Category: A Modest Proposal

Introduction

In this passage, Robinson Crusoe compares life on the island with being in prison. These similarities can be traced when he says that he wants to wring his hands and cry like a child: “I was a prisoner, locked in the eternal bolts of the ocean, in an uninhabited desert, without redemption”(Defoe 89). At first glance, one may not understand why an island in the Pacific Ocean is compared to four walls. On the island a person is free, nothing holds him and no one watches over him, as in prison.

However, when a person gets to the island due to circumstances and cannot get out of there for more than one year, it is comparable to a prison in which fate is the warden. Moreover, the author uses comparisons and enumerations in this passage. For example, “the greatest composures of my mind, this would break out upon me like a storm”, and ” my very heart would die within me, to think of the woods, the mountains, the deserts ” (Defoe 91). The tone of the passage demonstrates despair and longing for freedom.

Discussion

The Anglo-Irish writer Jonathan Swift’s The Humble Offer is a powerful political satire about the economic and social conditions of the poor in Ireland under British rule. The author describes the plight of the Irish people at the beginning, practically “lulling” the vigilance of an unprepared reader (Swift 99). He talks for a long time about how brilliant and rationally verified his idea is so that it seems that now he will open the eyes of the reader. The whole text is permeated with malicious irony over the image of a man who is confident that his proposal can change the life of the country and improve it. In this passage, Swift perceives “irony” as the best weapon for attacking all kinds of vices and injustices that prevail in society: “They die and decompose every day from cold and hunger, dirt and parasites as quickly as can reasonably be expected” (Swift 100).

Swift’s satirical way of presenting ideas is noticeable, since initially, he shows sympathy for poor people, stating that they are poor and do not have enough money to raise their children. Thus, there is an urgent need to make a decision for the well-being of the “Commonwealth”. His suggestion is that parents brutally kill their children by selling them and receiving money in return. The essay was written by Swift in agony and is addressed primarily to the English administration.

Conclusion

Swift’s masterful use of irony to make his main argument- that the Irish deserve better treatment from the British – powerful and terribly funny. In “A Modest Proposal” Jonathan Swift uses literary techniques of satire, imagery, hyperbole, wordplay, irony, and paralysis. The word “modest” is ironic, because the narrator’s sentence in this essay is not modest at all. Most would find this outrageous: the narrator suggests “poor women raise their children like livestock, fattening them up so they can sell them to rich people when they turn a year old” (Swift, 2018) He wrote a “Modest Proposal” as an attempt to persuade the Irish Parliament to improve the living conditions of the poor. Swift used the idea of eating children as a metaphor for what he saw as the exploitation of the poor, such as the high rents charged by landlords.

Works Cited

Defoe, Daniel. “The Life and Strange Surprizing Adventures of Robinson Crusoe.” The Life and Strange Surprizing Adventures of Robinson Crusoe. Bucknell University Press, 2022, pp. 78-90.

Swift, Jonathan. A modest proposal and other stories. GENERAL PRESS, 2018, pp. 98-101.

A Modest Proposal is a Juvenalian satirical essay written in 1729 by Jonathan Swift (Moore, 2010). It purported to provide a much-needed solution to the problem of poverty and hunger in Ireland. From the very beginning, the writer expressed his concern for the plight of the poor, which was central to the whole story. Swift made an attempt to resolve the economic difficulties of the Irish by proposing a new strategy: impoverished families could sell their infants to rich people as food (Moore, 2010). According to Moore, A Modest Proposal can be regarded as an attempt of intervention in the economic debates of 1729 (2010). Swift made a mockery of the financial policy attempting to restrain consumption. The writer did not surprise me by introducing the calendar for infanticide as a viable strategy for solving economic problems. However, I was astonished to realize that the implicit assumption in the essay was that all proposed economic strategies of the time Swift ridiculed were aimed at promoting the well-being of the ruling class only.

The plan that Swift put forward was gothicaly dark and grotesquely meticulous simultaneously. He made an approximate calculation of the birth rates of Irish children and pointed out to the fact that due to their young age, both employment opportunities and stealing as a form of last resort were closed to them. Much to my surprise writer offered the only logical solution in his opinion— to consume those kids when they reach the appropriate age. Swift believed it was the age of one year, and his very “worthy” friend argued that even fourteen-year-old kids could potentially be served as food (Swift, 2008). The writer dismissed the idea, and cynically persuaded the reader that only one-year-old infants are suitable for consumption. He argued that the flash of a teenage boy was too lean and that the teenage girls were potential “breeders themselves” (Swift, 2008).

The writer was extremely successful in convincing the reader to accept the idea of the final revelation. He went to great length to support his proposal by developing six elaborate arguments for it; thus, making the reader believe that the narrator was the outsider to the Irish community who was only motivated by greed. The first argument in support of the infanticide surprised me the most: it would significantly reduce the number of Catholics who were highly dangerous. The second argument stated that the impoverished Irish would “acquire” some property they could sell (Swift, 2008). The third argument was the economic one. Swift claimed that eating babies would improve national well-being by removing the financial burden of the children’s upkeep. The fifth argument defended the proposal on the grounds of cultural enrichment by new gourmet foods that could be appreciated in culinary circles. The final argument took a swing at the lamentable state of the institution of marriage. The writer claimed that since babies would become a commodity, they would receive better treatment from their families (Swift, 2008).

The last paragraph of the essay was extremely surprising. It was due to the fact that the prejudice against the people with low socioeconomic status was the main theme of the story, yet in the end, it was shown that the narrator was not an outsider but rather a loyal Irishman. Moreover, he was a citizen who was genuinely concerned with the plight of his people, and the only thing he wished for was to make them happy (Swift, 2008).

References

Moore, S. (2010). Swift, the book, and the Irish financial revolution. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press.

Swift, J. (2008). Modest Proposal: A Webster’s Bulgarian Thesaurus Edition. San Diego, CA: ICON Group.

The purpose of Jonathan Swift’s essay is to satirize the solutions to poverty issues in eighteenth-century Ireland. The text begins with the description of the realities of society living in the time of famine. Families with starving children are a common sight on the streets. As parents do not have the resources to feed their children, they live in poverty. Mothers are forced into begging, while children resort to stealing and other crimes. The narrator reasons that the abundance of offsprings who have to be fed, yet do not produce any products and services themselves, is a burden to the kingdom. Since small children are not capable of work, they only constitute the source of expenditures to families and the country. The narrator mentions other public issues, such as abortions and deliberate child injuries. He believes that despite the children’s age, lack of skills, and continuous drain of resources, they still can be useful. The narrator calculates that until a child reaches the age of one, they are relatively cheap to feed since they only rely on their mother’s milk. Breastfeeding on a regular basis makes children healthy and increases their body mass. The narrator suggests that a proportion of the infant population can be sold to wealthy people as food. He reasons that his solution may resolve the abortion problem because all children will bring benefit to society, as well as end the famine as they can be served as meals. The narrator adds that the remaining number of children will be sufficient for breeding future generations. Overall, the essay is a satire meant to bring the mistreatment of poor people to public attention.

Since one of the core features of any human activity is standardly purposefulness and meaningfulness, it appears reasonable to seek purpose and meaning in particular in works of literature. For centuries on end, works of fiction have been created by writers either to reflect the existing reality or to create a new, more desired one. Reflection of reality in literature can be instigated by such motives as a wish to praise and glorify the perfection of what is perceived on the one hand, or to point out the negative phenomena in order to stimulate its improvement on the other hand. In certain times the latter criticism of reality could be given a hostile reception by censure of the governing circles; thus it had to be disguised appropriately, with one of the ways to array criticism being irony and sarcasm. A veiled lunge against the injustice of the time could pass unnoticed in form of allegory or pamphlet. In modern times, when freedom of speech and freedom of press became more widespread in civilized society, irony and sarcasm do not lose their importance. They remain an efficient way of appealing to society, since they produce quite a profound impact attracting attention, amusing and instructing at the same time. It seems therefore curios to trace how irony and sarcasm are made use of by two writers of different periods on the example of Jonathan Swift’s pamphlet “A Modest Proposal” dating back to the first half of the eighteenth century, and Judy Brady’s essay “I Want a Wife” published more than two centuries later, in 1971. Apparently, despite the time gap and a series of individual peculiarities, Swift’s and Brady’s works demonstrate a striking semblance in the issues they focus on, the sarcastic rendition of the topic, the persuasive approach bolstered with numerous examples by both authors.

The first similarity that strikes the reader is that between the issues brought to light in the works of fiction discussed. Both Jonathan Swift and Judy Brady bring to light the urgent problems of their time. For the Irish satirist, the situation of economic, political and religious oppression of his country by the British Empire appeared so outraging that he published his anonymous pamphlet as a mockery of the British policy with a possible ‘solution’ to the problems of his country. The idea of social oppression of the poor streams throughout the whole piece, with the hopeless situation emphasized by thorough descriptions of the scarce choice paupers have: “… helpless infants […] as they grow up either turn thieves for want of work, or leave their dear native country to fight for the Pretender in Spain, or sell themselves to the Barbadoes” (Swift 297). A whole range of misfortunes forms a closed circle for those poor people and their offspring, and Swift openly talks about all the possible misery that accompanies them during their lives:

“… the oppression of landlords, the impossibility of paying rent without money or trade, the want of common sustenance, with neither house nor clothes to cover them from the inclemencies of the weather, and the most inevitable prospect of entailing the like or greater miseries upon their breed for ever.” (Swift 306)

In Brady’s essay the reader finds a reflection of another type of social oppression, this time carried out not on financial grounds but stipulated by social gender stereotypes. The narrator of the essay speaks on behalf of a whole class of people “known as wives” and enlists an enormous range of tasks an exemplary wife has to perform (Brady 57). The drama of the situation is not simply in the amount of work itself but rather in the attitude the male part of the society assumes towards the female part of the population. As if supporting the general trend of the time towards emancipation of women, men take advantage of the situation and load the woman with both the housework and the role of the main breadwinner in the family. “A wife who will work”, “a wife to take care of my children”, “a wife who will keep my house clean”, “a wife who is a good cook”, “a wife who will take care of the details of my social life”, “a wife who is sensitive to my sexual needs” — the enormous list of the wife’s duties astonishes by its comprehensiveness and involvement into every possible aspect of human life (Brady 57–59). But even more one is stunned by the widely accepted consideration that the wife should not be assisted in any of the listed tasks, and should readily and gladly accept the entire load prescribed to her by the social norms. Moreover, in case there appears a more attractive candidacy for the man to choose as a wife, the former wife should not complain and should willingly obey sparing the husband the trouble of caring for his offspring and leaving him free (Brady 59).

Both Swift’s and Brady’s choice of means for rendering the problems of social exploitation and oppression falls on sarcastic way of presentation. Swift employs a number of lofty epithets that are called to strengthen the authority of the people he is referring to: “a very knowing American”, “very worthy person”, “true lover of his country”, “whose virtues I highly esteem”, — but in fact those epithets only show all the cruelty and brutality of the treatment suggested by his American friend (299 and 301). Sarcastically ridiculing the ways the British treat the Irish, Swift compares the attitude of the former to the latter to that of treating animals: “I rather recommend buying the children alive, and dressing them hot from the knife, as we do roasting pigs” (301). The seemingly beneficial proposal of solving the Irish problem of overpopulation appears to be ghastly cynical and the latter quality is emphasized by Swift in his discussion of treatment of teenagers: “… it is not improbable that some scrupulous people might be apt to censure such a practice (although indeed very unjustly), as a little bordering upon cruelty” (301). The paradox of the situation is developed through a phrase “I believe no gentleman would repine to give ten shillings for the carcass of a good fat child…” as any reasonable person understands that no gentleman or lady would ever involve in such a dubious affair as eating babies, and moreover, they would not assess the financial costs of nurturing a baby for such ends (Swift 300).

Similar to Swift’s semiserious tone of discussion, Brady employs a generous share of sarcasm in order to render the ridiculous state of wives in the society of the time. As if quoting a manual for ideal wives, she presents the wife’s duties as something sacred, a code obligatory to follow and forbidden to break. The role of the husband according to such code is that of an inviolable and reverend idol, whose interest and multiple needs are to be respected, satisfied and never neglected. Every little thing, starting from the husband’s nutrition and sexual life and finishing with arranging his leisure and social image, is the responsibility of the wife: she takes care not only of the house and the children, but also of the husband’s doctor and dentist appointments, picking up the mess after him (Brady 57–58). Moreover, if she fails, she is obliged to let her man leave her with no objection, assuming the care for their children on her fragile shoulders (Brady 59). It appears that the wife never needs any help, any understanding and sympathy, any desires of her own, or any moment of rest. She is not supposed to talk too much, though should listen to whatever her husband may want to tell her; she should not express a desire to make love when she wants it, but should satisfy her husband whenever he wants; she should always bear a pleasant atmosphere around whatever she does; and even the time of rest is designed not for her but for her husband (Brady 57–59). The most striking thing is that for all this effort the maximum gratitude she can get is mere condescending tolerance on her husband’s part if due to overload of housework she gets a cut in her salary: “I guess I can tolerate that” (Brady 57). All this codex of wife’s role, though so smoothly written, appears hideously slanted in favor of the man, and thus is the paradoxical effect achieved by stating the sanctimonious ideas that can never be acceptable in any slave-free society.

In addition to parallel ideas and attitude in their writings, Swift and Brady appear to employ a similar persuasive tactics of rendering their message. Swift resorts to obviously phony statistic, calculating meticulously the number of poor people available for breeding, the quantity of children they could produce annually, the costs it would involve, and the benefits the participating sides draw (298). He provides logical arguments in order to persuade the reader of the rightfulness of his proposal. Stemming from the suggestion that the poor are one of the main problems in Ireland, Swift’s ‘brilliant’ idea is bolstered with a whole range of positive consequences its implementation may bring (Swift 302–303). If those are not the arguments to persuade a reasonable person, then anything is vain and Ireland has no hope for a better future. Such is the paradox and the bitter irony of Swift’s logical reasoning.

Judy Brady in her persuasive attempts follows the objective of convincing the reader of everybody’s necessity for a wife. Depriving ‘wife’ of any human needs, desires or status, Brady presents her as a machine for satisfying one’s needs; she even says she would have a wife herself (57). Brady categorizes the wife’s activities into several spheres and employs numerous examples of the wife’s practicality and makes it obvious and quite logical that a wife constitutes an essential device for securing a calm and happy life for anyone.

Though created several centuries apart from each other, Swift’s and Brady’s works appear to be congenial in their satiric treatment of exploitation and inequality issues, as well as in logical argumentation of their point. They constitute an example of how satire works as a persuasive instrument for attracting the attention of otherwise indifferent society to problems that demand solution. Therefore, the future of satire may be envisaged as that of fruitful service for the purposes of triumph of justice.

Works Cited

Brady, Judy. “I Want a Wife.” The Seagull Reader: Essays. 2nd ed. Ed. Joseph Kelly. New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 2007. 57–59. Print.

Swift, Jonathan. “A Modest Proposal.” The Seagull Reader: Essays. 2nd ed. Ed. Joseph Kelly. New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 2007. 297–307. Print.