from him.
The Fore-feet of the Yahoo differed from my hands in nothing else, but
the Length of the Nails, the Coarseness and Brownness of the Palms,
and the Hairiness on the Backs. There was the same Resemblance
between our Feet, with the same Differences ... the same in every Part of
our Bodies, except as to Hairiness and Colour. (248)
But he refuses to accept the Yahoos as 'man' or 'human'. He
considers himself human and the Yahoos as a lower species of
animal. The superficial physiological differences between the
Yahoos and Gulliver are the differences one would associate
between the primitive savage man and the civilized man. Like
Robinson Crusoe who finds no kinship between himself and the
cannibals whom he sees on his island for the first time, Gulliver too
manifests the same horror and amazement when upon landing on
the island he observes the Yahoos move towards him. Gulliver's
description of the features of the Yahoos indeed remind us of the
savages that Crusoe described on his island.
155
The face of it indeed was flat and broad, the Nose depressed, the Lips
large, and the Mouth wide: But these differences are common to all
savage Nations, where the Lineaments of the Countenance are distorted
by the Natives ... (248)
By presenting the rational horses and the brutish Yahoos, Swift
thereby subverts the prevalent distinction between man in the state
of Nature and civilized man which stated that Man's preeminence
over the brute creation consists in his power to reason. The same
logic was extended to distinguish one society from another, races
and nations, thereby declaring one superior on the basis of virtue,
reason and knowledge. Swift unmasks the speciousness of
hierarchical power structures that are based on the argument of
Locke and Hobbe, Pascal and Rousseau, the continuing debate of
whether to preside in a state of "sensual ignorance" or "the
perfection of man in the establishment of true civilization."
(Wollstonecraft 1985: 99)
Gulliver refuses to accept his close resemblance with the Yahoos.
He is careful not to undress himself in front of the Houyhnhnms lest
they identify him as a Yahoo.
I had hitherto concealed the Secret of my Dress, in order to distinguish
myself as much as possible, from that cursed race of the Yahoos. (254)
That Gulliver without his clothes is nothing but a Yahoo is
confirmed by the behaviour of the young female Yahoo who sees
him bathing and expresses her lust for him. Further, when his
Master Houyhrihnm finally observes him undressing, he states:
... it was plain I must be a perfect Yahoo. (255)
The Houyhnhnms' judgment shatters Gulliver
I expressed my uneasiness at his giving me so often the Appellation of
Yahoo, an odious Animal, for which I had so utter an Hatred and
Contempt. I begged he would forbear applying the Word to me ... (255)
156
Swift makes the Yahoos correspond to a negative model - all that
is odious, primitive and repellant, so that being a Yahoo becomes
an insult. Thus Gulliver takes care not to be associated with them in
his mannerisms, clothing or dietary practices. What is significant is
that Swift makes a clear demarcation between two models of
civilization in which it is not the individual who is civilized or
degraded, but the entire group. This ensures the dichotomy
between the master and the slave, the privileged and the
unprivileged, the powerful and the marginalized.
Gulliver's repudiation of his identity clearly stems from his desire to
be accepted as one of the Houyhnhnms. The fact that he is not a
perfect Yahoo in look or behaviour (his skin is whiter and smoother,
and he has the "Capacity for Speech and Reason"(256)) makes
him straddle the indeterminate and shifting boundary between
barbarism and civility. Gulliver's condition can be best understood
from the perspective of Frantz Fanon's brilliant work 'Black Skin,
White Mask' (Fanon 1982) where he analyses the social
antagonism that arises in a colonial relation. Fanon determines the
formation of a colonial subject as it comes to be developed in the
colonial condition. He provides a psychoanalytical explanation that
emerges from the colonial subject's desire to dissociate himself
from his own identity and culture. This results in a splitting of
identity, on the one hand a dislocation and alienation of the Self
and on the other hand the desire for acceptance by the Other.
Gulliver presents all the manifestations of social, cultural and
psychic alienation. He detests the physical looks, social behaviour,
the habits and practices and even the smell of the Yahoos. He
refuses to accept he is one of them. Gulliver's consciousness
vacillates between self-hatred and an utopian identity. In The
Location of Culture, Homi K. Bhabha examines the problem of
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identity, especially in postcolonial texts, and concludes that it rests
on two traditions in the discourse of identity:
... the philosophical tradition of identity as the process of self-reflection in
the mirror of {human) nature; and the anthropological view of the
difference of human identity as located in the division of Nature/Culture.
(Bhabha 1994: 46)
Caught in this struggle of contradictory representations of identity,
Swift's hero articulates the problem of cultural alienation. The
earlier voyages had denoted Gulliver's pride in his people and in his
nation's "Actions and Passions", but now he feels only shame and
abhorrence for his fellow creatures. It is significant that it is the
Houyhnhnms who are responsible for this, as they have "opened
my Eyes, and enlarged my Understanding". (276) Gulliver's
repulsion for his self arises from the image that the Houyhnhnms
create in his mind. They point out the polarity between the rational
and the brute, the civilized and the disgusting, and insinuate into
Gulliver's mind a self-impression that is increasingly degrading for
him. Besides, Gulliver cannot escape the social and psychological
pressures of the Houyhnhnms as
it was impossible for me to do before a Person of so acute a Judgement
as my Master, who daily convinced me of a thousand Faults in my self,
whereof· I had the least Perception before, and which with us would
never be numbered even among human Infirmities. (276)
Rather than accept his personal traits as distinctively different from
the rational horses, Gulliver unconsciously acknowledges his
nature as negative. From the feeling of loathing arises Gulliver's
estrangement from his own people and he finds the "Honour of my
own kind not worth managing."(276) Not only does the self get
drifted away from "my own kind", but it also transfers the humiliation
heaped upon it to its alter ego, the Yahoos.
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Having drifted away from a fixed identifiable position Gulliver now
strains to reach the 'ideal' construction of otherness. Gulliver can
only be accepted as a rational creature if he tries to erase the
difference by ingratiating himself to his Houyhnhnm masters. This is
the only way he hopes to gain the favour and acceptance of the
Houyhnhnms.
I now began to be a little comforted; and took out some Toys, which
Travellers usually carry for Presents to'the Savage Indians of America
and other Parts, in hopes the People of the House would be thereby
encouraged to receive me kindly. (246)
Fanon explicates this subconscious desire to identify with the
dominant social authority: " ... there is no native who does not dream
at least once a day of setting himself up in the settler's place."
(Bhabha 1994: 44) The fantasy of the subject is to occupy the
master's place for which he has to deny his intrinsic identity and
demonstrate his separateness from his group. Gulliver now longs to
imitate the infinite perfections of the Houyhnhnms. It is significant
from the colonial context that Gulliver seeks to bridge the difference
by beginning to learn the Houyhnhnm language, trying to
pronounce the words correctly and using the right accent. He is
commended by his Houyhnhnm Master for his "teachableness"
(252) He eats oat and milk, tries to put food in his mouth with his
fore paw, and further emulates his masters' way of talking and
walking.
By conversing with the Houyhnhnms, and looking upon them with
delight, I fell to imitate their Gait and gesture, which is now grown into a
Habit; and my Friends often tell me in a blunt Way, that I trot like a
Horse; which, however, I take for a great Compliment: Neither shall I
disown that in speaking I am apt to fall into the Voice and manner of the
Houyhnhnms, and hear myself ridiculed on that Account without the least
Mortification. (298)
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It is evident that Gulliver's "Love and Veneration" for the
Houyhnhnms make him totally disregard the absurdity of the
situation and the ridiculous object that he turns out to be. He is
completely ready to reject his own· people and makes a "firm
resolution never to return to human Kind". (277)
Though he prattles about his "beloved England" and tries to give a
"favourable" turn to all the faults, "For, indeed, who is there alive
that will not be swayed by his Byass and Partiality to the Place of
his Birth?" (277), it is self-evident that he brackets ''the Bulk of our
People" (271) as the "European Yahoos" (304) who indiscriminately
suffer from the imperfections of the mind and the body, "of Spleen,
Dulness, Ignorance, Caprice, Sensuality and Pride." (275) Gulliver's"
description of the state of England under Queen Anne does throw
light on the inadequacies, evils and absurdities of its constitution, its
court, ministers and people
But of course it would be foolish to attribute Gulliver's
disillusionment and antipathy towards his race to Swift's>
misanthropy. The first reason, often surprisingly overlooked, is that
Gulliver is not Swift. Swift could not have presupposed the entire
human race to be degenerate, brutish and entirely without any
sense, because he was evidently writing for the intelligent,
educated and civilized Augustan readers who were capable of
understanding and forming their own judgment. So when we read
Gulliver's criticism of the human Yahoos, we recognize a
considerable degree of truth in it, but at the same time we are
conscious of the degree of unnatural exaggeration, which is the
result of Gulliver's psychic metamorphosis. As A. E. Dyson points
out, Swift is playing "an intellectual game", full of "fantastic turns
and contortion of the irony" which he "expects his readers to enjoy"
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and for this he obviously expects his readers to possess
intelligence and moral awareness. (Dyson 1970: 350)
The second reason why we need to review our understanding of
Swift's last voyage is because the object of Swift's attack is not just
the English or the Europeans or even Mankind in general; the
spectrum of his satire is much broader than that. Swift targets
negative human characteristics, its self-indulgence, avarice,
bestiality, corruption, and we as readers realize in the last voyage
that the evils in man and his failings are not due to his religion,
nation or class. The uncivilized savage need not necessarily be
found in far off countries. Such brutes can exist closer home. While
explaining the workings of the state of England to his Houyhnhnm
master, Gulliver states that it is perfectly justifiable for the English
Prince to
send forces into a Nation, where the People are poor and ignorant, he
may lawfully put half of them to Death, and make Slaves of the rest, in
order to civilize and reduce them from their barbarous Way of Living.
(264)
Gulliver's account makes us reach the same conclusion that his
Houyhnhnm Master derives:
... he at last arrived at a competent Knowledge of what human Nature in
our Parts of the World is capable to perform. (262)
All the Yahoo characteristics, the "barbarous Way of Living" can be
found in "our Parts of the World", and Swift thereby emphasizes
that "our Bulk of the people" are actually "worse than Brutality itself'
because of their pretensions to reason. (262-266)
But Gulliver fails to realize that vices and follies can exist in
everyone, irrespective of class or national boundaries, small or big
people, debased or morally upright. Swift presents Gulliver who is
split between conviction and assumption; he is convinced that the
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Self posits everything that is negative, and assumes that the Other
denotes the positive. For him the Houyhnhnms denote an ideal
state, a perfection of nature, the epitome of wisdom and reason.
But as readers if we found Gulliver's abhorrence for the Yahoos too
neurotic, we cannot fail to see his obsessive admiration and
servility for the noble horses as ridiculously fixated. The
Houyhnhnm land is a mechanical abstraction, a "curiously dead"
place. (Daiches 1979: 618) They know no emotion; they have no
fondness for their colts, their children being the product of a cold
calculated rational duty. If lying, cunning and jealousy are not in
their vocabulary, then they are also bereft of any understanding of
courtship, Jove or joy .. Their language and sciences are purely
functional and they continue to live prudently, suffering no disease;
What Gulliver accepts uncritically as an ideal, appears to be a dull
and· monotonous utopia obviously unattainable by human
standards.
But Swift presents the mental transition in Gulliver, his
unquestioning acceptance of the moral superiority of the:
Houyhnhnms with such subtlety and dexterity that he tricks the
readers into believing in Gulliver. Gulliver's frame of mind becomes
completely plausible because Swift cunningly leads us to think that
the positive is being positioned against the negative. It is not
immediately apparent and we have to be on the alert, otherwise like
the gullible Gulliver we too are likely to fall in the trap where we
unconsciously start believing and colluding with the binary
constructs. But the Houyhnhnms are an abstraction, a conceptual
construction created by the Houyhnhnms themselves. It is they who
engrave in Gulliver's psyche the monolithic fixed categories of the.
desirable versus the undesirable. They may appear to be the
embodiments of perfection but their palpable anger and violent
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hatred lead them to a vicious desire that the Yahoos "be terminated
from the face of the Earth ... alledging, That, as the Yahoos were the
most filthy, noisome, and deformed Animal which Nature ever
produced." (290) The negative representation of the Yahoos
defines the superiority of the Houyhnhnms; in fact the very
presence of the Yahoos is necessary for the Houyhnhnms, against
whom their power and supremacy can be measured. There is
clearly a hierarchy that the Houyhnhnms subsume: they consider
the Yahoos a threat to themselves and seek to tame the Yahoos, to
cultivate order in them and to impose their will on them. The society
is antagonistic, divided into the ruler and the ruled, the superior and
the deprived, the master and the slave. They can sustain their
authority only by taming and domesticating the wild and indomitable
Yahoos. Since they find this task quite a difficult and challenging
one, they try "to cultivate a Breed of Asses, which were a comely
Animal, easily kept, more tame and orderly" than the Yahoos. (290)
The other aspect of the psychological influence asserted on
Gulliver is a projection of his 'difference ' from the Yahoos - a
production of an image of identity and an invitation to the subject for
assuming and adopting that image. Gulliver can occupy the
disturbingly ambivalent in-between space because of his
'difference'- he is more rational and cleaner than the Yahoos. He is
a rational Yahoo, an anomaly like the noble Savage. The frame in
which Gulliver now sees his image is significantly what the
Houyhnhnms want him to see.
When I happened to behold the Reflection of my own Form in a Lake or
Fountain, I turned away my Face in Horror and detestation of my self;
and could better endure the sight of a common Yahoo, than of my own
Person. (298}
163
This split in identity results in Gulliver disowning his Yahooness and
becoming an ardent votary of the superiority of the rational horses.
As he finally takes leave of his Master
... I was going to prostrate myselfto kiss his Hoof, he did me the Honour
to raise it gently to my Mouth ... Detractors are pleased to think it
improbable, that so illustrious a Person should descend to give so great
a Mark of distinction to a Creature so inferior as I. (302)
It will also be observed that side by side with Gulliver's collusion
with the superior creatures, there is a simultaneous development of
his alienation from his own people. He begins with a natural awe for
the rational horses and dislike for the ways of the Yahoos. As the
tale unfolds, Swift brilliantly portrays the gradual change that comes
in Gulliver. On the one hand his adulation for the Houyhnhnms gets:
slowly exaggerated, till it achieves a preposterous proportion where
Gulliver prostrates himself before them; on the other hand his
disapproval of the Yahoos' way of life steadily converts into disgust,
loathing and extreme hatred so much so that he now begins to
wear the hides of Yahoos and making a canoe, "covering it with the
Skins of Yahoos well stitched together" and "stopping all the Chinks:
with Yahoos Tallow''. (301) Swift's satire thus effectively shows that
adopting any of these positions is to have an absurdly prejudiced
and blinkered view of reality.
Gulliver's expulsion from Houyhnhnmland is rooted in the
anomalous position he occupies- he is n"either a complete Yahoo
nor a true Houyhnhnm. The combination of strength and intellect
makes him a potent threat to the· Houyhnhnms. He returns to his
native land but clearly there is no possibility of ever reverting back
to his former complacent un-fractured self. His disgust for his wife
and family, his inability to tolerate human presence and his comfort
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in the presence of the horses in his stable finally completes his
estrangement and makes him a misfit in society.
The last chapter, surprisingly the most neglected by critics, is what
sums up Swift's purpose of writing Gulliver's Travels. Of the
numerous themes that critics have discovered and analyzed in this
work, there remains no doubt that, as Swift himself concludes, this
establishes the "author's veracity, his design in publishing this
work."(310) That Swift wanted his book to be read predominantly in
the backdrop of colonialism and the consequent effect of
imperialism on both the ruler and the ruled nations, is what this last
chapter drives home so cogently. Swift's writings had always
espoused the Irish interest, not just the political and economic
issues, but ·also the psychological and ideological implications of
England's domination over Ireland. Here too, Swift exposes the
fiction of racial Otherness that serves to legitimize assumptions of
moral superiority and political dominance.
Here commences, a new Dominion acquired with a Title by Divine Right.
Ships are sent with the first Opportunity; the Natives driven out or
destroyed, their Princes tortured to discover their Gold; a free License
given to all Acts of Inhumanity and Lust; the earth reeking with the Blood
of its inhabitants: And this execrable Crew of Butchers employed in so
pious an Expedition, is a modern Colony sent to convert and civilize an
idolatrous and barbarous People. {314)
Swift also highlights the effect that story telling, fact or fiction, can
have on the minds of the readers, their psychology, their belief,
their concept of their self, their country, and the other nations of the
world. Swift draws the attention of his "gentle Readers" towards the
control that writers wield over their readers, and thus the distortion
that occurs in any form of representation.
165
.. .for then the World would no longer be deceived as it usually is, while
some writers to make their Works pass the better upon the Publick,
impose the grossest Falsities on the unwary Reader. (311)
When travelers narrate about their journeys to far away countries
usually not seen or visited by Englishmen or other Europeans,
seldom can such descriptions be slated as the truth. A lot of
exaggeration, suppression, oversimplification, or misrepresentation
accompany these tales. If there are "remote Nations where Yahoos
preside" (312), as has been the general impression of the
Englishmen and the Europeans about the non-Christian, non-white
people occupying the rest of the world, aren't there also nations
where the Brobdingnagians live, ''whose wise Maxims in Morality
and Government, it would be our Happiness to observe"? (312, my
emphasis)
Swift's hero continues, with the same degree of naivety and
gullibility with which he began his travels, his pompous and at times
foolish prattle about the experience and knowledge he has gained
from his voyages. Nevertheless, the readers cannot miss Swift's
satiric jab at the pretentious and supercilious attitude of the English
regarding themselves and their nation. Their pride in their
civilization, moral superiority and territorial conquests make them
blind to the ability and worth of any other nation. If, as Gulliver tells
his readers with his hindsight of having seen the "Capacity and
Disposition" of several nations, the Brobdingnagians or . the
Houyhnhnms were "to send a sufficient Number of their Inhabitants
for civilizing Europe" they could teach a few things like "Honour,
Justice, Truth, Temperance ... " (313). As these countries "do not
appear to have any Desire of being conquered, and enslaved,
murdered or driven out by Colonies; nor abound either in Gold,
Silver, Sugar or Tobacco; I did humbly conceive they were by no
Means proper Objects of our Zeal, our Valour, or our Interest."
166
Behind the guise of the comical, fawning and adulatory Gulliver
stands Swift who exposes the truth behind the fa<;ade of
imperialism. His Gulliver's Travels becomes a means of protest
against colonialism, something he had been doing in his political
and literary career even half a decade before the publication of his
masterpiece. What is so amazing is that Swift writing in the
eighteenth century was precisely addressing issues which would
concern socialists, historians and litterateurs a couple of centuries
later. His work depicts the interrelation between the reader, the
novel, the author, and what the latter chose to represent in his
work.
167