A MODEST PROPOSAL
8 diciembre 2010 by KSENIIA
Motives for writing “A Modest Proposal”
Swift’s motives for writing “A Modest Proposal”, which appeared in 1729, were complex. He felt, for his own part, that he had been exiled to Ireland when he would have much preferred to have been in England, and his personal sense of the wrongs he had received at the hands of the English only intensified the anger he felt at the way England mistreated Ireland. He lived in an Ireland which was a colony, politically, militarily, and economically dependent upon England. It was in England’s interest to keep things as they were: a weak Ireland could not threaten England, and the measures which kept it weak were profitable for the English. As a result Ireland was a desperately poor country, overpopulated, full, as Swift said, of beggars, wracked periodically by famine, heavily taxed, and with no say at all in its own affairs. England controlled the Irish legislature. English absentee landlords owned most of the land which was worth owning. Irish manufactories were deliberately crippled so that they could not compete with those in England.
Swift was enraged at the passivity of the Irish people, who had become so accustomed to the situation that they seemed incapable of making any effort to change it. The Irish Parliament ignored numerous proposals which Swift made in earnest — proposals to tax absentee landlords, to encourage Irish industries, to improve the land, agricultural techniques, and the quality of manufactured goods — which would have begun to rectify things.
“A Modest Proposal”, then, is at once a disgusted parody of Swift’s own serious proposals, as well as those of less disinterested «projectors,» and a savage indictment both of the exploitive English and of the exploited Irish. (C)
Question of beggars
Swift’s opening paragraph offers the reader a horrible but realistic picture of Ireland full of beggars. He makes a special emphasis on women and children, who are unable to work, and so they are forced to beg. In this opinion Swift contradicts the prevailing thought of his days when it was believed that if a person was poor and had to beg, it was his own fault. Thus it may seem that the author takes sides with the poor, however it is never totally clear. It is more likely that Swift criticizes the whole society: both the beggars and those who led the country to such a state of poverty. In a few lines that describe the future that the children will have when they grow up, Swift mocks the national politics of Ireland: “…infants who, 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”. (A. From now on I will use this online text as a reference for the quotations). We see that there is a lack of national integrity and loyalty to the native country, as people, not being able or not wanting to live in it, escape to other countries, where they can earn money and live in better conditions. Ireland does nothing to support its own inhabitants.
Probably, the careless way in which Ireland treats its own population finds its reflection in Swift’s description of people, especially mothers and children, as if they were animals and interested us merely in economic terms. Women are presented as breeders, and children are portrayed as something that can become financially valuable and profitable: “they shall, on the contrary, contribute to the feeding, and partly to the clothing of many thousands”.
Soon the problem of beggars among women and children becomes a pure economic argument. Despite his own moral indignation, when the author suggests that most abortions are occasioned by financial rather than moral considerations, he assumes that people’s motivations are basically materialistic. This is not, of course, Swift’s own assumption but a real fact: “There is likewise another great advantage in my scheme, that it will prevent those voluntary abortions, and that horrid practice of women murdering their bastard children, alas! too frequent among us, sacrificing the poor innocent babes, I doubt, more to avoid the expense than the shame, which would move tears and pity in the most savage and inhuman breast”.
The real meaning of “A Modest Proposal”
Of course, Swift’s proposal to eat children cannot be taken seriously. The literal reading of this pamphlet will not do. It should be read as an ironic representation of the degrading nation. On the one hand, the idea of cannibalism can be linked to the British oppression that nearly “devours” Ireland in a cannibalism of injustice and inhumanity. But on the other hand, it can refer to the nation itself. It consumes its own resources, it consumes itself without any compensation, thus leading the whole nation to destruction: the wealthy landlords “devour” most of the poor tenants, Irish people regard marriage and family values with so little sanctity, that they become nothing more than breeding animals (the fact that they need an economic inducement to marry, to love their children and spouses, and to refrain from domestic violence are obvious strikes against them), general baseness and lack of self-respect in Irishmen – all this leads to self-elimination as a nation.
The rich class
The rich class also receives its blow in “A Modest Proposal”. Swift criticizes the practice of absenteeism among Irish landlords, who often governed their estates from abroad, thus gathering the fruit of the labour of Irish peasants, taking the money out of the Irish economy and putting it into the British one. Swift’s contempt for the irresponsibility, greed, and moral indifference of the wealthy is matched only by his disgust at the utter failure of Ireland’s political leaders. So, the problem of poverty turns into a real problem of building a viable Irish national economy.
Catholic Church
There is also irony directed towards Catholic Church which is presented as an enemy, which is going to deliver the whole country to the devil, and which is famous for its excessively high tithes: “For first, as I have already observed, it would greatly lessen the number of Papists, with whom we are yearly over-run, being the principal breeders of the nation, as well as our most dangerous enemies, and who stay at home on purpose with a design to deliver the kingdom to the Pretender, hoping to take their advantage by the absence of so many good Protestants, who have chosen rather to leave their country, than stay at home and pay tithes against their conscience to an episcopal curate”.
The necessity of improvement
There author’s account of other proposals may be taken as Swift’s own. His list of supposedly unrealistic alternative solutions marks a turning point in the pamphlet and a break in the satire. The ideas the proposer rejects represent measures that Swift himself thought of and proposed, however with little effect. They are a set of steps by which the Irish might hope to break out of their problems, or at least some of them, without the need for England’s cooperation: “Of taxing our absentees at five shillings a pound: Of using neither cloaths, nor houshold furniture, except what is of our own growth and manufacture: Of utterly rejecting the materials and instruments that promote foreign luxury: Of curing the expensiveness of pride, vanity, idleness, and gaming in our women: Of introducing a vein of parsimony, prudence and temperance: Of learning to love our country, wherein we differ even from Laplanders, and the inhabitants of Topinamboo…”, etc. Swift wanted to make a change from the inside and he offered some real and practical solutions for that, which, unfortunately, were not supported.
Swift emphasizes the backwardness that is evident in Ireland. The country where cannibalism can become a real social improvement is, certainly, in a terrible condition. The situation seems to be so bad that it is better for people to die than to live suffering: “…they would […] think it a great happiness to have been sold for food at a year old, in the manner I prescribe, and thereby have avoided such a perpetual scene of misfortunes, as they have since gone through, by the oppression of landlords, the impossibility of paying rent without money or trade, the want of common sustenance, with neither house nor cloaths 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”.
So, we can conclude that “A Modest Proposal” is a manifestation of Swift’s sense of anger and frustration, and as such it is merely the most savage, the most brutal, the most heavily ironic, of the numerous tracts which he produced during the early eighteenth century in an attempt to shame England and to shock Ireland out of its lethargic state. It is a ghastly masterpiece, cunningly devised, horribly plausible, deviously manipulative: it remains for the reader to come to terms with it, to comprehend it, and to determine the extent to which, oddly enough, it might be relevant in our own world.” (C)