A Modest Proposal: Swift’s Recipe for Rug-Rat Ragout
Johnathan Swift offers a brilliant plan in A Modest Proposal. If enacted, the scheme would have provided a succulent delicacy to serve at house parties. It could have boosted the economy and enabled the Irish to pay their landlords. Legislators today might even consider Swift’s Proposal to alleviate the masses of homeless children living on inner-city streets. After all, poverty and homelessness have lingered on into the present century.
There is only one problem. Swift’s “modest” or likely inoffensive “proposal” recommends selling, slaughtering, and skinning human infants. Of course, when he crafted the title, Swift knew his plan would inflame audiences, an outcome “modest” does not imply. This play on words offers a glimpse into his unique brand of irony. Indeed, Swiftian satire taunts the reader. He criticizes his target with playful manipulation of rhetoric and, in the case of Proposal, sinister hyperbole. By employing a Juvenalian satiric style, Swift aims to jolt the British aristocracy out of complacency, pushing them to appreciate Irish poverty. To incite progress, the Dean forces his readers to scrutinize their ethical standards, posing the question of why his design seems immoral but their apathy does not.
Swift often adopts a persona to emphasize his point throughout his collective work, allowing him to circumvent decorous boundaries. For Proposal, he takes the role of an economist. He delivers his gruesome scheme in a matter-of-fact tone reminiscent of the aristocracy’s cavalier manner. For instance, without breaking character, the narrator ponders what to do with the older children. In a scathing excerpt, he ruminates over the advice of an American acquaintance, stating, “the want of venison [for casual hunting] might be well supplied by the bodies of young lads and maidens” (Swift 495). This plan works, though it reeks of dark irony. The rich want to hunt, and these impoverished older children provide “bodies” to “well [supply]” a forest. As it stands, they will starve and die on the streets, an alternative that renders them useless to the state. However, the children can serve a purpose if they repopulate the woodland. Considering death stands as their sole contribution to the country, Swift insinuates that Irish children have more value dead than alive. This implication shows the hypocrisy of the upper-class’s presumed condemnation of the economist’s plan. Whether by hunting or starvation, the children will die.
Furthermore, with mathematical precision, the economist continues to rely on facts and figures. He recommends children allocated for this aristocratic pastime should “not [exceed] fourteen years of age, nor under twelve.” His tone remains full of dark irony and devoid of all sentiment. The economist’s precision renders these children akin to animals for sale or consumption. As such, he considers the meager taste of the older boys, judging the quality of meat like a butcher preparing a carcass. The economist warns they are too thin to offer anything better than a piece of chuck steak, a casualty of their deprivation. Here, Swift observes the degrading treatment of the Irish by their colonizers, alluding to the inhumanity caused by the unalleviated poverty already taking place. In this light, his Proposal does not reach far from what the aristocracy considers morally sound. The comparison strikes the reader as ghastly, but it also forces his audience to reconsider their actions.
Similarly, the economist refers to women as “breeders,” a term belonging to husbandry, solidifying the poor’s status as potential commodities. He recommends an age limit for females, deeming it a “loss to the public” if they died before repopulating the marketplace. When coupled together, this Capitalist mentality strips the poor of their humanity. These principles reduce women to livestock and men to beasts. In effect, the economist suggests the poor belong to the supply chain but not to society. Swift adopts this persona to mock the elite’s mindset, emphasizing their materialism and apathy towards human life.
Likewise, the Dean’s use of the word “venison” comes under scrutiny. While the term typically refers to deer, it could also mean any wild game. Therefore, filling the forest with warm-blooded children makes them a variety of “venison.” This sinister double entendre summons an image of filthy preteens darting through the woods in the style of a feral creature. In turn, Swift’s manipulation of rhetoric leaves an impoverished child less important than an aristocrat’s spoiled lapdog. Unlike the wild “venison” roaming the forest, the pampered pooch will likely never see the end of a gun’s barrel. Swift employs this image to shock his upper-class audience, for they treat the Irish lower-class like wild game, picking them off with various pieces of legislation that make their lives harder. The economist’s dark, ironic tone reflects the sentiments of this ruling class. As such, Swift agitates his readers. They vilify cannibalism and murder, yet their indifference caramelizes Irish tots as well.
Nevertheless, the economist reconsiders the American’s addendum to the humble solution. Although he calls his acquaintance “a very worthy person,” his idea may prove “a little bordering upon cruelty” when presented to the more civilized British aristocracy. One must note the narrator accepts the sale and slaughter of infants. He merely suggests that hunting cognizant prepubescents is a “little…[cruel].” These children understand the threat of imminent death, and savagely hunting them would cause too much trauma for polite society. Infants do not appreciate such lofty concepts and would die ignorant of death, poverty, and starvation. Considering the modifier “little” implies ‘not very,’ Swift jabs at the aristocracy by suggesting the children’s fate on the streets matches their fate in the forests. In both cases, they knowingly die at the hands of the nobility. As such, Swift condemns the elite’s willful ignorance of Irish poverty through the economist, slamming their feigned morality by testing it against his Proposal.
In the end, Swift knows one cannot grill tasty chaps or stew a lass. He employs this satiric hyperbole to elicit a response from his privileged audience. Concluding this excerpt, Swift uses a back-door approach to denounce “any project,” not just his outlandish scheme. He criticizes the various legislative acts that have made paying rent impossible for the Irish. After all, tax hikes and trade embargos make life unendurable for them, rendering these acts as cruel as Swift’s Proposal. He further laments over “any” viable proposal brought to Parliament that legislators ignored, for their inaction results in widespread poverty and death. Without saying the words, Swift poses a question to his readership: Should the children expire from starvation on the streets or quickly as ignorant infants in a slaughterhouse? Considering the elite’s disinterested response thus far, the economist satirically perceives no other alternatives.
