Gulliver's Travels Dividing Th Swift Mind 1987 Issue 1 87-90

TERRY COOK 35

’Dividing the swift mind’: a reading of Gulliver’s Travels

Gulliver’s Travels is one of those rare books which, while preoccupying succeeding generations of literary critics, also forms a part of the nation’s unconscious. And, as with The Pilgrim’s Progress and Robinson Crusoe, one’s perception of the book is inevitably affected by this very universality; any reader views the book through the distorting medium of a series of previous encounters - an abridged copy at junior school, Walt Disney’s cartoon ver- sion, even the presence in ordinary language of ’Yahoo’, ‘Lilliputian’, and ‘Brobdingnagian‘. This makes it very difficult to appreciate the complete structure and overall meaning of the work. Generally speaking, the charac- ters and events of the first two books exercise so powerful an influence on the imagination, they provide ’a pattern so satisfymgly neat and complete“ that the rest of the work can easily be ignored or dismissed This temptation is evident in Samuel Johnson’s put-down, the most famous comment upon Gulliver’s Travels. ‘When once you have thought of big men and little men,’ Boswell reports him as saying, ‘it is very easy to do all the rest.’2 And even when the importance of the h a 1 two books has been recognised, reactions to them have often been so extreme as, once again,‘seriously to threaten a unified appreciation of the entire work Nowadays it is the fourth voyage which attracts critical attention, and, until quite recently, discussion of it was conducted under the cloud of earlier condemnation. From its first appearance many readers have claimed to find it offensive, even quite unaccept- able. An anonymous reviewer wrote that ’a Man grows sick at the shocking things inserted there; his Gorge rises; he is not able to conceal his Resent- ment; and closes the Book with Detestation and Disapp~intment‘.~ The account ofGulliver‘s experiences in Houyhnhnmland was seen as an utterly negative exposure of mankinds inadequacies and limitations, a clear revelation of Swift‘s lunatic view of man as nothing more than a brute beast, wal- lowing in his own excrement. James Beattie, an eighteenth-century poet and philosopher of strictly limited abilities, propagated this idea in typically bel- ligerent fashion. ’This last of the four voyages, though the author has exerted himself in it to the utmost, is an absurd and abominable fiction. . . . But, what is yet worse, if anything can be worse, this tale represents human nature itself as the object of contempt and abhorrence.’4 The culmination of this attack is found in the Victorian novelist Thackeray’s description of the fourth book as ’Yahoo language; a monster gibbering shrieks and gnashing imprecations against mankind - tearing down all shreds of modesty, past all

36 Critical Quarterly, vol. 22, no. 3

sen* of manliness and shame; filthy in word, filthy in thought, furious, rag- ing. obs~ene’.~

Fortunately, modern critics have been able to examine the last voyage more dispassionately, and the idea of Swift as an insane misanthropist, obsessed by man’s sexual and excretive behaviour, has been buried at last. Yet controversy still surrounds the fourth book with, broadly speaking. two kinds of interpretation vying for supremacy. The following summary of the events of the final voyage should serve to bring out the problems around which the critical debate has revolved.

At the beginning Gulliver arrives in a hitherto undiscovered land where, though he is not immediately aware of it, the order of his own world is reversed: an animal species is endowed with reason, and the human type is sunk to the level of an irrational beast. On his first contact with this situation Gulliver‘s responses are conditioned by the logic of the world he knows. The yahoos are perceived as ‘animals’, and he feels an instinctive revulsion from them. ‘I never beheld in all my travels so disagreeable an animal, or one against which I naturally conceived so strong antipathy’ (IV, 1; 270).‘j One could present his reasoning like this: All men are rational animals; these are not rational animals; therefore these are not men.

A similar strategy is adopted at the first meeting with aHouyhnhnm. Gul- liver is struck by the rational appearance of its behaviour - ’he neighed three or four times, but in so different a cadence, that I almost began to think he was speaking to himself in some language of his own’ (IV, 1; 271) - but he can only conceive of such rationality belonging to humans. Again, Gulliver‘s thinking can be set out formally: All rational animals are men; this is a rational animal; therefore this is a man,

And he contrives an explanation to account for the equine shape: ’the behaviour of these animals was so orderly and rational, so acute and judici- ous, that I at last concluded, they must needs be magicians, who had thus metamorphosed themselves‘ (IV, 1; 272). Gulliver‘s initial behaviour in Houyhnhnmland, then, represents a sensible and logical reaction to an unexpected state of affairs. However, once he becomes aware of the way in which this new order inverts that of his own land his logical defences begin to crumble. The rational animals, he discovers, really are horses, and, what is far worse, the beasts really are humans. ‘The beast and I were brought close together, and our countenances diligently compared, both by master and servant, who thereupon repeated several times the word yahoo. My horror and astonishment are not to be described, when I observed, in this abominable animal, a perfect human figure‘ (IV, 2; 276).

From this moment of recognitionGulliver‘s retreat into the world-view of the Houyhnhnms begins. Briefly he is able to cling to his clothing as an emb-

‘Dividing the swift mind’ 37

lem of his rationality, of his distinction from the yahoos, but even this ele- ment of self-esteem eventually disappears. The final confirmation of his appalled identification with the yahoos is his unpleasant experience at the hands of a rampant female. ‘This,’ he writes, ‘was a matter of diversion to my master and his family, as well as of mortification to myself. For now I could no longer deny that I was a real yahoo in every limb and feature’ (W, 8; 315). This total acceptance of the Houyhnhnms‘ taxonomy Ieads to a correspond- ing rejection of his own world ’When I thought of my family, my friends, my countrymen, or human race in general, I considered them as they really were, yahoos in shape and disposition, only a little more civilized, and qual- ified with the gift of speech, but making no other use of reason than to improve and multiply those vices whereof their brethren in this country had only the share that nature allotted them’ (IV, 10; 327). It is this attitude which prompts Gulliver‘s behaviour when he finally returns home, his complete repudiation of wife, family, and society. The question that this leaves with the reader, the central problem of modem criticism, is: how far, if at all, does Swift intend the reader to participate in Gulliver‘s experiences, and therefore to share his misanthropic conclusions? In other words, does the fourth book represent, as Beattie and Thackeray thought, an expression of Swift‘s disgust at man’s physicality, and his intention to describe in Houyhnhnmland a rational Utopia; or should the reader be more cautious about identifymg withGulliver’s reactions, recognising thatGulliver is himself in some way the object of Swift‘s satiric attack?’

As I have suggested, this crucial question can only be answered when the fourth book is replaced in its position in the work as a whole. One can see the necessity for this by considering the following example. Gulliver‘s fate in Houyhnhnmland is sealed by the female yahoo’s attempted rape, yet this was not the first time that he had been claimed by a member of a human-like species. In Brobdingnag he had been kidnapped by a pet monkey, and this is how he describes a part of his ordeal: ‘He took me up in his right forefoot, and held me as a nurse does a child she is going to suckle. . . . I have good reason to believe that he took me for a young one of his own species by his often stroking my face very gently with his other paw‘ (11, 5; 161).

But on this occasion Gulliver experiences no loss of humanity, no feeling that the monkey is right to see him as a fellow ape. All he does admit to is a Severe blow to his dignity. Why, then, should a similar event in Houy- hnhnmland produce such a grotesque reaction? To ask this question is to begin to appreciate the careful construction and organization of the work as a whole, to realise that it is something more than a collection of satirical observations and attacks randomly assembled aroung the figure of Lemuel Gulliver.


The incident I have just described is by no means the only point of contact between the second and fourth books. In both, after being adopted by a native family, Gulliver is made to feel that it is he, and not his hosts, who is the exception to the laws of nature: the wise men of Brobdingnag agree that he 'could not be produced according to the regular laws of nature' (n, 3; 142), and theHouyhnhnms are similarly unable to fit him into any category. This leads to him being treated as subrational but, as in the previous example, his reactions to these judgements are radically different. In Brobdhpag Gulliver is anxious to retain his humanity; inHouyhnhnmland he offers no resistance, and accepts totally his host's opinion. In Brobdingnag he is pre-occupied with the indignities his small size entails. When he is wedged into a marrow-bone by the vindictive dwarf he fears that he must have 'made a very ridiculous figure' (11, 3; 148); when he is carried about in a dog's mouth he has the story suppressed, saying that 'I thought it would not be for my reputation that such a story should go about' (11, 6; 156). InHouyhnhnm- land this defensive shell vanishes, and there is nothing to stop Gulliver grovelling at his master's hooves. Within this apparent cofltrast, however, lie important similarities. At times he experiences sensations in Brobding- nag very close to those which determine his later behaviour inHouyhnhnm- land. He feels, for example, a dissociation from his body: 'Neither indeed could I forbear smiling at my self, when the Queen used to place me upon her hands towards a looking-glass, by which both our persons appeared before me in full view together; and there could nothing be more ridiculous than the comparison: so that I really began to imagine my self dwindled many degrees below my usual size' (11, 3; 146).

He also undergoes a series of degrading experiences which prompts a feeling of alienation, the court ladies' refusal to treat him as a proper man, for instance. 'That which gave me most uneasiness among these maids of hon- our, when my nurse carried me to visit them, was to see them use me without any manner of ceremony, like a creature who had no sort of consequence. For they would strip themselves to the skin, and put on their smocks in my presence' (11, 5; 158). These two tendencies come together in the fourth book to generate Gulliver's collapse. In Houyhnhnmland he is alienated from both his physical and mental nature: 'When 1 happened to behold the reflection of my own form in a lake or mountain, I turned away my face in horror and detestation of myself (IV, 10; 327). Another example of the interaction of the two books is found in their respective accounts of Gulliveis return to his own world. After his time in Brobdingnag he has problems of perceptual re-adjustment, since he has been used to perceiving things from a midget's point of view. These physical problems clearly fore- shadow the distortion of moral vision at the end of the fourth book, andGul-


liver‘s comment on the former is therefore particularly interesting; ‘In short, I behaved my self so unaccountably, that they were all of the captain’s opinion when he first saw me, and concluded I had lost my wits’ (n, 8; 191).

The second and fourth books can be seen as forming an important internal strudure, a mutually enlightening pattern. C. J. Rawson makes an interesting comment on this method of organisation: ‘The point about these patterns is not that they are neat and flawlessly progressive (they are not), and not merely that they fit in with the ’themes’ (though they do): it is that they have an effect as w e read, without our necessarily being aware of them as patterns.’* ,

As 1 have pointed out, the most obvious of these patterns is formed by the first and second books, and it would be foolish to ignore its importance. In Lilliput Gulliver‘s attention, because of his giant size, is concentrated upon the macrocosm, upon the state as a whole, viewed as it were through the wrong end of a telescope. In Brobdingnag his small size enables him to per- ceive in great detail the individual, the microcosm, as if through a micro- scope or magnifying-glass. The two balance one another and, in Kathleen Williams’ words, ’as in the Lilliputians Swift worked out precisely the symbolic consequences of smallness, so in the Brobdingnagians does he work out the symbolic consequences of largene~s’.~ But this pattern is only one of several in the work, all of which are locked together in a strong progressive movement. TheGulliver who arrives in Lilliput has played no part in public life - ’I had been hitherto all my life a stranger to courts for which I was unqualified by the meanness of my condition’ (I, 7; 103) - and so his own character and beliefs rarely come into consideration. Lilliput can function as an ideal, through its traditional constitution, and as a satiric picture of Eng- lish public life, in the current practice of that constitution, yet neither impinge uponGulliver in any significant way he is never implicated by the book’s ironic vision. The Lilliputians though do regardGulliver as a freak of nature: ’For as to what we have heard you affirm, that there are other king- doms and states in the world, inhabited by human creatures as large as yourself, our philosophers are in much doubt, and would rather conjecture that you dropped from the moon, or one of the stars’ (I, 4; 84).

This initiates the process of the disruption ofGulliveis world-view which really starts in the second book. Here Gulliver himself begins to intrude upon the readeis consciousness, and to be drawn into the scope of the irony. From being simply an observer and reporter - pleasant enough, if a bit dull - he now becomes, as much as any other character, a figure whose behaviour is to be judged by standards other than his own. So when he is placed against the wise king of BrobdingnagGulliver suffers in the readeis estimation, making him or her aware for the first time of his inordinate con-


ceit. He patronises the king unmercifully, treating him like an unsophisti- cated provincial, 'I was forced to rest with patience while my noble and most beloved country was so injuriously treated. . . . But great allowances should be given to a king who lives wholly secluded from the rest of the world, and must therefore be altogether unacquainted with the manners and customs that most prevail in other nations' (11, 7; 173-4).

Gulliver's pride is here reminiscent of the Lilliputians, whose king had styled himself - all six inches of him - the 'delight and terror of the uni- verse'. Gulliver's behaviour seems to bear out the king's remark: 'he observed how contemptible a thing was human grandeur, which could be mimicked by such dimunitive insects as I' (Q, 3; 146). By the end of the second book the reader has parted company from Gulliver. One stands back from him and views his behaviour critically, as Swift sets him on a down- ward path to disillusionment and madness. It remains to consider what part the third book plays in this process.

Fitting the third voyage into the overall pattern and meaning of Gulliver's Travels has always been a problem since, as with the fourth book, many readers have reacted to it adversely. Arbuthnot told Swift that the 'part of the projectors is the least BrillianY, Gay that it was generally agreed that 'the fly- ing island is the least entertaining',"J and these initial responses have been echoed by succeeding generations. Coleridge's opinion is unusual only in the force of its attack 'Laputa I would expunge altogether. It is a wretched abortion, the product of spleen and ignorance and self-conceit.'*1 But despite its obvious differences from the other books (the visiting of more than one land, for example), and the fact that it was written last of the four, Laputa does occupy a crucial position in the evolving structure of Gulliver's Travels. Broadly speaking, one can say that the physical dislocation of the first two books has primed Gulliver for the mental and moral disruption of the last, with the events of the third voyage forming an essential bridge between the two stages. RichardGrad in making a similar point, refers to 'the atmosphere of decay, death and purposelessness which pervades the third voyage and preparesGulliver - by now an invisible man - for his role in the final book'. 12

In Laputa and LagadoGulliver discovers societies in which theoretical and practical sciences have become totally degenerate. The Laputans have made many discoveries in astronomy and natural science, but this knowledge makes them unable to live a normal life. Similarly the Lagadoans have developed a technology which makes their world worse instead of better. The aspirations of the thinkers and the projectors are shown to end either in futility or in madness, a revelation which bears down heavily upon a Gul- liver who confesses that 'I had myself been a sort of projector in my younger

'Dividing the swift mind' 41

days' (In, 4; 223). The second half of the book carries this theme of disillusionment further into Gulliver's personal world, exploring the effect which such revelations have upon him. InGlubbdubdrib the escape-route offered by the past is cut off, shce history is shown to be either a means of disguising corruption, or, when it is a true record, it only highlights the present days short-comings. As Gulliver observes, 'As every person called up made exactly the same appearance he had done in the world, it gave me melan- choly reflections to observe how much the race of humankind was degenerate among us, within these hundred years past' (Ill, 8; 247).

The final blow toGulliver's ideals and aspirations comes in his encounter with the struldbruggs. On learning of the existence of these immortalsGul- liver immediately imagines them as a means of combating the apparently irreversible progress of folly and corruption in human societies: 'These struldbruggs and I would mutually communicate our observations and memorials through the course of time, remark the several gradations by which corruption steals into the world, and oppose it in every step, by giving perpetual warning and instruction to mankind; which, added to the strong influence of our own example, would probably prevent that continual degeneracy of human nature so justly complained of in all ages' (I& 10; 255). More importantly, Gulliver instinctively imagines himself as a struldbrugg, using them as a means of re-asserting the idealism which his recent experiences have undermined. The revelation of the miserable. truth about the struldbruggs, therefore, is the ultimate assault onGulliver's aspirations. The process of disillusionment is complete, and he admits his utter dejection. 'I grew,' he says, 'heartily ashamed of the pleasing visions I had formed, and thought no tyrant could invent a death into which I would not run with pleasure from such a life' (In, 10; 259).

It should be obvious from the way that I have analysed the structure of Gulliver's Travels that it seems to me that Gulliver's surrender to the Houyh- nhnms' world-view should not come as a surprise to the reader. The first three voyages represent a carefully managed disruption of Gulliver's perceptual and moral norms,13 and the events in Houyhnhnmland are simply the result of this. Gulliver's experience in the fourth book has been likened to a brain-~ashing,'~ and the comparison is apt, so long as it is seen as the culmination of a long process. He can only be reprogrammed because the sensory deprivations of the first three books have wiped from his mind all its normal ideas and attitudes. He is progressively isolated, the focus is con- tinually narrowed, until he is left completely alone, stripped of his defences; like a newly-hatched chick he is ready to attach himself to the first positive influence. And this is where the Houyhnhnms come in. They provide just that kind of authoritarian and absolute standard whichGulliver now needs.


He accepts their world-view completely, thinking that he has thereby rehabilitated himself. A natural analogy is with contemporary 'spiritual renewal' enterprises - E.S.T. or the'Moonies', for example - the devotees of which claim to have achieved through them a new level of insight and self- awareness. To an objective observer, however, their self-abasement is as repellent as Gulliver's grovelling before his 'mastei, all dignity and self- respect abandoned In the looking-glass world Alice remains triumphantly herself, applying normal logic to inverted situations, but in a similar situation in Houyhnhnmland Gulliver collapses, abjectly yielding his humanity to the cold, alien rationality of his 'master'.

Our reactions to Gulliver's capitulation, then, must be determined by the awareness we possess of why he behaves in such an extreme way. Through- out the first three books we have gradually been encouraged to stand back from Gulliver, and by the fourth book this distancing should be complete. We know that Gulliver's judgement is no longer to be trusted and so, while he whole-heartedly accepts the Houyhnhnms as ideals, we must try to view them critically. The claims he makes for them are contradictory (they write the best poetry in the world, yet their language is factual and purely func- tional), and it soon becomes clear that there is no way in which they can be adopted as ideals. This instinctive response is confirmed by what happens when the reborn Gulliver returns to his old life, determined to follow the Houyhnhnm model. The first European he meets- the Portuguese sea- captain, Mendoza - seems a thoroughly admirable human being, yet Gul- liver can hardly tolerate his company; even after some time at home he still cannot endure the presence of his wife, let alone the rest of society. It is hardly an overstatement to describe the returned Gulliver as mad - mad to condemn his fellow men as yahoos, and mad also to imagine that his educa- tion in Houyhnhnmland has raised him to a higher level of awareness. His story ends, ironically, with a display of that pride which first became apparent in the second book, and which by now has become total egomania:

when I behold a lump of deformity and diseases both in body and mind, smit- ten 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. . . . I dwell the longer upon this subject from the desire I have to make the society of an English yahoo by any means not insupportable, and therefore I here entreat those who have any tincture of this absurd vice, that they will not presume to appear in my sight. (IV, 12; 345)

To return to the question that was originally posed about the final meaning of Gulliver's Travels, as it emerges from the fourth book. The conclusion must be that Swift by no means endorses his protagonist's behaviour. The reader is not supposed to participate completely in Gulliver's disillusion-

'Dividing the swift mind' 43

merit, nor consequently should he or she accept the identification of humans and yahoos, and the idealisation of the Houyhnhnms. Rather one is expected to stand back, to view Gulliver critically and to be aware of his ultimate folly. There has been a tendency in modern criticism to concentrate upon the origin and meaning of the yahooMouyhnhnm dichotomy, but this has diverted attention from the evolving nature of Gulliveis collapse. It is certainly true that Swift does comment upon various contemporary debates, using the yahoos and Houyhnhnms, for example, to attack those progressive moralists who were busy trying to tidy away man's essentially fallen nature, and presenting him as a being who could hope to achieve a wholly rational existence. But such allusions only mould the background of the work. It isGulliver himself who occupies the foreground, and in the end he is a figure who is treated ironically. Swift is concerned to expose his failure in knowing, to satirise man's perennial desire to elevate himself above his fellow men, while refusing to include himself in his own pronouncements about human nature and society.

It will be suggested that to read Gulliver's Travels as I have done - as essentially the story of an individual's psychological and moral disintegration - is to distort the work crucially. Much modem criticism has attempted to undermine such a novelistic approach, to show, in W. E. Yeomans' words, that 'Gullher's Travels is written in a tradition which is distinctly different from that of the noveY.15 The most important implications of such a view concern the figure of Gulliver. On this analysis he does not represent an attempt to create a novelistic character, a three-dimensional figure whose psychology can be discussed as if he were reaL The best known advocate of this idea must be George Orwell, who points out that 'the implied character of Gulliver himself necessarily changes somewhat'. l6 Claude Rawson a m p lifies this: 'It is wrong, I think, to takeGulliver as a novel-character who suffers a tragic alienation, and for whom therefore we feel pity or some kind of contempt, largely because we do not, as I suggested, think of him as a 'character' at all in more than a very attenuated sense. . . we are never allowed to accustom ourselves to him as a real personality.'"

The final aim of such criticism is to show that Gulliver is simply a device through which Swift manipulates the responses of the reader, a changeable and inconsistent figure whose only use is in the deployment of irony 'Gul- liver is, in fact, an abstraction manipulated in the service of satire."* Thus, it can be asked, ifGulliver's experience is meant in some way as a warning to all men, why should Swift individualise him to the extent I have described? What relevance can Gulliver's presumably unique experience have as a lesson to the book's readers? Why show the reasons for Gulliver's wrong choice in Houyhnhnmland when all that matters is the fact of that wrong


choice? These questions are not to be side-stepped, but I think Some recon- ciliation can be made between the two apparently different approaches to Gulliver's Travels.

It seems to me that one should begin by recognising that Gullivef s story does not end with his final return to Europe, braced to meet the evils of the yahoos. Implicitly Gulliver's supposed life must include his writing of his book he ends not as a traveller, nor as a ship's-surgeon, but as a writer - more specifically, as a moralist. Gulliver concludes his account of the last voyage with a chapter in which he explains why he has written the story of his travels. There he asserts that his object was not fame, but 'the PUBLIC GOOD, that he writes 'for the noblest end, to inform and instruct mankind' (IV, 12; 341). One is supposed to believe that Gulliver's Travels represents its fictional author's intention of reforming the manners and minds of Euro- pean man. But, of course, so it did in reality, in the mind of its actual author Jonathan Swift. This duplication is not unlike that of the earlier Tale ofa Tub, which has upon its title-page the statement that it was 'Written for the Uni- versal Improvement of Mankind'. l9 The irony here is delicate. The claim is certainly intended to mock the aspirations of the Tale's supposed author, with his disastrous over-estimation of his own abilities, but it also turns back upon Swift himself. Just as much as the character he laughs at, he aims at unreachable goals, like the overthrow of modernism. But if in their aims Swift and Gulliver are very much alike, in their proceedings they are very different. Swift has clearly considered the problems inherent in any attempt to reform mankind through writing, and his awareness of them is made apparent in the letter Gulliver writes to his cousin Sympson. Here we find Gulliver upset that his attack upon vice and folly has had no effect

instead of seeing a full stop put to all abuses and corruptions, at least in this little island, as I had reason to expect: behold, after above six months' warning, I cannot learn that my book hath produced one single effect according to mine intentions. . . . These, and a thousand other reformations, I firmly counted upon by your encouragement; as indeed they were plainly deduciile from the precepts delivered in my book. (38)

Gulliver's expectations are absurd, yet don't such wild hopes lie behind the writings of any moralist, ironic or otherwise? Isn't it only a slightly exaggerated picture of what any writer - no matter how hard-headed - feels, when he sees his strictures ignored?Gullivefs reaction to his failure is to abandon his writing career altogether: 'I should never have attempted so absurd a project as that of reforming the yahoa race in this kingdom; but I have now done with all such visionary schemes for ever' (41). The tendency of the disappointed moralist to turn savagely upon the former objects of his benevolence Swift had noted in a letter to Alexander Pope, written the year


before the appearance of Gulliver’s Truvels. There he wrote: ‘I tell you after all that I do not hate Mankind, it is vous autres who hate them because you would have them reasonable Animals, and are Angry for being disap pointed. I have always rejected that Definition and made another of my own.’20

The last sentence refers to an earlier letter of the same year, the importance of which to the understanding of Gulliver’s Travels has been well documented. Certainly there he makes clear his affection for individuals, rather than abstractions, and his preference for a definition of man as ‘an animal capable of rationality’, rather than ’a rational animal’. But he concludes this discussion by saying ’Upon this great foundation of Misanthropy (though not Timon’s manner) The whole building of my Travells is erected And I never will have peace of mind till all honest men are of my Opinion by Consequence you are to embrace it immediately and procure that all who deserve my Esteem my do so too. The matter is so clear that it will admit little dispute.’21

This light-hearted undercutting of his own deeply-felt beIiefs seems to reflect exactly the attitude towards moralistic writing found in Gulliver‘s Travels. Any attempt to correct or reform mankind must be tempered by the realisation of the ridiculousness of such an enterprise. And not only ridiculousness. If in the fictitious preface Swift gently mocksGulliver’s expectations, in the closing chapter he exposes the darker side of the moralist‘s endeavour. The temptation is always present to say, as Gulliver does, ‘I write for the noblest end, to inform and instruct mankind, over whom I may, without breach of modesty, pretend to some superiority from the advan- tages I received by conversing so long among the most accomplished Houyhnhnms’ (IV, 12; 341).

This is a tendency upon which Swift had commented earlier in his career. In the preface toA Tale ofa Tub he had described satire as ’but a Ball bandied to and fro, and every Man carries a Racket about Him to strike it from himself among the rest of thecompany’, 22 and in the preface to The Battleof the Books he had seen it as ’a sort of Glass, wherein Beholders do generally discmer every body‘s Face but their Own’.23 Such blindness is particularly dangerous for the author of the satire. He may have made his voyage to theHouyhnhnms, may have glimpsed his Utopia, but to use this to claim to be on a higher level than the rest of mankind is calamitous. As soon as he loses his sense of humanity, his feeling of identity with his fellow men, he is condemned to the hopeless, bitter Ioneliness that Gulliver discovers. Throughout his satiric writings Swift seems aware of this possibility, and is, consequently, never afraid to implicate himwlf in his own attacks on vice, never tempted to overlook the folly of his reforming enterprise. In 1832 William Godwin, an eighteenth-


century philosopher and novelist, wrote the following about Culeb Williams, a novel which was designed to promote a radical political consciousness in its readers, but which suffered a fate similar toGulliver’s Travels: ‘And, when I had done all, what had I done? Written a book to amuse boys and girls in their vacant hours, a story to be hastily gobbled u p by them, swallowed in a pusillanimous and unanimated mood, without chewing and digestion.’Z4 Lemuel Gulliver would be similarly appalled to discover that his book has become a children’s classic, for most of its readers a n imaginative and humorous adventure story. Swift would, I think, smile.

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Notes Jenny Mezciems, ‘The unity of Swift’s “Voyage to Laputa” ’,M. L.R. 72 (1977), 1. Life of Johnson, e d R. W. Chapman (London, 1970), 595. Swift: the Critical Heritage, ed Kathleen Williams (London, 1970), 66. Critical Heritage, 196. The English Humourists of the Eighteenth Century (London, 1853), 42. Roman numerals refer to book and chapter, arabic numerals to page numbers in the Penguin edition of Gulliver‘s Travels, e d Peter Dixon and John Chalker (1967). Adopting James L. Clifford’s formulation (see selected reading), should we favour a ’hard’ or a ‘soft‘ interpretation? Gulliver and the Gentle Reader (London, 1973), 18. ’Jonathan Swift’, Sphere History of Literature in the English Language, ed. Roger Lonsdale (London, 1971), IV, 85. Two of Swift’s closest friends. The Correspondence of Jonathan Swift, e d Harold Williams (Oxford, 1963), 111, 179, 183. Critical Heritage, 334. ‘Gulliver’s Travels’: a Casebook, e d RichardGravil (London, 1974), introduction, 18. The best known instance of this is the way in whichGullivefs experiences at the beginning of each voyage become increasingly dark and violent - from shipwreck to piracy to mutiny. See, for example, Denis Donoghue, Jonathan Swift: a Critical Introduction (Cam- bridge, 1969), 160. ‘The Houyhnhnm as Menippean horse‘, Modern Judgements: Swift, e d A. Norman Jeffares (London, 1969), 259. ’Politics vs. literature: an examination of Gulliver’s Trmels’, Shooting an Elephant and Other Essays (London, 1953), 57. Op. cit., 27 Quoted by W. E. Yeomans, op. cit., 260. ’A Tale of a Tub’ and other Satires, e d Kathleen Williams (Everyman edition, London, 1975). Correspondence, III, 118. Correspondence, III, 103. Everyman’ edition, 31. Everyman edition, 140. Fleetwood, 1832, Preface.


Selected reading list Relevant criticism can be divided into three distinct, albeit overlapping, categories.

1 Works on Swift in general, useful preliminaries to a reading of Gulliver’s Travels Denis Donoghue, Jonathan Swift: a Critical Introduction (1969). An excel-

lent introduction F. R. Leavis, ‘The irony of Swift‘, The Common Pursuit (1952), and A..E.

Dyson, The Crazy Fabric (1966): chapter 1. Two discussions of Swift’s ironic methods.

R. C. Elliott, ‘Swift’s”I’’ I, Yale R e v i m 62 (1973). An interestingexamina- tion of the relationship between author and personae.

Works on Gulliver‘s Travels as a whole Frank Brady, ‘Vexations and diversions: three problems in Gulliver’s

Travels’, Modern Philology 75 (1977). R. P. Fitzgerald, ‘The structure of Gulliver‘s Travels’, Studies in Philology 71 (1974). Embodies an approach similar to the one I’ve adopted.

C. J. Rawson, Gulliver and the Gentle Reader (1973). Especially chapter 1.

Works on specific parts of Gulfiver’s Travels Book III: Jenny Mezciems, ‘The unity of Swift’s “Voyage to Laputa” ’,

Modern Language Review 72 (1977). Book N: James L Clifford, ’Gulliver‘s fourth voyage: ”hard’ and ”soft”

schools of interpretation’, Quick Springs of Sense, e d Larry S. Champ ion (1974).

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The crucial division of opinion can be found by reading R. S. Crane, ’The Houyhnhnms, the Yahoos, and the history of ideas’,

Reason and the Imagination, ed. J. A. Mazzeo (1 962) and Kathleen Williams, ‘Jonathan Swift‘, Sphere History of Literature in the

English Language, IV, ed. R. Lonsdale. Three collections of essays are widely available: Swift: Modern Judgements, ed A. Norman Jeffares (1969). ‘Gulliver‘s Trauels‘: a Casebook, e d R. G r a d (1974). The Art of Jonathan Swift, ed. Clive T. Probyn (1978). Finally, an important feature of recent study of Gulliver’s Travels has been the reconstruction of its cultural and intellectual contexts. A good selection of relevant texts is found in Jonathan Swift: the Contemporary Background, ed. Clive T. Probyn (1978).

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Gulliver's Travels Dividing Th Swift Mind 1987 Issue 1 87-90