Female Representations in “Gulliver’s Travels”
Female representations in “Gulliver’s Travels”
In Jonathan Swift’s satire, “Gulliver’s Travels”, the representation of women can be seen, at a superficial level, as offensive and extremely misogynistic and in broad lines corresponding to the image of the woman in Swift’s contemporary patriarchal society. The woman was almost objectified, thus reduced to her physical appearance and its status as obedient wife, whose sole purpose was to attend to her husband’s need. This perception of women was what triggered the emerging feminist movement. With pioneers as Mary Wollstonecraft with her XVIIIth century “A Vindication of the Rights of Women”, the philosophy of feminism has reached its peak in the XXth century, starting with Simone de Beauvoir’s “The Second Sex”. Using a parallel between Mary Wollstonecraft and Simone de Beauvoir’s concepts of the image of the woman in canonical thinking, the aim of this essay is to discuss feminine representations in Gulliver’s Travels and the way in which Swift’s view of the nature of women coincided or not with the existing ones in his contemporary society. In this manner, we can conclude that perceiving Swift as a fierce misogynist is rather a hasty conclusion and, in fact, he used his masterpiece as a way of emphasising the wrong perception and cultivation of the female nature in the Augustan Age. Published as Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World, in Four Parts; by Lemuel Gulliver in 1726, Gulliver's Travels is a satire against the Augustan society, focusing its tirade on institutions such as government, arts, education and individuals alike. His vehemence in illustrating each of the book’s sections has lead to the conception that Swift is a misanthropist and a misogynist in particular, given the fact that he often used women to illustrate the most appalling aspects of human decadence. Nevertheless, taking into account the fact that being both a convinced religious man (he was an Anglican clergyman) and a humanist (he
In Jonathan Swift’s satire, “Gulliver’s Travels”, the representation of women can be seen, at a superficial level, as offensive and extremely misogynistic and in broad lines corresponding to the image of the woman in Swift’s contemporary patriarchal society. The woman was almost objectified, thus reduced to her physical appearance and its status as obedient wife, whose sole purpose was to attend to her husband’s need. This perception of women was what triggered the emerging feminist movement. With pioneers as Mary Wollstonecraft with her XVIIIth century “A Vindication of the Rights of Women”, the philosophy of feminism has reached its peak in the XXth century, starting with Simone de Beauvoir’s “The Second Sex”. Using a parallel between Mary Wollstonecraft and Simone de Beauvoir’s concepts of the image of the woman in canonical thinking, the aim of this essay is to discuss feminine representations in Gulliver’s Travels and the way in which Swift’s view of the nature of women coincided or not with the existing ones in his contemporary society. In this manner, we can conclude that perceiving Swift as a fierce misogynist is rather a hasty conclusion and, in fact, he used his masterpiece as a way of emphasising the wrong perception and cultivation of the female nature in the Augustan Age. Published as Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World, in Four Parts; by Lemuel Gulliver in 1726, Gulliver's Travels is a satire against the Augustan society, focusing its tirade on institutions such as government, arts, education and individuals alike. His vehemence in illustrating each of the book’s sections has lead to the conception that Swift is a misanthropist and a misogynist in particular, given the fact that he often used women to illustrate the most appalling aspects of human decadence. Nevertheless, taking into account the fact that being both a convinced religious man (he was an Anglican clergyman) and a humanist (he
Bibliography: Beauvoir de, Simone. “The Second Sex”. >>http://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/ethics/de-beauvoir/2nd-sex/ >http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/beauvoir/ >http://records.viu.ca/~Johnstoi/introser/swift.htm