CHAPTER IV. The Ephemeral Pride of a Nation: Gullivers Travels

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1 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

2 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

3 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 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

4 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

5 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

6 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

7 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

8 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

9 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

10 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

11 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

12 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 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

13 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

14 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

15 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

16 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 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 eggbreaking 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

17 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

18 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

19 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

20 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

21 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

22 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

23 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 stepmotherly 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

24 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 ( ) 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

25 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

26 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

27 sucks is clearly more dangerous than those who pursue their selfinterest. 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: ) 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

28 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

29 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 selfpreservation. 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

30 ... 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 : weak ego and his vaguely defined authority can lead to a of the self - "a self from whom one is already somewhat abstracted and alienated." (Nandy 1983: 108-9). The duality of the self therefore ensures that the humiliation and violence that the subject suffers is 137