Universitk de Montreal Gulliver and the Other:
A Psychoanalytical Examination
par:
Chaim Melamed
DBpartement d'8tudes anglaises
Facult6 des Arts et des Sciences
Thbse presentee P la Facult6 des etudes supkrieures
en vue de I'obtention du grade de
Philosophiae Doctor (Ph-D)
en Btudes anglaises
Mars 1995
8 Chaim Melamed, 1995 National Library BiMioth&quenationale du Canada Acquisiions and Acquisitions et Bibliographic Services services bibliographiques 395 Wellington Street 395, me Wellington WwaON K1AON4 Otbwa3F( KtAON4 carlark Canada
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Cette thise intitulee : Gulliver and the Other:
A Psychoanalytical Examination
present6 par:
Chairn Melamed
a btC evaluC par un jury compost des personnes suivantes : RESUME
L'itintraire de Guiliver retrace la qu2te du savoir et plus particulibrement celle de la connaissance de soi. Dans les Voyages de
Gufliver,la satire de Swift prend comme cible I'orgueil humain et son arrogance, dkchirant sans merci le voile qui les recouvre. L'emphase mise sur le comportement humain refl5te ainsi les prCoccupations de la psychanalyse. Gulliver la fois dkouvrira et incarnera les fragilitks de la condition humaine.
La psychanalyse corrobore la description de l'humanite qu'en a faite Swift lorsqu'elle se voit reduite 2 I'esp&ce Yahoo. EIle apparait alors primitive, puerile, fix& au stade sado-anal du developpement infantile. Chez Freud, la conscience n'est qu'un phCnomene secondaire, la pointe minuscule d'un iceberg dont la masse invisible, formte par
I'inconscient est symboliquement refletee par I'esptce Yahoo dans les
Voyages de Gulliver. L'esprit conscient &ant reduit 2 une manifestation secondaire, c'est I'inconscient qui forme dks lors la matrice d'oii imanera la dicouverte de I'essence de la nature hurnaine.
L'inconscient est dkcrit comme primitif et infantile, le domaine d'une espkce d'enfant terrible oil narcissisme et agressivite supportent une realit6 hallucinatoire de la gratification des dbsirs, aliment& par le principe de la jouissance.
iii L'enfant devient la cle donnant accbs 5 la comprthension de l'inconscient et comrne le cite I'aphorisme: denfant est le pire de
I'hommen. Freud dicouvrit que l'enfant devait malheureusement traverser une phase nevrotique au cours de sa progression de dbveloppement. Nous sommes decrits, tant chez Freud que chez Swift, comme etant mernbres d'une espike nCvrosCe. Nous sommes pddispos6s P une peur fondamentale de fragmentation. D'importance capitale chez I'enfant, le sein deviendrait indispensable au moment meme OD il progresserait du besoin au dbsir. I1 peut arriver qu'en certains cas le sein soit retirt prematurdrnent ou encore qu'il ne soit pas offert avec suffisamment d'alacritb ce qui accroitrait chez I'enfant la peur et le besoin, consequences directes de la soif et de la faim. A ce stade de son tvolution, le sein reprCsente un objet i la fois attache et dttache de lui-meme. Swift souligne expressernent le rdle pacificateur aupres du corps tenu par le sein de la nourrice, au pays de
Brobdingnag .
De tous les stades infantiles, c'est la phase orale qui derneure'la plus primitive, celle oii I'on retrouve le d6sir clairement lie aux besoins fondamentaux engendris par I'instinct de survie. C'est par la morsure que Gulliver manifeste son agressivite orale 2 l'egard de certains
Lilliputiens tout en devenant lui-meme menace, plus tard, par diverses creatures de Brobdingnag. En psychanalyse, ni breuvage ni nourriture ne peuvent d'aucune fason se substituer adequatement au sein maternel.
Jacques Lacan postule que les aobjets a,, par exemple le sein, ne sont ni plus ni rnoins que des blocs sur lesquels s'edifient le langage de
I'inconscient. Que Swifl ait eu l'intuition de ces concepts linguistiques et psychanalytiques apparait evident avec son utilisation des Yahoos, figurant I'inconscient, et qui sont dipourvus de toute habiletC au niveau du langage. Les habitudes humaines concernent la nourriture et la boisson r6vblent les aspects primitifs du stade oral tels que revelts chez les Yahoos omnivores, qui s'empiffrent de faqon desordonnee et s'abreuvent ii I'excis.
C'est dans le stade anal que la libido se concentre sur l'urttre et
I'anus, ainsi que sur les plaisirs associBs au processus d'excretion des dkhets humains. Ltimpact de ce stade sur le developpement subskquent de IWre est ph6nom6naI. La psychanaiyse freudienne faisant echc P Swift teconnait en la matiire fecale un substitut ii
I'identite, la propribte, P un cadeau, une expression, ou un plaisir libidinal, mais surtout 5 une arme. La prescience de Swift est remarquable puisqu'en psychanalyse cette phase est connue sous le nom de stade sado-anal. Gulliver contemplera lapider les Lilliputiens et
I'acte de retribution qui sera perpetre par l'ile volante de Laputa sera celui-Ii meme qui caracterise l'esp6ce Yahoo chez qui les excrements deviement des armes au sens littiral du terme. Pour Lacan, l'humanitt s'inscrit moralement au niveau anal et les excrements (urine, matibres
fkales) deviennent les produits soutenant nos interactions sociales (art,
argent, agressivitb, langage). La matitre Mcale devient un autre
*objetm detach6 du corps et lie au sein, au phallus, etc. Ces
introspections de Swift se matdrialisent alors que Gulliver urine sur le
palais, saute dans la bouse de vache, ainsi que dans la convoitise des
Yahoos t I'egard des pierres Ctincelantes.
I1 est interessant de noter que chez Freud, la libido est decrite
comme organe essentiellement rnkle. Selon Lacan, le phallus incarne P
la fois le signifiant primordial du langage ainsi que le symbole du
desir. L'orgueil phallique de Gulliver, rCvClC au moment oG Ifarmbe
lilliputienne defile entre ses jambes avec des regards admiratifs,
explique le degrd de frayeur ressentie face B la perte anticipee du
phallus. Pour le mile, le complexe d'oedipe sera rBsolu 2 travers la
menace de castration par le pbre, ltagent repressif du dtsir i I'bgard de
la mere. Les Houyhnhnms menace de castration l'esptce Yahoo.
L'individu se constitue P travers les signifiants et les aobjets a,. La
creation directe de I'inconscient, I'esprit conscient subordonnd P des
procddds hguistiques stables sert alors d'intermediaire entre un
inconscient essentiellement inaccessible et le principe de rbalite.
L'image rdfibchie lors du dade du miroir~,(6-18 mois) chez Lacan, procure P I'individu une vue exttrieure de lui-mtme. La relation existant entre 1e miroir et le narcissisme a 6t6 maintes fois d6montree dans la mythologie et en psychanalyse. Pour chaque individu, I'univers prend de l'expansion B partir de l'dgocentrisme, pour s'etendre ensuite vers la reconnaissance du soi et des autres. Le miroir rkflkchissant le soi et que I'on retrouve constamment i travers les Voyages de Gulliver confirme I'insignifiance du Brobdingnag ainsi que I'identification de
Gulliver avec les Yahoos, au livre IV. Le miroir devient le signifiant-clb de la satire elle-rntme. Chaque dbsir est r6vili, tant chez Swift que chez Freud, comme &ant narcissique. L'amour de soi est un element essentiel de I'auto-prdservation soutenu par I'agressivitb qui permeabilise les relations inter-personnelles et sociales. Le moi devient le centre d'un riseau forme des signifiants et B travers lequel Ie ddsir est detourne, suite f une peur de castration, dam Ie rnonde vide du langage qui reflbte les caracteristiques instinctives sous-tendant l'humanitt, soit l'agressivitb et le narcissisme.
Les besoins et ies desirs du soi se heurtent aux restrictions impostes par une civilisation qui exige la subordination de l'individu au nom du plus grand bien social. L'histoire de l'humanite est replate d'actes de violence. Le langage devient Ie systtme fonctiomel et ordomt du conscient; c'est la voix de la civilisation.
La satire rtvble nos infbrioritbs physiques, morales, intellectuelles et sociales, notre degbntkation historique ainsi que notre condition fondamentalernent anale. Confront6 5 cette riialite,
I'humanite se r6vble diminube. De par sa nature humaine la civilisation reflbte, necessairement, la ntvrose collective de chaque individu contraint de rtprimer ses disirs. La voix de la raison telle qu'on la retrouve dans les anciens concepts lilliputiens d'utopie, dans les sages observations du roi de Brobdingnag, et surtout dans les conclusions du
Maitre Houyhnhnm, est identique a celle du +lorn-du-P&re>~retrouvi chez Lacan et conduira tventuellement Gulliver vers I'aliCnation et la rnisanthropie. L'histoire humaine se rkvele sordide, violente, centree sur elle-meme et degkneree; nos dirigeants et nos instituions it la fois politiques et sociales se revelent aussi corrompues que notre nature corporelle.
L'orientation psychanalytique apportte f la critique des Voyages de Gulliver accorde la prepondtrance B la personnaliti de l'auteur, plutdt qu'au genre ou au message contenu dans la satire. Certains ouvrages de rbference, en particulier l'oeuvre de Rabelais, dCotent une ligne commune tant au niveau du style que de la matiiire traitee. Le phenomhe anal apparait comme une faiblesse structurale dans I'arrnure narcissique de I'humanitt et place ainsi les satiristes parmi les prticurseurs de la psychanalyse. Sublimer Man anal fait appel 1 une alchimie litteraire transmutant la matiere vile en or.
viii SUMMARY
Satire shares with psychoanalysis an interest in human behaviour
and personality. Gulliver undertakes a voyage/quest for self-
knowledge; he both discovers and represents human frailties. The
works of Jacques Lacan are employed to elucidate Swift's satirical
conclusions. Swift and Lacan shared a fascination with language, the
key to decoding the human signifier.
This thesis begins with a review of the strident critical reactions
to Swift's employment of scatology, primarily in Book Four in the
Travels. According to critics like Karpman, Ferenczi, etc., the problem
lies in Swift, not in mankind, proving Swift's contention that people
only see others' faces in the mirror of satire. According to Freudian
psychoanalysis, anal repression is universal. An examination of the
satirical tradition, from Aristophanes to Rabelais, reveals that Swift's
use of scatology is fairly traditional.
Swift employed devastating images, such as the infant, to
undermine man's pride. The first section of this thesis deals with the
unconscious and the infantile in Gutliver's Travels. The
infantile/unconscious is critical (in satire and in psychoanalysis) to
decoding our shame, pride, desires, and language. In Lilliput, Gulliver
is the narcissistic, fantasizing infant; in Brobdingnag, he is the helpless infant. His obsequiousness, before the socially exalted, continues throughout the voyages until Gulliver becomes a misanthropist. "The child is father to the man." Freud discovered that the child had to go through a phase of neurosis during its development. We are depicted as a neurotic species, by both Swift and Freud. The infantile, libidinal objects (mouth, breasts, etc.), become signifiers in the unconscious.
These objects signify presence and absence, integrity and disintegration; they sustain, undermine, or divert desire and identity.
Feces becomes the signifier of man (identity, expression, and weapon).
The anal sadistic underlies human aggression, and links the infant, the unconscious, and language. Man defecating on his fellow man becomes Swift's ultimate signifier of human history and civilization.
Gulliver is a signifier of man and of the ego. The second part of this thesis deals with the egohelf, the mirror, narcissism, and conscious linguistic processes. The stade du miroir (6-18 months) provides the individual with an external view of the self. The self becomes the centre of a signifying network of words and images. There is a fusion of language, identity, and desire (narcissism). The sliding of signifiers into one another reflects the primitive linguistics of the unconscious.
Language is also the functioning, ordered system of consciousness.
Swift focuses on the abuses of language (by academics, lawyers, courtiers, etc.), the proliferation of signifiers, arbitrary signification and other linguistic manifestations of human aggression, irrationality and narcissism.
The third part of this thesis deals with satire as superego, the voice of civilization, of the father. Civilization, a human construct, reflects the neuroses of individuals, who are constrained to repress their desires. The voices of reason (ancient Lilliputian utopian concepts, the
King of Brobdingnag, and particularly the conclusions of the
Houyhnhnm Master representing what Lacan called the nom-du-pere) drive Gulliver to alienation and to misanthropy. The phallus is a signifier of Gulliver's pride in Lilliput. The superego/father/satirist threatens to castrate the Yahoo species. In Swift's satire, to see man as he really is, is to condemn him as aggressive, narcissistic and irra tionai.
This thesis concludes with a review of some of the criticism which counters the extreme, subjective reactions to Swift's satire. Annotated Abbreviations
CD Civilization and its Discontents
Corr. Correspondence of Jonathan Swift
E Ecrits
FFC Four Fundamental Concepts of Psycho -Analysis
FI The Future of an Illusion
GT Gulliver 's Travels
I.P Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis
JLPP Jacques Locan and the Philosophy of Psychoanalysis
PW Prose Works of Jonathan Swift
SE Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud
Sem. The Seminoires of Jacques Lacan
WJS The Writings of Jonathan Swifi
xii Glossary of Lacanian Terminology
Desire - linked to lust, a continuous force; contrasted to need (besoin).
Imaginary - linked to the mirror stage and ego-formation; all images, conscious and unconscious.
Jouissance - linked to desire, pleasure; not subject to discharge, not part of the Pleasure Principle.
Mirror Stage - specular link to ego - formation (6 - 18 months).
Name-of-the-Father - (nonr-du-pere) - linked to the father in Totem and Taboo; linked to Symbolic language laws (also known as non-du-pere - the father's "No! ").
Objet petit a - the a is short for cutre (other). These objets are linked to Freud's "objects" (breast, feces, etc.). Lacan stresses that these objects are confused as self or other by the infant, and constitute primary signifiers.
Other - a 'plastic' signifier of otherness - may be the mother, the id, the ego, or another person; linked to discourse.
Real - linked to experience, history; not a signifier of reality, but "what is real for the subject;"' a point to which the subject keeps returning.
Anthony Wilden, "Lacan and the Discourse of the Other," trans.
& cornm. The Language of the Self: The Function of Language in
Psychoanalysis, Jacques Lacan (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins P, 1968)
161. xiii Signifiers - units of language; words and images on conscious and unconscious levels; separated from the signifieds; part of signifying webs; based on insights of Saussure and Jakobson.
Symbolic - world of language and laws into which the subject is born; linked to the Name/No-of- the-Father.
xiv Table of Contents
Page INTRODUCTION ...... 1
Chapter One: WILD ANALYSIS ......
Chapter Two: SWIFT AND THE SATIRIC TRADITION ...... 18
Chapter Three: THE INFANTILE AND LANGUAGE OF THE UNCONSCIOUS 32 THE INFANTILE ...... 32 TheOral ...... 37 TheAnal ...... 49 The Anal Sadistic ...... 60 The Phallic ...... 67 OBJETS a AND LANGUAGE OF THE UNCONSCIOUS (Lalongue) ...... 70
Chapter Four: THE EGO/SELF. THE MIRROR AND THE SYMBOLIC ORDER OF LANGUAGE ...... 82 LE STADE DU MIROIR AND THE SELF/EGO ...... 82 Narcissism ...... 89 Desire ...... 100 LE NOM-DU-PEE: THE SYMBOLIC ORDER OF LANGUAGE ...... 108
Chapter Five: THE SUPEREGOILE NON-DU-P&RE . THE VOICE OF SATIRE ...... 141 SATIRE AS SUPEREGO ...... 141 The Castration Complex ...... 160 The Mirror of Misanthropy ...... 167 Neuroses and Madness ...... 175
Chapter Sir: A CRITICAL RE-EVALUATION ...... 186
CONCLUSION ...... 195
BIBLIOGRAPHY ...... *...... 200 INTRODUCTION
As Carnochan wrote, "The psychological issue is raised
unavoidably by any satire on man."' In the satirical writings of
Jonathan Swift, Norman 0.Brown found "startling anticipations of
Freudian theorems about anality, about sublimation, and about the
universal neurosis of the stuff that satire is made of. Satire
and psychoanalysis are both concerned with defining "the signifier
man.")
Many early psychoanalytic critics of literature primarily focused
on the biographical approach, examining literary works for insights into
the personality of the author, thereby remaining within the traditional
domain of psychoanalysis. Critics such as Ernest Jones returned to the
W.B. Carnochan, Lemuel Gulliver's Mirror for Man (Berkeley:
U of California P, 1968) 65. * Norman 0.Brown, "The Excremental Vision," Swi': A
Collection of Critical Essays, ed. Ernest Tuveson (Englewood Cliffs,
New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, 1964) 38.
Jacques Lacan, The Seminaires of Jacques Lacan, ed. J.A.
Miller, vol. 3. The Psychoses (1955-6), trans. Russell Grigg (NY &
London: W.W.Norton 1993) 198. These texts will be abbreviated as
Sem . text to analyze literary characters (like Hamlet). Psychoanalysis has in
turn provided insights into areas of interest to literary critics, like
inspiration, identification, motivation, catharsis and reader response.
Psychoanalysis is known as the 'talking cure' since language is decoded
in order to understand personality. Language is crucial to both
literature and psychoanalysis, and it is particularly in the area of
linguistics that psychoanalytical critics currently have much to offer.
It must be acknowledged that there are inherent difficulties in
applying psychoanalysis as a method of literary analysis. While
literature and psychoanalysis share many areas of interest, they are far
from identical. Frederick Crews enumerates a number of problems
concerning psychoanalytical literary criticism: the dangers of dogma
and reductionism, the fact that psychoanalysis is less a science than "a
system of metaphors,"' and "Freud's own reformulations ... [and]
exclusively male perspective" (10, 172). These are valid arguments.
While a number of Freud's theories have been challenged, modified or
rejected, Crews acknowledges the legitimacy of employing
psychoanalysis as a method of criticism when evalusting reader
Frederick Crews, Out of My System: Psychoanalysis, Ideology, and Critical Method (NY:Oxford UP, 1975) 7. response or when encountering "general psychological themes in a
literary document" (14).
A number of critics have committed the error of ignoring the
exigencies of style, and the conventions of satire.
When the character who delivers the satiric
attack is ... identified as the author, the
biographical method .... Our attention is ...
directed away from the satiric work ... toward
some second object, the personality of the
author ... satire is denied the independence of
artistic status and made a biographical ...
document ... while the criticism of satire
degenerates into discussion of an author's
moral character.'
While satire can simultaneously mount attacks and reveal insights into
the author's mind or personality, the biographical approach does seem
to limit the universal nature of satire, and to replace man with the
author as the focus of the satiric attack. This error is evident in the
Alvin Kernan, The Cankered Muse: Satire of the English
Renaissance 1959 (Hamden Corn.: Archon Books, 1976) 2. reasoning of certain psychoanalytical critics like Karpman and Ferenczi
who felt that "insight into Swift's life surely justifies one ... in treating
the fantasies in Gulliver's Travels exactly as we do the free
associations of neurotic patients ... especially when interpreting their
dreams."' In this line of fallacious reasoning, the dream (Imaginary
register) is confused with the creative work of art (Symbolic register),
and the artistic is reduced to the neurotic. Greenacre may have
provided one explanation for some of the critical attacks on Swift: "his
writing was so vindictive, so foul in language, so violent, that presently
the stench seemed to come from him rather than from the subject or
object which he was treating."' As for satiric authors, "many of the
characteristics confidently attributed to them derive from the very
nature of satire itselft' (Kernan 28). Any "simple identification of
Swift's character with Gulliver is absurdly na~ve."~In fact, "Lemuel
Sandor Ferenczi, "Gulliver's Phantasies," Final Contributions to
the Problems and Methods of Psycho-Analysis (NY: Brunner/Mazel,
1955) 59. Phyllis Greenacre, Swi' and Carroll - A Psychoanalytic Study
of Two Lives (NY: International UP, 1955) 35. a R.S. Crane, "The Rationale of the Fourth Voyage," ed. Robert A. Greenberg, Jonathan Swifi's Gulliver 's Travels (NY & London: W. W.
Norton, 1970) 334. Gulliver is an Other, not a double."' Monk agrees that Gulliver "is
NOT Jonathan S~ift."~
According to Brady, the "major critical error lies in the absolute
identification of Swift and Gulliver. [In Swift's satires] the narrator is
... afways s~spect."~Brady reminds us that Gulliver is a satirical tool,
washed up in Lilliput on Guy Fawkes Day, "the day on which Tristram
Shandy is born" (350). Brady criticizes analyses unsupported by
textual references such as the pitiable nature of the Yahoos, or the
supposition that Gulliver went mad before arriving in the land of the
Houyhnhnms (349). Brady also rejects the biographical approach
since,
all satires would have to be read not as attacks
on vice and folly but as projections of the
Deborah Baker Wyrick, Jonathan Swift and the Vested Word
(Chapel Hill & London: U of N. Carolina P, 1988) 101. Samuel Holt Monk, "The Pride of Lemuel Gulliver," The
Writings of Jonathan Swift, eds. Robert A. Greenberg & W.B. Piper
(NY & London: W.W. Norton, 1973) 72. This text will be abbreviated as WJS. rank Brady, "Vexations and Diversions: Three Problems in
Gulliver's Tmvels," Modem Philology 75.4 (May 1978): 365. satirist's inner conflicts .... any deductions
about Gulliver which start from Swift's
Christianity or fragmented personality or anal
retentiveness (or expulsiveness) or whatever ...
are inherently suspect (347, 355).
Swift, Freud and Lacan have all been villified (as neurotic or worse) on the basis of biographical evidence which, by its very nature, must be incomplete, subjective, contradictory, and open to misinterpretation. Inevitably (as with Swift and Freud) we are presented with two different visions of Lacan, neither of which is very convincing. The 'first' Lacan is portrayed as a clown, a fool, an aggressive and narcissistic boor, a pretentious guru, a petty thief and an unscrupulous scholar: "There are countless anecdotes about the legendary bad manners .. . eccentricities, [Lacan's] alleged promiscuity, .. . . [and] suicides among Lacan's analysands. "'The second picture of
Lacan is a reversed image of the first. In this persona, Lacan is a super-hero, fearlessly entering Gestapo headquarters to contest a dossier prepared against his first wife, and helping to obtain "false - papers for Jewish friends" (Macey 3). Lacan also allegedly smuggled a friend to freedom, "across the West German border" (Macey 2). This
David Macey, Lacaniun Contexts (London: Verso, 1988) 2. Lacan is also lionized for his "loyalty to the Freudian cause" (Macey
3), since the works of Freud were banned in wartime France.
According to Lacan, "the fact that psychoanalysis is 'Appended to the
Oedipus' does not mean that it has anything of value to say about
Sophocles" (Macey 6).
I have chosen psychoanalysis as a critical method to examine
Gulliver's Travels, not its author, Jonathan Swift. My main interest
lies in comparing the satirical and the psychoanalytical analyses of
mankind. I have studiously avoided biographical references (except as
examples of questionable or unjustifiable criticism) and have presented
basic biographical information on Lacan to introduce him to an
audience who might be unfamiliar with this theorist, not to judge the
man or the theories. From the vast body of psychoanalytical writings, 1 have chosen to focus on a limited number of concepts in Freud and
Lacan to evaluate Swift's depiction of mankind in Gulliver's Travels: the stages of infantile development; the id, ego and superego; narcissism; aggression; language acquisition and usage.
Besides re-invigorating Freudian psychoanalysis, Lacan was able to expand upon Freud's linguistic insights. Lacan's use of language, described as enigmatic and metaphorical, has been generously compared to that of MallarmB. Lacanian concepts such as the Other, objets a', signifiers, linguistic webs, le stade du nziroir and le nonzlnon
du pere serve both to elucidate and corroborate Swift's insights into
human nature, and language. It is precisely because of his link to both
traditional Freudian concepts, and linguistics, that I have chosen a
'Lacanian' approach. Swift and Lacan shared interests in the mirror
metaphor; the defining of signifiers; and the infantile nature of man
(narcissistic and aggressive).
There are also a number of problems in employing Lacanian
concepts in a literary analysis. Lacan's use of language is often
convoluted and obscure. Many of Lacan's 'algebraicf equations are
questionable, and appear to follow attempts by Saussure and others to
provide linguistics with a patina of 'hard' science. Other criticism
faults Lacan's theoretical "inconsistencies, divergencies and
contradictions ... a kaleidoscope of [linguistic] theories" (Macey l23),
charges which might be levelled against many a theorist or author.
Jacques Lacan (1901-81) was a French psychiatrist who
practiced and taught psychoanalysis. Lacan's readings of Freud
convinced him of the necessity of restoring the radicality of the
master's writings, of recreating a 'living' Freud by overcoming over-
Objets - objects; a for autre, other. These objects are confusing to the infant as self or other. simplifications, problems of translation etc. Lacan became a member
of the Societt Psychanalytique de Paris in 1934, resigned in 1953,
joined the SocietC Frangaise de Psychanalyse and began his famous bi-
weekly public seminars on Freud.' In the 1930's and 40's Lacan's main
concerns centered on the image and the mirror. In the 1950's and 60is,
Lacan focused on language, substituting "linguistics for biology as the
scientific foundation and model for psychoanalysis. "* In 1955, Lacan
attacked the works of ego-psychologists (Hartmann, Kris etc.). "From
1955-64, he developed his triadic model of the Symbolic, Imaginary
and Real order^."^ In 1963, Lacan was expelled from the International
Psychoanalytic Association for his radical practice and teaching
methods (Sarup xiii). Lacan founded the Ecole Freudienne de Paris
(1964) where he attracted intellectuals in diverse fields such as
Madan Sarup, Jacques Lacan (Toronto: U of Toronto P, 1992),
xi, xii. E.S. Casey and J. M. Woody, "Hegel, Heidegger, Lacan:
Dialectic of Desire, " Interpreting Lacan, Psychiatry and the
Hunonities vol. 6, eds. Joseph H. Smith and William Kerrigan (New
Haven & London: Yale UP, 1983) 76.
Michael Payne, "Lacan by Malcolm Bowie," Literature and
Psychology 39 (3) 1993: 71. linguistics, mathematics and philosophy; luminaries such as Barthes,
Foucault, Derrida, Ricoeur and Jakobson (who was also a close friend), as well as Lkvi-Strauss (Sarup ix).
This thesis begins with a review of some of the early extreme psychoanalytical analyses of Swift's neuroses (Greenacre, Karpman) and of later analyses which focused on the text, and on language itself
(Lacan). This is followed by an examination of the satiric tradition, to place Gulliver's Travels in its literary context. The main body of this thesis is divided into three parts. The first deals with the unconscious/infantile stages of development and the acquisition of language and behaviour patterns as revealed by Swift and Lacan. The second deals with the egohelf, the mirror, narcissism and conscious linguistic processes. In this thesis, the term narcissism will be employed to signify negative vanity and pride, as opposed to the positive instinct of self-love, essential to the life drive. The third part deals with the superego and the voice of the satirist. The thesis concludes with a review of some of the criticism which counters the extreme, subjective reactions to Swift's satire. Chapter One
WILD ANALYSIS
Among the great authors, Swift has been the recipient of an
inordinate amount of vilification, disgust, contempt, and rejection from
a large and varied group of critics and scholars. The cause of this
consternation and condemnation lies in Swift's having focused on
anality to reveal the essence of human nature, illustrating the validity
of Freud's linking of resistance and repression. Many psychoanalytical
examinations of Swift have been directed toward searching his works
for examples of perversions, and other signs of a disordered
personality. Freud, in an essay entitled "Wild Psycho-Analysis" (1910)
warned of the danger of errors in interpretation when one blindly leaps
to unwarranted conclusions.
A cursory examination of some of the critical responses reveals
an interesting pattern of anal repression. The Earl of Orrery concluded
that Swift's excremental "representation ... of human nature, must
terrify, and even debase the mind of the reader."' According to Landa,
Orrery's is the "tone and pretty much the method of criticism of the
The Earl of Orrery, Remarks on the Life and Writings of Doctor
Jonathan Swift, 1752 (Hildesheim: Georg Olms Verlagsbuchhandlung,
1968) 184. Fourth Voyage for a century and a half."' Even Patrick Delaney, a
"defender of Swift" (Landa 289), employed phrases such as "moral
deformity ... a defiled imagination" (Landa 289), to explain the
scatology in Gulliver's Travels. Sir Walter Scott wrote that the Travels
revealed Swift's "base depra~ity,"~and that Swift's vision of human
anality was simply "too degrading ... loathsome" (Scott 281). For
W.M. Thackeray, "the reader of the fourth part of Gulliver's Travels is
like the hero himself" (ed. Foster 86), stifled with filth, and that the
final voyage reveals Swift to be "filthy in word, filthy in thought,
furious, raging, obscene" (ed. Foster 86).
Murry commented on the anality of Swift's works, especially the
poetry, as attesting to the author's character and views as "so perverse,
so unnatural, so mentally diseased, so humanly wrong? Huxley
echoes this sentiment, concluding that Swift suffered from an
Louis A. Landa, "Jonathan Swift," ed. Greenberg, 289. Sir Walter Scott, "Introduction to Gulliver's Travels in the
Works of Jonathan Swift," A Casebook on Gulliver Among the
Houyhnhnms, ed. M.P. Foster (NY: Thomas Y. Crowell, 1970) 281. John Middleton Murry, Jonathan Swift - A Critical Biography
(1954) (NY: The Noonday P, 1965) 440. obsessive preoccupation with the visceral and
excrementitious subject ... to the verge of
insanity ... . Swift's greatness lies in the
intensity, the almost insane violence, of that
hatred of the bowels which is the essence of
his misanthropy and which underlies the whole
of his work.'
While such excessive reactions provoke little more than mirth among
modem critics, they do underline the dangers of analyzing the text as if
it were synonymous with the mind of the author. Recent biographical
and psychoanalytical studies have revealed these attacks on Swift to be
total nonsense. Greenacre's interpretation of key biographical material
as 'proof of Swift's neuroses, is summarized (and questioned) by
Norman 0.Brown:
Swift lost his father before he was born; was
kidnapped from his mother by his nurse at the
age of one; was returned to his mother three
years later, only to be abandoned by his
Aldous Huxley, Do What You Will (London: Chatto & Windus,
1931) 104, 101. mother one month after his return to her at the
psychoanalytically crucial Oedipal period (35).
Greenacre concluded that Swift's
anal fixation was intense and binding, and the
genital demands ... impaired ... [implying a]
total retreat from genital sexuality .... Swift
showed marked anal characteristics, an
exaggerated pleasure in dirt and excreta ... in
writing he let his language become foul and
his similes became coprophiliac
(Swiftand Carroll 85).
She also states that Swift exhibited the anxiety of "an unusually severe
castration complex" (Swift and Carroll 92), a sentiment echoed by
Karpman.' According to Ferenczi,
The biographical argument confirms our
supposition that Gulliver's fantasies in which
persons and objects are magnified or
minimized express the sense of genital
inadequacy of a person whose sexual activities
I Ben Karpman, "Neurotic Traits of Jonathan Swift as Revealed by Gulliver 's Travels," Psychoanalytic Review 29 (1 942): 34. have been inhibited by intimidation and
fixations in early childhood (Ferenczi 59).
A number of psychoanalytical critics like Karpman, Ferenczi and
Freedman, noting that the private chambers of the Queen of Lilliput are
involved, see Gulliver's act of urinating as "the child's idea of sexual
intercourse" (Ferenczi 53). Freedman also relates Gulliver's fear of
blinding (castration) with the desire to witness the primal scene.' For
F.R. Leavis, Swift's great force was "conditioned by frustration and
constriction; the channels of life have been blocked and per~erted."~
The depictions of Swift as mad, perverse, diseased and impaired are
ample testimony to anal repression/denial, and unwarrented
assumptions over-reaction on the part of these critics.
Karpman's essays on Gutliver's Travels represent extreme
examples of literary psychoanalysis wielded in a very narrow and
parochial manner; they are guilty of a number of fundamental critical
errors which include: confusion of author and character, disregard of
both genre and literary tradition, and the inability to accept anality as a
William Freedman, "The Whole Scene of this Voyage: A
Primal Scene Reading of Gulliver's Voyage to Brobdingnag,"
Psychoanalytic- Review 71.1 (Dec. 1984): 554. F.R. Lcavis, "Swift's Negative Irony," ed. Greenberg, 422. mirror to human nature. In his essay, "Neurotic Traits of ... Gulliver's
Travels," Karprnan especially takes issue with the scatological
references: "at almost no time are they justified by the narrative: they
are seldom funny; and only rarely do they serve the purpose of
heightening the author's satire ... [the author desires] to revel in dirt for
its own sake" (30-1). According to Karpman, Swift was obsessed with
defecation and that excremental references
belong to that stage of infancy which Freud
has described as the anal erotic .... Swift was a
neurotic who exhibited psychosexual infantilism and its particular aspect - coprophilia ... the entire narrative may be
viewed as a neurotic phantasy' with
coprophilia as its main content (31-32).
He feels that at the very least, Swift "could have employed a less
objectionable device" (31) than scatology, and "pictured a primitive
race of disagreeable creatures without smearing his pages with their
excrementst' (42), a powerful metaphor also employed by Swift who
"A phantasy is an imaginary scene in which the subject is a protagonist, representing the fulfilment of a wish" (Samp 70). was well aware that, in eighteenth-century Europe, many books would wind up in a jakes, as reading material, as toilet paper, or as both. Chapter Two
SWIFT AND THE SATIRIC TUDITION
Gulliver's Travels is a treasure trove of literary allusions and
parodies. Swift employed a number of elements traditionally
associated with satire: the satirist as physician or surgeon; scatology;
utopian concepts (for contrast); the travel motif, etc. The genre of
satire ranges "from the extreme realism of formal satire to the extreme
symbolism of the beast fable, and may be presented in poem, play,
essay or novel" (Kernan 34-5). Authors such as Horace, Chaucer and
Erasmus practised a milder brand of satire than Juvenal, Marston,
Rochester, Swift, and Pope who were apt to "lash out with violence"
(Kernan 29). In both traditions, satire appears to possess a curative
quality against vice and folly. Horace spoke of "Spells and sayings
whereby you soothe the pain and cast much of the malady aside."' The
satirist "can keep your health or name from harm" (Horace "Sermons"
1, iv, 119). Swift wrote of "Satyr which is most useful, and gives the
least offense: which instead of lashing, laughs Men out of their Follies,
and Vices; and is the character that gives Horace the Preference to
1 Horace, "Epistles," Horace, Satires, Epistles and Ars Poetica , ed. & trans. H.R. Fairclough (London: Loeb Classical Library, 1926) I, i, 253. Juvenal."' However, "Even if Swift prefers Horace, it is commonplace
that he is more Juvenalian than Horatian" (Carnochan 30). This choice
was Swift's, and not absolutely required by the genre of satire.
To achieve "the purging of our minds" (Carnochan 24), the
satirist "applies appropriate therapeutic treatments: the whip, the
scalpel .. the emetic, the burning acid."2 In a letter to Alexander Pope
(June 1, 1728), Swift refers to his own "perfect rage and resentment,""
recalling Juvenal's "fiery indignation" (Kernan 25). John Marston's
satiric persona also "cannot chuse but bite."4 In The Scourge of
"The Intelligencer" no. 3 (1728) Prose Works of Jonathan Swift
vol. 12, Irish Tracts (1728-33), ed. Herbert Davis (Oxford: Basil
Blackwell, 1955) 33. This edition will be abbreviated as PW. ' Mary Claire Randolph, "The Medical Concept in English
Renaissance Satiric Theory: Its Possible Relationships and
Implications," Studies in Philology 38 (1941): 125, 157.
The Correspondence of Jonathan Swifr (1 724-3I) vol. 3, ed.
Harold Williams (Oxford: Clarendon P, 1963) 289. These texts will be abbreviated as Corr. John Marston, The Scourge of ViIIanie (1598-9), The Poems of
John Marston, ed. Arnold Davenport (Liverpool: Liverpool UP, 1961) viii, 1.50: 151. Villanie, Marston portrays the satirsit as "Lashing the lewdnes [with] ...
the lashes of my ... rime" (11.2,20: 103); the "sharpe fangd Satyrist" (ii,
1.8: 106), filled with "rage" (ii, 1.104: log), employs the "Satyrick whip
.. . to scourge poluting beastliness" (iii, 1.150: 116 & vii, 1.2: 149).
In A Tale of Tub, those who lack wit and humour "lay
themselves bare to the Lashes of Both" (WJS 273), meted out by the
satirist. When the author encounters critics, "Noisy Curs ... barking, ...
he honors the boldest with a Lash of his Whip" (WJS 360). In "The Life
and Genuine Character of Doctor Swift," Swift wrote that as "you
dread no further lashes / You freely may forgive his ashes."' In
"Verses on the Death of Dr. Swift." the satirist, in order "to cure the
Vices of Mankind ... Expos'd the Fool, and lash'd the Knave" (WJS
558). Swift's satire was aimed not only at individual knaves, but also
at a general and universal censure; he "lash'd the Vice" (WJS 562). In
a letter to Alexander Pope (Sept. 29, 1725), Swift wrote: "when you
think of the World give it one Lash the more at my Request." I have
ever hated all Nations professions and Communityes and all my love is
towards individualls ... I hate and detest that animal called man" (Corr.
3: 103).
Jonathan Swift, The Complete Poems, ed. Pat Rogers (New a - Haven & London: Yale UP, 1983) 11. 201-2, p. 485. Swift (like Marston) wields the paternal lash. Referring to
Gulliver's Trovels, in a letter to Pope (Sept. 29, 1725), Swift wrote that
"all my labours [aim] to vex the world rather than divert it and if 1
could [safely] compass that designe ... I would" (Corr. 3: 102), satire
as a product "of Misanthropy" (Corr. 3: 103). In Swift, we find an
author "who symbolically murders or castrates - that is, who satirizes
man" (Carnochan 75). According to Freud, "the ego ideal displays
particular severity and often rages against the ego in a cruel fashion."'
Although Gulliver's Travels is an example of "satiric aggression against
human aggression,"' Swift also employed the feather of humour. The
Travels, "a great comic masterpiece" (Monk 70), attests to the fact that
"Swift is surely one of the funniest men who ever ~ived."~As Swift's
. - Sigmund Freud, "The Ego and the Id" vol. 19, The Standard
Edition of the Complete Psychologicul Works of Sigmund Freud 24
vols, ed. and trans. James Strachey (London: Hogarth P & the
Institute of Psycho-Analysis, 1954) 51. This edition will be
abbreviated as SE. William Freedman, "Gulliver's Voyage to the Country of the
Houyhnhnms: Adolescent Asceticism, Idealization and Ideology,"
International Review of Psycho-Analysis 18.4 (1991): 538. Alan Bloom, "An Outline of Gulliver's Trovels," WJS 661. satire is saturated with irony, reversals and paradox, it is difficult to
apply absolute stylistic labels. Gulliver's TraveLs "is a take-off on the
imaginary voyage - a parody of a parody,"' and like Dante's satire, it
attests to the comedy and tragedy of human affairs.
Since Gulliver echoes Swift's raging misanthropy at the end of
the Travels, it is evident that, at times, Swift speaks directly to us
through Gulliver. However it is too simplistic to equate Swift and
Gulliver. As a naive idealist, Gulliver is reduced to a mere satirical
tool. Satire itself would lose much of its sting if it reflected the
author's personal, rather than universal, weaknesses. In Book Four, the
Master coafirms what Swift has always known, but what Gulliver finds
hard to accept, "that humankind are all Yahoos" ("A Panegyric on the
Reverend Dean Swift," Rogers 11.177-8: 414).
In "Epistle to a LadyQ2(Rogers 514-72) Swift wrote:
Fiom the planet of my birth
I encounter vice with mirth ...
Like the ever-laughing sage
In a jest I spend my rage
Ricardo Quintana, Swifi: An Introduction (London: Oxford UP,
1962) 53. Lady Acheson. (Though it must be understood,
I would hang them if I could)
(ll.l49-jO, 177-80: 5 18-1 9).
Here Swift is once again more Juvenalian. Similarly, Swift's "A
Character, Panegyric and Description of the Legion Club" (Rogers
550-6) is a devastating, vitriolic attack (presented as a panegyric) on the Irish House of Commons. The legislators are mercilessly attacked on several levels. Theologically, they are "dernoniacs" (1.1 I),
"infernal" (1.120) and "damned" (1.19 1). Psychologically, these
"brainsick brutes" (1.176) are inmates of a "madhouse" (1.99). Legally, they are condemned as a "den of thieves" (1.28) who would "sell the nation for a pin" (1.48). Swift's solution is the scourge:
Lash them daily, lash them duly,
Though 'tis hopeless to reclaim them
Scorpion Rods perhaps may tame them (11.156- 158).
The tradition of the satirist as scourger has not shielded Swift from critical condemnation of his raging diatribes: "it is Yahoo language, a monster gibbering shrieks and gnashing imprecations against mankind"
(Thackeray, ed. Foster 86).
A second satirical tradition, the use of scatology, was fully exploited by Swift, engendering a great deal of negative critical reactions. Plato described satire as a dish of "foul foods."' The
unpalatable nature of satire lies in its critical stance. The satirical 'dish'
served by Swift is an excremental one. The satire demands that the
reader swallow the bitter truth, that we are excremental creatures filled
with shame and repressions. The meal, traditionally denoting "a
civilized activity, a cultural rite,"' is a signifier which is reversed in
satire, where 'food' becomes an emetic. Swift's use of scatology is
quite traditional in the satiric genre. In Aristophane's The Clouds (423
BC), we find references to flatulency and dung3 Also, "In Dante's
scatological images, excrement serves as a major metaphor for sin"
(J.N.Lee 16). In the Inferno, flatterers are discovered
... in the lake's
Foul bottom, plunged in dung, the which appeared
Michael Seidel, Satiric Inheritance, Rabelais to Sterne
(Princeton: Princeton UP, 1979) 4. Michel Jeanneret, A Feast of Words: Banquets and Table Talk in the Renaissance, trans. J. Whitely & E. Hughes (Cambridge: Polity
P, 1991) 30.
' Jae Num Lee, Swifi and Scatological Satire (Albuquerque: U of
New Mexico P, 1971) 9-10. Like human ordure running from a jakes
(11.112-14, J.N. Lee 17).
Similarly, John Marston whose"rna1content ... noses into all the filth of
Elizabethan London" (Kernan 28), describes "dung-pit reeking
stearnest' (The Scourge of ViNanie i, 1.71: 105). In fact, "Genius seems
to have led practically every great satirist to become what the world
calls obscene. "'
Swift annotated a copy of Rabelais (J.N. Lee, 150 in. 9). The
satirical works Gargantua (1534) and Pantagruel (1532) abound with
anal (as well as oral and phallic) fantasies. Seidel notes the link
between oral, anal and procreative acts of the body in the depiction of
Gargamelle (stuffed with tripe while pregnant with Gargantua) who
simultaneously "evacuates all her bodily holdings" (66). In the works
of Rabeiais, the "heroes develop from the impulsive phase of
childhood, when desires are not bound by rules" (Jeanneret 29).
Gargantua urinates a deluge, drowning "two hundred and sixty
thousand, four hundred and eighteen persons, not counting the women
1 Northrop Frye, Anatomy of Criticism (Princeton: Princeton UP,
1957) 235. and small children."' J.N. Lee notes that during the war against
Picrochole, Gargantua's mare urinates, creating "'a flood twenty-one
miles wide,' drowning a large band of the enemy" (19). Swift follows
Rabelais in describing the production of prodigious amounts of urine
and excrement; Gargantua "wiped myself on the sheets, on the
bedclothes, on the curtains, on a cushion, on a rug, on a green carpet,
on a duster, on a napkin."? Like many satirists, Rabelais claimed to be
exposing historical 'truths', such as "that the great in Elysium have
learned the exquisite pleasures of goosedown ass-wipes" (Seidel 64).
The anal experiments at the Academy of Lagado also echo similar
material from Rabelais; one churchman, after "fermenting a great tub of
human urine in horse-dung, with plenty of Christian shit, ... watered
kings and great princes with this holy distillation, and thereby
lengthened their lives by a good six or nine feet" (GT 348 fn 8). In
Rabelais' satire, "the monks ... 'draw ou ihemseives the opprobrium,
insults, and curses of the world' because 'they eat the world's
Paul Turner, ed. Gulliver's Travels (Oxford & NY: Oxford UP,
1986) 317, fn. 14. All quotations will be from this edition, which will be abbreviated GT. The Portable Rabeluis, ed. and trans. Samuel Putnam (NY: The
Viking P, 1946) 87. excrement, that is to say, sins"' (Seidel 14). In Gulliver's Travels, the projector who employs the bellows on the unfortunate dog echoes "one young calcinator ... extracting farts from a dead donkey, and selling them at fivepence a yard" (GT 349 fn 16). As an infant, Gargantua approached the body functions with unrepressed exuberance; he "pissed in his shoes, shat in his shirt ... blew a fat fart, pissed against the sun"
(J.N.Lee 19). Farts and shit are the ingredients used to create a tiny race of men and women; and the cure for resuscitating Epistemon requires "powdered extract of dung" (Rabelais 344), a common emetic and Gulliver's cure for Yahoo spleen.
Many of Swift's works continue this tradition. The excremental, as a satirical device, deflates our pride by pointing out our pretensions and repressions. In "The Lady's Dressing Room" and "Cassinus and
Peter," the excremental reality "Oh Celia, Celia, Celia shits," (Rogers
451, 466) unnerves the naive male lovers who discover that the temple of Venus is profaned by anality. The female love object is the source of "an excremental smell ... unsavoury odours" (Rogers 451). In
"Strephon and Chloe," the lady keeps her excremental functions private: "None ever saw her pluck a rose" (Rogers 455). The social repression of human excrementality is evident; generally performed in isolation, defecation is linked to strong feelings of shame. Social inhibitions concerning the anal functions appear to be less binding on the socially exalted (royal levees and Lyndon Johnson). Our use of euphemistic expressions signifies our anal repressions. Comparing excrement to a "rose" is humorous, as two diametrically opposed signifiers slide into one another. Strephon asks "Can Chloe, heavenly
Chloe piss?" (Rogers 459). Strephon farts as well. In "A Beautiful
Young Nymph Going to Bed," Corinna is described as extremely malodorous: "Who sees, will spew; who smelts, be poisoned" (Rogers
455). Swift's "The Legion Club" also "encases its targets in ... excremental images" (Wyrick 172):
Such a crowd [of legislators] their ordure throws
On a far less villain's nose.. ..
While they never hold their tongue
Let them dabble in their dung ...
We may, while they strain their throats,
Wipe our arses with their votes ....
Souse them in their own excrements1
(Rogers 11.19-20, 51-2, 61-2: 186).
In "An Examination of Certain Abuses, Corruptions, and
Enormities, in the City of Dublin" (1732), Swift wrote of
1 Payments. ... the immense Number of human Excrements
... for which the disaffected Party hath
assigned a very false and malicious Cause.
They would have it that these Heaps were laid
there privately by British Fundaments, to make
the World believe, that our Irish Vulgar do
daily eat and drink; and consequently, that the
Clamour of Poverty among us, must be false
(PW 12, 220).
He continues with a humorous pseudo-scientific treatise on the contrast between British and Irish anuses and excrement. In the interests of science, a physician, we are told, conducted the research, poking a finger into a variety of anal apertures. In A Tale of a Tub, Jack, in reaction to curious spectators, would take "out ... his Gear and piss full in their Eyes" (WJS 363). In "The Battel of the Books," we find
Bentley armed with "a Vessel full of Ordure" (WJS 392) and Aesop dreaming of "a Wild Ass [moderns] dunging in [the ancients'] Faces"
(WJS 394), the anal sadistic.
Swift's satire employs both traditions of scourging and scatology.
Scatology is scourge employed by the wrathful, father-like satirist to chastize an infantile humanity. We are excremental creatures, not because we defecate, but because of our anal organization and repressions. The use of excremental images and concepts are both
legitimate and successful in Swift's scatological poetry, constituting "a
devastatingly satirical attack on those who ... find the ultimate horror
of the human situation ... in the fact that women as well as men
excrete."' According to Freud (and Swift), neurosis may result from an
obsessive concern with the inseparable links between the excremental
and the sexual: "inter urinas et faeces na~cintur."~In satire, scatology
is a traditional, highly effective technique, attesting to our sensitivity to
the excremental reflection of man.
In Swift's "A Meditation Upon a Broom-stick" (1703), the broom
becomes a metaphor for the satirist (and unwittingly, the
psychoanalyst) who "sets up to be a universal Reformer and Corrector
of Abuses ... bringing hidden Corruptions to the Light, and raiseth a
mighty Dust where there was none before; sharing ... in the very same
Pollutions he pretends to sweep away" (WJS 421-2). This is a mock
Donald J. Greene, "On Swift's 'Scatological' Poems," Essential
Articles for the Study of Jonathan Swift's Poetry, ed. David M. Vieth
(Hamden, Conn.: Archon Books, 1984) 223.
"We are born between urine and faeces" St. Augustine. Quoted by Sigmund Freud, Civilization and its Discontents, ed. James
Strachey (NY:W.W. Norton, 1961) 53. This text will be abbreviated as CD. attack on the satirist. Since the broom is "the Reverse of what it was"
(WJS 421), the signified is to be reversed. The satirist is no more
responsible for the 'filtht he brings to light, than is the doctor who
lances a boil or the psychoanalyst who dredges up unconscious
signifiers.
The psychoanalytical doctrine of sublimation provides an
interesting defence for the satirist (if such is required). According to
Freud, "sublimation is a vicissitude which has been forced upon the
instincts entirely by civilization" (CD 44). Through sublimation, "what
has belonged to the lowest part of the mental life of each one of us is
changed, through the formation of the ideal, into what is highest in the
human mind" (SE 19 "Ego and Id" 36). According to Roberts, if Swift
was in any way neurotic, his "neuroses worked positively for him as an
artist;"' his "fantasies .. . were transmuted into art. "2
Landrum Banks and John S. Zil, "Misanthropy and Antisocial
Behaviour in Houyhnhnmland: Equine Symbolism in Book IV of
Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels," Corrective and Social Psychiatry and Journal of Behaviour Technology Methods and Therapy 26.1
(1980): 33. Donald R. Roberts, "A Freudian View of Jonathan Swift,"
Literature and Psychology 6 (1956): 9. Chapter Three
THE INFANTILE AND LANGUAGE OF THE UNCONSCIOUS
THE INFANTILE
In the mirror of Swift's satire, we discover a series of images, which help the author to define the human signifier. A key image employed to undermine man's pride is that of the infant. Swift explored key areas of the infantile stages (oral, anal and phallic) to reveal the roots of human personality and language development. The infantile (and unconscious) in Swift's satire (and in psychoanalysis) reflects our shame, pride, desires and fears.
Gulliver embarks on an "internal voyage ... through the stages of childhood development" (Freedman '91, 529, 531). Upon his arrival in
Lilliput, Gulliver sleeps "above nine hours" (5) and maintains
"residence of about nine months in that empire" (34). Later he specifies "nine Months and thirteen Days" (50). The repetition of the number nine signifies the time required for gestation. Gulliver notes his "Gentleness and good Behaviour" (24), a childhood concern. His behaviour which is "oddly infantile and submissive" (Freedman '84,
555), is restrained by the need to satisfy social requirements.
Gulliverts inferior status would seem to contradict Ferenczi's statement that "An unusual reduction in the size of objects and persons ... is to be
attributed to the compensatory, wish-fulfilling fantasies of the child
who wants to reduce the proportions of the terrifying objects in his
environment to the smallest possible size" (44); while Gulliver may
physically tower above the adult (parental) figures, they remain
terrifying. Gulliver "reacts like a child - crying out when he is hurt,
demanding food and drink, sleeping once more when his pains have
been relieved and his needs fulfilled" (Carnochan 135).
In Brobdingnag, a reversed mirror image of Lilliput, Gulliver's
earlier power has disappeared; like a real child, he is physically
helpless in a giant's world. One Brobdingnagian scholar even identifies
poor Gulliver as an embryo. According to Ferenczi, any "sudden
appearance of giants or magnified objects is always the residue of a
childhood recollection dating from a time when, because we ourselves
were so small, all other objects seemed gigantic" (44). Placed on a
table, Gulliver is "in terrible Fright ... for fear of falling" (80). The
adult is perceived as "a huge Creature ... [a] Monster" (75) whose very
stature undermines Gulliver's earlier narcissistic sense of omnipotence.
Glumdalclitch treats him like "her Baby" (86), an infantile
signifier for a doll. The traditional use of a doll to signify a baby has become reversed. He is placed in a "Baby's Cradle" (86) and sleeps in a "Baby's Bed" (90). Ironically traditional roles are also reversed;
Gulliver (adult) becomes the infant, while Glumdalclitch (child)
becomes the surrogate mother: "To her I chiefly owe my Preservation"
(86). Like a mother, she would "dress and undress me" (86). She
"cares for his physical needs and wards off the dangers of exploitation
by her father's avarice; at court she salves his wounds and his egdl
The relationship between Gulliver and Glumdaklitch does appear to
constitute an infantile fantasy. She "carried me on her Lap in a Box
tied about her Waistt' (90). Carried is synonymous with bore. Critics
like Ferenczi and Karpman interpret this as a "birth fantasy" (Karpman
'42, 37), with the "Box" as vagina. Interestingly, Gulliver, unlike
Robinson Crusoe, makes no reference to his own mother (the first
other) in recounting his personal history at the beginning of the novel,
which could corroborate Swift's 'maternal rejection' suggested by many
psychoanalytic critics. Gulliver, in his conversations with the
Brobdingnagian King, refers to "the Frailties and Deformities of my
political Mother" (127), a phrase with psychoanalytical co~otationsof
maternal condemnation.
Kathleen M. Swaim, A Reading of Gulliver's Travels (The
Hague, Paris: Mouton, 1972) 93. While Gulliver refuses the Lilliputian King's request to destroy
Blefuscu, he continually displays an excessive, although not absolute, obsequiousness towards royalty and other socially exalted figures.
There are many examples of Gulliver's infantile awe before parental figures, such as "prostrating myself at his Majesty's Feet ... so great a
Prince" (31). In Blefuscu, "1 lay on the ground to kiss his Majesty's and the Empress's Hand" (61). When sold to the Brobdingnagian
Queen, Gulliver "begged the honour of kissing her Imperial Foot but this gracious Princess held out her little Finger ... to my Lips" (92).
Later he tries to "ingratiate my self into his Majesty's Favour" (128).
His faith in princes (a satirical target) is undermined during the four voyages. Like a child, Gulliver is highly pleased that the farmer's wife
"by Degrees grew extremely tender of me" (79), as would
Glumdalclitch. Gulliver exhibits an infantile desire to please, and to be thought well of, to gain approval from those who symbolize authority
(substitute parental figures).
The animosity displayed towards Gulliver on the part of the dwarf is significant. Gulliver has displaced the dwarf as the object of interest. Gulliver is a diminutive reflection of the dwarf who himself is a diminutive reflection of the Brobdingnagians. The dwarfs aggression
(involving food) towards Gulliver suggests infantile sibling rivalry for the favour of the parental figures who tower over them both. Gulliver as a signifier of the diminutive, replaces the dwarf as signifier. The dwarfs identity and livelihood are threatened by Gulliver's popularity at Court. It takes nine months for Gulliver to return to England.
In Book Three, Gulliver's visit to Glubbdubdrib enlightens him as to the truth of human history and politics, which "inclined me a little to abate of that profound Veneration which I am naturally apt to pay to Persons of high Rank" (200-1). Preparing for exile, Gulliver boasts:
if I may speak it without Vanity ... as I was
going to prostrate myself to kiss his Hoof, he
did me the Honour to raise it gently to my
Mouth ... so illustrious a Person ... to give so
great a Mark of Distinction to a Creature so
inferior as I (289-90).
Gulliver's self-denigration before a superior being is counterbalanced by the pride he derives from his relationship with the exalted Master.
Gulliver's veneration for princes has merely been displaced onto a new father figure. Gulliver (as child) is humble before the father/superego but proud of parental recognition or praise. One of the most crucial and far-reaching conclusions of
psychoanalysis is its confirmation of the extreme influence of the
infantile stages of development in determining the character of the
adult (SE 21 "The Future of an Illusion" 9).' Freud "discovered the
libidinal stages of the child through the analysis of ad~lts,"~
establishing the "continuity between the infantile and the adult mind ...
the child is father to the man" (SE 13 "The Claims of Psycho-Analysis
to Scientific Interest" 183). The child becomes a key to understanding
both language and human nature, since "what is unconscious in mental
life is also what is infantile."'
The Oral
The oral stage occurs primarily during the first year of life. The
main activity is sucking, an instinctive behaviour from the life drive.
This text will be abbreviated as FI. Jacques Lacan, Ecrits: A Selection, trans. Alan Sheridan (NY:
W.W. Norton, 1977) 36. This text will be abbreviated as E. Sigmund Freud, Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis, ed.
James Strachey (Toronto: Penguin Books, 1974) 247. This text will be abbreviated as ILP. Yet, the desire of the oral drive "exceeds simple biological needsw1as
attested to by pacifiers. This drive is "the most primitive" (ILP 371).
In psychoanalysis, oral activities may become metaphors for aggression
(devouring) and fragmentation (being gobbled up) or for taking in, to
"swallow anything,"* "g~llibility."~Just as the child begins the stages
of development with oral needs to be satisfied, so does civilization
itself, which dates back to the time when men achieved a surplus of
food by moving from hunter-gatherers to farmers.
Swift recognized that the orality of man is linked to the infantile,
to aggression and to language. In Lilliput, Gulliver's inability to
communicate verbally, or to get food, suggests infantile dependency:
"Almost famished with Hunger ... I found the demands of Nature so
strong upon me that I could not forbear showing my Impatience
J. Brenkrnan, "The Other and the One: Psychoanalysis, Reading,
The Symposium," Literalure and Psychoanalysis: The Question of
Reading: Otherwise, ed. Shoshana Felman (Baltimore & London:
Johns Hopkins UP, 1977) 417.
* Calvin S. Hall, A Primer of Freudian Psychology (NY &
Scarborough. Ontario: A Mentor Book, 1979) 106. James 0.Whittaker, Introduction to Psychology 2nd ed.
(Philadelphia: W.B. Saunders, 1970) 471. (perhaps against the strict Rules of Decency) by putting my finger
frequently on my Mouth to signify that I wanted Food" (7-8). The
communication involved in getting food is the beginning of language
skills. "There is a kind of universal language, consisting of expressions
of the face and eyes, gestures and tones of voice."' The reference to
"Rules" may indicate a conflict between infantile needs and adult
conventions, the primitive and the civilized. The use of parentheses
may suggest that Gulliver's social concerns may have been added in
retrospect, the adult looking back at the child. The phrase "demands of
Nature" can signify both the oral and the anal functions. Food
deprivation serves as a weapon; starvation is the form of oral
punishment to be inflicted upon Gulliver (child) by the Lilliputian
government (parent): "for want of sufficient Food you would ... decay
and consume in a few Months" (59). Alive or dead, Gulliver's very
corporeality offers a possible danger to the kingdom.
Besides eating and drinking, there are also negative aspects of
the oral stage, including biting, which psychoanalytically may signify
"many kinds of direct, displaced, and disguised aggressions" (Hall
1 St. Augustine, Confessions, trans. R.S. Pine-Coffin (Toronto:
Penguin Books, 1961) 29. 106). Infantile "phantasies of devouring [or] of being gobbled up"'
signify the link between aggression (incorporation) and fear
(fragmentation). Infantile aggression may result from insufficient food,
as the infant is entirely dependent upon others. However the advent of
teeth is a natural phase of development which indicates the time for
weaning. It is of course impossible to strictly attach aggressive
motivation to the infant's biting, as the infant may not be entirely aware
of the nature or consequences of its actions. Gulliver indulges in a
fantasy of primitive oral aggression when a Lilliputian's arrow narrowly
misses his eye: "I made a Countenance as if I would eat him alive.
The poor Man squalled terribly" (16-17). The man's cries are an oral
response to an oral threat. The cry is instinctive and also the beginning
of speech. The child consumed by the parent is a primal, mythic fear
which Swift dealt with in "A Modest Proposal." Gulliver's gestures,
signifying a possible impending attack, create a pretence sufficient to
evoke a response from the threatened Lilliputian and to permit Gulliver
to discharge his aggression. He does not actualize the fantasy. Self-
Jacques Lacan, The Four Fundamental Concepts of
Psychoanalysis, ed. Jacques-Alain Miller, trans. Alan Sheridan (NY:
W. W. Norton, 1978) 195. This text will be abbreviated as FFC. restraint suggests Gulliver, a civilized adult, still exhibits infantile oral aggression.
In Brobdingnag, food proves to be either elusive, disgusting or a threat to Gulliver, who has been reduced, in proportion, to insignificance, the helpless infant. Satisfying oral requirements involves the reality principle. As in Lilliput, when Gulliver arrives in
Brobdingnag he is "in the utmost Distress .... to find out some fresh
Water" (74) and food. Yet when food does arrive, it is overwhelming.
There is a meat "Dish of about four and twenty Foot Diameter" (80) and "a small Dram-cup which held about two Gallons" (80).
The Brobdingnagian baby, seeing Gulliver, "seized me by the
Middle and got my Head in his Mouth" (82). From Gulliver's point of view, the act is one of oral aggression. Gulliver has reversed positions
(mirror images) with the Lilliputian he had threatened to eat. Here, the devouring adult has been displaced by the baby, an infantile fantasy.
For Gulliver, the threat is real, as the unwitting and uncivilized infant is capable of literally swallowing (or dropping) Gulliver who "roared so loud that the Urchin was frighted" (82). Both Gulliver and the infant have managed to communicate, rhetoric without language. In nature, the volume of a beast's bellowing or roaring helps to establish dominance. The loud noise startles and frightens the baby, who reacts to a false signifier of danger. The nurse must resort to providing oral
gratification to appease the child. She "was forced to apply the last
Remedy by giving it suckt' (82). Here the breast is offered as a
pacifier, to replace another, Gulliver. One signifier slides into another.
In "An Outline of Psychoanalysis," Freud wrote that the mother was
"the first and strongest love-object .... [and] the ... first erotic object is
the mother's breast" (SE 23, 188), or its equivalent, which the infant
"desires most of all" (CD 14). Of great significance to Lacan, Freud
postulated that at first "the child does not distinguish between the
breast and its own body" (SE 23 "An Outline of Psychoanalysis" 188).
According to Lacan, it is through the removal/absence of the breast that
the child realizes separationfioss and otherness. Gratification of the
infant's needs is neither immediate nor assured, as it was in the womb.
As a result, the "Object cathexis' for ... the mother's breast [becomes]
the prototype of an object choice" (SE 19 "The Ego and the Id" 31).
The absent breast carries "a part of the original narcissistic libidinal
cathexis" (SE 23 "An Outline of Psychoanalysis" 188), or as Lacan puts
it, the breast becomes an "objet a cause of desire" (FFC 168).
From Freud's 'dynamict theory, an urge to discharge psychic energy. In Brobdingnag, breasts inevitably elicit exaggerated negative
responses of rejection from Gulliver: "I must confess no Object ever
disgusted me so much as the Sight of [the Nurse's] monstrous Breast
...: nothing could be more nauseousf' (82). Similarly, among the
beggars, Gulliver sees "a Woman with a Cancer in her Breast, swelled
to a monstrous Size, full of Holes" (105). Gulliver's disgust at the
gross corporeality, and diseased nature of the breast is
psychoanalytically significant. Since the nurse is a substitute maternal
figure, Gulliver may be exhibiting "a primal revulsion with the
maternal body."' When Gulliver refers to Glumdalclitch in the line:
"the poor Girl laid me on her Bosom" (87), the maternal element is
positively depicted. The maids of honour also act maternally towards
Gulliver; they "lay me at full Length in their Bosoms" (111). The tone
and diction suggest infantile fantasy, as does the action of the
handsomest maid who "set me astride upon one of her Nipples" (112).
- -- --
I Carol Barash, "Violence and the Maternal: Swift,
Psychoanalysis, and the 172OVs,"ed. Christopher Fox, Jonathan Swift -
Gulliver's Travels, ser. ed. Ross C. Murfin, Case Studies in
Contemporary Criticism (NY & Boston: Bedford Books of St.
Martin's P, 1995) 450. in Brobdingnag, surrounded by food, Gulliver starves due to the greed of the inhabitants: "the more my Master got by me, the more unsatiable he grew. I had quite lost my Stomach and was almost reduced to a Skeleton" (92). Failure to satisfy the oral needs is a primal fear. The already tiny Gulliver is shrinking. The Lilliputian threat of starving Gulliver is being realized in Brobdingnag. To complete the earlier examples of 'adult' and 'infantile' oral aggression,
Gulliver fears the most primitive, bestial aggression from a "Spaniel ... taking me ... between his Teeth" (109). However, Gulliver is safe from harm as the dog, a retriever, has been "well taught" (109) to control his instincts (unlike the baby), the process of civilization itself.
A male monkey assumes the role of a surrogate mother to
Gulliver. The monkey
held me as a Nurse doth a Child she is going
to suckle ... he took me for a young one of his
own Species .... holding me like a Baby in one
of his Fore-Paws, and feeding me with the
other, by cramming into my Mouth some
Victuals he had squeezed out of the Bag on
one side of his Chaps, and patting me when 1
would not eat .... 1 was almost choaked with the filthy Stuff the Monkey had crammed
down my Throat; but, my dear little Nurse
picked it out of my Mouth with a small
Needle; and then 1 fell a vomiting, which gave
me great Relief (114-6).
Unlike the incident with the dog, here Gulliver is safe due to the animal's misdirected instinct (in this instance) to care for its young.
Paradoxicalty, Glumdalclitch's role as mother involves a reversal, the removing of food. Vomiting is a form of oral excretion. The description "filthy Stuff' employs an excremental signifier sliding into an oral signifier. The monkey as mother figure is rejected as not satisfying Gulliver's oral needs, as the wrong species (simian) and wrong sex (male), while Gulliver is also the wrong age (adult). Here
Gulliver's eating habits elicit laughter and ridicule, the opposite of his experiences in Lilliput. Orally, Gulliver is spitting out or rejecting the impurity of the regurgitated food as well as his being classified either a child or, worse, a monkey, according to his eating habits. "If incorporation is painful" (Hall 103), spitting out occurs which may become "a protoqpe for certain personality traits" (Hall 104) based on rejection. Gulliver's progressive rejection of the human species follows such a pattern. At the end of Book Two, Gulliver's box is carried off in an eagle's "Beak, with an Intent to let it fall on a Rock, like a
Tortoise in a Shell, and then pick out my Body and devour it" (136)
reflecting oral fears of fragmentation/incorporation.
The third voyage is a result of "the Thirst I had of seeing the
Worldt' (149), an oral signifier. On the flying Island of Laputa,
Gulliver discovers that the shape of the food in this civilization betrays
the inhabitantsf eccentricity, if not obsession, concerning mathematics
and music: "Sausages and Puddings resembling Flutes and Haut-boys,
and a Breast of Veal in the Shape of a Harp. The Servants cut our
Bread into Cones, Cylinders, Parallelograms" (157). In a humorous
confusion of the abstract and concrete, the inhabitants seek food for
thought. Laputa (like the Lilliputian court and the Brobdingnagian farmer) serves as an instrument of oral deprivation (starvation) with which to threaten subject lands below with the loss "of the Benefit of the Sun and the Rain" (169).
The King of Traldragdubb offers Gulliver "the Honour to lick the
Dust before his Footstool. This is the Court Style ... I was commanded to crawl upon my Belly, and lick the Floor as I advanced" (204). The act signifies and satirizes deference to political power. The floor is strewn with poison when someone slated for execution is invited.
Once, when a Page maliciously neglected to remove the poison, resulting in a Courtier's death, the King forgave the Page's actions
which simply mirrored his own. The oral drive is perverted here,
leading to death.
Gulliver links the oral to the life drive, in referring to the
Luggnaggian people's reduced "Appetite for living" (311) due to the
example of the immortal Struldbruggs. These Struldbruggs "eat and
drink without Relish or Appetite" (213) since they are separated from
the pleasure principle. Even the planet itself is perceived to be in
danger of oral destruction, as it "must in Course of Time be absorbed
or swallowed up" (161) by the sun.
Primitive orality is evident in the omnivorous Yahoos who, like
Europeans, "devour every thing that came in their Way, whether Herbs,
Roots, Berries, corrupted Flesh of Animals, or all mingled together ...
till they were ready to burst" (266). They greedily devour weasels, rats
and cats, and fight over food even when there is more than enough.
They are primitive, greedy and orally aggressive. When Gulliver picks
up a three-year-old Yahoo, the infant reacts with oral aggression,
"biting with such Violence, that I was forced to let it go1' (271). reversing the incident with the Brobdingnagian baby. The infantile
Yahoos "would privately suck the Teats of the Houyhnhnms Cows"
(277). When Gulliver is hungry, the Houyhnhnms offer him Yahoo fare;
"a Piece of Ass's Flesh, but it smelt so offensively that 1 turned from it
with loathing" (232). When Gulliver is shown some hay and oats, he
employs sign language (the most primitive and universal): "I shook my
Head, to signify neither of these were Food for me" (732-3). Diet
serves to differentiate Gulliver from both Yahoos and Houyhnhnms.
He must grind the grain (processing) to make "a Kind of Bread" (134).
As well, he discovers "a good Store of Milk ... which I drank very
heartily and found myself well refreshed" (333). Milk, as nourishment for infants, naturally satisfies oral needs in man, Yahoo and
Houyhnhnm. Gulliver can milk the cow (and make bread), and is less infantile than the Yahoos who suck it directly. The Yahoos, having discovered a certain "Root ... would suck it with great Delight. It produced the same Effects that Wine hath upon us" (266). The stress on sucking portrays the Yahoos as infantile. The Yahoos are an exaggerated mirror image of human orality: "The Use of ... Liquor filled us with Diseases, which made our Lives uncomfortable and short
.... we fed on a Thousand Things which operated contrary to each other
... we eat when ... not hungry" (257).
When Gulliver is back in England, for the first year he would not permit his family "to eat in the same Room. To this Hour they dare not presume to touch my Bread, or drink out of the same Cup" (298).
The reference may allude to Saint Paul's exhortation for people to
"examine themselves before they come to eat of that Bread and drink of that Cup" (GT 377 fn. 18). The references to the Communion service may "serve to emphasize the unchristian quality of Gulliver's final attitude" (GT 377 fn. 18). Gulliver's denial encompasses communion and comrnunality; providing food constitutes a basic familial link between parent and child.
While the breast is a key signifier in the oral stage, Lacan stresses the mouth as an equally significant component of the oral erotic, and like the breast, it becomes an unconscious signifier. The mouth, one of Freud's erogenous areas, is also crucial to speech, permitting the discharge or sublimation of libidinal energy, desire deflected into language (in Lacanian terms).
The Anal
The "infantile stage of anal eroticism takes the essential form of attaching symbolic meaning to the anal product" (Brown 43). Freud wrote that excrement may signify identity, property, a weapon, a gift
(FFC 104) or an "expression of defiance" (SE 9 "From the History of an Infantile Neurosist' 81). Anality (including both excretion and urination) permits the discharge of narcissistic and aggressive impulses.
As with the other infantile stages, there is a danger of regression and .
fixation.
Freud's examination of the anal stage (one to three years) of
infantile development revealed that it is only our upbringing which
renders "the excreta worthless, disgusting, abhorrent and abominable"
(CD 40). Infants find value and pleasure in the excreta, while adults are only repelled by the smell of the excreta of others (CD 47). The anus
and urethra are key erogenous areas of the infantile stages (SE 9
"Character and Anal Erotism" 171), and help determine the formation of signifiers (according to Lacan).
The child is helpless, requiring someone to bring food and to remove excrement. The social requirements (parental functions) for dealing with excrement parallel those for dealing with food. In
Lilliput, Gulliver describes how he
discharged my Body of that uneasy Load. But
this was the only Time I was ever guilty of so
uncleanly an Action .... From this Time my
constant Practice was, as soon as I rose, to
perform that Business in open Air, at the full
Extent of my Chain; and due Care was taken every Morning before Company came, that the
offensive Matter should be carried off in
Wheel-barrows, by two Servants appointed for
that Purpose (14- 15).
In Lilliput, we see that human excrement is a potential danger to which civilization must cater (to prevent cholera and dysentery). We find
"the treatment of the hero's elimination and physical processes
[handled] as matters of state" (Swaim 51). Gulliver's tone of detachment, and the euphemistic vocabulary, "Load," "unclean,"
"offensive Matter," and "that Business," reveal the underlying anal repressions of Gulliver and of civilized people in general. Gulliver's plea for understanding from "the Candid Reader" (14) and his protestations "in Point of Cleanliness" (15) support Freud's insights into anal repression. Social repressions towards anality are evident in the
Lilliputian reactions to Gulliver's Rabelaisian urinary feat. As any child discovers, untimely urination becomes a 'crime,' and Gulliver is charged with lacking excretory control, since "whoever shall make
Water within the Precincts of the Royal Palace, shall be liable to the
Pains and Penalties of High Treason" (55). The nature of Gulliver's crime is "mentioned with Horror" (58). The Lilliputian court becomes a signifier of the father's IawlLe Non-du-Pere. One of the first laws the infant must face is the demand that it achievc voluntary control over the excretory functions, the beginning of the process of civilization. Civilization itself denotes the postponement of gratification, which is essentially beyond the infantile, primitive
Yahoos. In the Lilliputian court, the father's law is both metaphorical and literal. If toilet training begins too early, or is too severely enforced, the result may be aggressive behaviour, a charge (and wild analysis) directed at Swift.
In Brobdingnag, Gulliver's euphemisms and apologies concerning the anal function are given prominence. In this kingdom, feces (like food) constitutes a source of danger and disgust to Gulliver, while providing a general reflection of human anal repressions. Gulliver, needing to relieve himself and "full of shame, will not allow himself to be seen performing these functions" (Bloom 650). Gulliver,
beckoning to [the farmer's wife] not to look or
to follow me ... hid my self between two
Leaves of Sorrel, and there discharged the
Necessities of Nature.
I hope, the gentle Reader will excuse me
for dwelling on these and the like Particulars;
which however insignificant they may appear to grovelling vulgar Minds, yet will certainly
help a Philosopher to enlarge his Thoughts and
Imagination, and apply them to the Benefit of
publick as well as private Life (84-j), the two forums where, according to the satire, knowledge of our excremental natures may best serve a salutary purpose. Here, as in
Lilliput, Gulliver's use of euphemisms ("Necessities of Nature") and his appeal to the readerfphilosopher for understanding concerning the anal repression of the individual, guides the reader to equate Gulliver with the human species; his infantile repressions are ours. Shame and disgust are the reaction-formations to our repressed desire for feces.
This disgust is less pronounced in agrarian societies where excrement is valued as a fertilizer. In anal repression, Swift discovered the chink in the narcissistic armour of mankind. He intuited man's narcissistic attachment to feces. In "The Battel of the Books" we are told that
"Pride ... turns all into Excrement1' (WJS 383).
Gulliver complains that, when he was eating, flies "would sometimes alight upon my Victuals and leave their loathsome
Excrement or Spawn behind" (101). The infantile anal-birth fantasy may be suggested here; the mixture of food, feces and spawn is significant as unconscious signifiers sliding into one another. There may be a link here to the birth of Gargantua which was accompanied by a simultaneous anal evacuation on the part of Gargamelle, his mother. In A Tale of a Tub, we are told that "a Fly driven from a
Honey-pot will immediately, with very good Appetite alight, and finish his Meal on an Excrement" (WJS 370). The confusion of oral and anal signifiers is a common technique of Swift's satire.
The Brobdingnagian maids feel no shame "to discharge what they had drunk" (111) before Gulliver, the 'child', who feels shame before
'adults' (socialization). Psychoanalysis pays particular attention to spontaneous acts, when unconscious impulses may break through. In one such incident, Gulliver reveals his anal fixation, the common heritage of man and Yahoo according to Swift (Freud and Lacan):
There was a Cow-dung in the Path, and I must
needs try my Activity by attempting to leap
over it. I took a Run, but unfortunately
jumped short, and found my self just in the
Middle up to my Knees. I waded through with
some Difficulty, and one of the Footmen wiped
me as clean as he could with his Handkerchief;
for I was filthily bemired, and my Nurse
confined me to my Box (117). Gulliver is unable to overleap his anal nature. Regressed by the satire,
Gulliver becomes an infant who has dirtied itself. Like the incident
with the monkey, here catering to the infant's anality is performed by a
male, which may also attest to Swift's maternal rejection.
At the Academy of Lagado, Gulliver discovers that the nature of
excrement is the subject of scientific examination. In their typical
twisting of logic and reason, the hare-brained experimenters attempt to
reverse the natural oral to anal process (and stages of development) in
a parody of the alchemist's transmutation of base matter. There may be
an allusion to Parcelsus's conversion of "human Excrement [into]
Perfume" (WJS fn 347), in the Projector whose
Face and Beard were of a pale Yellow; his
Hands and Clothes daubed over with Filth ....
His Employment ... to reduce human
Excrement to its original Food .... He had a
weekly Allowance from the Society, of a
Vessel filled with human Ordure (178-9).
The use of the word "Allowance" equates money and feces. This
Projector is patterned on the excrement-eating Bedlamite in A Tale of a
Tub whose "complexion is of a dirty Yellow ... raking in his own Dung, and dabbing in his Urine. The best part of his diet is the reversion of his own ordure" (WJS 354). The madman eating his own feces
becomes another image of man as Yahoo. Psychoanalytically, the
experiment signifies the repressed, infantile desire for excrement. At
the Academy, one agricultural project (borrowed from Rabelais)
involves putting hogs on land in which acorns have been buried. While
uprooting the acorns for food, the hogs would inevitably plow and
fertilize the land, "manuring it with their Dung" (179). Once again we
find oral and anal signifiers sliding into one another. Ironically, the
hogs are more capable of transforming dung into food than are the
Projectors.
Gulliver describes a physician who (like the satirist) employs
"contrary Operations" (180). The muzzle of a pair of bellows is
"conveyed eight Inches up the Anust' (180) of a dog with cholic. Air is
withdrawn or pumped in, with the physician "clapping his Thumb
strongly against the Orifice of the Fundament" (180). Once again the
satire focuses on our anal fixation. The only results of the experiment
are the dog's death, the release of noisome odours, and excrement
spattering the doctor.
In Book Four, what uniquely denotes the Yahoos is their anality,
"their strange Disposition to Nastiness and Dirt; whereas there appears to be a natural Love of Cleanliness in all other Animals" (268). Since the Yahoos "are filthy by instinct and by intent,"' excrement becomes
their key signifer: "excrement pervades their lives: they dabble in it
like inmates of ~edlarn,"~the Projector, doctors, critics, and satirists.
As a doctor, Gulliver reveals the medical profession's views on
eating and excreting: "Their Fundamental is, that all Diseases arise
from Repletion; from whence they conclude, that a great Evacuation of
the Body is necessary, either through the natural Passage, or upwards at
the Mouth" (358). A list of medicinal ingredients includes
"Excrements ... Serpents ... dead Mens Flesh ... with some other
poysonous Additions they command us to take in at the Orifice above
or below ... a Medicine disgustful to the Bowels; which relaxing the
Belly, drives down all before it" (258). Since nature "intended the
superior anterior Orifice only for the Intromission of Solids and
Liquids, and the inferior Posterior for Ejection ... [disease may be
reversed] by interchanging the Use of each Orifice; forcing Solids and
Liquids in at the Anus, and making Evacuations at the Mouth" (258).
The medical (and satirical) cure for the Yahoo's Evil (spleen) is "a
1 Peter Steele, Jonathan Swift -Preacher and Jester (Oxford:
Clarendon P, 1978) 217.
Max Byrd, Visits to Bedlam: Madness and Literature in the
Eighteenth Century (Columbia: U of S. Carolina P, 1974) 85. Mixture of their own Dung and Urine, forcibly put down the Yahoo's
Throat ... often taken with Success: And [I] do here freely recommend it to my Countrymen" (266). European medicine is similar to that of the Academy and to that prescribed for the Yahoos, except that
European doctors offered a variety of remedies. After overeating,
Yahoos employ "a certain Root that gave them a general Evacuation"
(266), like their civilized European counterparts.
Psychoanalysis explores links between greed and anality in terms of retention. Yahoos will dig for days for shiny stones, which are of no practical use. Gulliver surmises this "might proceed from the same
Principle of Avarice1' (265). When one Yahoo's stones were removed, he "miserably howled, then fell to biting and tearing the rest; began to pine away, would neither eat nor sleep, nor work" (265). According to
Brown, a correlation between signifiers for feces and money occurs
"because the anal erotism continues in the unconscious. The anal erotism has not been renounced or abandoned but repressed" (43-4).
In "Character and Anal Erotism," Freud referred to the common usage of terms depicting money as "dirty or filthy ... the identification of gold with feces .... the gold which the devil gives his paramours turns into excrement after his departure" (SE 9, 173-4). Excrement "mirrors the essential Yahoo spirit" (Swaim 157).
The horrifying
vision of man as Yahoo, and Yahoo as
excrementally filthy beyond all other animals
... stays with Gulliver after his return to
England, so that he finds relief from the
oppressive smell of mankind in the company of
his groom: 'For I feel my spirits revived by the
smell' he contracts in the stable (Brown 31, 42-3).
The excremental odours of the groom have been masked by those of the Houyhnhnms, an ideal for a neurotic Gulliver. For Lacan (and
Freud), "man is inscribed at the anal level" (FFC 104). Excrement is not only the primary symbol of the anal stage, but a key to understanding personality, behaviour and language development. In
Swift's satire, the "anal function ... becomes the decisive weapon in his assault on the pretentions, the pride, even the self-respect of mankind"
(Brown 31). The Anal Sadistic
"Psychoanalytical theory stresses the interconnection between
anal organization and human aggression to the point of labelling this
phase of infantile sexuality the anal-sadistic phase" (Brown 44).
According to numerous works by Freud, aggression is natural to man
(FI 7; CD 69), part of our "instinctual endowments" (CD 58). In the
anal sadistic organization, the "instinct for mastery ... easily passes
over into cruelty" (ILP 370); aggression "already shows itself in the
nursery ... in its primal anal form1' (CD 60). According to Lacan,
"aggressivity is ... narcissistic, and determines the formal structure of
man's ego" (E 16). Unfortunately, aggression appears to be a "piece of
unconquerable nature."' In psychoanalysis, "expulsive elimination is
the prototype for emotional outbursts, temper tantrums, rages, and other
primitive discharge reactions" (Hall 107). Like Freud, Lacan linked
such expressions of violence to the infantile process of self-mastery
(FFC 183). In psychoanalysis, cruelty does not have to be overfly anal
to be considered anal sadism, which Swift intuited to be at the core of
human aggression.
John Deigh, "Freud's Later Theory of Civilization: Changes and
Implications," ed. Jerome Neu, The Cambridge Contpanion to Freud
(Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1991) 302. When the Lilliputians climb over Gulliver, he exhibits anal
sadistic tendencies: "1 confess I was often tempted to seize Forty or
Fifty of the first that came in my Reach, and dash them against the
Ground" (8). Gulliver has a number of aggressive fantasies. A
Lilliputian attack "might so far have rouzed my Rage" (10) that had he
broken free of the ropes holding him, "they could expect no Mercy"
(10). The diction ("confess," "tempted" and " Mercyt') consists of
religious terms, signifying that Gulliver sees himself as a vengeful god.
They also signify the superego's suppression of aggression. The
"Rage" is merely anticipated, revealing the underlying sadistic fantasies
(like eating the Lilliputian) which are not acted out, remaining pure
fantasies. Similarly, Gulliver later muses that "i might easily with
Stones pelt the Metropolis to Pieces" (60) if not for his oath to the
Emperor. This appears to be an anal sadistic fantasy, with the "Stones"
signifying excrement.
The Lilliputians are as anally sadistic as their European counterparts. They are "rapacious, treacherous, cruel and vengeful"
(Monk 638). Gulliver's excretions are linked (by inference) to the execution of Charles I, in a temple "polluted some Years before by an unnatural Murder" (12). That aggression, depicted as anal, transformed the temple into an outhouse, signifiers sliding into one another. The Lilliputians fear that Gulliver "might at another time, raise an
Inundation by the same Means, to drown the whole Palace" (58).
Gulliver has the god-like power to cause a flood. His urine can
destroy, constituting an infantile fantasy both narcissistic (pride in the
excretory functions) and aggressive (weapon).
The policies of the Lilliputian Royal Court reveal anal sadistic
"refinements of ... cruelty."' The Court debates whether to starve
Gulliver to death, to burr! him alive, a "most painful ... Death" (57), or
by the use of poison, "make you tear your own Flesh, and die in the
utmost Torture" (57), like Hercules (GT 321, fn. 7). All enemies of the
state are to be destroyed or enslaved. In Brobdingnag, Gulliver's
graphic account of European war, and weapons "dashing out the
Brains" (128) is "principally anal-sadistic in character" (Freedman '84,
565). Europeans are merely Yahoos with weapons.
The Island of Laputa signifies absolute political control as an
anal-sadistic activity. We recall that the Island can block the sun and
rain, inflicting disease, starvation and death on the lands beneath,
whenever the King deems it expedient:
-- - ' John F. Ross, "The Final Comedy of Lemuel Gulliver," ed.
Tuveson, 75. And if the Crime deserve it, they are at the
same time pelted from above with great
Stones, against which they have no Defence ...
But if they still continue obstinate, or offer to
raise Insurrections; he proceeds to the last
Remedy, by letting the Island drop directly
upon their Heads, which makes a universal
Destruction (169).
The "Remedy, ... [dropping] great Stones" (169, 170), is an excremental signifier of human aggression. The greatest act of anal sadism is war. There are endless justifications for war besides greed or fear: 0 Sometimes a War is entered upon, because the
Enemy is too strong, and sometimes because
he is too weak ... wasted by Famine, destroyed
by Pestilence, or embroiled by Factions
amongst themselves. It is justifiable to
enter into a War against our nearest Ally (249), if such an act is perceived as serving the State. As for those conquered, a prince "may lawhlly put half of them to Death, and make Slaves of the rest" (249). According to Hobbcs, life is "a perpetual and
restless desire of power after power, that ceaseth only in death."'
The anal sadistic metaphor is literalized in Book Four where
"Men (Yahoos) are beasts, expressing their hostility by the infantile
habit of excrement" (Karprnan '42, 39). When Gulliver strikes one
Yahoo, several others climb a "Tree, from whence they began to
discharge their Excrements on my Headtt (226). The same fate, being
"stifled with the Filth" (226), awaits the Yahoo leader's Favourite:
... the very Moment he is discarded, his
Successor, at the Head of all the Yahoos in that
District, Young and Old, Male and Female,
come in a Body, and discharge their
Excrements upon him from Head to Foot. But
how far this might be applicable to our Courts
andFavouritesandMinistersofState,my
Master said I could best determine (167).
The political actions of civilized men reveal underlying anal sadistic
impulses. Since Yahoos are fixated at an anal level, there is no
' Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan: or the Matter, Forme and Power of a Commonwealth, Ecclesiasticall and Civil1 (165 I), ed. A.R. Waller,
Cambridge English Classics (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1904) 64. progression from infantile to adult behaviour. The actions of the adults
mirror those of a Yahoo infant who "voided its filthy Excrements of a
yellow liquid Substance, all over my Cloaths" (271). Throughout the
satire, the anal-sadistic is presented as evidence of man's primitive,
infantile nature. Excrement serves the Yahoos "as a magical
instrument for self-expression and aggression" (Brown 47), and
evidently as a cure. Man defecating on his fellow man becomes a
perfect signifier of human nature, history, and civilization.
Gulliver's description of warfare (to the Houyhnhnm Master) is
essentially a repetition of his earlier conversation with the King of
Brobdingnag: "Limbs flying in the Air ... dead Bodies drop down in
Pieces ... the Earth reeking with the Blood of its Inhabitants'' (250-1,
303). In "Why War?", Freud concluded that our civilization reflects
"the original state of things: domination by whoever had the greater
might .... an endless series of conflicts .... a lust for aggression and
destruction ... countless cruelties in history and in our everyday lives"
(SE 22, 208-10). Freud explained that "cruelty and violence ... enter
consciousness from the id."' When man deals with his fellow man, it is
"to humiliate him, to cause him pain, to torture and kill him. Homo
Sigmund Freud, Inhibitions, Symptoms and Anxiety (1926), ed.
James Strachey (NY & London: W.W. Norton, 1959) 42. homini lupus1 ... a savage beast" (CD 58-9). Back in England,
Gulliver indulges in another "sadistic fantasy" (GT 378 fn. 11):
"Imagine twenty thousand [Houyhnhnms] ... breaking into the midst of an European Army ... battering the warriors Faces into Mummy" (302).
Gulliver is still subject to his anal sadistic impulses.
In satire, the boundary between fiction and reality must, of necessity, be blurred. The intrusion of the 'real' world helps to add an air of authenticity to the satirical fiction, as in the references to Japan and to the Dutch. Aggression is depicted as universal and unrelenting;
Gulliver fears that references to intelligent horses "probably put me in
Danger of being imprisoned or burnt by the inquisition" (296). In "A
Vindication of Isaac Bickerstaff, Esq.," the author wrote that "the
Inquisition in Portugal was pleased to burn my Predictions" (WJS 437).
In a letter to Pope (Sept. 29, 1725), Swift questioned "when a Printer shall be a found brave enough to venture his Eares" (Corr 3: 102) by publishing the Travels. This punishment was faced by the injudicious for disseminating seditious or libelous material. The rebellion in
Lindalino (the desire to bring down the flying Island of Laputa, and to kill the king), "allegorizing the anti- Wood campaign" (GT 345 fn 20). is one example of material which was suppressed during both the first
' Man is a wolf to his fellow man (Plautus). printing (1736) by Benjamin Motte and the second printing (1735) by
George Faulkner (GT 345 in 20). Motte had also toned down the
passage "treating of plots against the State and the methods adopted by
decipherers of secret papers;"' the description of law, lawyers and
justice; as well as references to the "physical and mental imperfections
of the nobility and people of quality" (Williams 58). Man's anal
sadistic propensity is not, unfortunately, merely a satiric invention.
The Phallic
During the phallic stage (3-6 years) a boy's libidinal desire for
his mother intensifies. The primary sexual organs are pre-eminent in
providing gratification (auto-eroticism) during this phase. The
Lilliputians are phallic symbols. Gulliver perceives a "human Creature
not six Inches high" (6) and a Page "somewhat longer than my middle
Finger" (7). Lilliputians on Gulliver's thigh, between his legs and in
his pocket "are dearly phallic projections" (Freedman, '84, 558),
according to Freudian psychoanalysis. Lilliputian arrows "pricked me"
(6) and Gulliver's clothes are measured according to his thumb, another
phallic symbol. Also, "An Officer in the Guards put the sharp End of
Harold Herbert Williams, The Text of Gulliver's Travels
(Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1952) 55. his Half-Pike a good way up into my left Nostril ... and made me
sneeze violently" (1 I), which conceivably could signify an orgasmic
reaction (with Gulliver in the female role). Hugh Ormsby-Lennon
links the sneeze to "various excrements,"' and to the production of
semen in Descartes' Treatise of Man. Interestingly, Gulliver refers to
Lilliput in phallic terms: "this Empire from its first Erection" (34).
The reactions (laughter, astonishment) of Lilliputian soldiers marching
between his legs can serve narcissistic attachments or lead to genital
anxiety. According to Freudian psychoanalysis, Gulliver, as colossus,
may signify the child's underlying "dread of a gigantic father - a
dread proceeding from the comparison of his own genital organs with
those of his father" (Ferenczi 48). There may be a link to Rabelais:
"Gargantua's organ at birth dwarfs the organ that produced him" (Seidel
67).
According to Freedman and other critics, there are a number of
phallic symbols in Book Two. Gulliver describes how the dwarf,
"squeezing my Legs together, wedged them into the Marrow-bone"
(100). One of the maids of honour would play "Tricks wherein the
Reader will excuse me for not being over particular" (112). Gulliver
1 Hugh Ormsby-Lennon, "Swift's Spirit Reconjured: das Dong- an-Sich," Swift Studies (1988): 36. requests that she not be permitted to visit him again. The implication
is that she may have employed him as a substitute phallus, as Gulliver
is "roughly the size of a Brobdingnagian penis" (Freedman '84, 558).
In Book Three, there is almost a total lack of references to the
phallus. The abstract speculation of the males in Laputa appears to
preclude desire. In order to rouze their masters, the Laputanst servants
employ "a blown Bladder fastened like a Flail to the end of a short
Stick ... In each Bladder was a small Quantity of dried Pease" (155).
The diction may signify that speculation here substitutes for the
phallus.
In the land of Houyhnhnms, the human penis is linked to shame
and castration. Gulliver's habit every night, is to "cover myself with
my Cloaths" (138). When the Sorrel nag comes to fetch him, he finds
Gulliver "asleep, my Cloaths fallen off on one Side, and my Shirt
above my Waste" (338). Gulliver is literally exposed; "with the lower
part of his body uncovered, they are sure that he is a Yahoo."' Here
the penis establishes species identity. Gulliver explains to the Master
that "my Kind always covered ... those Parts that Nature taught us to
conceal" (339). The Master is astonished since the Houyhnhnms, as
Phyllis Greenacre, "The Mutual Adventures of Jonathan Swift and Lemuel Gulliver," Psychoanalytic Quarterly 24 (1955): 43-4. superego, are not subject to shame concerning "any Parts of their
Bodies" (139). Gulliver is mistaken; civilization, not nature, is the source of shame. Civilized man is exposed with all his neuroses, taboos, repressions and shame. Gulliver admits "my Resemblance in every Part" (241) to the Yahoos. The servant also ascertains that
Gulliver was "an exact Yahoo in every Part" (278). The encounter with the libidinal Yahoo female convinces Gulliver "that I was a real Yahoo in every Limb and Feature, since the Females had a natural Propensity to me as one of their own Species" (371,).Clearly the "Part" or "Limb" which identifies a naked Gulliver as a Yahoo is the penis. Unlike the incident with the monkey, Gulliver no longer believes he is dealing with another species. It is ironic that he blindly accepts being identified as a Yahoo, by the female Yahoos, after he had resisted the
Master's similar conclusion. Euphemistic references to "Parts" and
"Limbs" (like those involving excremental functions), reveal underlying genital repressions. The infantile stages of development mark the evolution of personality and linguistic formation.
OBJETS a AND LANGUAGE OF THE UNCONSCIOUS (Lalangue)
In his depiction of the Yahoos, Swift showed uncanny insights into the unconscious, and into unconscious signifiers. Freudian psychoanalysis views the primitive, infantile, anal-sadistic Yahoos as
creatures of the id, human "instinctuality quite literally incarnate ...
insatiably voracious, lascivious, [and] anally aggressive" (Freedman
'91, 528-9). Lacan echoes Freud in stressing the "prematurity of
birth"' as a key factor in language development: "before language,
desire exists solely in the ... imaginary relation of the specular stage"
(Sen I, 170). The internalized image is a key to language, as "man's
libido attains its finished state before encountering its object" (Sem.I,
149). The unconscious fusion of language and desire reveals a
linguistic framework which is essentially narcissistic (self-centered).
Language is response-oriented, "not to inform but to evoke ... presence
in absence" (E 86, Sem. 1, 218); Lacan acknowledges that "the being
of language is the non-being of objects" (E 263). In Lacanian terms,
since the Yahoos lack repressions, their desire cannot be deflected into
the Symbolic register of language. They can only manipulate the objet
a itself directly, in a brilliant parody of the language speculators in
Book Three. Yahoos "express themselves in e~crernent,"~because they
- Sem. I, Freud's Papers on Techniques (1953-4), trans. John
Forrester 149. ' Ann Cline Kelly, Swift and the English Language (Philadelphia:
U of Pennsylvania P, 1988) 27. lack the word which, according to Hegel, signifies "the murder of the
thing" (E 104). Yahoos have achieved the desired goal of language
Projectors, to reduce the word to the object. In a "Letter of Advice to
a Young Poettt (1721), Swift describes how hack writers "throw out
their filth and excrementitious productions" (PW 9, 342). For the
Yahoos, language remains imaginary, part of the unconscious
(instinctual) forces, and divorced from the conscious (Houyhnhnms) as
a partner in dialogue. "Yahoos drop excrement upon us ... They
inscribe our very bodies with a text,"' the message of the satirist.
Freud and Lacan recognized that the unconscious, like the
submerged portion of an iceberg, represents the huge, hidden
foundation of the conscious mind, and that the ego and the superego
are merely given secondary cathexes. Man cannot escape his
"Disposition to Mischief" (237), his "ineradicable animal nature" (ILP
326), his primitive roots. Freud wrote that "the devil is certainly
nothing else than the personification of the repressed unconscious
instinctual life" (SE 9 "Character and Anal Erotism" 174), the Yahoos.
"Oral greed ... sadistic ... anal activity ... coprophilic pleasures, and a
' Terry J. Castle, "Why the Houyhnhnms Don't Write: Swift,
Satire and the Fear of the Text," Essays in Literature 7.1 (Spring
1980): 41-2. fondness for dirt and disorder are the defining signals of the return of
the repressed. They are also the definitive qualities of the Yahoos,"'
explaining the natural antipathy of the ego to the id. The Yahoos, we
discover, are descendants of an original pair of Yahoos (Adam and
Eve) "degenerating by Degrees" (278). The presumption is that these
Yahoos were Europeans whose offspring are a sort of "regressed
mankind" (Banks, Zil 3 1). Their degeneration evidently resulted from
incest among the Yahoo offspring, which would explain the need for
the threat of castration, its deterrent. Swift has satirically inverted the
traditional symbol of the Centaur, where the top half of the creature is
human (employing reason, language) and the bottom half is horse
(body, beast). In their degeneration, the Yahoos have lost their
linguistic skills, their civilized state and their humanity. They have
regressed to a pre-linguistic stage of human evolution.
Freud's delineation of the unconscious ranks as one of his
greatest contributions to psychoanalysis, as well as to a number of
other fields from philosophy to linguistics. Freud credited the poets as
the true discoverers of the unconscious. St. Augustine also intuited the
William Freedman, "Gulliver's Voyage to the Country of the
Houyhnhnms: Adolescence and the Resurgence of the instincts,"
International Review of Psycho-Analysis vol. 13.4 (1986): 475. existence of the unconscious: "the mind is too narrow to contain itself
entirely" (Confessions 2 16). According to Lacan (and Freudian
psychoanalysis) "the unconscious is Other" (Sarup 76). The id is an
hallucinatory realm in which there is no separation between subject and
object, or between fantasy and reality. "The pleasure principle ...
reigns unrestrictedly in the id" (SE 19 "The Ego and the Id" 25). The
primordial id is narcissistic and aggressive, "a subject without a head."'
Having examined dreams, Freud determined that the unconscious was a
rich site for the examination of the self: "Wo rs war soil Ich werden"'
(E 128), or as Lacan puts it, "Where ntoi was, there shall je place
itself.") Lacan stresses that Freud did not mean that "the ego must
dislodge the id" (FFC 44), Gulliver's error. "The unconscious begins
to unveil itself" (E 100) in the subject as "Other to his self (to his self-
' William J. Richardson, "Lacan and the Subject of
Psychoanalysis," eds. Smith, Kerrigan, 56. Where it (unconscious/dream) was, there shall I (subject)
"emerge" (E 128); it is a "call upon the subject to re-enter himself in the unconscious" (FFC 47).
Ellie Ragland-Sullivan, Jacques Lacan and the Philosophy of
Psychoanalysis (Urbana and Chicago: U of Illinois P, 1986) 51. This text will be abbreviated as JLPP. image and self-consciousness)."' In "the unconscious ... something
Other demands to be realized" (FFC 25). The "conscious I is but a
semblance of being. Substance is the other."' The operation of the
unconscious is instinctual (an evolutionary product of biological and
linguistic processes). This "obscure will regarded as primordial" (FFC
24) is the centre of repressions, although unconscious signifiers can
break through in dreams, neuroses and language.
The significance of the unconscious "is that the implications of
meaning infinitely exceed the signs manipulated by the individual"
(Felman '87, 77). In fact, "the unconscious is not only that which must
be read, but also, and primarily, that which read^."^ The other/id
becomes "the locus of truth or the treasure of the ~ignifier."~
Shoshana Felman, Jacques Lacan and the Adventure of insight:
Psychoanalysis in Contemporary Culture (Cambridge Mass. & London,
England: Harvard UP, 1987) 124. Antoine Vergote, "From Freud's 'Other Scene' to Lacan's
'Other,"' eds. Smith, Kerrigan, 21 1. Malcomb Bowie, Freud, Proust and Lacan: Theory as Fiction
(Cambridge, England: Cambridge UP, 1987) 129. Bice Benvenuto and Roger Kennedy, The Works of Jacques
Lacan: An Introduction (London: Free Association Books, 1986) 176. According to Lacan (and crews), psychoanalysis is "not a science [but
rather is] closest to rhetoric" (Sarup 58). Since "analysis is really
analysis of language,"' the psychoanalyst is essentially a linguist
delving below surface meanings. Freud "often compared the
unconscious to a foreign language" (Felman '87, 54), and the
psychoanalyst to an archaeologist.
The "primordial objects of desire or objrts u"' which include "the
mamilla, faeces, the phallus (imaginary object)" etc. (E 315) have
become libidinally valori~ed."~Man "is these objects" (E 251) which
activate conscious and unconscious language processes. Through the
processes of "introjection and projection of images and sounds ... The
objets a [become seminal units] of a primitive linguistics (lalangue)"
' Stanley A. Leavy, "The Image and the Word," eds. Smith,
Kerrigan, 4. Ellie Ragland-Sullivan, "Lacants Seminars on James Joyce:
Writing as Symptom and 'Singular Solution'," Psychoannlysis and, eds.
Richard Feldstein & Henry Sussman (NY & London: Routledge,
1990) 69. F. Jameson, "Imaginary and Symbolic in Lacan: Marxism,
Psychoanalytical Criticism, and the Problem of the Subject," ed.
Felman, 352. (JLPP 200, 225). In Lacanian theory, we find "the usurpation of the
economic point of view by the linguistic,"' the "movement of
signifiers" (Vergote 112). The drive or "trieb implies in itself the
advent of a signifier" (E 136).
Psychoanalysis provides a key to understanding human nature
and society by revealing that "the unconscious is the discourse of the
Other" (FFC 131), an alien discourse which "leaves none of our actions
outside its field" (E 163), especially language. Lacan unites "Freud's
unprecedented discovery ... that the unconscious speaks" (Felman '87,
57) with his own conclusion that what "the psychoanalytical experience
discovers in the unconscious is the whole structure of language" (E
147); the unconscious itself "is structured like a language" (FFC 20).
Chomsky had "equated deep universal structures of grammar with real
mental structures" (JLPP 210). According to Lacan, "the unconscious
speaks us .... the subject is an unconscious author, the ego mere
per~ona."~
Lacan describes the structure of language in the unconscious as an
endless "chain of signifiers" (E 297). Metaphor and metonymy are
Joseph H. Smith, "Epilogue: Lacan and the Subject of American
Psychoanalysis," eds. Smith, Kerrigan, 26 1-2.
William Kerrigan, "Introduction," eds. Smith, Kerrigan, xvii, xxv. the "most fundamental linguistic operations" (Sarup 50), "Lacan's key
tropes for understanding the unconscious" (Payne 72). According to
Lacan "all language becomes what rhetoric calls a figure" (Vergote
201). Lacan credits Freud as the one who traced "the relations of
desire to language and discovered the mechanism of the unconscioustt
(FFC 12). Lacan, reversing Jakobson's insights, links Freud's
displacment to metonymy, which involves a combination of linguistic
units (Lacantsphonemes) into more complex constructs: "Language as
a system is metonymic" (JLPP 251). The "metonymic displacement of
desire"' links language and libido. As well, metonymy permits "the
unconscious to foil censorship" (E 160). Metonymy is also a primary
technique of Swift's satire, using excrement to signify the Yahoo, the
Yahoo to signify Gulliver, and Gulliver to signify humanity.
Freud's condensation is linked by Lacan to "metaphor as a trope
of resemblance" (JLPP 333). Etymologically, metaphor suggests
transport (of meaning), the superimposition of signifiers (E 157, 160).
"No verbal metaphor can be completely liberated from the unconscious
chain of meaning" (JLPP234). Language is essentially metaphorical,
"substituting for a sense of lack in being ... separation is compensated
' Shoshana Felman, "Turning the Screw of Interpretation," ed.
Felman, 118. for by language that creates the unconscious" (JLPP 242, 245). The
"subject is split from the moment he enters language" (Vergote 310).
According to Lacan, "the subject constitutes himself out of the effects
of the signifier" (FFC 126) i.e. "substitution and combination" (E 298);
metaphor and metonymy determine, "via .. . internalization, .. . the
formation of identity" (JLPP 239, 243). Man "glides in a chain of
signifiers .... Derrida places the substitutive process at the origin of all
thought" (JLPP 223, 254). The role of language for the decentered
subject is "to replace what has been lost: the repressed (rn)Other"
(JLPP 134); "the signifier is the symbol of an absence" (Bowie 126), of
fragmentation, "something that is separated from him, but belongs to
him and which he needs to complete himself" (FFC 195) like the breast
or the feces. The fear of fragmentation and the desire for corporeal
integrity are evident in "the metonymic and metaphoric structure of the
objet (a).'I '
Of great significance to Lacan, Freud depicted the libido itself as
a 'male' organ. For Lacan, the phallus possesses a privileged place in
the unconscious, becoming the signifier of signifiers. Paradoxically,
the phallus is also signified by a hole "which inexorably marks
Andre Green, "The Logic of Objet (a) and Freudian Theory," eds. Smith, Kerrigan, 169. discourse and human desire with a lack" (Vergote 214). The imaginary
phallus is related to the mother (the victim of castration): "the absence
of the penis ... turns her into the phallus, the object of desire" (E 22).
"The suppression of the desire of the mother"' initiates the "investment
of energy in a representation ... link[ing] ... Desire to signifier" (JLPP
318). According to Lacan, "the repression of the phallus as signifier ...
serves to constitute the unconscious as a language" (E 388). The
phallus becomes
the ultimate point de capiton,' the signifier that
fixes the meaning of the signifying chains of
every subject's discourse .... The phallus is
present beneath every signifier as the signifier
that has been repressed, and as such every
signifier in effect is a metaphor substituting for
the phallus.)
------J. P. Muller and W.J. Richardson, Lacan and Language: A
Reader's Guide to Ecrits (NY: International UP, 1982) 213. ' Upholstery stud, the objet holding together the web of signification. Jonathan Scott Lee, Jacques Lacan (Amherst: U of
Massachusetts P, 1990) 66-7. In Lacanian theory, the "gender neutral" (Payne 73) phallus (traced back by Lacan to undifferentiated tissue) is not a sex organ but a libidinal/linguistic phenomenon.
The unconscious "commands ordinary language in varied and enigmatic ways" (JLPP 245). Unconscious representations become conscious as metaphors (Vergote 201); the imaginary is decoded into symbolic meaning (JLPP 153). Signification results from "a crossing of the bar" (E 164) which "cleaves conscious from unconscious signifiers" (Vergote 305). "The phallus signifies this bar in its simultaneously repressing and revealing role" (Casey, Woody 109). In
Swift's satire, the Yahoos not only signify the unconscious, they are unconscious signifiers. In Gulliver's case, narcissism is the bar preventing the signifier (Yahoo) from crossing over into the signified
(man). Chapter Four
THE EGOISELF, THE MIRROR AND THE SYMBOLIC ORDER OF LANGUAGE
LE STADE DU MIROIR AND THE SELFIEGO
Just as the Yahoos represent the id (in Freudian terms),
Gulliver's claim to rationality suggests that he signifies the ego. "In each individual there is a coherent organization of mental processes; and we call this his ego. It is to this ego that consciousness is attached" (SE 19 "The Ego and the Id" 17). Unlike the id, the ego differentiates between subject and object, fantasy and reality. As it is successful, the ego increasingly requires greater displacements of
"libido from the id, and transforms the object cathexes of the id into ego-structures" (SE 19 "The Ego and the Id" 55). The ego employs strategies of thinking and doing to achieve discharge or to block energy from the id, with a self-control totally alien to the id. The self- conscious ego is a latecomer to the psychoanalytical development of the individual, and is a product of necessity. Although the ego serves primarily as a wall between the id and the outer world, it does occasionally act as a conduit, enabling certain unconscious processes to become conscious. In its "relation ... to the discourse of the unconscious, ... the ego ... plays its function of obstacle, of
interposition, of filter. "I
Lacan links ego formation to the stade du miroir. The mirror
stage (6-18 months) signifies "the transformation that takes place in
the subject when he assumes an image" (E 2). The role of "the imago
... is to establish a relation between the organism and its reality ...
between the Innenwelt and the ~mwelt"~(E 4). The ego involves
"Self-reflection, the traditional fundamental principle of
consciousness" (Felman '87, 61). According to "The Ego and the Id,"
"consciousness is the surface of the mental apparatus" (SE 19, 19).
However, the subject is the whole being, the entire discourse,
ego/conscious and id/unconscious; "the Ich is the complete, total locus
of the network of signified (FFC 44). Lacan charts a complex web of
inter-relationships between identity (self), reflection (image) and
language (I, names). The result is what Freud "defined as an ego
formed of a verbal nucleus" (E 89). According to "Lacan, the subject
' Sem. 2, The Ego in Freud's Theory and Technique of
Psychoanalysis, trans. Sylvana Tomaselli, 120. Internal and external worlds. is always a myth ... fictional,"' an "effect of the symbolic" (FFC 279
trans.). Language, which "provides us with substitute objects of desire"
(MuIler 29), is "the symbolic matrix in which the I is precipitated in
primordial form" (E 2). Identity resides in the I of the beholder. There
is an "emergence of self-consciousness from the recognition of the self
in the mirror, or in another self" (Casey, Woody 79). Through
"narcissistic identifications" (J.S.Lee 65), the "subject makes himself
an object by displaying himself before the mirror" (E 43). While the
mirror "shows a unified vision of self ... wholeness" (Wyrick 99), there
remains the possibility that the primal sense of unitylintegrity may
become compromised. There is a proliferation of "fleeting images of
identity ... connected metonymically to the chain of signifiers by means
of which the subject tries unsuccessfully to articulate his desire" (J.S.
Lee 59) for unity and recognition.
In Gulliver's Travels, the reflected images of man include the
Lilliputians, Brobdingnagians, Laputans, and especially the Yahoos. In
the Yahoos we discover an exaggerated version of Lacan's alien miroir
image of the other: "the Refiection from a troubled Stream returns the
Image of an ill-shapen Body more distorted" (251). Human rationality
' Mikkel Borch-Jacobsen, Locan - The Absolute Muster, trans.
Douglas Birch (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford UP, 1991) 154. appears grotesque to the satirist/misanthropist. Carnochan points out that Gulliver's Travels constitutes a satire on Locke, and that the mirror of satire provides a counterpoint to the "Lockean notion of reflection"
(142), and of the view of man as rational. "The mirror symbolizes vanity [and] ... self-knowledge; ... it may sharpen reality or it may delude us" (Carnochan 176). Swift employs the mirror image to inflate Gulliver's pride in Book One, to deflate Gulliver's narcissism
(and ours) in Books Two and Three, and to reverse it completely in
Book Four. Self-knowledge will prove even more dangerous than vanity to Gulliver's mental health. Psychoanalysis also recognizes the twin significations of the mirror, which casts an image/reflection that may establish identity or engender alienation. "For Lacan ... stability and wholeness are illusions .... The Imaginary is the order of mirror images ... the realm of delusional, fixed ego identityt' (Payne 71, 72).
The 1735 edition of the Travels was printed with a picture of
Gulliver (Splendide Mendax). Since Gulliver represents man, the image serves as a mirror. In "Emblem books," an object or a figure of an object is employed to symbolize another object, often for moral purposes. "The oval which forms the portrait is a shape common to both portraits and mirrors."' What we have here is an engraving of a
painting, a reflection or fictitious representation of a fictional character
who is also the author of the Trovels, a fictional reflection of 18th
century European society. Similarly, the reader is presented with a
letter from one fictional entity to another, Gulliver to Sympson, his
cousin. Identity is established, deflected, diffused.
In Lacanian theory, "the signifier ... constitutes the subject"
(Richardson 60). Gulliver is a signifier representing Everyman in
Swift's universal satire. Gulliver is less than a literary character, he is
a satirical tool. He could not be an individual for the satire to be
successful.
Swift's delineation of Gulliver is intentionally prosaic. Swift
stressed the financial history and incentives which led Gulliver to
embark on his various voyages. Gulliver outlines his money problems,
his studies (medicine and navigation), his apprenticeship, and his years
travelling. Gulliver undergoes his own stade de miroir. The first
images reflected are of someone average, normal, the "Third of five
Sons" (3), "from the very middle of England .... he has no character at
--
I Grant Holly, "Travel and Translation: Textuality in Gulliver's
Travels," Criticism: A Quarterly for Literature and the Arts 21.2
(Spring 1979): 149. all ... [being] so thoroughly average" (Carnochan 133). Gulliver is pragmatic. Even his marriage is a financial arrangement:. "Being advised to alter my Condition, I married ... [and] received four hundred
Pounds for a Portion" (3-4). The stress on mercantilism parodies
Defoe's Robinson Crusoe (1 719). Gut liver proudly differentiates himself from less scrupulous medical practitioners: "My Conscience would not suffer me to imitate the bad Practice of too many among my
Brethren" (4). He is a decent, well-read, seasoned traveller, on a quest for wealth and experience. Gulliver possesses the required mix of skills, knowledge, pride, drive and a minor disability, the "Weakness of mine Eyes" (23); Gulliver is all too human.
In the hero of Robinson Crusoe, Swift discovered a protagonist who exemplified the English adventurer; resourceful, adaptable and a keen observer. Gulliver is a marvellous reflection/parody of the intrepid
Crusoe, projecting an image of modem Europeans as civilized, generous and inventive. As well, Swift (like Defoe) employed verisimilitude to stress the reality of the fiction, to great satiric effect.
Gulliver mirrors Crusoe's sense of superiority and his condescension.
In Lilliput, before the King, Gulliver exemplifies the English hero: "It would not become me, who was a Foreigner, to interfere with Parties; but I was ready, with the Hazard of my Life, to defend his Person and State against all Invaders" (36). The humour of the fiction and the
function of the satire are furthered by Gulliver's protestations of
veracity, as in Lucian's True History. Gulliver's dullness (like Swift's
verisimilitude) helps preclude the reader from charging him with being
overly imaginative. Gulliver presents himself as a careful and
trustworthy recorder of events, with an eye for detail, dull but
persistent.
Gulliver's name is also significant, signifying one who is
gullible. "Gullibility has to do with a persistent need to be deceived ...
gullibility is pathologically misplaced trust."' King Lemuel is
addressed in Proverbs 31:9, "Open your mouth, judge righteously."'
However, considering Gulliver's gullibility and Swift's reference to
Sinon, the appellation is employed ironically; we are not dealing with
King Lemuel, or Samuel who railed against idol worship (1 Samuel 7:
3,4) but with Lemuel Gulliver who found gods of reason to venerate.
Gulliver's pronouncements are only profound or prophetic when the
K.S. Isaacs, J.M.Alexander and E.A. Hagard, "Faith, Trust and
Gullibility," The International Journal of Psychoanalysis 44 (1963):
' The Holy Bible, King James Version. reader reconstructs what Swift is saying to him, or when Swift is speaking directly through Gulliver.
Narcissism
"The outstanding characteristic of the sexual instinct during the pregenital period is its narcissism" (Hall 112) which continues into adulthood. The danger lies in abnormal (i.e. excessive) self-love. In psychoanalysis, primary narcissism is more narrowly defined as physically erotic - the sucking, defecating and self-stimulation of the infant. Freud described narcissism as "a libidinal complement to the egoism of the instinct of self-preservation" (Sf? 14 "On Narcissism:
An Introduction" 73-4), the life drive. In Freudian psychoanalysis, all libidinal desire is viewed as essentially catering to "narcissistic need"
(FI 24). This is understandable since survival is the fundamental instinctual goal. Vanity is merely one facet of narcissism, "the universal and original state of things ... [dominating] the mind of the child and of primitive man" (ILP 465, 471). Neuroses may result from excessive narcissism (ILP 474; CD 6).
In Lilliput, narcissism is manifested both by Gulliver and by
Lilliputians (Europeans). Gulliver's gigantic stature has given him the power to fulfil infantile fantasies. Gulliver, surrounded by Lilliputians, "roared so loud, that they all ran back in a Fright and some ... were hurt with the Falls they got by leaping from my Sides" (6). He is a giant to the Lilliputians; at "a full Sight of my Face, [one lifted] up his
Hands and Eyes by way of Admiration" (6). Gulliver feels godlike: "1 had Reason to believe I might be a Match for the greatest Armies they could bring against me" (7). Gulliver's narcissism is strongly reinforced in Lilliput where he marvels "at the Intrepidity of these diminutive Mortals who durst venture to mount and walk on my Body while one of my Hands was at Liberty, without trembling at the very
Sight of so prodigious a Creature" (9). It takes "Nine Hundred of the strongest Men" (11) to lift Gulliver, and "There could not be fewer than ten thousand at several Times, who mounted upon my Body" (12).
Here we see the infantile, narcissistic "projection of the fantasized omnipotent self " (Isaacs, Alexander, Hagard 463), the "oversized child-god" (Swift and Carroll 67).
Gulliver's infantile pride is closely linked to his orality. His feasting elicits "a thousand Marks of Wonder and Astonishment at my
Bulk and Appetite. ... When I had performed these Wonders, they shouted for Joy, and danced upon my Breast" (8). Gulliver's joy, at the admiration his appetite elicits, is the infant before the gloating parents.
Gulliver is the infant (albeit gargantuan) dependent on others for his sustenance, "a daily Allowance of Meat and Drink sufficient for the
Support of 1728 [Lilliputians]" (3 1). Gulliver boasts that "three hundred Cooks .... prepared me two Dishes a-piece ... twenty Waiters
... an hundred more attended" (51). To spite his enemy Flimnap
(Walpole), Gulliver would "eat more than usual, in Honour to my dear
Country, as well as to fill the Court with Admiration" (52). There is a sense of sibling rivalry, as well as wish fulfilment, as both Gulliver and the court 'fill' each other. While dependence on others would seem to undermine any infantile sense of omnipotence, this is only true if the infant's needs are unsatisfactorily handled; having gigantic beings catering to the infant's oral and anal requirements could not help but fortify narcissistic fantasies of omnipotence.
In Lilliput, Gulliver's first reference to the urinary function reveals elements of aggression and narcissism. The diction is
Rabelaisian:
... relaxing the Chords ... I was able ... to ease
my self with making Water, which 1 very
plentifully did to the great Astonishment of
the People, who conjecturing by my Motions
what I was going to do, immediately opened
to the Right and Left on that Side, to avoid the Torrent which fell with such Noise and
Violence (10).
Gulliver's "Motions" are a non-verbal means of communication. The
infantile sense of pride and power is evident: "achievements in the
way of urination appear to be the subject of particular pride" (ILP 324).
especially for males. The parting of the people, and the torrent of
water may parody Moses parting the Red Sea. When the Queen's
apartment caught fire, the Lilliputians could not extinguish it. Gulliver
describes ho*whe employed "Urine ... in such a Quantity. and applied
so well to the proper Places, that in three Minutes the Fire was wholly
extinguished" (42-3). Gulliver's urethral pride is evident in the diction
employed: "such a Quantity" and "applied so well."
Gulliver's diction may signify phallic narcissism: "at the sight of
my Scimiter hundreds fell down" (22). His exhibitionism is revealed
when soldiers parade between Gulliver's legs. The King's orders to his
troops "could not prevent some of the younger Officers from turning up
their Eyes as they passed under me ... my Breeches were at the Time in
so ill a Condition, that they afforded some Opportunities for Laughter
and Admiration" (28). There is a "narcissistic preoccupation with his
own organ."' Gulliver is a Titan:
1 Ben Karpman, "A Modern Gulliver: A Study in Caprophilia,"
Psychoanalytic Review 46.2-3 (Ap. and July 1949): 280. He doth bestride the narrow world
Like a Colossus, and we petty men
Walk under his huge legs, and peep about
(Julius Caesar 1: 2, 11. 123-5) or, in Gulliver's case, up. Traditional Freudian psychoanalysis supports the view that the Lilliputian parade betrays narcissistic "exhibitionist tendenciest' (Karpman '42, 34) in Gulliver, who does not primarily see the people as a reflection of his own kind, but as beings inferior proportionally to himself, and by extension, to his species. His narcissistic self-image has been greatly magnified.
Lilliputian displays of pride and superiority appear particularly ludicrous in such physically insignificant beings. The Emperor 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" (15). The
Lilliputians reveal their pretensions in their love of titles and honours,
"coloured Silkt' (26) and other gifts from the superego. The Emperor's titles satirize European royal vanity. He is the
most Mighty Emperor of LiNiput, Delight and
Terror of the Universe, whose Dominions
extend ... to the Extremities of the Globe:
Monarch of all Monarchs ... whose Feet press down to the Center, and whose Head strikes
against the Sun ... pleasant as the Spring,
comfortable as the Summer, fruitful as
Autumn, dreadful as Winter (29).
The proliferation and control of signifiers also serve narcissistic
pretensions. The excessive profusion of exaggerated royal qualities is
a humorous contrast to Gulliver's more accurate epithet, "Man-
Mountain" (17). Titles are signifiers of status and power as opposed to
more familiar salutations. The use of these titles (when addressing
their possessors) satisfies social and political conventions which
demand recognition and, to varying degrees, subservience; omitting
these titles could suggest a challenge or threat. Flattery panders to narcissism, and is a fundamental art at court; Gulliver multiplies signifiers in referring to the Empress as "the Ornament of Nature, the
Darling of the World, the Delight of her Subjects, and Phoenix of
Creation" (93). Similarly, in Traldragdubb, the required salutation to the King's narcissism is: "Mayyour cdestial Majesty out-live the Sun, eleven Moons and an half' (206), an ironic request considering the plight of the Struldbruggs.
LilliputEngland and Blefuscu/France are narcissistic mirror images of each other: "each Nation priding itself upon the Antiquity, Beauty, and Energy of their own Tongues, with an avowed Contempt for that of their Neighbour" (41) despite trade and travel. The similarity between the two countries is the cause of friction (as between
Gulliver and the dwarf) in that each undermines the other's narcissistic desire for uniqueness.
Gulliver is Lilliputian in all but size, and proudly relates that the
Lilliputian Prince "created me a Nardac ... the highest Title of Honour among them" (39). The Blefuscudian ambassadors also employ flattery to cater to Gulliver's narcissism. They
began with many Compliments upon my
Valour and Generosity, invited me to that
Kingdom in the Emperor their Master's Name
and desired me to shew them some Proofs of
my prodigious Strength of which they had
heard so many Wonders; wherein I readily
obliged them ... to their infinite
Satisfaction (40), and Gulliver's as well. When Gulliver speaks of Flimnap, he refers to him contemptuously as "only a Clumglurn, a Title inferior by one
Degree" (53). There is a strong link between "a primary narcissism that regards every other person as a potential enemy, rival, as inhibitor of one's freedom, ... and aggression, aroused in defense of this narcissism. " ' According to Freud and Lacan, "aggressivity and narcissism appear to be tightly bound to one another" (Sarup 53). This is true of Gulliver: "While 1 had Liberty, the whole Strength of that
Empire could hardly subdue me" (60). Even death (from starvation) would leave his "Skeleton as a Monument of Admiration to Posterity"
(59), an object of awe. In Blefuscu, the Lilliputian envoy (who recognizes Gulliver's narcissism) warns Gulliver that he could be declared a traitor and "be deprived of my Title" (64). Gulliver refers proudly to "My own dear Country" (49, and longs to see "my beloved
Country" (67). Love of one's family, country, religion and species are all extensions of personal narcissism as these groups provide identity and security, in sustaining the individual. Perhaps, as with love, all altruistic actions may ultimately be based on narcissistic impulses. The reader is being prepared for Gulliver's revuIsion/rejection of the
Yahoos who undermine his narcissism.
In Brobdingnag, Gulliver wistfully recalls that the Lilliputians had "looked upon me as the greatest Prodigy that ever appeared in the
World" (77). Although Gulliver is now reduced to an insignificant size, he proudly relates that he is perceived by the Brobdingnagians
Robert A. Paul, "Freud's Anthropology," ed. Jerome Neu, 279. possess the "finest Limbs ... [and] a Complexion fairer than a
Nobleman's Daughter of three Years old" (87). The Brobdingnagians call their capital "Lorbrulgrud or Pride of the Universe" (91). They too share the universal human affliction of pride.
Back in England, Gulliver's narcissism is restored: "observing the Littleness of the houses ... I began to think myself in LiNiput ... as if they had been Pygmies, and I a Giant" (144-5). This is a curious reaction as his sensory perceptions would not support such a view - houses would still tower over him and people would confront him eye to eye. Swift apparently was more interested in establishing a pattern of over-reactions on Gulliver's part; he is easily influenced, effecting changes of perception, behaviour and beliefs, due to "the great Power of Habit and Prejudice" (145). This sets the stage for his final transformation (in Book Four) into a misanthropist.
In Book Three,'Gulliver hears a debate at the Academy regarding taxation rates which would reflect human narcissism (vanity and pride).
Women would be "taxed according to their Beauty and Skill in
Dressing" (190), and they themselves would judge the appropriate amount. Similarly, men would be taxed according to their degree of favour with women, their "Wit, Valour and Politeness" (190). Here we have economics according to psychoanalysis. The satire implies that the amount of tax money collected would be prodigious.
In contemplating the immortality of the Struldbruggs, Gulliver reveals the human narcissistic desire for "the great Happiness and
Advantages of immortal Lifett (209). In Gulliver's narcissistic fantasy, he is god-like, immortal. The Struldbruggs provide a satiric mirror image of this desire. Long life is "the universal Desire and Wish of
Mankind; ... Death ... the greatest Evil" (?11), except in Luggnagg (due to the example of the Struldbruggs). In "Thoughts on Religion," Swift wrote: "It is impossible that any thing so natural, so necessary, and as universal as death, should ever have been designed by providence as an evil to mankind" (PW 9, 263). In a psychoanalytical sense, religion may be catering to man's narcissism by 'offering' eternal life.
In Book Four, Gulliver has very little reason for feeling any narcissism before the Master, except "to distinguish myself ... from that cursed Race of Yahoos" (238) they both detest; "my Teachableness,
Civility and Cleanliness astonished him ... Qualities altogether so opposite to those Animals ... [like] my Capacity for Speech and
Reason" (236, 240). Even the rational Houyhnhnms may exhibit narcissism, as their name signifies "the Perfection of Nature" (237). In a parody of European courts, the narcissistic Yahoo leader has his Favourite "lick his Master's ... Posteriors" (167). Narcissism is shown
by Swift (and psychoanalysis) to be infantile, inescapable, and
ubiquitous. Gulliver stresses "there were few greater Lovers of
Mankind, at that time, than myself" (233). The mirror provides a
direct link to the myth of Narcissus, who fell in love with his "adored
image."' Until his final transformation, Gulliver shares Narcissus' self-
love, and "hard pride" (Fox 22). In narcissism, the desire for the
Other's desire becomes (through libidinal displacement) self-love, "the
ego ... forcing itself ... upon the id as a love-object" (SE 19 "The Ego
and the Id" 30). Excessive narcissism seems to facilitate subsequent
misanthropy. For Lacan, the significance of this process lies in the fact
that "the ego presents itself as a love-object, just like external objects"
(Richardson 56). When thwarted, the libido "which is so desperate for
satisfaction" (E 123), will turn to the ego. The subject discovers in a
"specular mirage" (FFC 268), the "narcissistic jouissance of his image"
(E 212). The "Golem of narcissism" (E 124) is an apt signifier for the
grotesque creation of the self as love object.
Back in England, Gulliver reveals his great pride in his
association with the Houyhnhnms. "Pride is a form of secondary
- - -- I Christopher Fox, "The Myth of Narcissus in Swift's Travels,"
Eighteenth Century Studies 20.1 (1986-7): 22. narcissisnr. The ego loves itself for doing what is virtuous" (Hall 47).
Gulliver is ready to adopt the voice of his gods, the Houyhnhnms.
Swift, as Dean and satirist, understood the essential human characteristic, pride/narcissism.
Desire
Lacan quotes Spinoza's "desire is the essence of man" (FFC
275). When the libido is not fixated on the ego, "after the narcissistic stage" (ILP 476), it turns to object choices. Lacan echoes Freud's views on the centrality of the nurturing mother as primary love object in establishing the pattern of the "narcissistic structure" (FFC 186) at the heart of the libido (E 137). Narcissistic elements are retained, as there is no 'unselfish' love; external objects must still satisfy narcissistic needs. Lacan equates the libido with desire (FFC 153) which involves "catching the jouissance of the Other" (FFC 183). It is
"in the field of the Other, that the genital drive has to find its form"
(FFC 184). Ricoeur claimed "that psychoanalysis is essentially a
'hermeneutics of desire"' (Casey, Woody 81). The libidinal process begins with the separation of the infant from the mother, creating "a split in the subject and the resultant desire (ncunyue-ci-Ptrr),' which destines humans to be questing, lacking creatures" (JLPP 43).
Freud suggested, in every human being, there
is a fundamental cleavage or 'split'. Lacan
refers to the story told by Aristophanes, in
Plato's Symposium, of the androgenous, four-
legged creature who is split in two by an
angry Zeus. Since that timc, the two parts of
the creature have been struggling to rejoin ...
Each half holds fast to any object it thinks
might be its lost counterpart (Sarup 70).
We attempt to reconstruct ourselves in sexual union, to "become one flesh" (Genesis 3: 24).
Gulliver relates that in Lilliput, children did not owe duty to their parents for their births, as the Lilliputians' "Thoughts in their
Love-encounters were otherwise employedt' (48) i.e. centred on desire, not on procreation. In Gulliver's Travels, desire is presented primarily as a female trait. Flimnap fears his wife had "taken a violent affection"
(52) for Gulliver in spite of the impossibility of consummation. Desire
A lack in beingldasein, a desire to be. alone constitutes sufficient grounds for jealousy. Violent emotions appear to be totally divorced from reason.
In Book Two, the tone and diction suggest that libidinal desire is behind the Brobdingnagian maids' "Pleasure of seeing and touching me.
They would often strip me naked from Top to Toe" (1 11). While
Gulliver's "Uneasiness" (1 11) may bc attributed to the corporeality of the giant females, the degree of his "Horror and Disgust" (1 11) may suggest an underlying fear of female sexuality or maternal rejection.
He is not a potent male among young women but rather an anatomically correct 'doll' who is toyed with.
In Laputa, strong libidinal desires are again portrayed as a female trait:
The Women of the Island have Abundance of
Vivacity; they contemn their Husbands, and
are exceedingly fond of Strangers .. .. Among
these the Ladies chuse their Gallants: But the
Vexation is, that they act with too much Ease
and Security; for the Husband is always so
rapt in Speculation, that the Mistress and
Lover may proceed to the greatest
Fadiarities before his Face (162). The women are ignored emotionally by their husbands; the vocabulary
("Abundance of Vivacity" and "exceedingly fond") suggests that the satisfaction of libidinal desires is primarily of importance to women.
The women cheat on their husbands but lack any fear of possibly getting caught, a thrill they would prefer. Many women, like the wife of the Prime Minister, would sneak down to Lagado. She preferred poverty and the company of "an old deformed Footman, who bcat her every Day" (162), to the libidinal starvation of Laputa. Gulliver concludes that "the Caprices of Womankind are not limited by any
Climate or Nation; and ... are much more uniform than can be easily imagined" (163). According to Lacan, "nran's desire is the desire of the Other" (FFC 115) or as Hegel put it, "a desire to be desired"
(Casey, Woody 83). At the Academy, it is determined that women will not be taxed according to their "Constancy [or] Chastity ... because they would not bear the charge of Collecting" (190). The satire is devastating. Unlike desire, these qualities are so rarely found, that the taxes would not even be worth collecting. The unfortunate
Struldbruggs, senile and immortal, are left with "impotent Desires"
(211). Desire here is closer to Lacan's use of the word; desire is
"essentially excentric and insatiable" (FFC 278, transl.). In Book Four, Gulliver reveals that many European "prostitute
Female Yahoos acquired a certain Malady, which bred Rottenness in the Bones of those, who fell into their Embraces" (37). Lust is linked to degeneration. Similarly, we are told that noblemen contract "odious
Diseases among lewd Females" (961). The female Yahoos display the same desire as their civilized counterparts. Upon spying a group of young males, a female Yahoo would
appear, and hide, using many antick Gestures
and Grimaces; at which time it was observed,
that she had a most offensive Smell; and when
any of the Males advanced, would slowly
retire, looking often back, and with a
counterfeit Shew of Fear, run off into some
convenient Place where she knew the Male
would follow her (268).
Her "Gestures and Grimacest' constitute a non-verbal message of availability. More than the antics, smell is one of the most primitive means of (chemically) communicating female sexual accessibility.
Gulliver concludes "I could not reflect without some Amazement, and much Sorrow, that the Rudiments of Lewdness, Coquetry, Censure, and
Scandal, should have Place by Instinct in Womankind" (269). Although there is a reference to European sexual perversions" in both
Sexes" (369), inclusion of the male libido appears to be a mere
afterthought and lacks argumentative weight. Swift does seem to
exhibit misogynistic tendencies. "Women ... only know .. . gross desire
... no women's hearts are won by virtue" ("Cadenus and Vanessatt
Rogers 11.35-6, 61-3: 131, 133). Thc whore is a signifier of
corruption, etymologically generalized in Lillipcit and ~aputa.'
Reference to "these politer Pleasures" (369) portrays lust as ubiquitous
in civilized society, echoing Juvenal: "Abomination reigns in
conquering Rome .. . detested crimes .. . sensual art. "'The uncivilized
Yahoos do not share in those appetites "which Nature had not given us"
(263). We are capable of "perversions and corruptions undreamed of
by Yahoos" (Ross 84). In The Scourge of Villanie, Marston refers to
"lustfull villanies, [that] even Apes and beasts would blush [at]" (ix,
11.96-7: 161); "Lust hath confounded all" (viii, I. 165: 155). Gulliver
admits that members of his crew were guilty of "Pimping [and]
Whoring" (256).
l La puta is "the whore" in Spanish.
Juvenal's Satires, trans. William Gifford (London: J.M. Dent,
1954) 3: 11.167, 173, 178: 18-19. While swimming "stark naked" (271,),Gulliver is observed: "a young Female Yahoo ... inflamed by Desire ... came running with all
Speed, and leaped into the Water ... I was never in my Life so terribly frighted ... She embraced me after a most fulsomc Manner" (273).
Gulliver is saved by the Sorrel nag, and the female Yahoo is left
"gazing and howling all the time I was putting on my Cloaths" (172).
When the "libidinous eleven-year-old female Yahoo ... tries to mount him, Gullivcr is mortified" (Seidel 110). As a civilized, and scxually repressed individual, Gulliver is shocked by "thc salacious bchaviour of the female Yahoos who admit males when pregnant and leap amorously upon poor Gulliver" (Byrd 86). When "desire leads towards danger, anxiety is evoked and the signifier of desire is repressed" (Smith 270).
Desire proves a danger to Gulliver's narcissism, as he is threatened with being recognized and labelled as a Yahoo.
Christopher Fox traces parallels between Gulliver and Nariccus.
In Ovid, upon seeing Narcissus, Echo becomes "inflamed with love"
(Fox 13). She attempts "to throw her arms around" (Fox 23) a horrified Narcissus who crics out and flees. No one is permitted to intrude on this self-love, to displace the love object. For Narcissus, a visual image returns to the eye; for Echo, a sound returns to the ear.
The relationship of the pair to different senses is interesting, perhaps suggesting the visual as more self-centred, unlike the auditory, since speech is oriented towards an Other.
Sexual desire is portrayed as a key factor in the socio-political degeneration of European civilization. Gulliver notes the
Interruption of Lineages by Pages, Lacqueys,
Valets ... [and] how Prostitute Writers ...
ascribe ... Chastity to Sodomites ... [how]
Courts, Councils and Senates [are] ...
challenged by Bawds, Whores, Pimps ... How
a Whore can govern the Back-stairs, the
Back-stairs a Council, and the Council a
Senate ... some confessed they owed their
Greatness and Wealth to Sodomy or Incest
(1 99-200).
In The Drapier's Letters, Swift rescued the Irish from "the English
King's irresponsible granting of the right of money coinage for Ireland to a relative of the King's mistress" (Swift and Carroll 19). Desire pervades the individual and society. Exercising power over ministers, one may find "a decayed Wench or favourite Footman who are the
Tunnels through which all Graces are conveyed" (260) again echoing
Juvenalts satire. Like the Europeans and unlike the Houyhnhnms, "Yahoos breed prolifically and indiscriminately."' Gulliver's mutinous
crew had also been guilty of various crimes, like "Rapes or Sodomy"
(246). The Yahoo leader's Favourite also served his Master by driving
"the Female Yahoos to his Kennel" (167). Lust is a common human
trait. St. Augustine described the human heart as restless and full of
longing, the soul "torn by desires" (80), and afflicted by "the disease of
lust" (169). In George Herbert's "The Pulley," G-d gives men
"repining restlessness"' to balance His other gifts and to help ensure
man's return to his Maker. Part of the reason why the land of the
Houyhnhnms is utopian, is the absence of "Bawds ... Ravishers ...
Whores .. . [and] lewd Wives" (284). Swift's vision of desire is
misogynistic.
LE NOM-DU-&RE: THE SYMBOLIC ORDER OF LANGUAGE
Lacan, sharing Swift's interest in language, was fascinated by the -S nature of the signifier. Lacan's famous formula or algorithm " " (E
Charles H. Hinnant, Purity and Deflement in Gulliver's Travels
(NY: St. Martin's P, 1987) 88. ' George Herbert, "The Pulley," The Norton Anthology of English
Literature 5th ed. vol. 1, ed. M.H. Abrams (NY & London: W.W.
Norton, 1986) 1350. 149), large 'St (signifier) over small 'st (signified) reversed Ferdinand
de Saussure's formula for the sign (JLPP Xl), signified above the
signifier, S/s, "the elementary cell of all language" (Vergote ZOO), and
"the beginning of modern linguistics" (E 149). Saussure
based the reality of signs on the signified ...
and separated word from concept to show the
arbitrariness of meaning .... Lacan's critique of
what Jacques Derrida called logocentrism
deconstructs Saussure's sign to give us pure
signifiers - such as the Phallus - linked to
no signified whatsoever (JLPP 209, 113, 316),
but rather to other signifiers such as the Name-of-the-Father (JLPP
198). Lacan "assigns the phallus a privileged position in the Symbolic
order" (Payne 71), as he did in the Imaginary register. Lacan's radical
reversal helped to establish the pre-eminence of the signifier. Since
"the polysemic qualities of the word permit one meaning to be
substituted for another" (Vergote 205), the result is a plasticity of
signification. In Lacan's formula, the line between signifier and
signified is a bar (barrier) indicating the lack of a direct, unequivocal relationship between the two, which results in a continual misconstruction and misreading, by undermining the "correspondence between words and things" (Sarup 90). Lacan describes "the sliding
(glissentent) of the signified under the signifier" (E 160).
Paradoxically, words both signify and suppress meaning; as with the
mirror, wc find "the simultaneity of presence and absence in language"
(Borch-Jacobsen 171). Lacan concludes that "only the correlations
between signifier and signifier provide thc standard for all rescarch into
signification" (E 153). Language is innately elusivc since a signifier
can only signify another signifier, "S, -> S?" (FFC 148). "The
signifier is to be thought of initially as distinct from meaning" (Senr. 3,
199). Lacan describes language as a complex web where signifiers are
strung along a "signifying chain [like] rings [on] a necklace [each
connected to] another necklace made of rings .... it is in the chain of
the signifier that the meaning 'insists' but ... none of its elements
'consists' in the signification" (E 153). The signifying chain yields "a
controlled ambiguity" (Payne 72). In his examination of dreams, Freud discovered certain 'knots' of signification (E 166). These resurface as
Lacan's "anchoring points (Points de capiton)" (E 154) which provide
structural cohesion to linguistic webs. These webs provide access to signification, through shared codes (historical, cultural, etc.) in a wide variety of linguistic situations, from satire to psychoanalysis. Kelly points out that "Swift's concern with language was at the centre of his life and work" (1),that he generally detested "vagueness, abstraction, [and] euphemism" (?I), and that in certain circumstances
"linguistic change" (4) should be controlled. Swift's manipulation of language in the service of satire is not hypocritical; according to Kelly,
Swift's only real stipulation was that "language must serve a social function" (3). Swift examined many key aspects of language: infantile acquisition; signifiers (conscious and unconscious); speech and text; voices; memory, and webs of signification.
Gulliver has read "the best Authors, ancient and modern ... a good Number of Books" (4). The Lilliputians (Europeans) are tightly bound within the webs of the Symbolic order of language. Linguistic confusion and corruption accurately reflect the inhabitants and civilization of Lilliput. The contents of Gulliver's pockets are examined by two of the King's officers who, with "Pen, Ink, and Paper
... made an exact Inventory of every thing" (19). Here the problem is how to signify the unknown, by employing "familiar terms" (Holly
146), i.e. familiar to the Lilliputians. Similar problems are faced by
Lilliputians, Brobdingnagians and Houyhnhnms in labelling Gulliver.
The diction is ironical since it is unlikely that the unknown signifiers would yield exact signifieds. Here signifiers are even further removed from their signifieds, because the Lilliputians employ their own codes of meaning and frames of reference. While the Lilliputians do recognize familiar (albeit huge) objects like Gulliver's comb, sword, money and "Writings" (70), Gullivcr must explain his razor and pocketknife to them. As for Gulliver's watch, thc Lilliputians
"conjecture it is either some unknown Animal, or the God that he worships ... his Oracle" (21). Their scholarly "Opinions ... were b various and remote" (73). They also cannot fathom his European weaponry (pistols, powder and bullets). Gulliver must demonstrate the use of firearms: "I let it off ... Hundreds fell down as if they had been struck dead" (12). Guns become new signifiers of power to the
Lilliputians who confiscate "My Scymiter, Pistols, and Pouch" (73).
Swift reveals that an object, like a signifier, may be totally barred from the signified.
The role of the written text is crucial in Lilliput, where we find a proliferation of "edicts ... 'Proclamations' and 'Orders of State,' treaties
.. . 'Articles' of behaviour and ... 'Articles of Impeachment"' (Castle 39-
40). These reflect the aggressive legal tendency to multiply synonyms
(for rhetorical emphasis) to describe any guilty act; Gulliver's urinating was performed "maliciously, traitorously, and devilishly" (55).
Lilliputian "language is full of circumlocution and redundancy" (Kelly 81). The author of A Tale of Tub had also complained of the "endless
Repetitions upon every Subject" (WJS 165), and the proliferation "of
Writers" (WJS 338). Even the charges against Gulliver are an indirect result of the written word, as the palace fire is caused by the
"Carelessness of a Maid of Honour who fell asleep while she was reading a Romance" (44). The "Books of Big-Endians have been long forbidden1' (36); as in Europe, censorship of thc written text is a socio- political weapon. The reference may be to the Act of 1550, outlawing the dissemination of Catholic literature (GT 316 fn. 17).
The linguistic chicanery practiced by the Lilliputians soon becomes evident to Gulliver when the punishment, "to put out both your Eyes" (57), is reversed to signify mercy: "all the World would applaud the Lenity of the Emperor" (57). Whenever
the Court had decreed any cruel Execution ...
the Emperor always made a Speech ...
expressing his great Lenity and Tenderness, as
Qualities known and confessed by all the
World. This Speech was immediately
published through the Kingdom; nor did any
thing terrify the People so much as those
Encomiums on his Majesty's Mercy; because it was observed, that the more these Praises
werc enlarged and insisted on, the more
inhuman was the Punishment, and thc Sufferer
more innocent (60).
Here we find an intentional reversal of signification; a cruel decree signifies a lenient Emperor. The people understand this reversal in the signified and correctly interpret the intent, proving that the signified only has meaning in context. The people, terrified, pretend to believe.
For Swift, the misuse and perversion of language (arbitrary signification) inevitably reflects the corruption of the court (the law of the father) and of other political and social organs of the state. In
Lilliput, the manipulation of language serves the narcissism of the leaders, and protects them from being portrayed as aggressive. For
Swift and Lacan, the decoding of linguistic webs can easily support reversal of signification (as in satire) but never the purely arbitrary, which is the domain of madness. The satire is reversed once more when
Gulliver confesses that had he known then how cruel courts were, he would "have submitted to so easy a punishment" (61) as blindness.
Reality is more nightmarish than satire, and aggression is far from signifying the inhuman. Gulliver's sense of self (and self-worth) is inextricably linked to his use of language and reason. In Brobdingnag, to prevent a farmer attacking him, Gulliver tries to prove he is a civilized creature; he employs gestures and begins "to speak some Words" (78). The farmer in turn "made a Sign'' (79) to signify that Gullivcr could put his belongings back in his purse, and the purse in his pocket. Gulliver complies. The Brobdingnagians soon note that he "seemed to speak in a little Language of his own" (87). They are uncertain because they cannot decode the signifiers. Swift and Stella had also communicated in their own secret "little language" (Kelly 51).
In Brobdingnag (as in Lilliput) language is a reflection of the inhabitants. In their straightforward use of language, as in the evolution of their political system, the Brobdingnagians are the antithesis of the Europeans/Lilliputians. The King cannot understand how thousands of books could have been written on the "Art of
Government" (139), or the meaning of "Secrets of State" (130), an unknown signifier in the Brobdingnagian Court which is honest, sincere and utopian. Swift equates the multiplying of texts with corruption, as the result entails endless, mutually contradictory signification. The entire Brobdingnagian literary output is "a thousand Volumes" (130).
Laws "are expressed in the most plain and simple Terms" (130), avoiding the corruptions of European linguistic ambiguity. Their laws
are permitted only "one Interpretation ... [and] to writc a Comment
upon any Law, is a capital Crime" (130), i.e. punishable by death. The
written text is dangerous, being open to corruptive influences due to its
very permanence. The length of each law is limited to twenty-two
words, to match "the Number of Letters in their Alphabet" (130). To
prevent the proliferation of macro-signifiers, micro-signifiers supply
the limits. The Brobdingnagian "Stile is clear, masculine, and smooth,
but not florid for they avoid Nothing more than multiplying
unnecessary Words, or using various Expressions" (131). However, the scholars label Gulliver as a "RefplumScalcath ... Lusus Naturae" (95) or freak of nature, which is no improvement on the epithet "strange
Animal" (87) employed by the Brobdingnagian pcople. Signifiers slide into one another. As in Europe, the signifier Luscis Naturae has been
"invented .. . to the unspeakable Advancement of human Knowledge"
(95). The scientific and academic sophistry is self-evident. Language here lacks a clear signifier, so there is irony in the use of the word
"unspeakable", as the scholars are essentially saying nothing. Among the Brobdingnagians, the simplification of signification is possible without resorting to transcendental signifiers; there is place for improvement, not perfection, in the use of linguistics. In order to read a Brobdingnagian book, Gullivcr needs a ladder and must walk to the end of each line. The emphasis is on the physicality of the text and on memory, an integral aspect of reading in particular, and language in general. As well, Swift inadvertently suggests the role of the preconscious. According to Lacan, the sentence reveals that "The unfolding chain of signifiers always anticipates a yet-to-be-completed unit of discourse that will give the chain a fixed signification retroactively" (J.S.Lee 54). The beginning of the sentence sets up a web of potential signification which is only completed at the end of the sentence, when a confirmation or reinterpretation occurs. There is no metalanguage or privileged point inside or outside the permutations of language (JLPP 333) since both the signifier and the subject are barred.
Silence, the retention of speech, is also linguistically significant.
The Brobdingnagian King, horrified by Gulliver's description of war, orders Gulliver, "as I valued my Life, never to mention Gunpowder"
(129). Silence becomes a solution (censorship) to the destructive misuse of language. In Glubbdubdrib, "the Island of Sorcerers" (194), when Gulliver calls up the spirits of Homer and Aristotle, all their commentators are silent "through a Consciousness of Shame and Guilt" (197), the reactions of the errant child beforc thc parent, the ego before
the superego.
The Struldbruggs' loss of memory denies them the pleasure of
reading, and their longevity hinders communication:
The language of this Country being always
upon the Flux, the Struldbruggs of one Age do
not understand those of another; neither are
they able, after two hundred Years, to hold
any Conversation (farther than by a few
general Words) with their Neighbors the
Mortals; and thus they lie under the
disadvantage of living like Foreigners in their
own country (313-14).
The Struldbruggs suffer in that they "forget the common Appellation of
Things and the Names of Persons ... their Memory will not serve to
carry them from the Beginning of a Sentence to the End" (213). The
loss of language skills leaves them worse than alienated, they are the
living dead. Using the sentence as an example, St. Augustine wrote that memory is an integral part of the mind, and is absolutely crucial to linguistic communication: "the mind and the memory are one and the same" (Confessions 120). Reading and writing require memory and intelligence (Confessions 30). Memory is defined as "where all those
images ... are stored" (Confessions 716). According to Hobbes, the
"Imagination ... is nothing but decaying sense ... . When we would
express the decay, and signify that the sense is fading, old, and past, it
is called ntemory" (9, 10).
Gullivcr discovers that Laputan scientists have peculiar problems
with language: "The Minds of these People are so taken up with
intense Speculations, that they neither can speak nor attend to the
Discourses of others without being rouzed" (155) by a servant wielding
a bladder. They lack positive counterparts to speculation; "Imagination,
Fancy, and invention, they are wholly Strangers to, nor have any
Words in their Language by which these Ideas can be expressed" (160).
Their speculations are neither poetic nor creative. Essentially, they
lack "verbal coherence" (Kelly 81); their discourse exemplifies
"Heideggerts ... Gerede (idle talk) .... Within empty speech the subject
is ... alienated and unauthentic" (Sarup 54, 55).
An excellent example of empty discourse can be found in the
work of the Academy's "Projectors in speculative Learning" (183). A
machine provides a short cut to producing books "without the least
Assistance from Genius or Study ... to give the World a compleat Body of all Arts and Sciences" (183). The wood and paper contraption is a proto-computer, a "wonderful Machine" (184) which arbitrarily
combines various words: "on these Papers were written all the Words
of their Language in their Order ... where they found three or four
Words together that might make Part of a Sentence" (183). They had
"made the strictest Computation of the general Proportion there is in
Books between the Numbers of Particles, Nouns and Verbs, and other
Parts of Speech" (184). The result is "broken Sentences" (183),
meaningless fragments which lack any signification. The Laputan
Professor hopes to raise funds for "employing five Hundred such
Frames" (184). The explosive proliferation of rncaningless texts which
would ensue is directly contrary to the situation in Brobdingnag. The
empty speech of Laputan language projectors and sages recalls the
plight of the Struldbruggs. These language fragments, cut off from the
Imaginary and Symbolic registers, represent "the forces of linguistic
fragmentation that Swift abhorred" (Kelly 35). The Laputans are perverting language, but unlike the Lilliputians whose aim was deception, here there is no communication, no webs of signification. In
"A Tritical Essay upon the Faculties of the Mind" (1707-1 l), Swift contradicted
the Epicurean's Opinion ... that the Universe
was formed by a ... fortuitous Concourse of Atoms, which I will no more believe, than that
the accidental Jumbling of the Letters in the
Alphabet, could fall by Chance into a most
ingenious and learned Treatise of Philosophy
(WJS 432).
Swift may have had Lucretius in mind:
... nothing
Can come from nothing, since seed is required
For each thing, out of which it may be born
(1 Al. 205-61.'
At the mathematical school, "The Proposition and Demonstration
were written on a thin Wafer with Ink composed of a Cephalick
Tincture" (185), so that it would travel to the brain. At the Academy,
there is an endless confusion between the abstract and the concrete, the
literal and the metaphorical. The text is literally to be absorbed by the
students. They in turn literally reject it by spitting up or regurgitating
the distasteful concoction. The "Wafer" may suggest a parody of
communion. One recalls that in A Tale of a Tub modern books are to
Lucretius, De Rerunz Natura, trans. R.C. Trevelyan (Cambridge:
Cambridge UP, 1937) 7. be boiled and distilled, to permit "snuffing it strongly up your Nose"
(WJS 328) for the brain to absorb knowledge easily and directly.
In the interests of "Health as well as Brevity" (184), the "School of Languages" (184) has a project, a kind of linguistic castration, "to shorten Discourse by cutting Polysyllables into One, and leaving out
Verbs and Participles; because in Reality all things imaginable are but
Nouns" (184), in the sense that all words signify or name things.
Bacon had written: "What are words but images of things" (GT 350-1 fn. 29); the word as image is indicative of the mirror effect. An object can only be "recognized by means of the image within us" (Confessions
25),which would explain the difficulty the Lilliputians had in interpreting Gulliver's guns and watch. Hobbes described speech as
"consisting of Names or Appellations and their Connexion" (13) or linguistic webs of meaning. According to Hobbes, names are universal signifiers (19), and signification is essentially definition (21). He praised "Metaphors, Tropes, and other Rhetorical1 figures [because] they profess their inconstancyt' (25). Hobbes felt these tropes should be avoided when dealing with truth.
Simplifying language by radical surgery would leave signifiers without links, linguistic confusion. Swift is satirizing a number of schemes attempted by the Royal Society to remove ambiguities, in order to simplify English. According to Kelly, "numerous seventeenth-
century language theorists constructed languages that they hoped wouid
... unite word and thing, provide an insight into Nature, and reestablish
linguistic universality" (74). Kelly concluded that Swift rejected the
notion that "language could be reformed in a more nearly perfect way"
(74). Sprat's History of the Royul Society proclaimed the author's
desire (in certain contexts) "to reject all the amplifications [and]
digressions ... [in order] to return back to the primitive purity, and
shortness, when men delivertd so many things in an equal number of
words,"' the Brobdingnagian approach. In order, ostensibly, to
"eliminate Obscurity" (184) there is a
Scheme for entirely abolishing all Words ... as
a great Advantage in Point of Health as well
as Brevity ... since Words are only Names for
Things, it would be more convenient for all
Men to carry about them, such Things as were
necessary to express the particular Business
they are to discourse on ... many of the most
1 Thomas Sprat, History of the Royal Society (facsim.), eds.
Jackson I. Cope and Harold W. Jones (St. Louis: Washington UP,
1958) 113. Learned and Wise adhere to the new Scheme
of expressing themselves by Things .... I have
often beheld two of those Sages almost
sinking under the Weight of their Packs ...
who when they met in the Streets would lay
down their Loads, open their Sacks, and hold
Conversation for an Hour together (184-5).
We have moved from a surfeit of words, to a dearth. The sages are
literally "bearing the burden of discoursc" (Wyrick 4). Great business
would require "a greater Bundle of Things (185). Locke had
acknowledged that words become "tinged with associations" (Kelly 83).
Swift may have had Locke's advice in mind: "consider Things and
discourse of them, as it were in Bundles,"' or perhaps linguistic webs.
The use of objects does not necessarily ensure that the signification of
the object will correspond between two people, or "serve as an
universal Language" (185). The signifiers do not automatically become
signifieds. The concretization of signifiers (the word made flesh) does
not simplify referentiality, as any object exhibited may signify the
metaphorical or literal, colour, shape or texture. Without webs of
John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, ed.
Peter H. Nidditch (Oxford: Clarendon P, 1975) 3, iii, 20. meaning we would have the same result as with the word frame. As well, the signification of abstract concepts would be lost. The attempt to 'perfectt communication by ridding ourselves of words, still leaves the multiple signification of objects, as well as adding materialistic burdens requiring wealth and strength. Neither shortcuts nor simplifications appear to improve language. The use of the object kills the word - negating the oral and written aspects of language (the
Yahoos). In response to the attempt to abolish words, "Women in conjunction with the Vulgar and Illiterate ... threatened to raise a
Rebellion" (185). Swift has frequently made the point that things do not disappear when certain signifiers no longer exist. In "An Argument
Against Abolishing Christianity," Swift questioned:
Will any Man say that if the Words Whoring,
Drinking, Cheating, Lying, Stealing were, by
Act of Parliament, ejected out of the English
Tongue and Dictionaries; we should all awake
next Morning chaste and temperate, honest
and just, and Lovers of Truth? ... And is our
Language so poor, that we cannot find other
Terms to express them? (WJS 465). As physician, Gulliver can attest to the importance of 'reading'
stool in determining medical (or political) diagnoses. One
Professor shewed me a large Paper of
Instructions for discovering Plots and
Conspiracies against the Government. He
advised great Statesmen to examinc into the
Dyet of all suspected Persons ... with which
Hand they wiped their Posteriors; to take a
strict View of their Excrements, and from the
Colour, the Odour, the Taste, the Consistence,
the Crudeness, or Maturity of Digestion, form
a Judgment of their Thoughts and Designs:
Because Men are never so serious, thoughtful
and intent, as when they are at Stool (190-1).
Swift satirizes the witch hunt for Jacobites in this "decipherment of
feces" (Holly 140). In Lacanian terms, the Imaginary signifier is
arbitrarily decoded into the Symbolic. When a conspirator thought "of
murdering the King, his Ordure would have a Tincture of Green" (191).
The word "Taste" refers to the eating of excrement, oral and anal
- signifiers sliding into one another. In A Tale of a Tub, Swift had
written how "Physicians discover the State of the whole Body, by consulting only what comes from Behind" (WJS 338). In "A Discourse
Concerning the Mechanical Operation of the Spirit," Swift had
described "certain Fortune-tellers ... who have a Way of reading a
Man's Destiny, by peeping in his Breech" (WJS 111).
In satire, the bar between fiction and reality is particularly
evanescent. In Langden (England), a group of men (Whigs) seeks "the
mysterious Meanings of Words, Syllables and Letters. For Instance,
they can decypher a Close-stool to signify a Privy Council ... a lame
Dog, an Invader ... a Sink, a C-t" (191-1). False interpretation
becomes an aggressive and paranoid activity whose sole purpose is to
uncover treason, so only one code of interpretation is permitted, an
ironic parody of Brobdingnag. The signified becomes the starting point
(a linguistic reversal) ensuring the desired 'interpretation' of any
signifiers. This passage has a number of topical allusions such as the
"lame Dog" which refers to the trial of Bishop Atterbury and a dog
named Harlequin. The interpreters are unaware that their linking of
disparate signifiers provides the stuff that political satire is made of.
The "Privy Council," juxtaposed to "a Close Stool" denotes the excrementality of politics. The juxtaposition of "Sink" and "a C-t" produces a more complex web of signification. The court ("C-1") is signified here as a source of the wasted spending of public money. The ambiguity of "C-t" also permits (through the sliding of signifiers) a
secondary identification of the court with a cunt or a cesspit, which
would also fit the signifier. As well, this incomplete signifier suggests
the danger faced by the satirist when the satire becomes too obvious to
those in power. At the School of Political Projectors, interpretations of
words "are not constrained by the dictates of usagc, logic, or common
sense" (Kelly 61), since "N, shall signify a Plot: B, a Regiment of
Horse" (192), etc. Letters themselves become signifiers in the flux of
arbitrary significations. To the satirist and to the psychoanalyst, determining the underlying significations of words is crucial to achieving their respective tasks.
Swift satirizes European linguistic experiments. John Wilkins's
Mercury; or the Secret Messenger is an investigation of non-verbal forms of communication. There is a desire to create "an immediately apprehensible language ... the universal language of Adam .. . more suitable for scientific discourse" (Kelly 74-5). Gulliver's "prose style is the kind which had the approval of the Royal Society" (Quintana
158). Wilkins also described a word frame for the secret coding and decoding of messages. Wilkins' Essay Towards a Real Character and a Philosophical Language describes an attempt to control linguistic ambiguity by anchoring the signifier to the signified. A new dictionary would be based on a kcy list of words and their fixed and exclusive
meanings. This list would reflect the distillation of "the distinct
Expression of all Things and Notions that fall under Discourse ... and
... the reduction of all other Words in the Dictionary to these Tables,
either as they were synonymous to them, or to be defin'd by 'em."'
According to Lacanian theory, "If artificial languages are stupid, it is
because they are constructed on the basis of signification" (Borch-
Jacobsen 179), i.c. the signified is given prornincnce over the signifier
in an attempt to remove the bar, a difficult task considering that
langauge is essentially metaphorical.
"In Book Four articulation is strictly allied with essential
intellectual capacity" (Swaim 169). According to Lacan, "it is the
employment of a language which makes one conscious,"' echoing the
traditional notion that (Symbolic) language "distinguishes human
society from natural societies" (E 148). "Man is caught up in symbolic
' John Wilkins, Mercury: Or the Secret and Swift Messenger and
Essay Towards a Real Character and a Philosophicul Language
(Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company,
1984) 169, 172. ' Jennifer Church, "Morality and the Internalized Other," ed. Neu,
211. processes of a kind to which no animal has access."l Social structures
"reveal an ordering of possible exchanges which, even if unconscious,
is inconceivable outside the permutations authorized by languagc" (E
148), "symbolic processes [which] dominate and govern all" (Senr. 7,
45). Lacan defined praxis as "a concerted human action, whatever it
may be, which places man in a position to treat the real by the
symbolic" (FFC 6). Although Lacan was specifically referring to
psychoanalysis, praxis also defines language in gcneral, and the literary
work in particular. Language plays an integral role in the development
both of the individual and society. For man, being is inextricably
linked to language, "a symbolic order that pre-exists the infantile
subject and in accordance with which he will have to structure himself"
(E 334). For Swift (and Lacan) "verbal coherence and social coherence
were causally linked" (Kelly 7). According to Lacan, "Language is an
order constituted by laws" (E 135) (such as the "law of endless
substitutionsM2)based on the rich complexity of the signijfer inside
social and linguistic webs. "The NameLaw of the Father is equivalent
Sent. 7, The Ethics of Psychoanalysis (1959-60), trans. Denis
Porter (1986) 45. Edward Said, "Swift's Tory Anarchy," Eighteenth Century
Studies 3 (1969-70): 62. to culture (including language) itself .... according to Lacan we arc
prisoners of language. "'
The link between naming and power is an ancient one. In
Genesis, G-d ordained that Adam (Man) should have "dominion" (Gen.
1, 16) over all the beasts "and whatever the man called every living
creature, that was its name" (Gen. 3, 19), powcr through the control of
signifiers. According to Lacan, "symbolic identification" (E 67) is the
counterpart to "the imaginary identity of the ncoi" (J.S. Lee 65);
interconnected webs structure self and language, through unconscious
and conscious signifiers.
In the land of the Houyhnhnrns, when Gulliver observes a horse:
"I almost began to think he was speaking to himself in some Language
of his own ... almost articulate" (227). Two horses appeared "like
Persons deliberating ... as if they were engaged in serious
Conversation. I plainly observed, that their Language expressed the
Passions very well" (227-8), an ironic turn of phrase for rational
Jane Flax, "Signifying the Father's Desire: Lacan in a Feminist's
Gaze," Criticism and Lacan: Essays and Dialogue in Language,
Structure and the Unconscious, eds. Patrick Colm Hogan and Lalita
Pandit (London: U of Georgia P, 1990) 111, 115. beings. Gulliver "links speech with reason,"' surmising that should the
inhabitants possess "a proportionable Degree of Reason, they must be
the wisest People upon Earth .... [and] must needs excel in Wisdom all
the Nations of the World" (127, 230). We recall Gulliverts first
idealized view of the Struldbruggs. Gulliver has misread the
Houyhnhnm signifier by identifying them (according to their shape) as
inferior beings. His European codes of reference have misled him.
Like the inhabitants of a variety of countries, the Houyhnhnms
have difficulty in labelling Gulliver, although they recognize him as a
Yahoo (albeit clothed). Gulliver, desirous of flaunting his linguistic
prowess by parroting the Houyhnhnms, "boidly pronounced Yahoo"
(229). Gulliver inadvertently confirms their hypothesis when he
"names himself and the name is Yahoo .... language not only fails to
distinguish man from beast, but it also certifies that man is beast"
(Wyrick 179). There is a paradox here, in that Yahoos cannot speak.
The Houyhnhnms recognize that while Gulliver is a Yahoo, he differs
from other Yahoos; he is labelled with an expanded Yahoo signifier,
' Frances Deutsch Louis, Swift's Anatomy of Misunderstanding: A
Study of Swift's Epistenaological Imagination in a Tale of a Tub and
Gulliver's Travels (London, England: George Prior Publishers, 1981)
158. "a wonderful Yahoo that could speak like a Houyhnhnnr, and seemed in his Words and Actions to discover some Glimmcrings of Reason"
(138). Gulliver, as "wonderful Yahoo," is still a freak of nature, a
Yahoo with a "Capacity for Speech and Reason" (240). Hobbes had noted that "The Greeks have but one word, logos, for both speech and reasontt (32). Language, denoting intelligence in the Houyhnhnms, becomes part of Gulliver's desperate proof of human rationality to differentiate man from Yahoo. Gulliver fails at this task precisely because, to the Houyhnhnms, Yahoos signify man.
In psychoanalytical theory, the release or retention of words
(silence) may parallel patterns established during the early phases of development. Language may signify "the flood of urine of urethral ambition, or the retained faeces of avaricious jouissunce .... The discourse then takes on a phallic-urethral, anal-erotic, or even an oral- sadistic function" (E 87-8). Discourse was "First developed in the symbolic manipulation of excrement and perpetuated in the symbolic manipulation of symbolic substitutes for excrement" (Brown 44),
Lacan's signifiers: "biological need is articulated in symbolic form"
(J.S. Lee 58). Lacan links the author to
... the child who registers as victories and
defeats the heroic chronicle of the training of his sphincters, enjoying (jouissant) the
imaginary sexualization of his cloaca1 orifices,
turning his excremental expulsions into
aggressions, his retentions into seductions, and
his movements of release into symbols (E 53).
Gullivcr describes lawyers to the Houyhnhnm Master, as
bred up from their Youth in the art of proving
by Words multiplied for the Purpose, that
White is Black and Black is White, according
as they are paid .... [a] Lawyer [ is] ...
practiced almost from his Cradle in defending
Falshood ... this Society hath a particular Cant
and Jargon of their own, that no other Mortal
can understand, and wherein all their Laws are
written, which they take special Care to
multiply; whereby they have wholly
confounded the very Essence of Truth and
Falshood, of Right and Wrong (251-3).
Perhaps Swift had the biblical injunction in mind: "Woe unto them that call evil good and good evil" (Isaiah 5: 20). Here the proliferation of signifiers serves neither narcissism nor aggression. Signifiers are not connected by lawyers for clarity of meaning or to provide power to expression; rather linguistic webs of signification arc warped into linguistic mazes. Legal ambiguities are symptomatic of 'mad' societies
(like ours) which invite the obscurantism of lawyers who subvert signification by multiplying words and laws ostensibly to aid their clients, but really to ensure that they themselves remain indispensable and that cases take as long as possible to adjudicate, with the lawyers continuing to collect fees. Not only is the language of law purposely kept incomprehensible, its very purpose is obfuscation, separating law from its ideal signifiers (truth and justice) which are diverted (like desire) into language. References to "Youth" and "Cradle" suggest that linguistic patterns are established early in the development of the individual.
When it comes to subverting signification, European politicians even outdo the lawyers. The duplicitous Chief Minister
never tells a Truth, but with an intent that you
should take it for a Lye; nor a Lye, but with a
Design that you should take it for a Truth;
That those he speaks worst of behind their
Backs, are in the surest Way to Preferment;
and whenever he begins to praise you to others or to your self, you are from that Day
forlorn (259).
Of course, most lies (contrary signifiers) are meant to be taken as truth, since the intention behind them is invariably deception. There is a subtle difference in presenting truth as a lie; the signified is reversed when the signifier (although accurately referential) is perceived and rejected as false. The victims/targets of the Chief Minister's prevarications suffer the same fate in either case, ignorance of the true state of affairs. Truth and lies are subjective evaluations and not mutually exclusive signifiers. Here the control of signifiers/signified
(through reversal) is indicative (and a result) of the abuse of political power. The worst is to "receive a Promise ... confirmed with the Oath, after which every wise Man retires and gives over all Hopes" (259).
The wise people (like those in Lilliput) see beyond the pretence; those who are unwise are fooled when they accept things as they merely appear. Gulliver is only confirming the Houyhnhnm assessment that man perverts any gifts nature has bestowed, like reason and language.
In "Examiner" 14 (1710), Swift compared the political lie to a
"Goddess [who] flies with a huge Looking-glass in her Hands to dazzle the Crowd, and make them see according as she turns it, their ruin in their Interest, and their Interest in their Ruin" (WJS 453). Linguistic corruption is evident in such false signifiers, or "perpetual
Misrepresentations" (WJS 455), the nature of language, and of man.
The Europeans, as abusers of language, are satirically compared to the Lilliputians, and are contrasted to the Brobdingnagians and especially to the Houyhnhnms who accuse Gulliver of saying "the thing which was not. (For they have no Word in their Language to express
Lying or Falsehood)" (237). Here, the definition becomes a new signifier. The Houyhnhnm language is a reflection of the inhabitants
(honest, rational and accurate). The Houyhnhnms employ the word
Yahoo to signify everything negative and despicable. In poetry, the
Houyhnhnms, we are told, "excel all other Mortalstt (180), although it is necessarily of dull subject matter to us (no emotions or problems). It is poetry which would have been permitted in Plato's Republic;
Gulliver stresses "the Justness of their Similies and the Minuteness, as well as the Exactness of their Descriptions" (280). The 'scientific' inaccuracy of figures of speech, noted by Plato, is the least concern of poetry, except perhaps in a rational utopia. The Houyhnhnms engaged in "Conversations where nothing passed but what was useful, expressed in the fewest and most significant Words" (984). They "do not allow multiple definitions of words, nor ... ambiguities in their lexicon"
(Kelly 81), unlike the European lawyers and politicians, so their language is less open to confusion and corruption than that of
Brobdingnag or even the Lilliputian utopian past.
The Houyhnhnms "have not the least Idea of Books or
Literature" (237) mirroring the Socratic preference for oral teaching
(GT 365 fn. 3). Swift stressed the differences between the written and the spoken word. According to Terry Castle,
We impute to speech a natural priority and
purity: we identify it as the mode of
signification appropriate to 'natural man'.
Writing ... is traditionally imagined as an
imitation of speech ... as an unnatural
superimposition upon the primal and exquisite
purity of oral communication ... if speech
preserves a pure relation between Nature and
the Word, writing interrupts, compromises,
corrupts this relation .... its inauthenticity as
signifier ... its very materiality attests to its
corruptness (31,34).
Castle points out that the Houyhnhnms are "free from textuality" (41) and any possibility of textual corruption. Oral discourse provides referentiality, in that one can refer to the speaker for explanations, corroboration, etc. The direct and clear use of language, by the
Houyhnhnms, is only a distant goal for language Projectors in the
Royal Society and the Academy of Lagado.
According to Castle, "All of Swift's satiric pieces ... reflect upon
the problematic status of the written word ... the Tale is simultaneously
a history and an embodiment of the corruption potential in the scriptory" (33); in the "Apology," we learn that the original copy of the
Tale has been lost and that we are left with a "surreptitious copy ... with many alterations ... the text's signification is unverifiable; its truth is always indeterminate [and open to] arbitrary, creative, interpretation
.... No reading is disallowed" (35). Castle reminds us that the Tale is predicated on "the problem of Biblical interpretation" (37). The three brothers search through the provisions of the will for permission to embellish their coats. By twisted reasoning they determine that the fact that the same letters are employed in the will (more or less) is sufficient grounds for proceeding with the alterations. Babel is equated with "Chaos," as both Church and State are dependent on the mother tongue. Swift employed the metaphor of clothing to signify language.
The suit or sacred text, "all of a Piece ... very plain, and with little or no Ornament" (WJS 306), is vulnerable to corruption. Gulliver encounters Portuguese sailors on his voyage home and
"When they began to talk, I thought I never heard or saw any thing so
unnatural; for it appeared to me as monstrous as if a Dog or a Cow
should speak in England, or a Yahoo in Houyhnhnnl-Land" (194).
Once again Gulliver has become conditioned, and his frame of
reference has become altered and confused: "Man speaks ... because
the symbol has made him man" (E 65), unlike thc Yahoo who is free of
both textuality and speech. Just as the signifier contains the signified
within it, so man contains the infantile, primitive Yahoo within him.
For Lacan "every signifier of conscious discourse is a substitution for
an unconscious signifier" (Vergote 203). As a satirical persona,
Gulliver is both signifier and signified, tool, messenger, vehicle, author
and subject of the satire. He illustrates the metonymic sliding of signifiers. Gulliver (like Swift) "is not able to stop writing" (Castle
41), claiming "some corruptions of my Yahoo Nature" (xxxix) as the reason behind the writing of the Travels. Even the narrative itself can be "read metonymically, i.e. as a series of parts building towards completion" (Holly 141). Chapter Five
THE SOPEREGOILE NON-DU-PERE - THE VOICE OF SATIRE
SATIRE AS SUPEREGO
"Satire deals with the mores of men" (Carnochan 13) in a judgmental manner, determing what should be criticized. In this function, it is similiar to "the super-ego, ... the moral or judicial branch of personality, ... [which] is made up of ... the ego-ideal and the conscience [and signifies] the child's conception of what his parents consider to be morally good" (Hall 31) or bad. The parents transmit cultural and social 'laws'. In Lacan's delineation of the superego, we find the fusion of language and law: "Le non du pere, the father's command 'No!' ... ushers the symbolic world of law into the mind of the child" (Leavy 13). The symbolic (paternal) phallus is a "signifier of power" (Borch-Jacobsen 113). In order "to thwart our boundless narcissism, ... culture has ... to inhibit ... the violent and anal sadistic urges that arise when narcissism is infringed" (Paul 279). The superego "is typically experienced as an inner voice" (Church 216).
According to Freud, "Not only what is lowest but also what is highest in the ego can be unconscious" (SE 19 "The Ego and the Id" 27). The lengthy stages of infantile development favour the formation of the superego. In "A Tritical Essay Upon the Faculties of the Mind," Swift wrote that "The Mind of Man is, at first, ... capable of any impression"
(WJS 425). In Gulliver's Travels the voice of the superego is that of
the satirist; Swift speaks through satiric and utopian authors, European
moralists, the Brobdingnagian King, the Houyhnhnm Master and
Gulliver (directly or indirectly). The satirist is the Name-of-the-
Father, maintaining Symbolic laws of language and controlling the
definition of the signifier, since "the central issue ... is primarily one of
definition: is man, or is he not, correctly defined as a rational
creature?"'
In Lilliput, the voice of reason (the superego) speaks from the
golden past of a just and equitable society. However, it speaks to us,
not to the Lilliputians. In Brobdingnag, we learn that it was in the
past, during the reign of the king's grandfather that a more humane and
benevolent society was ushered in, and still continues. In
Glubbdubdrib, the golden past mocks the feeble modem reflection.
Swift invariably venerates the ancients over the moderns (recalling
"The Battel of the Books"). While such veneration might support
charges of infantile attachment levelled against Swift, writers like
Horace exhorted people "to return to the ways of their fathers ...
R.S. Crane, "The Houyhnhnms, the Yahoos, and the History of
Ideas," ed. Greenberg, 402. reason, chastity, honour" (Kernan 18). Even the Yahoos have
degenerated from a better past. The Brobdingnagians are the exception
to the pattern.
In adopting the voice of the satirist/superego, Swift employs
utopian concepts from works which include Plato's Republic, Sir
Thomas More's Utopia (1516), and Sir Francis Bacon's New Atlantis
(1624). Swift speaks through the utopian "original Institutions" (47) of
Lilliputian society, a voice from the golden past "so directly contrary"
(45) to present-day Lilliput/Europe. In their utopian past, the
Lilliputians had a legal system which severely punished ingratitude,
false accusers, and "Breach of Trust" (46), and which rewarded honest
citizens with a title of attestation. Here the title becomes part of the
naming process of the father, as opposed to the mere vanity of title-
loving present-day Lilliputians/Europeans. The difference between this
past utopia and modern Europe affects Gulliver: "I was heartily
ashamed" (46). Shame is a result of the socializing process, the
father's laws. In the past, those chosen for employment required "good
Morals" (47) and those in office had to believe in G-d. Children were
brought up and educated by the state to suit their stations in life, "their
own Capacities as well as Inclinations" (48). They were morally protected from coddling parents and from "Folly and Vice" (49), the goal of satire and society. Girls received an education equal to that of the boys and were encouraged to avoid "personal Ornaments" (49), and to become "reasonable and agreeable" (49) mates. Students were "bred up in Principles of Honour, Justice, Courage, Modesty, Clemency,
Religion and Love of their Country" (48). The multiplying of signifiers also serves the voice of the superego (as it did aggression and narcissism).
In Brobdingnag, Gulliver describes England as "the Seat of
Virtue, Piety, Honour and Truth, the Pride and Envy of the World"
(99). While Gulliver believes the truth of his statements, the opposite is implied by Swift who reverses the signification, one of the linguistic techniques of his satire. Satire permits nothing to be taken at face value; language itself is just another tool to be manipulated according to satiric exigencies. Signifiers are inherently suspect and require contextual codes for signification.
The Brobdingnagian King is "possessed of every Quality which procures Veneration, Love and Esteem ... great Wisdom and profound
Learning ... with admirable Talents for Government" (129). He has never "reduced Politicks into a Science" (129). While the King loves
"new Discoveries in Art or in Nature ... he would rather lose Half his
Kingdom than be Privy to such a Secret" (129) as gunpowder, even if he would become an "absolute Master" (139). Machiavellian politics is absent. He is the idealized ruler and father figure, the voice of the superegolsatirist.
His kingdom contains many traditional utopian aspects: towns close together and alike, and the absence of war or cultural contamination: "wholly excluded from any Commerce with the Rest of the World" (103-4), due to geographic factors. The Kingdom is governed according "to common Sense and Reason, to Justice and
Lenity, to the Speedy Determination of Civil and criminal Causes"
(130). The Brobdingnagians are "enlightened and benevolent" (Monk
638), as well as rational and practical, believing that whoever improved agricultural production "would deserve better of Mankind, and do more essential Service to his Country, than the whole Race of Politicians put together" (130). Even their mathematics "is wholly applied to what may be useful in Life; to the Improvement of Agriculture and all mechanical Arts" (130). The Brobdingnagians are the opposite of the
Laputans, Lagadians and the Royal Society. Concerning "Abstractions and Trancendentals, I could never drive the least Conception into their
Heads" (130). The Brobdingnagians can trace their present peaceful and benevolent society back to "the Laws of the Prince's Grandfather" (133). Contrary to Europe and Lilliput, this society is peaceful and stable.
The book which Gulliver reads in the King's librxy "treats of the
Weakness of Human kind ... shewing how diminutive, contemptible, and helpless an Animal was Man .... Nature ... could now produce only small abortive Births" (131). The irony here is delightful as the subject matter suggests that this book is a satire, portraying the
Brobdingnagians like men or Lilliputians; petty in comparison to past greatness, subject to the same forces of disease and decay, and inferior in many aspects to other species. With the same infirmities as mankind, they have managed to attain desirable results socially, politically and morally.
Gulliver's panegyric on European history elicits "many Doubts,
Queries and Objections" (112) from the idealized King whose superior physical, moral and rational stature permits him to speak with the voice of the superego (the father, utopian moralists and Swift). Gulliver's description of the last century of European history is an excellent example of satire and the complexity of linguistic webs. On one hand,
Gulliver is merely recounting historical and military facts. Through
Swift's satirical intent, Gulliver is 'inadvertently' eliciting a moral judgment from the King of Brobdingnag who, seeing beyond Gulliver's defences and excuses, arrives at the underlying message, Swift's. The
King's indignant and critical reactions exemplify the power of language
to evoke, a key Lacanian view. The King's observations are wise,
rational and compassionate, "excellent Qualities of Mind" (120). He
wonders at a society which permits the bankruptcy of "a Kingdom"
(124), the cost and frequency of wars, and how "our Generals must be
richer than our Kings" (124), a satirical reference to the Duke of
Marlborough: "Many of Swift's Exoniiners are personally aimed at the
General" (Orrery 106). in the "Examiner" dated Nov. 13, 1710, Swift
drew up a set of tables to contrast Marlborough's vastly greater rewards
to those of a Roman general (PW 3, 23). In "Conduct of the Allies,"
(1711) Swift referred to the endless warfare as having "no other End
than ... to increase the Fame and Wealth of our General" (PW 6, 20).
The King is convinced that European history is nothing more
than "An heap of Conspiracies, Rebellions, Murders, Massacres,
Revolutions, Banishments; the very worst Effects that Avarice, Faction,
Hypocrisy, Perfidiousness, Cruelty, Rage, Madness, Hatred, Envy, Lust,
Malice, and Ambition could produce" (125). Satire, like the language
of lawyers and courtiers, employs the multiplication of positive and
negative signifiers. The King fears that guns are Satanic, the product of "some evil Genius, Enemy to Mankind" (129). The King (as satirist) compares human degeneration to a corrupted text (c.f. A Tale of a Tub),
having observed "among you some Lines of an institution, which in its
Original might have been tolerable; but these half erased, and the rest
wholly blurred and blotted by Corruptions" (126). Mankind is judged
(by a superior being) to be the "most pernicious Race of little odious
Vermin that Nature ever suffered to crawl upon the Surface of the
Earth ... so impotent and grovelling an Insect" (126, 129). The use of
the term "impotent" is psychoanalytically significant, as the King
represents the father figure, the agent of castration.
According to Ehrenpreis, "Gulliver's portrait of the King of
Brobdingnag agrees in many essentials with the character of Temple,"'
his "indifference to visible rewards,"' and his "lack of intrigue"
(Personality of Jonathan Swift 95). The Brobdingnagian King loathed
"all Mystery, Refinement, and Intrigue" (130) in rulers or courtiers.
Temple, like the King, was horrified by accounts of war. While
Irvin Ehrenpreis, The Personality of Jonathan Swift (London:
Methuen, 1958) 93.
Irvin Ehrenpreis, Mr. Swift and His Contemporaries vol. 1,
Swift: The Man, his Works, and the Age 3 vols (London: Methuen,
1962-83) 96. Ehrenpreis saw Temple as a father figure to Swift,' other critics have
questioned this assumption.' The dangers of biographical misreadings
are evident. Gulliver, highly susceptible to the voice of the father,
echoes the diction of the King of Brobdingnag when he is rescued;
crew members become "the most little contemptible Creatures I had
ever beheld" (143). Similarly, in Book Four, when the Yahoo baby
urinates on him, Gulliver describes it as "odious Vermin" (271).
In Book Three, the satire equates utopian concepts with the
impossible mad schemes of the Political Projectors: Monarchs
choosing their favourites according to "their Wisdom, Capacity and
Virtue" (187); and Ministers and Princes taking into account "the
publick Good ... rewarding Merit, great Abilities and eminent Services
.. with other wild impossible Chimaras" (187). In Glubbdubdrib, the
spirits of the dead speak with the voice of the superego, the voice of
"Truth, for Lying was a Talent of no Use in the lower World" (195),
unlike the one above. The satirist takes on this mantle of absolute
truth. Real history reveals the injustices of good men killed or ignored,
Irvin Ehrenpreis, Doctor Swift vol. 2 Swift: The Man, his
Works, and the Age 755.
A.C. Elias Jr., Swift at Moor Park: Problems in Biography and
Criticism (Phil: U of Penn P, 1982) 129, 199. and villains rewarded. While the past may have been nasty, the implication is that we have become even worse.
When Gulliver learns of the immortal Struldbruggs, he imagines himself one of them:
a living Treasury of Knowledge and Wisdom
... the Oracle of the Nation ... forming and
directing the Minds of hopeful young Men, by
convincing them ... of the Usefulness of
Virtue in publick and private Life .... These
Struldbruggs and 1 would .. . remark ...
Corruption . .. and oppose it in every Step, by
giving perpetual Warning and instruction to
Mankind (210).
Not surprisingly, the labour of an immortal being, preventing "that continual Degeneracy of human Nature" (210), is equated with the task of the satirist (and the superego).
In Book Four, the land of the Houyhnhnms is depicted as a utopia where reason rules, and ironically "it is the land of another species. "'Words like "Power, Government, War, Law .. . Ceremony"
Ernest Tuveson, "Swift: The Dean as Satirist," ed. Tuveson, (346, 273) are unknown signifiers because these things do not exist
here, until Gulliver speaks of them. This is a society in which all
"Share in the Productions of the Earth" (255), yet a class system
remains and servants maintain their station. As in the Lilliputian utopian past, the Houyhnhnms display no excessive, foolish attachments/"Fondness" (373) for their young. The Houyhnhnms signify "Friendship and Benevolence ... Decency and Civility" (373). In complete contrast to the self-hating Yahoos, the Houyhnhnms "love the whole Species" (273). Marriage and procreation are strictly controlled to prevent over-population and especially "to preserve the Race from degenerating" (274), the fate of Yahoos/humanity. The Houyhnhnms, partly fashioned on Plato's idealized philosophers, are rational and virtuous. The Master "agreed entirely with the Sentiments of Socrates"
(273) concerning the preference for the study of the ethical over any examination of the material world. The Houyhnhnms symbolize the
"Apollonian" (Banks, Zil 33) in contrast to the Dionysian Yahoos.
Every four years the Houyhnhnms hold a political "Council of the whole Nation" (275) which inevitably elicits "unanimous Consent"
(175). The Master believes "Nature and Reason were sufficient guides for a reasonable Animal ... Their grand Maxim is to cultivate Reason, and to be wholly governed by it" (252, 272-3). Freud (echoing Plato) hypothesized that "the ideal condition of things would of course be a
community of men who had subordinated their instinctual life to the
dictatorship of reason ... But in all probability that is a utopian
expectetinn" (SE 33 "Why War?" 313), a conclusion which echoes
Gulliver's Travels, where civilization is seen as imperfect or corrupt.
Houyhnhnm education (as in the Lilliputian past) is provided equally to males and females, who learn "Temperance, Industry,
Exercise and Cleanliness" (375). Diametrically opposed to the filthy
Yahoos, they are "perfectly neat and cleant' (131). Like the
Brobdingnagians, the Houyhnhnms are isolated from other nations.
The idealized elements here are presented as signifiers of absence.
Among the Houyhnhnms we find no disease, no
Passion and Interest .. . Controversies,
Wranglings, Disputes and Positiveness in false
or dubious Propositions ... no ... Unchastity ...
Jealousy, Fondness, Quarrelling or Discontent
... Treachery or Inconsistency of a Friend, nor
the Injuries of a secret or open Enemy. I had
no Occasion of bribing, flattering or pimping,
to procure the Favour of any great Man, or of
his Minion. I wanted no Fence against Fraud or Oppression: Here was neither Physician to
destroy my Body, nor Lawyer to ruin my
Fortune ... No Leaders or Followers of Party
and Faction ... No Pride, Vanity or Affectation
(173-4,183-4).
The role of the superego is confirmed in the Houyhnhnms' "general
Disposition to all Virtues" (372). There is "no Example or Incitement to Vice ... no Encouragers to Vice, by Seducement or Examples" (262,
284). Gulliver, as ego, before the Master/superego "learned from his
Example an utter Detestation of all Falsehood" (262), the lesson of satire. Gulliver's determination to stay with the Houyhnhnms signifies his submission to the superego. Gulliver's secondary narcissism is evident in his "respectful Love and Gratitude, that [the Houyhnhnms] would condescend to distinguish me from the rest of my Species"
(285). Gulliver, like a child, begins to "see himself ... as others see him" (FFC 268), signalling that "the ego ideal has taken the place of the Other" (E 212). The "superego ... remains opposed to or critical of the ego" (Church 215), and "represents the ideal rather than the real, ... strives for perfection rather than pleasure ... [and] consists largely of restrictions or obstacles to the satisfaction of biological needs, particularly sexual" (Whittaker 470-1). In "The Ego and the Id," Freud wrote that the superego is linked to the character of the father (SE 19:
31, 34, 48) and is critical to the moral development of both the
individual and the species. The ego ideal does not automatically
signify an avenue of escape from primitive impulses since "the figure
of an enormously exalted father ... is so patently infantile" (CD X),as
infantile as desire for the mother. Psychoanalysis and satire both speak
in terms of a cure, having adopted the critical voice of the
superego/father.
The Master, as a purely rational being, provides a unique
perspective from which to judge mankind; unlike the King of
Brobdingnag, here we have an alien (non-human) being. The Master
notes that while Gulliver is "not altogether so deformed ... he thought I
differed for the worse" (244) in a physical comparison (with the
Yahoos) of strength, speed, etc., mirroring the assessment of the King
of Brobdingnag. To complete the satire, man is judged to be worse
than the Yahoos. While the Master cannot blame Yahoos "for their odious Qualities" (251), he does condemn human reason, fearing that
"the Corruption of that Faculty might be worse than Brutality itself"
(251). The Master concludes: "how vile as well as miserable such a
Creature must be" (285). Gulliver's description of the Yahoos echoes the assessment made by the Master; man is "the most unteachable of all Animals ... perversc, restive ... cunning, malicious, treacherous and
revengeful .... cowardly ... insolent, abject and cruel" (971). Here
satire once again employs a proliferation of negative signifiers.
In Swift's satire, a man is inevitably precluded from any purely
rational society; the Houyhnhnm Council prudently decides to banish
Gulliver since he might join forces with the Yahoos. Because Gulliver
possesses "some Rudiments of Reason, added to the natural Pravity of
those Animals, it was feared I might be able to seduce them" (287) into
rebellion. Gulliver also reveals the superego as conscience: "who can
read of the Virtues I have mentioned in the glorious Houyhnhnms,
without being ashamed of his own Vices" (300), evidence of the
powerful influence of the superego on the ego, the law of the father on
the child. With the Houyhnhnms as a model, Gulliver begins "to view
the Actions and Passions of Man in a very different Light; and to think the Honour of my own Kind not worth managing .... my Master ... daily convinced me of a thousand Faults in my self ... human Infirmities"
(162).
Freud wrote that "The ego represents what we call reason and sanity, in contrast to the id which contains the passions" (SE 19 "The
Ego and the Id" 25). In Book Four, Gulliver essentially represents the ego; the Yahoos, the forces of the id; and the Houyhnhnms are the "ego ideal" (Karpman '42, 39). Like a morality play, the ego is faced with
temptations (in the form of repressed desires) or what Swift terms our
natural corruptions. Freedman views the libidinal encounter between
Gulliver and the Yahoo girl as a psychoanalytical paradigm:
Attacked by the baser instincts ... Gulliver is
rescued by ... his conscience ... When we
move away from the protective guardianship
of conscience, the instincts ... rise and
threaten us .... the ego [is] caught between the
repugnant fascination of risen instinct and the
implacable demands of the superego
(Freedman '86, 480, 482).
In works such as New Introductory Lectures, Freud described the ego
measuring itself according to the ego ideal. In Book Four, all creatures
reject the Yahoos whom "the Weaker avoided, and the Stronger drove
from them" (245). According to Freedman, weaker creatures/egos
avoid the Yahoos (repressed desires) while stronger creatures/egos
master them. The Houyhnhnms are "idealized ... superego ... possessing all the reaction formation against the primitive animal
instincts" ("Mutual Adventures" 49), and providing "refuge from ... repugnant instinctuality" (Freedman '91, 528-9). In the Iand of the Houyhnhnms, "the positive and negative alternatives are objectified
outside the hero himself" (Swaim 161). Gulliver is trapped by the
satire into choosing between Yahoo and Houyhnhnrn.
The superego may initiate "reaction-formations, or counter-
forces, such as shame, disgust and morality" (SE 9 "Character and Anal
Erotism" 171). Gulliver's choice of the Houyhnhnms as a role model is
an impossible one. Humanity would be even more narcissistic than it
is (if this were possible) to believe it could emulate a race of perfectly
rational beings by sacrificing its instincts. In a comment Swift
undoubtedly would have enjoyed, Freud concluded: "it almost seems
as if the creation of a great human community would be most
successful if no attention had to be paid to the happiness of the
individual" (CD 87). The problem faced by society, and the error of a
severe superego is that "the id cannot be controlled beyond certain
liprits" (CD 90). Freud questioned whether the superego would ever
help the ego master the instincts or whether it was destined to fail
because its demands are a source of individual frustration and unhappiness. For Lacan, "this idol, the super-ego is essentially located within the symbolic plane of speecht' (Sem. 1, 102). His use of the word "idol" is not accidental, as Freudian psychoanalysis equates religion with the superego, the law of the father internalized. The Brobdingnagians, while being Yahoos (human), are "the least corrupted" (301). In Swift's satirical mirror, the Brobdingnagian reflection shows us that we could have progressed morally and socially, without forfeiting our humanity or our sanity. Gulliver, having found gods of reason to venerate, no longer accepts that "G-d created man in his own image" (Gen. 1, 17). Gulliver wishes the Houyhnhnms would civilize Europe, teaching "Principles of Honour, Justice, Truth,
Temperance, Publick Spirit, Fortitude, Chastity, Friendship,
Benevolence and Fidelity" (307,),goals of satire and the superego.
Swift knew that finding such teachers would be, at the least, highly improbable, a conclusion shared by Freud:
All is well if these leaders are persons who
possess superior insight into the necessities of
life and who have risen to the height of
mastering their own instinctual wishes ... It
may be asked where the number of superior,
unswerving and disinterested leaders are to
come from who are to act as educators of the
future generations (FI 8). Freud wrote that those "forces which, operating from the ego,
bring about the restriction and repression of instinct owe their origin
essentially to compliance with the demands of civilization" (SE 13
"Scientific Interest in Psychoanalysis" 188). As a result, "every
individual is virtually an enemy of civilization" (N6). Having examined the period following the Industrial Revolution, Freud concluded that "the masses are lazy and unintelligent; they have no love for instinctual renunciation ... an appallingly large number of people are dissatisfied with civilization and unhappy in it, and feel it is a yoke" (FI 7, 37). In the reference to lazy masses, Freud may be evincing middle class attitudes towards a lower class almost depicted like the id itself. Class differences here also reflect precedents in
Plato's Republic.
Gulliver speaks with the voice of the satirist (superego) when he reveals that many Englishmen (such as his crew) "are compelled to seek their Livelihood by Begging, Robbing, Stealing, Cheating, [and]
.. . Poysoning" (756). Gulliver (as satirist) sarcastically describes the predatory political machinations of colonizing European nations like
England, which employs "so pious an Expedition ... to convert and civilize an idolatrous and barbarous People [who] do not appear to have a Desire of being conquered, and enslaved, murdered or driven out" (303). Satire, like law, politics, etc. involves linguistic manipulation
(such as reversing the signification of pious) but its purpose is to
reveal, rather than to conceal, the truth.
As satirist, Gulliver claims that he wrote for "the public Good ... to inform and instruct Mankind" (300-301), to end "all Abuses and
Corruptions" (xxxvi), and to aid in "reforming the Yahoo Race"
(xxxix). While satire may produce a salutary effect (as punishment or through the revelation of what was hidden or repressed), Gulliver's naive optimism becomes satiric material for Swift. The reader's potential improvement is a concept which would undermine the validity of the satirical argument that man is incorrigible. In A Tole of a Tub the author extols any "Philosopher or Projector [who] can find out an
Art to sodder and patch up the Flaws and Imperfections of [human]
Nature" (WJS 352). While Gulliver might put himself in such a role,
Swift knew better.
The Castration Complex
In Lilliput there are a number of incidents which may signify castration. The King's grandfather "happened to cut one of his Fingers"
(35) when breaking the large end of an egg, which led to a law forbidding the breaking of the large end, and to religious civil war. A Lilliputian arrow narrowly misses Gulliver's eye. "The fear of blinding and eye injury ... is ... a displacement of castration fear" (Freedman '84,
554). Blinding is "an Oedipal sentence" (Seidel 114) which Gulliver fears. When arrows are fired at Gulliver, his "greatest Apprehension was for mine Eyes which I should have infallibly lost" (38). To protect
Gulliver from being executed by fire or poison, Reldressal, Gulliver's friend, suggests that "to put out both your Eyes" (57) would prove "a sufficient punishment" (Ross 75). The description is coldly graphic.
Surgeons would "attend in order to see the Operation well performed, by discharging very sharp pointed Arrows into the Balls of your Eyes"
(59-60). The use of the word "Balls" reinforces the sense of castration anxiety.
In Book Two, Gulliver becomes associated with the phallus, and is threatened with fragmentation or death. Cutting the body may signify castration, according to Freudian psychoanalysis, with the giant
"Monsters ... with Reaping-Hooks" (76) in the role of castrating fathers. Gulliver's fears of becoming "a Morsel in the Mouth" (77) of a
Brobdingnagian, being eaten by a baby or by rats, or of being clawed by the cat, are all related to castration fears (fragmentation) which culminate in the "castrative Brobdingnagian beheading" (Freedman '84,
556-6): The Malefactor was fixed in a Chair upon a
Scaffold erected for the Purpose; and his Head
cut off at one Blow with a Sword of about
forty Foot long. The Veins and Arteries
spouted up such a prodigious Quantity of
Blood, and so high in the Air [like] the great
Jet d%au at Versuilles (1 11).
The head fell with a bounce and deafening sound. The fear of castration underlies the horrifying description, where blood is spurted or ejaculated. The use of the word "erected" is also significant.
In Book Three, as previously noted, language itself is fragmentedkastrated in the schemes to simplify, reduce or negate it.
In Book Four, it is ironic that Gulliver "planted the idea of castration" (Wyrick 181) when he explained to the Master "the Manner and Use of Castrating Horses" (244). Male horses to be employed for
"riding or draught, were generally castrated about two Years after
Birth, to take down their Spirits, and make them more tame and gentle"
(244). In Brobdingnag, Gulliver had also been described as a "Creature
... tame and gentle" (87). The word "tame" is an interesting signifier, suggesting that which is civilized, domesticated or castrated. In the world of nature, the tame animal is no match for his feral counterpart. Although the King of Brobdingnag wished to breed humans, Gulliver
feared "leaving a Posterity to be kept in Cages like tame Canary Birds"
(134). Gulliver also compares his relationship with the Yahoos to "a
tame Jack Daw ... always persecuted by the wild ones" (270),
signifying the danger of the primitive overwhelming the civilized; the
id, the ego. In the Houyhnhnm ruling Council, the only debate held was "whether the Yahoos should be exterminated from the Face of the
Earth" (777). The Houyhnhnms had originally encircled the Yahoo herd, "destroying the Older" (277) ones, and reducing the "young Ones
... to a Degree of Tameness" (278). The Master suggests an ideal
(rational) method for controlling Yahoos, castration, which "Besides rendering them tractable and fitter for Use, would in an Age put an End to the whole Species without destroying Lifet*(279). The Yahoos are replaceable; the Houyhnhnms had "neglected to cultivate the Breed of
Asses, which were a c~nelyAnimal ... more tame [and] ... without any offensive Smell" (278). Genocide becomes the rational solution to the problem of mankind. Genital or libidinal control (essential for socialization) is signified by the threat of castration.
The "castration complex is of profoundest importance in the formation alike of character and of neurosis" (SE 20 "An
Autobiographical Studyt' 37). When successful, the castration complex "shatters the Oedipus complex ... [and] institutes the superego,"'
through the imaginary "sacrifice ... of its symbol, the phallus"
(Benvenuto, Kennedy 180). Freud notes that "The superior being
which turned into the ego ideal, once threatened castration, and this
dread of castration is probably the nucleus around which the
subsequent fear of conscience has gathered .... The ego is the actual
seat of anxiety1' (SE 19 "The Ego and the Id1' 57). Under the threat of
castration, the desired death of the father (and its attendant guilt), like
Oedipal desire itself, is repressed (not destroyed). Ironically even
"conscience uses the power of the aggressive instinct to do its work"
(Deigh 302). Lacan stated that "the Name-of-the-father sustains the
structure of desire with the structure of the law" (FFC 34) substituting
"for ~esire-of-the- other."' Apparently, "the incest taboo ... has the
universality of ... instinct, and the coercive character of law" (J.S. Lee
61). The process of civilization necessitates the successful completion
of the Oedipus complex through the agency of "primordial law ... that
Juliet Mitchell and Jacqueline Rose, Feminine Sexuality:
Jacques Lucan and the Ecole Freudienne, trans. Jacqueline Rose (NY
& London: W.W. Norton, 1982) 14. John P. Muller, "Language, Psychosis and the Subject, in
Lacan," eds. Smith, Kerrigan, 23. castration should be the punishment for incest" (E 181), castration
originally threatened by the "obscene, ferocious figure of the
primordial father" (E 167) of Freud's Totent and Taboo. "The tensions
between the harsh super-ego and the egot' (CD 70), in extreme cases,
may entail "killing off the instincts" (CD 26) signified by the
Houyhnhnms castrating Yahoos. Perhaps due (in part) to castration
anxiety, Gulliver must reject his species, by identifying with the
Houyhnhnms or agents of castration, the superego: "Just as the father
has become depersonalized in the shape of the superego, so has the fear of castration become transformed into an undefined social or moral anxiety" ("Inhibitions, Symptoms and Anxiety" 28). Castration is revealed to be a complex signifier of the father/power/law, narcissistic fears of fragmentation, the repression of desire, and linguistic control.
Lacan echoes anthropologists like Claude Levi-Strauss in viewing the control of sexual relationships as the foundation upon
"which human societies are based" (E 142). This process "signifies the socialization of the child, the acquisition of the language, law, and culture whereby the individual becomes human ... The subordination of desire to law and language is the locus of primal repression" (Casey,
Woody 85). The paternal 'no' "enjoins us to substitute for the imaginary phallus, the symbolic phallus" (Borch-Jacobsen 219), i.e. conscious language signifiers for unconscious ones. "Primordial law is clearly enough identical with an order of language" (E 66). Castration
"marks human discourse and human desire with a lack" (Vergote 114).
Lacan echoes Freud in stating that "The fear of mutilation is like a thread that perforates all the stages of development. It orientates the relations that are anterior to its actual appearance - weaning, toilet training, etc." (FFC 64). Lacan links "castration, mutiliation [and] .. . devouring ... [as] inlagos of the fragmented body" (E 1 I), primordial fears traced back to birth, man's "original splitting (d6chirenzent)" (E
28). Case studies and dream analyses suggest that the "fear of castration and mutilation ... is apparently even greater in the unconscious than the dread of death" (Ferenczi 48). Lacan agrees:
"the fear of death ... is psychologically subordinate LO the narcissistic fear of damage to one's own body" (E 28). Anxiety is a signifier of
"the linguistic unconscious" (Kerrigan xx); castration accounts for
Lacan's "master trope for subjectivity: the wound" (Kerrigan xix).
Lacan unites elements from anthropology (incest taboos), psychoanalysis (the Oedipus complex and the superego), and linguistics
(the signifying chain). Swift appreciated the role of castration, which in Gulliver's Travels becomes an overt paternal threat to the ego to maintain its control over the instincts. The Mirror of Misanthropy
For Swift's satire to bc most effective, Gulliver, the lover of
mankind, had to become a misanthropist. He becomes the exaggerated
and humorous messenger and message of the satire, that to see man as
he really is must lead to madness and/or misanthropy. Swift faced an
enormous challenge in creating a universal satire capable of
undermining the irrepressible narcissism of mortal man who views
himself: "like a god! the beauty of the world! the paragon of animals
(Hamlet, 2: 2, 399). Religion and art may be catering to narcissism in
depicting man as "the Human Form ~ivine."' In Gulliver's Travels,
Swift appropriates the mirror, or signifier of narcissism, to reflect the
satiric images of man: insect, infant, beast, madman and anal sadistic
Yahoo. The first stage of the satiric progression involves the
diminution of human pride, the "absurd Vice" (305) of man and Yahoo.
The mirror of vanity (distortion) is transformed by satire into that of
knowledge (clarity); satire holds up "a glass where you may see the
inmost part of you" (Hamlet 3:4, 19-20).
William Blake, "A Divine Image," The Complete Writings of
William Blake, ed. Geoffrey Keynes (London, NY & Toronto: Oxford
UP 1966) 221. In Brobdingnag, Gulliver (in retrospect) realizes that man is a
Lilliputian (physically insignificant, narcissistic and aggressive). Man does not fare well when compared with the "prodigious Race" (77) of
Brobdingnagians. Gulliver/man is drastically reduced to the level of "a
Weasel" (77), a "little hateful Animal" (78), "a Toad or Spider" (79), "a
Play-thing" (81), "an Embrio or abortive Birth" (95), "a diminutive
Insect" (98), "a Frog or young Puppy" (134) and a baby monkey.
Gulliver's self-esteem is relentlessly diminished in Brobdingnag, where he is to be displayed "as a Sight" (87), a freak or "Monster" (88).
After Gulliver's heroic battle, the maid removes the monster-sized
"dead Rat with a Pair of Tongs" (84). When Gulliver sails in a trough, to display English seamanship, the wind is provided by Brobdingnagian breath, fans create gales, and afterwards the ship is "hung ... on a Nail to dry" (113).
Particuiarly destructive to Gulliver's narcissism is his mirror reflection beside the Queen: "there could nothing be more ridiculous than the Comparison: So that I really began to imagine my self dwindled many Degrees below my usual Size" (99). The mirror of satire is literalized here. In A Tale of a Tub, the author wrote "How shrunk is every Thing as it appears in the Glass of Nature" (WJS 351).
Gulliver later admits: "I could never endure to look in a Glass after mine Eyes had been accustomed to such prodigious Objects; because
the Comparison gave me so despicable a Conceit of my self" (143).
Here, the mirror signifies self-reflection or introspection. The use of
the word "Conceit" is highly ironical, considering the underlying
narcissism.
In Book Three, Gulliver's alienation increases as he is subject to
endless examples of human irrationality, impracticality, aggression and
narcissism. Doctors, scientists, philosophers, and professors are all
depicted as Bedlamites. History itself becomes a reflection which
confirms the pettiness and degeneration of the present, that injustice
triumphs, and that the virtuous are destroyed. The historical review is
illuminating for Gulliver, since "from it one can understand what has been lost or gained and the direction in which one is going" (Bloom
656), backwards. He reacts by becoming "chiefly disgusted with modern History ... how much the Race of human Kind was degenerate"
(199, 202). Gulliver, schooled by satire, discovers that reason can easily become perverted; and human effort, ineffectual. Human pride is relentlessly eviscerated by the satire. It is in Book Four that Gulliver undergoes "a growing sense of
misanthropy,"' the natural state of Yahoos who "hate one another more
than they did any different Species of Animals" (264). Ironically,
Gulliver's rejection of his own species identifies him as a Yahoo.
Gulliver reacts strongly to the Yahoos: "so disagreeable an Animal ...
against which I naturally conceived so strong an Antipathy ... Contempt
and Aversion ... an odious Animal for which I had so utter an Hatred
and Contempt" (726, 139). To Gulliver's "everlasting Mortificationt'
(731), the Master labels him a Yahoo, "a brute in human shape"
(Cadenus and Vanessa, " Rogers 1.40: 13 1). Gulliver's "Horror and
Astonishment are not to be described, when I observed, in this
abominable Animal, a perfect human Figure" (232). The primitive
beast becomes a mirror reflection of man. Gulliver relates the Master's
observation that all animals "abhor the Yahoos ... the natural Antipathy
which every Creature discovered against us" (245). They has become
us. Ironically, Gulliver's hatred identifies him as one of them; Yahoos
hate themselves even more than others do. In Gulliver's account of the
wars against Louis XIV, he refers to Europeans as "Yahoos" (248),
- Bernie Selinger," Gulliver's Travels: Swift's Version of Identity
Formation," Mosaic: A Journal for the Interdisciplinary Study of
Literature 17.3 (Summer 1984): 13. interchangeable signifiers. The Yahoos as well "had some Imagination that I was of their own Species ... they ... imitate my Actions after the
Manner of Monkeys" (170),which perhaps justifies the Houyhnhnms'
fear that the Yahoos may follow Gulliver in a general rebellion.
Gulliver's hatred for the Yahoos is extended to humanity. The
Houyhnhnms, Yahoos and Gulliver all recognize man as Yahoo. The satiric strategy is successful; the logic, inexorable: the Yahoos are hateful, and we are the Yahoos.
Since Gulliver "ought to have understood human Nature much better than .. my Master ... it was easy to apply the Character he gave of the Yahoos to myself and my Countrymen" (270). Gulliver is overwhelmed by the "resemblances in which Yahoo and man mirror each other" (Hinnant 75). The "execrable Yahoos" (240) signify
Gulliverts "misanthropic disgust with the human race" (Karpman '49,
170). As a final proof of human vanity, Gulliver's "attempt to escape his own human nature ... in favour of the equine ideal ... renders him misanthropic" (Swaim 197). He has learned to hate the human image; catching "the Reflection of my own Face in a Lake or Fountain, I turned away my Face in Horror and Detestation of my self" (286), since "mirrors reflect the human form he has now rejected" (Fox 26).
Gulliver desperately proclaims his "detestation of the Yahoo Race ... Antipathy against human kind ... Hatred and Contempt" (293, 296,
297). As in Brobdingnag, "to avoid the glass, as Gulliver so long tries
to do, is to suppress ... self-knowledge" (Carnochan 140), Gulliver's
problem, not Swift's.
"In all literature, Book Four of Gulliver's Travels describes one
of the most extraordinary personality changcs and the resulting end-
stage of the disturbed personality" (Banks, Zil 31). Of course, as stated
earlier, Gulliver is not a character in the traditional sense but a tool of
satire. However, as Everyman, Gulliver is treated as having a
personality when it suits Swift's satirical purposes. Freud wrote that
"permanent character-traits [may be] reaction-formations" (SE 9
"Character and Anal Erotism" 175) to earlier instincts. One of the
vicissitudes entails "reversal into its opposite ... found in the single
instance of the change of love into hate" (SE 14 "Instincts and their
Vicissitudes" 77), or narcissism into "self-hatred, .. . raging misanthropy" (Freedman '9 1, 533-4).
Back in England, Gulliver's family "filled me only with Hatred,
Disgust and Contempt .... by copulating with one of the Yahoo-
Species, I had become a Parent of more; it struck me with the utmost
Shame, Confusion and Horror" (298). Gulliver's over-reaction indicates that he is rejecting more than social relationships and human instinct; hc (like the Houyhnhnrn Master) may be prepared to see the
end of the human race's propagation. The linking of "copulating" and
"Shame" suggests the ego's reaction to the superego. Gulliver's
"Confusion" is due to the shocking reminder of his Yahoo nature,
which is also attested to by his strong emotions: "Hatred, Disgust."
Hc has of course failed to become a reflection of Houyhnhnm
rationality: "The very extremity of Gulliver's conduct emphasizes the
hopeless distance between ... human beings and rational creatures,"' the
message of the satirist. Embraced by his wife, "that odious Animal ... I
fell in a Swoon" (198). Perhaps the memory of the Yahoo girl's
lascivious attentions is still too fresh. "During the first Year I could
not endure my Wife or Children in my Presence, the very Smell of
them was intolerable; much less could 1 suffer them to eat in the same
Room" (298). The importance of the sense of smell must be
emphasized. It is a primitive method of identification (employed by
many species) and constitutes a powerful link to memories. It may also
suggest the smell of human excrementality, which Gulliver rejects
along with human sexuality.
Conrad Suits, "The Role of the Horses in 'A Voyage to the
Houyhnhnms, " University of Toronto Quarterly 34 (1 965): 129. A "tendency arises to separate from the ego everything that can
become a source of ... unpleasure" (CD 15), even to the point of
detaching "itself from the external world" (CD 15), as Gulliver desires.
Gulliver's conclusion is Swift's: "when I behold a Lump of Deformity,
and Diseases both in Body and Mind, smitten with Pride, it
immediately breaks all the Measures of my Patience; neither shall I
ever be able to comprehend how such an Animal and such a Vice could
tally together" (304). At the end of the book, Gulliver employs the
mirror in a kind of aversion therapy. He would "behold my Figure
often in a Glass and thus if possible habituate my self by Time to
tolerate the Sight of a human Creature" (304). The irony is exquisite;
misanthropic man, like his narcissistic counterpart, is glued in front of
the mirror. The fact that Gulliver's own reflection is less painful to
him than the sight of other Yahoos reveals that he remains narcissistic.
Satire and psychoanalysis affirm the "truth discovered by Freud
.... [concerning] the self s radical ex-centricity to itself" (E 171).
According to Lacan, "the human individual fixes upon himself an image that alienates him from himself" (E 19). Man becomes "a subject always split and fading from itself in self-division" (Casey,
Woody 88). Lacan alludes to Rimbaud's "Je est un autre" (J.S. Lee
28), i.e. "'I is an other', an observation that is less astonishing to the intuition of the poet than obvious to the gaze of the psychoanalyst" (E
137). For Lacan, "It is in the disintegration of the imaginary unity
constituted by the ego that the subject finds the signifying material of
his symptoms" (E 137), in the unconscious. Psychoanalytically, the
mirror can serve misanthropy as readily as narcissism; as in satire, it is
a two-edged sword. In misanthropy, as "in melancholia, the object to
which the super-ego's wrath applies has been taken into the ego
through identification" (SE 19 "The Ego and the Id" 51), like the
Yahocs and Gulliver.
Neuroses and Madness
The conflict between personal needs and social restrictions has
led to "increasing nervous illness" (SE 9 "'Civilized' Sexual Morality and Modern Nervous Illness" 183), for which Freud largely blamed society: "we cannot fail to be struck by the similarity between the process of civilization and the libidinal development of the individual"
(CD 44). Freud arrived at the thought-provoking conclusion that a
"child cannot successfully complete its development to the civilized stage without passing through a phase of neurosis" (FI 42), due to the conflict between the pleasure principle and the need to control the instincts in order to satisfy the demands of civilization: One might assume, humanity as a whole. ...
through the ages, fell into states analogous to
the neuroses .... under the influence of cultural
urges, some civilizations, or some epochs of
civilization - possibly the whole of mankind
- have become neurotic (FI 43, CD 91).
Both Freud and Lacan questioned whether "mankind will surmount this
neurotic phase" (FI 44). For Lacan, "not only can man's being not be
understood without madness, it would not be man's being if it did not
bear madness within itself as the limit of his freedom" (E 115).
According to Lacan, the greatest alienation is "the alienation of
madness .... the problem lies not in the reality that is lost, but in that
which takes its place" (E 71, 188-9). Our heritage, apparently, is a
combination of the primitive, the infantile, and the neurotic.
"For Swift, madness is a deliberate perversion of rational
faculties."' A recurring figure in Swift's works is "the man gone crazy
with too much reason" (Byrd 82), like Gulliver. In an age which
professed reason and restraint as social necessities, excessive
Michael V. Deporte, Nightmares and Hobbyhorses: Swift,
Sterne and Augustan Ideas of Madness (San Marino: Huntington
Library, 1974) 65. passion/irnagination was suspect, as were irrationality, hysteria,
melancholia, obsession and misanthropy. Gulliver exhibits a number of
these disorders. In "The Mechanical Operation of the Spirit" we are
told that when "the Reasoning Faculties are all suspended and
superseded [we will find] that Imagination hath usurped the Seat,
scattering a thousand Deliriums over the Brain" (WJS 405). Society,
fearing madness as a threat to its image of rationality, segregated
(locked up) those perceived as mad. According to Foucault (and
Lacan), madness may reveal itself in alterations to the normal
"structure of a discourse ... the silent language by which the mind
speaks to itself."' Swift visited Bedlam, where one could "observe
madmen first hand ... [and later] was made a governor of the hospital"
(Deporte 56). The inmates of Bedlam became the source of many of
Swift's satirical reflections in keeping with "the associations that the
Augustans habitually attached to madness ... bestiality, disorder,
excrement" (Byrd 79),the qualities of Yahoos (the id). "In Swift's era
madness was commonly defined as extreme subjectivity, as imagination
beyond control of reason. One of the symptoms - and perhaps its
' Michel Foucault, Madness and Civilization: A History of
Insanity in the Age of Reason (London: Tavistock Publications, 1967)
100. cause - was seen to be pride."' Hobbes believed excessive pride led
to melancholia (Deporte 14). In Swift's satires, pride often serves as a
catalyst to separate reason from common sense; it tilts "the mind off
balance and makes a man mad" (Byrd 83).
There are numerous references to madness in Swift's works,
primarily through the satiric "equation of madness with folly" (Deporte
55). In "Cassinus and Peter," Cassinus relates "how I lost my Wits"
(Rogers 466), upon learning of his lover's excrementality. Like
Gulliver, he treads the excremental path to madness. Swift's "The
Legion Club" also presents "society as madhouse" (Byrd 81).
Eighteenth-century asylums "regarded the insane as minors ... madness
is childhood" (Foucault 252), in that inmates evinced a total lack of
self-restraint. In A Tale of a Tub, Swift described a Bedlamite
"foaming at the Mouth, and emptying his Piss-Pot in the Spectators'
Faces" (WJS 353). If the great men of the past were alive in his time,
Swift claims they would (like madmen) "incur manifest danger of
Phlebotomy, and Whips, and Chains, and dark Chambers, and Straw ...
Bread and Water" (WJS 348-9). In the chapter entitled "A Digression
concerning the Original, the Use, and Improvement of Madness in a
Frederik N. Smith, Language and Reality in Swift's "A Tale of a
Tub" (Columbus: Ohio State UP, 1979) 95. Commonwealth," Swift employs a horseriding metaphor to describe the
initiation of madness: "when a Man's Fancy gets astride on his Reason"
(WJS 350). The metaphor would seem to suggest the horse mounting
the rider, or an inverted image of a Centaur. "Reason [is] a very light
Rider, and easily shook off" (WJS 355). In "A Meditation upon a
Broom-stick" (1703), man is compared to a broom, "A topsy-turvy
Creature, his animal Faculties perpetually mounted on his Rational"
(WJS 431). Echoing Plato, Freud compared "the ego's relation to the id
... with that of a rider to his horse."' The "man on horse-back ... has
to hold in check the superior strength of the horse" (SE 19 "The Ego
and the Id" 25). Lacan wrote that "a madman is precisely someone
who adheres to the imagery, pure and simple" (Sent. 2, 243) suggesting
the total corruption of the ego by the id, the horse riding the man.
A key symptom of madness for Swift (and Lacan) is the
breakdown of language. Swift's major satirical works attest to his
fascination with madness as a structural and thematic device. Swift
notes that society perceives the individual's deviation from normal
discourse to signify madness. In A Tale of a Tub, one inmate of
Bedlam is occupied with "Swearing and Blaspheming" (WJS 353), a
I Sigmund Freud, New htroductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis
(1933), transl. James Strachey (NY:W.W. Norton, 1965) 77. second is "talking, sputtering, gaping, bawling" (WJS 353), and a third, engaged in "Conversations with himself ... has forgot the common
Meaning of Words, but [is] an admirable Retainer of the Sound " (WJS
354). The satire reveals how these Bedlamites mirror/parody their sane counterparts: the soldier, lawyer and courtier. For Swift, the madman is a perfect satirical persona. As in Gulliver's Travels, the satire equates those inside with those outside of Bedlam. Peter is described as one of "those who run mad out of Pride" (WJS 373); he suffers from
"mad Fits" (WJS 395). Jack, "mad with Spleen, and Spight, and
Contradiction .... had run out of his Wits ... falling into the oddest
Whimsies that ever a sick Brain conceived" (WJS 336). Upon hearing any music, Jack (a Quaker) "would run Dog-mad" (WJS 364). To complete the satire, Swift chooses "to deliver himself through the mind of a madman" (F.N.Smith 98) who had "left Bedlam before he was fully cured" (Deporte 69); the author "had some Time the Happiness to be an unworthy Member" (WJS 353) of that institution. A Tale of a
Tub was "Written for the Universal Improvement of Mankind" (WJS
363), the mad project of the satirist, here and in Gulliver's Travels.
In "The Battel of the Books," there are several references to madness. The Spider, the signifier of the Moderns, "stormed and swore like a Mad-man" (WJS 382), while "Spleen ... half over-turned [Wotton's] ... Brain" (WJS 388). Gondibert is also called a "Madman"
(WJS 388) for his injudicious challenging of Homer to engage in personal combat.
There are many references to madness throughout the Travels.
When Gulliver is rescued at the end of Book One, his improbable tales of Lilliput convinced Captain Biddle "I was raving and that the
Dangers I underwent had disturbed my Head" (67). After the trip to
Brobdingnag, Gulliver is rescued by a passing ship. Gulliver's request that one of the sailors lift up Gulliver's room-sized box with his finger, convinced the crew "I was mad" (139). The Captain "concluded I was raving" (139), that "my Brain was disturbed" (141). Here again, fabulous tales and altered perception are mistaken for madness. In
England, Gulliver, seeing himself as a giant and fearing to trample on people, "behaved my self so unaccountably" (145), that his family
"concluded I had lost my Wits" (145). Rationalizing, Gulliver attributes his reactions to "the great Power of Habit and Prejudice"
(145), or what psychoanalysts would call conditioning.
In Book Three, "the voyage is a digression on madness, on the divorce of man and good sense in the modern world" (Monk 640). The
Laputans are limited to abstract thoughts which are divorced from any practical application. The Lagadians however are the engineers, divorced from abstract reasoning and especially from common sense.
They are worse than the Laputan scientists since their practical effects are highly destructive. The Royal Society which "symbolized the absurdities and excesses inherent in projecting ... becomes the Grand
Academy of Lagado, the insane high point of Gulliver's third voyage
... where fixed ideas of scientific progress havc driven everyone mad ... another scene of Bedlam" (Byrd 83).
When Gulliver sets off, in Book Four, as Captain of the
Adventure, he relates that "several Men died in my Ship of Calentures"
(1,23), the sailors' madness, tropical fevers accompanied by delirium
(Carnochan 157). The voyage, which begins with Gulliver witnessing madness in his crew, will end in his own. In the land of the
Houyhnhnms, Gulliver enters a house to find that the servants of the house were horses: "I feared my Brain was disturbed by my Sufferings and Misfortunes" (331). Aboard ship, on his journey back to England,
Gulliver's misanthropic behaviour startles the crew, who "all conjectured that my Misfortunes had impaired my Reason" (294) His transformation is complete; Gulliver, "attempting to live a life of pure reason ... loses it altogether" (Fox 28). The "madman is given just enough presence of mind to record the process of his own lunacy"
(Seidel 219). Gulliver's final acceptance that Yahoo (Other) is man (self) "renders him mindless" (Seidel 704). "In obsessional neurosis ....
love-impulses ... transform themselves into impulses of aggression
against thc object" (SE 19 "The Ego and the idt' 37, 53), and for
Gulliver that object is self/man. Gulliver (like Oedipus) has searched
outwards for knowledge only to learn that the secret message (the
signifier for man) is within, that the Other is the self. I'A neurosis ... is
in itself ... the result of an alienation from self."' Gulliver's madness is
contrasted to the Yahoos who, having abandoned civilization, arc at
one with nature; they give free reign to their desires (instincts),
avoiding neuroses. Swift ironically depicted Gulliver as more neurotic
than the Yahoos, an inspired concept.
"When Gulliver returns to England he is insane" (Banks, Zil 32).
Gulliver cannot "suffer a Neighbour Yahoo in my Company without the
Apprehensions I am yet under of his Teeth or Claws" (304). Gulliver's
paranoid delusion of teeth and claws indicates that a displacement has
occurred. The civilized English Yahoos are perceived as a
physical/animal threat, leaving Gulliver open to other (non-physical)
types of aggression. In Swift's view, "violence is a kind of madness:
it is inherently perverse" (Steele 120). The madness of European
------I Karen Horney, New Ways in Psychoanalysis (NY: W.W. Norton,
1939) 189. Yahoos is far more dangerous than Gulliver's "madness" (Freedman '86,
478) which like that of the author of A Tale of a Tub, adds to the satire; we are a mad (and a maddening) species.
Gulliver, "by forfeiting his humanity" (Quintana 163), repeats the pattern of the degenerated Yahoos. Through his language and mannerisms, Gulliver becomes "a madman who declares himself a horse" (Byrd 84), a delusional identity: "I fell to imitate their Gait and
Gesture, which is now grown into a Habit ... I trot like a Horse [and] fall into the Voice and Manner of the Houyhnhnnrs" (186). In the Laws of Non Conzpos Mentis (1700), John Brydall listed as madmen those who "hiss like a Goose, or bark like a Dog" (Deporte 81). Gulliver is
"like all Augustan madmen; they resemble animals" (Byrd 86).
Eighteenth-century readers undoubtedly recognized this as the aberrant behaviour of Bedlam. According to Lacan, the language of the madman "has given up trying to make itself recognized" (E 68); language becomes "solipsistic ... without regard for the intersubjective dialectic of speech" (J.S. Lee 68). The neurotic is "driven ... towards aims which are essentially alien to him .... certain neurotic types seem to adhere to particularly rigid and high moral standards" (Homey 189,
207). Gulliver's expectation that "seven Months were a suzficient Time to correct every Vice and Folly to which Yahoos are subject" (xxxvii) is as nrad as the schemes to "plan Societies in which the virtuous shall
govern and merit shall be the sole basis for reward" (Deporte 94).
Gulliver ironically had concluded that these "political Projectors ...
appear in my Judgment wholly out of their Senses" (187). Political
idealism is satirized as totally "irrational" (187), the mad attempt to
remedy the human situation, like Gulliver at the end of the Travels, and
the satirist in general. In "The Life and Genuine Character of Dr.
Swift," Swift wrote:
'Tis plain, his writings were designed
To please, and to reform mankind
... [but] he often missed his aim
(Rogers 11.197-9: 485).
Unlike Gulliver, Swift can toy with the role of satirist. In The Scourge of Villanie, Marston questions: "Is not he bedlam mad ... that melts his
very braine/ In deep designes .... Playing the rough part of a Satyrist?"
(x, 10-14: 163). The author of A Tale of n Tub was "entirely satisfied
with the whole present Procedure of human Things" (WJS 291), the
ultimate madness to, or in, a satirist. Chapter Six
A CRITICAL RE-EVALUATION
The "history of Swiftian criticism, like the history of
psychoanalysis, shows that repression weighs more heavily on anality
than on genitality" (Brown 31). Critical reactions ranging from the
exaggerated to the hysterical, confirm that anality "is the most
repressed aspect of human sexuaiity."' A growing number of critics
have begun to question the underlying critical and psychoanalytical
assumptions held by those who questioned Swift's character or sanity.
The cure that Doctor Gulliver (and Swift) prescribes for spleen and
pride, swallowing the truth of our anal natures, provides too bitter a
medication for critics like Karpman who reject it with loathing, like the
students and their wafers in Book Three; we may be pictured as
primitive and hateful, but never as excremental creatures. Karpman's
own anal repression is evident in the hysterical, almost obsessive use of
the diction he employed. Paradoxically, "a repressed image or thought
can make its way into consciousness on condition that it is denied ....
Unconscious truth often appears unacceptable" (Sarup 76, 96). The
author of A Tale of a Tub wonders at critics who should be avoiding
1 Nora Crow Jaffe, The Poet Swift (Hanover, New Hampshire: UP of New England, 1977) 113-4. excrement in their path rather than "tasting it" (WJS 311). They
"nibble at the Superfluities and Excrescencies of Books" (WJS 314).
Such critics have concluded that "The Yahoos should seem to represent all that part of himself which Swift loathed" (Karpman '43, 39), i.e. that the Yahoos merely reflect Swift, rather than accepting that "the fault is in mankind" ("Verses on the Death of Doctor Swift," Rogers
485).
In "The Excremental Vision," Norman 0.Brown takes exception to the vitriolic attacks which questioned Swift's sanity. Brown's focus is primarily on the anal elements in Swift's scatological poems. Brown employs psychoanalytical insights into repression and sublimation, in order to refute the simplistic and fallacious diagnoses of Huxley,
Murray, etc. concerning Swift's alleged progressive mental degeneration; scatology is recognized as a valid satirical technique, not proof of the author's neuroses. According to Brown, Swift's
"excremental vision of the Yahoo is substantially identical with the psychoanalytical doctrine of the extensive role of anal erotism in the formation of human culture" (43). Brown concludes that the powerful influence of the anal stage on subsequent behaviour supports the psychoanalytical "impression that there is no aspect of culture uncontaminated by connections with anality. Swift leaves us with the
same impression" (52).
The use of "Scatology seems to intensify ... satire ... and
certainly does not degrade the work .... the artistic purpose [is] served
by the device" (J.N.Lee 21-13). To expose "man in his egotistical
pride ... scatology becomes a legitimate satirical device for pointing
out the physical basis upon which the human ego rests."' Satire
concerns itself with "animal functions ... eating, drinking, ...
evacuatingtr (Kerman 11). Jaffe also comments on anality and the
"reductive potential of the metaphor, its capacity for humbling pride
and undermining flimsy social distinctions .. . . the human tendency to
repress and deny anality makes its exposure particularly shocking
and particularly effective in satire" (113-4). The satirist presents
"a distorted image, and the reader is to be shocked into the realization
that the image is his own. Exaggeration of the most extreme kind
is central to the shock tactics."' In Swift's "extraordinary,
complicated set of mirrors" (Quintana 53), the excremental Yahoo is
I Samuel Kliger, "The Unity of Guiulliver's Travels," ed. Foster,
165. ' A.E. Dyson, "Swift: The Metamorphosis of Irony," WJS 673. a reflection of Gulliver, and he is a reflection of us. Signifiers slide
into one another.
According to Carole Fabricant, "excrement ... was very much a
fact of life for Swift; his landscape was literally as well as
linguistically full of it" (30). Siebert concurs: "the smell of feces and
urine must have been pervasive in eighteenth-century life: no privy,
cesspit, or pot would be able to contain it."' Human excrement
mingled with horse and cow droppings in streets and laneways. Swift
makes frequent allusion to the unsanitary conditions in European cities
in his poetry and in A Tale of a Tub: "Steams from Dunghils ... Fumes
issuing from a Jakes" (WJS 346). In such an environment, Swift's
excremental signifier (like the excrement) became ubiquitous. Swift,
like satirists who preceded him and many psychoanalysts who followed
him, perceived a species fixated at the infantile anal stage of
development: "We can no longer allow ... Swift to be laid to rest in
the procrustean bed that psychoanalytic critics have made" (Selinger
14).
Donald R. Roberts also faults a number of Freudian studies of
Gulliver's Travels; they "suffer from inadequate preparation and a
Donald T. Siebert, "Swift's Fiat Odor: The Excremental Re- vision," Eighteenth Century Studies 19.1 (1985-6): 26. tendency to hypothetical conclusions" (8). He rejects Ferenczi's finding, of genital inadequacy caused by Swift's lack of paternal identification, as not supported by Swift's life, which "does not conform to the usual syndrome of sex inadequacy" (9). As for
Ferenczi's focusing on the changes of size in Lilliput and Brobdingnag as significant proof of Swift's sexual inadequacy, to Roberts, it is rather the "normal experience of babyhood, along with an associated projective wish-fulfillment" (9). He notes that while Freud saw a
"resemblance between neurotic fantasy and artistic imagination" (9),he never simply equated them. Roberts also rejects Karpman's view of the
Travels as Swift's neurotic fantasies since neurosis suggests repression while art is an externalization: "Art is not a neurotic activity" (15).
While Roberts feels that early, severe toilet training may have effected
"the syndrome of anal fixation" (lo), he denies Swift's alleged "hatred of the bowels" (10) espoused by Huxley; due to our "disposition, the human race itself is unclean" (12). Swift, like so many other great literary geniuses, was accused of madness. Authors who produce great works of literary and cultural significance challenge our complacency.
These works are invariably the products of genius and sanity. Swift's later works do not evince any difference or lessening of artistic ability or mental acuity; these charges are patently absurd. Many of the psychoanalytical criticisms draw contradictory conclusions concerning Swift's underlying problems. Greenacre sees the episode of the Brobdingnagian monkey feeding Gulliver as a
"homosexual fellatio fantasy" ("Mutual Adventures" 113). Can Swift have been coprophiliac, impotent, mad and a homosexual? These conclusions recall those of the paranoid decoders in Tribnia.
If, for the sake of argument, we grant the conclusions reached by
Ferenczi, Karpman that Swift was an anal obsessive type, the question becomes one of the determining whether Swift erroneously projected his own anality onto others or whether his anal repressions simply provided him with a greater understanding of human anality. If the former argument is correct, the entire satiric structure of Gulliver's
Travels would collapse; its premise of human anality (as integral to understanding behaviour, history itself) would never elicit the horrified reactions of all too many critics/readers, which rather attest to the disgust of unpleasant self-recognition. Gulliver's Travels would have been relegated to the role of a minor literary work, of interest primarily to abnormal psychology, merely a literary example of one man's neuroses. This has hardly proven to be the case; Gulliver's
Travels is rather justifiably esteemed as a great and universal satire. If the latter argument is correct, Swift's anality becomes an artistic virtue. There is also the satiric tradition of the satirists who share the vices
and folly they attack, such as Petronius, Rochester and Wycherly. For
Rabelais and Swift, "the real satiric subject is the degenerative spirit in
human nature" (Seidel 11). Marston was also accused of exhibiting "an
insane delight in raking the cesspits of vice."'
"When he wrote Book Four, [Swift] was not in the early stages
of ... mental disorder" (Freedman '91, 534). The satiric tradition itself
(like psychoanalysis) has been accused of being overly-anal. While this
does not provide exculpation for Swift (if such is required) it would
seem to be a mitigating factor. Many psychoanalytical critics of Swift
appear to have become 'conditioned' to decode art for evidence of
neurosis, and have misconstrued excrementality's function as a satiric
technique. Critics' sensitivity to (and rejection of) charges of
excrementality may stem from the fact that the socialization of the
individual begins with toilet training, our first instinctual control:
"mastery of the sphincters is intimately connected with an identification
with external authority."' In a "relentless satirist" (Roberts 11) like
I. Le Gay Brereton, Writings on Elizabethun Drama (Melbourne:
Melbourne UP, 1948) 43.
L.F. Grant Duff, "A One-sided Sketch of Jonathan Swift," The
Psychoanalytic Quarterly 6 (1937): 256. Swift, there is an overpowering "insistence upon ... the undisguised
truth regarding human nature and the human situation" (Quintana 143),
in spite of 'the slings and arrows' of outraged critics. Swift "was no
more eccentric or neurotic than Pope or Johnson, and probably less so"
(The Personality of Jonathan Swift 125). As for the charges of
perversion and insanity, as Lacan once queried (albeit in a different
context) "who will sweep away this pile of dung from the Augean
stables of the psychoanalytical literature?" (E 276). When Gulliver
speaks of those "Maligners" (15) who question "my character in point of cleanliness" (15), he may also be speaking for Swift to critics not
yet born, in a discipline not yet conceived, psychoanalysis.
In A Tale of a Tub, Swift referred to critics who "drag out the lurking Errors ... and rake them together like Augea's Dung" (WJS
312). He sarcastically concludes that when it comes to "Criticks, ... their Writings are the Mirrors of Learning" (WJS 3 l7), i.e. a reversed image or signifier. With poignant irony, Swift suggests that "the perfect Writer must inspect into the Books of Criticks, and correct his
Invention there as in a Mirror" (WJS 317). Man is depicted as averse to criticism which is likened to "a Ball bandied to and fro, and every
Man carries a Racket about Him to strike it from himself" (WJS 290).
In the Preface to "The Battel of the Books" Swift provided his own answer to many of his future critics: "Satyr is a sort of Glass, wherein
Beholders do generally discover every body's Face but their Own"
(WJS 375). CONCLUSION
For Lacan, "psychoanalysis is akin to poetry, in which the
interplay of metaphors is a major means of encountering unspeakable truth" (Benvenuto, Kennedy 119). Gulliverts psychological "voyage of
identity" (Freedman '86, 482) inexorably leads him to the satiric truth that man is Yahoo, rendering him misanthropic (like Swift) and mad
(unlike Swift). While Gulliver (madman) and Swift (satirist) attempt to reform the Yahoo race, only Gulliver attempts to escape his human nature, for the mirage of reason: "Swift doubted man's ability to conquer the passions by unaided reason" (Carnochan 71). The Yahoos are beyond any hope of reformation; they are the instincts severed from the wisdom of the Houyhnhnms, the superego. Like Swift, Freud also questioned the ability of the superego to help the ego to overcome the relentless instinctual demands. At the end of "The Future of an
Illusion" (1927), Freud concluded on an optimistic note, surmising that since individuals surpass their infantile phases of development, there was some hope society might also accomplish the same objective.
However, at the end of Civilization and its Discontents (1930), Freud was much more pessimistic in his conclusion, based on his re- evaluation of human aggression. Freud concluded, that having studied the "history of mankind ... I can offer them no consolation" (CD 92). In his hatred, Gulliver has forgotten the good people who, like
his father, uncle and other relatives, helped sustain him when he
studied in Leyden. He was apprenticed to Doctor James Bates who
recommends him: "my good Master ... encouraged me" (3). Gulliver's
reference to "my good Master Bates" (4) is seen as a deliberate pun by
Christopher Fox (17), and William Kinsleyl. Fox links Onanism to
"Gulliver's narcissistic movement from self-love to self-hatred" (11).
When Gulliver is charged with treason in Lilliput, Reidresal tries to get
a reduction of his sentence from death to blinding, a risky act
considering the animosity and treachery of the Lilliputian Court. On
his return from Lilliput, Gulliver is rescued by Captain John Biddel, "a
very civil Man ... who ... treated me with Kindness" (67). In
Brobdingnag, Glurndalclitch is more than a friend to Gulliver, she is
almost a mother. The Brobdingnagian King proves to be an astute,
able and compassionate leader, a moral man who is a slave neither to
narcissism nor to ambition. Upon leaving Brobdingnag, Gulliver is
rescued by Captain "Thomas Wilcocks, an honest worthy Shropshire
Man ... He entertained me with great Kindness" (139-40). Gulliver's
third voyage was under Captain William Robinson who "always treated
William Kinsley, "Gentle Readings: Recent Work on Swift,"
Eighteenth Century Studies 15 (1981-2): 443. me more like a Brother than an inferior Officer ... so honest a Man"
(149). Hc offers Gulliver a position as surgeon. In Book Three,
Gulliver meets the kindly Lord Munodi who is "regular and polite ....
Prudence, Quality, and Fortune, had exempted him from those Defects
which Folly and Beggary had produced in others" (174-5). Similarly, when Gulliver leaves the land of the Houyhnhnms, and is picked up by
a ship, the crew "spoke to me with great Humanity" (294), an ironic turn of phrase. He meets a Good Samaritan, Captain "Pedro de Mendez
.. . a very courteous and generous Person ... I wondered to find such
Civilities from a Yahoo" (195). He is "a wise Man" (296) whose
"whole Deportment was so obliging" (297).
The author who created the compassionate Don Pedro is not the character Gulliver, who is essentially blind to any manifestations of human virtue. "Gulliver in the last voyage is not Swift .... Gulliver has adopted a final rigid and oversimplified attitude" (Ross 76, 86). Don
Pedro's character is idealized, a humanitarian. To an extent, "Don
Pedro is inconsistent with the view of men as Yahoos" (Deporte 95). If the Yahoo epithet encompasses him as well, it loses some of its satiric sting, in the plasticity of its signification. Yet the Yahoo appellation can be stretched to include "wonderful" Yahoos as well; apparently a rare, individual exception does not nullify the satiric formula: man equals Yahoo. Our species is judged and condemned; only the occasional individual merits exception, according to Swift, not
Gulliver. Swift, in a letter to Pope (Sept. 29, 1725), wrote: "0, if the world had but a dozen Arbuthnetts in it I would burn my Travells"
(Corr. 3: 104). Like Abraham in Sodom, the lack of a handful of good men invites divine wrath.
If man does have redeeming qualities, they may include the facts that our species writes and reads satire, and is still able to laugh at itself, a healthy and sane phenomenon. The final joke occurs when the reader reacts to the satire precisely with the species-specific behaviours which Swift provided in the Yahoos: narcissism and
x aggression. The reader's reaction becomes a final proof of the truth of the satiric portrait. If the reader denies his Yahoo nature, he is merely revealing the degree of his repressions; if he accepts, he is a self- confessed Yahoo. There is no escape from Swift's satirical trap.
However, the choice before the reader is not Yahoo or Houyhnhnm, but
Gulliver or Don Pedro.
Swift's uncanny psychoanalytical insights are evident in his manipulation of language; in his subversion of the mirror, which sustained narcissism, to serve the misanthropy of satire; in his appropriation of the voice of the father (superego) to reprimand a species fixated at an infantile stage of development; in his choice of the
anal sadistic to describe a repressed and aggressive humanity; and in
his choice of the threat of castration to counter human instincts.
The experiences of the twentieth century also confirm the
accuracy of Swift's depiction of an anal sadistic humanity. This
century has witnessed two world wars, concentration camps and nuclear
bombs; aggression within us remains a potent force of destruction.
Ideological divisions and authoritarian regimes continue to wreak
havoc. Internecine religious divisions still plague us; and the
generation of new leaders, who have mastered their instincts and are
ready to employ reason and compassion to guide the evolution of
mankind, have yet to make an appearance. When unaccommodated
man beholds his reflection in the mirror of satire, the image reveals
that man is closer to the id than to the superego; our roots are bestial,
primitive, infantile; our symptoms are aggression aod aarcissism; and the key human signifier is excrement. Crews claimed to have discovered in Freud's "writings, vast presumption - a wish to expose all hyprocisy, unify all knowledge, [and] assume a godlike distance from deluded mankind" (XII). Perhaps Juvenal said it best, when he wrote that it is "difficult not to write satire" (Kernan 8); for Swift, it proved impossible. BIBLIOGRAPHY
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