1044 swift, Jonathan
near the end of the essay. In A Modest Proposal, this
includes a long litany of “other expedients” in favor
of which Swift himself had actually written pam-
phlets. Hence, an alert reader will realize that Swift’s
true intent is to propose that the Irish government
tax absentee landlords; buy Irish-made goods to
support their own economy; reject foreign goods
that only fund foreign luxury; change women’s con-
sumer tastes; love their country more than their old
animosities; teach mercy toward poor tenants; and
inspire a spirit of honesty, industry, and skill in Irish
merchants. The intent, then, of A Modest Proposal is
to elevate the lives of the destitute Irish by institut-
ing a more humane economic system in the nation
that would serve the people instead of treating them
like common commodities.
Kelly MacPhail
SocIaL cLaSS in A Modest Proposal
Jonathan Swift’s A Modest Proposal begins with
a subtle but disturbing contrast, a juxtaposition
between “the great town” of Dublin, the beauty
of the country, and “the streets, the roads, and
cabbin-doors crowded with beggars of the female
sex, followed by three, four, or six children, all in
rags, importuning every passenger for an alms.”
Clearly, being accosted by beggars at every turn is
an unacceptable situation, but what is to be done?
How are the poor to be dealt with? And what of
their children? Are we to take Swift seriously when
he speaks of these children as a “great additional
grievance” to the already “deplorable state of the
kingdom”? Is it possible that Swift, an Anglican
priest and the dean of St. Patrick’s Cathedral in
Dublin, sees these people simply as unpleasant
objects?
It might seem as if Swift intends his essay as
an attack on the poor themselves, but to read the
essay this way ignores the irony he employs. Satire
is a literary form that seeks to correct and conserve
cultural and moral values by ridiculing a group’s
inappropriate behavior. Rather than attack a prob-
lem directly, satire employs irony—saying one thing
while meaning its opposite—in order to present an
argument. Swift, a master of satirical prose, employs
irony throughout A Modest Proposal in order to point
out the horrible treatment of the poor by the rich—
specifically the way poverty degrades and dehuman-
izes its victims.
What makes Swift’s satire so effective is his
apparent sympathy for the rich at the expense of
the poor. In other words, it seems as if he, too, holds
the poor in disdain. When he writes of “a child
just dropt from its dam,” he succeeds in turning a
woman into an animal, a metaphor he maintains
when he describes the number of “wives as breeders”
that currently reside in Ireland. He writes about the
children “annually born” as though they are a com-
modity, and he reinforces this sense when he claims
“that a boy or a girl before twelve years old is no
saleable commodity.” While the position he takes
in these statements is extreme, it might be justified
by the assumption that Swift does not intend to
have us take him literally. The poor seem to have
a large number of children, so he speaks of them
as “breeders,” but only metaphorically. Thus, when
Swift claims that a year-old child is “most delicious
nourishing and wholesome food, whether stewed,
roasted, baked or boiled,” we are caught off guard.
Swift demonstrates that figurative language reflects
our state of mind. By speaking of the poor as though
they are not human, we allow ourselves to treat them
as though they are no longer human.
The consequence of devaluing human life is
reflected as an issue of social class and status as
the gap between the rich and the poor is further
emphasized. Swift explains that his proposal will
have moral as well as economic benefits, and those
who stand to gain the most are “the persons of qual-
ity and fortune” who will be able to procure plump
one-year-olds for their tables. Of the wealthy, it is
the landlords who are the most appropriate consum-
ers, according to Swift, since “as they have already
devoured most of the parents, [they] seem to have
the best title to the children.” This statement is
pivotal to understanding both the complex nature
of Swift’s irony and his attack on social class. In his
attack on the landlords, Swift reveals the image at
the center of his repeated metaphor of poor women
as farm animals. The poor are not animals because
they have so many children or because they are
not morally scrupulous but because they are being
financially destroyed—Swift’s “devoured”—by the
wealthy, who take advantage of their difficulties. It