Student Question
What is the nationality of the person who suggested eating well-nursed babies in Swift's A Modest Proposal?
Quick answer:
The person who suggested eating well-nursed babies in Jonathan Swift's "A Modest Proposal" is identified as "an American acquaintance in London." This reference is politically significant as Swift, a Tory, uses it to satirize anti-Tory sentiments prevalent among American colonists and impoverished Irish Catholics. By attributing the idea to an American, Swift critiques both the oppressive conditions under English rule and the growing dissent against the monarchy.
By the eighth paragraph of Jonathan Swift's pamphlet titled A Modest
Proposal, Swift identifies that "an American acquaintance in London" had
assured the speaker that "a young healthy child well nursed, is, at a year old,
a most delicious nourishing and wholesome food." Hence, the nationality
of the friend who made the recommendation the speaker is basing his
proposal on is American.
The reference to the American nationality is politically
significant due to the fact that Swift was a Tory . Swift published his satirical pamphlet in 1729, a time when Ireland was experiencing what has been dubbed the Age of Ascendancy. Though Ireland was its own separate kingdom, it was controlled by England, and it was dominantly Catholic. England's break from the Catholic Church and creation of the Anglican Church posed significant hardships for dominantly Catholic Ireland. The Catholics of Ireland were no longer given the...
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right to rule or vote. Instead, the few Anglican landowners in Ireland held all of the authority. What's more, most of Ireland's Catholic were poor commoners; hence, as the Anglican landed gentry ascended to positions of absolute authority, theimpoverished
Catholics became further oppressed. Swift strongly empathized with the
suffering of the poor Irish Catholics even though he himself was Anglican and a
Tory. The Tory party believed in absolute monarchism. Hence,
while Swift saw a need to fix the impoverished conditions in Ireland, he also
objected to any idea that Ireland break completely free from the King of
England.
Meanwhile, American colonists were also beginning to
show very anti-Tory sentiments. In 1729, England had recently
finished defeating the French in the French Indian War, which
secured Canada and other French territories for England but also left American
colonists financially distressed because the war created wealth for the
merchants but left the poor unemployed. On top of
unemployment, England began taxing colonists more heavily in order to pay for
the debts left by the war. Heavy taxation left American
colonists wanting to be separated from the King of England,
just like the impoverished Irish.
Hence, in referencing America, Swift is very cleverly satirizing
anti-Tory sentiments, and since he was a devoted Tory, his satire is
his way of denouncing anti-Tory sentiment even in the face of poverty and
oppression.