THE SATIRE OF THE ENGLISH VALUES IN GULLIVER’S TRAVEL
Rafael Nunes Ferreira
Graduando do Curso de Letras - Português/Inglês e respectivas literaturas
Universidade Federal do Pampa - Unipampa
Campus Bagé
During centuries, the Western Culture has produced a thought based on the transmission of an idealized model of society in the history of the human civilization. In this thought, stereotypes and social values are privileged in detriment of others. Thus, individuals are born and live according to a pre-set of social patterns that influences their way to be in the world. On Gulliver’s Travels, Jonathan Swift makes a criticism of the cultural patterns transmitted in the English society of his time. The novel narrates the voyages of Gulliver, an Englishman who tries to prove the supremacy of his culture during a sequence of voyages by the world. In this sense, his self-importance can be seen as a way of hybris. However, the criticism on the novel consists on the fact that the customs and values of this Englishman become insignificant in contrast to the ones adopted by the inhabitants of the places that he visits.
Gulliver was born and lived into the social patterns of the English society. In his youth, he studied at Emmanuel College, in Cambridge, and at the University of Leida, where he took a medicine course for two years and seven months. At this period, the traveler also learned about sailing and mathematics. After he finished his studies, he started to work as a surgeon on the ship Swallow, where he worked during three years and a half. However, Gulliver got married to Mary Burton and established in London. He lived there until he received an offer to work on the ship Antelope. Thus, the English surgeon started a number of voyages that lead him to places in which his idealized English culture would be desecrated.
On his initial voyage, Gulliver went to Lilliput, a nation in where for the first and only time he saw himself grandeur, self-reliant and pride of his ascendance. This reign was inhabited by tiny people who were “not six inches high (18)”. For that reason, Gulliver was respected and feared due to his giant stature. However, by socializing with them, he was also able to be accepted by most of that community, because their social system was similar to his. In other words, Gulliver knew how to use political strategies to interact in that small world. Thus, the Englishman did not feel, in a certain way, displaced when he was in Lilliput. Rank, politics, international conflicts were similar to the English society.
During the time Gulliver had contact with this society; we may perceive that the English surgeon was successful because people from Lilliput were like the inhabitants from England. By his description of the Emperor of Lilliput, we can recognize that Lilliput was orientated by the same stereotypes and values of the English society which represents the male-dominated culture:
The reading of the Emperor done by the English surgeon seems to adjust itself to the superiority patterns transmitted by his society. So, we may comprehend why Gulliver did not question his perception concerning the citizens and the Emperor of Lilliput.He is taller by almost the breadth of my nail than any of his Court, which alone is enough to strike an awe into the beholders. His features are strong and masculine; with an Austrian lips and arched nose; his complexion olive; his countenance erect; his body and limbs well proportioned, all his motions graceful, and his deportment majestic. (30)
The description of the Emperor made by Gulliver is an indicator that helps us to understand the critique presented on this novel. The ruler of Lilliput is a man who “is enough to strike an awe into the beholders (30)”. His appearance has the standards of the idealized models cultivated by the Western Culture: “Austrian lips and arched nose; his complexion olive; his countenance erect; his body and limbs well proportioned (30)”. However, although Lilliput is an island ruled by a distinct man, its great central issues are belittled and reduced to unimportance, like centering on which end of an egg must be open first, the big or the small end. Besides, Gulliver did not question this fact, what can show the banality of his values.
On the other hand, on his second voyage the traveler faces his littleness in the reign of Brobdingnag. He realizes: “I reflected what a mortification it must prove to me to appear as inconsiderable in this nation… (101-102)”. Gulliver is mortified because his pride is violated. He feels substandard in that community in which the inhabitants are much bigger than him.
On other words, Gulliver has to face his double inferiority, which is caused by his size and his strong dislike towards that society. One of the reasons of his dislike is the fact that his society is seen by the majesty of Brobdingnag as a vicious civilization, as we can perceive in the following excerpt:
You have a made a most admirable panegyric upon your country; you have clearly proved that ignorance, idleness and vice may be sometimes the only ingredients for qualifying a legislator; that laws are best explained, interpreted and applied by those whose interest and abilities lie in perverting… […] 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. (158-159)
After listening to the words said by the majesty of that reign, Gulliver opts to censure the way the people of Brobdingnag lead their lives rather than consider the words concerning his society. Gulliver has the following point of view in relation to the giant’s society: “The learning of this people is very defective, consisting only in morality, history, poetry and mathematics, wherein they must be allowed to excel (164)”. The attitude adopted by Gulliver can be seen as a way of protecting the values and principles of his society. That is, a manner of supporting his hybris. Besides disagreeing with the judgment of the majesty, he sees in an arrogant way the social system of Brobdingnag, which does not reach the qualities of his society.
After his voyage to Brobdingnag, Gulliver arrives to Laputa, where the traveler perceives his inadequacy. In this island, the inhabitants are more interested in spending their time with mathematical theories and music than in giving attention to him: “...yet must confess I thought myself too much neglected, not without some degree of contempt (209)”. Gulliver is inferior concerning his intelligence since he is not able to have the same level of understanding of the areas of knowledge that the citizens from the floating island are experts. Thus, his pride is again offended and he sees the relativity of those sovereign qualities that he is a carrier. Nevertheless, Gulliver expresses his disapproval in relation to the social actions of the citizens from the floating island, as we can see below:
[They are] so abstracted and involved in speculation that I never met with such disagreeable companions. […] I saw nothing in this country that could invite me to a longer continuance, and began to think of returning home to England. (209 and 232)
Taken by arrogance, the English surgeon does not question the values and qualities of the people from his society, neither his intelligence. Actually, although unfitted to that nation, Gulliver is still part of a dominant culture, whose beliefs, behavior, values, moral rules are most of the time considered superior in relation to a foreign culture.
The last reign visited by Gulliver is Houyhnhnm, where the traveler is compared to an inferior race of savage creatures. This place is inhabited by the Houyhnhnms, a race of intelligent horses, and the Yahoos, a repulsive specie of creatures that behaves like animals. For the Houyhnhnms, Gulliver is considered a Yahoo because he resembles the members of this race. The European people described by the traveler are like the Yahoos: greedy, perverse, lascivious and stupid. They actually are more intelligent than the Yahoos, but rationality makes them worst because according to Gulliver’s master: “when a creature pretending to reason could be capable of such enormities, he dreaded lest the corruption of that faculty might be worse than brutality itself (303)”. We may read these words as a criticism to the English thought, whose hybris is capable to develop the humankind cruelty. Once again the English society appears in a disagreeable way.
We may perceive a satire of the British Empire while Gulliver is in Houyhnhnm and in the other reigns. His stay in these places reveals a criticism of the English habits and values. Social patterns are questioned through the voyages of the English surgeon, in which we can see the relativity of the supremacy of his race. Like a carrier of the hybris transmitted by his nation, Gulliver can be seen as a synecdoche-character, whose superiority exists due to the fact that he is a European man. However, this narrative exposes that his value is actually big only in his nation, where Gulliver lives according to the English social patterns.
REFERENCES:
Swift, Jonathan. Gulliver’s Travels. London: CRW Publishing Limited, 2004.
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