for some odd reason, this won't post straight, but the words are all there.

The role of satire in the 18^th century and its

effect on social reform in the Metropolis

Satire was a tool that artists and writers such as Swift and Hogarth employed to attack what they saw as the injustice in society in the eighteenth century, with Swift attacking the treatment of the poor in Ireland, and Hogarth criticising the treatment of women and the plight of the poor in London. The satirist ‘has a view on how people should behave morally, and contrasts this against the vices and follies of the time (Ogborn, Buckroyd, 2001, p11).’ Swift and Hogarth used their works as a platform for their political and sociological ideas. David Nokes argues ‘There is reason to suggest that satire tends to be an instrument not for change but for grumbling acquiescence’ (Nokes, 1987, p17). Both Swift and Hogarth were social moralists and used their work to highlight political issues that were affecting society at the time and bring them to the attention of the more influential parts of society. Morgan and Rushton (2005) point out that ‘in the eighteenth century the developing print culture made bodies--particularly the bodies of the poor, the troublesome and the criminal, more noticeable than ever before... the new print culture was used to spread the word--and the image.’ Swift and Hogarth capitalised on this print culture to raise awareness of the conditions and issues facing the poor.

Ireland in the eighteenth century was a place on insecurity, poverty, and extreme hardship. The majority of the country was Catholic. The society was feudal, and the economy was mostly based on the agricultural primary industries. However, the legislation of the country meant that trade that conflicted with the interests of England was kept at minimum levels, with Ireland unable to sell most of its produce to other countries. Swift produced a pamphlet after the British government passed legislation that meant they had the ‘right to act as final courts of judicature (Johnston, 1974, p69)’. This left the Irish parliament with little power, and Swift called for a boycott of British goods in favour of Irish ones in 1720, ‘advocating sanctions against English imports (Johnston, 1974, p70)’ because of his opinions on this ruling. Warburton’s History of the City of Dublin (1818) described the poorer areas of Dublin in the eighteenth century. It was populated with ‘the residence of shopkeepers or others engaged in trade, but a far greater proportion of them, with their numerous lanes and alleys, are occupied by working manufacturers, by petty shopkeepers, the labouring poor, and beggars crowded together to a degree distressing to humanity (Fitzpatrick, 1907).’ Swift’s A Modest Proposal is a reflection of the anger that he felt when looking at this situation. He wrote numerous pamphlets on the Irish political and social situation under various pseudonyms, including The Drapier’s Letters in 1794, a series of pamphlets looking at the problems with the patenting of a privately minted coin which Swift thought to be inferior quality, calling it ‘filthy trash’. This demonstrated Swift’s defiance to what he saw a improper British rule in Ireland.

A Modest Proposal deals specifically with the situation with the Irish poor in the early eighteenth century. In it, Swift assumes the persona of a well-meaning gentleman. The first part of the pamphlet describes the ‘deplorable state of the kingdom’, chronicling the conditions of the poor in Ireland, forced to beg, steal or leave the country. He then goes on to give a detailed argument as to his plans for these paupers, in which they sell their children to the rich for food, listing a number of ways that they may be served, ‘stewed, roasted, baked or boiled...in a fricaise, or ragoust (Rawson, Higgins, 2010, p297). He lists the reasons for his argument, citing a reduction in the number of Papists, the poor having goods to trade, profit for Ireland, increase in trade and an increase in marriages amongst others. Rosenheim says that Swift’s persona in A Modest Proposal is portraying an alternative to the terrible situation and bringing it to the attention of the reader, ‘the proposer adopts a posture in which he implies that cannibalism is a reasonable alternative to an unspeakable status quo (Rosenheim, 1963, p47).’ David Nokes declares that Swift ‘has chosen this horrifying image of eating babies as a savage analogy for the callousness, inhumanity and moral apathy of the English authorities, whose policies have resulted in mass starvation in Ireland (Nokes, 1987, p183). Swift is dehumanising the tragic poor of Ireland to highlight their plight, by couching the situation in terms that reflect the terrible state of Ireland and it’s people. The Irish are reduced to a cannibalistic Other in Swift’s writing, reduced to the level of the natives of the new world such as George Psalmanazar, a hoaxer who claimed to be from an island where they ate human flesh, who is mention in the piece. Chowdhury points out that ‘In spite of his genuine concern for Ireland and his condemnation of the self-destructive economic behaviour among all sections of the Irish population, Swift’s use of the discourse of defamation (cannibalism) retains the basic characteristics of the traditional religio-ethnic slur against the Irish: a mixture of pity and deeply felt contempt (Chowdhury, 2008, p133)’. Swift is using the Abject to emphasise the horror of the Irish situation.

A Modest Proposal’s satiric victim is difficult to see. Swift, by discussing the commonwealth, and the proposer’s conversation in London with an American friend could be seen to be attacking once again the British and their hand in Irish politics, as he had done before with pamphlets such as A Proposal for the Universal Use of Irish Manufacture (KCL, 2010), which on the title page in bold are the words ‘Utterly Rejecting and Renouncing... ENGLAND (Nokes, 1985, p266). However, the proposal does not have the level of vehemence and anger at the English that Swift’s other pamphlets do. In A Proposal for the Universal Use of Irish Manufacture, he attacks ‘Country Landlords; who, by unmeasurable screwing and racking their Tenants all over the Kingdom, have already reduced the miserable People to a worse Condition than the Peasants in France, or the Vassals in German’. Swift was angry with the system of rule in Ireland, and he used his pamphlets to arouse anger in other influential people.

Rosenheim and Nokes both argue that the intended victim in A Modest Proposal is the Irish people themselves. Nokes points out that the only pamphlet that Swift produced under his own name, Proposal for Giving Badges to the Beggars of Dublin deals with the poor of Ireland ‘in terms which range only from irritation to contempt (Nokes, 1987, p184)’. Nevertheless, the level of detail that Swift goes into in A Modest Proposal, examining the costs and means of marketing babies to the wealthy reflects the problems in politics where economic concerns are more important than morality. Rosenheim says that the state of the Irish poor is ‘no more shocking than the state of affairs which, through the folly of their own national policy, they have already arrived (Rosenheim, 2008, p51)’. However, if we examine the state of Irish politics more closely, we can see that it was the British who were imposing laws and sanctions on the Irish public. Lyman Baker points out that the Irish parliament were impotent to do anything in the wake of acts of parliament such as the Cattle Acts (1666, 1680) and the Woollen Act of 1699, which left the country with little means to supply itself or other countries through trade by giving the English merchants and hauliers more right to trade than the Irish. It is therefore unfair to blame the Irish for the predicament that they now found themselves in, especially after three bad harvests in a row (Baker, 1999).

So therefore, the satiric victim in A Modest Proposal is the people that have allowed Ireland to get to the state in which a pamphleteer can suggest cannibalism, and it is an alternative that is no different from the situation in which the Irish population were already finding themselves in with the unnecessary deaths of thousands of people, including infants in the early eighteenth century. Dickson (1997) estimates that in the Great Frost of 1737-1739, 38% of the Irish population died.

The problem Swift was dealing with in A Modest Proposal was the British and Irish governments who imposed and accepted new laws, throttling Ireland’s ability to pay its own way and provide work and land for its people. Another issue was the Anglo-Protestant landlords, who after employing middle men had little contact with the poor, and were often absentee landlords, residing in England and having rents sent to them by their impoverished tenants. Swift, in writing A Modest Proposal was trying to highlight the iniquity of the situation that the government and landlords had left the Irish in.

Compared to Dublin, London was a much larger, sprawling metropolis. The Workhouse Test Act (1723) meant that ‘the deserving poor’ had to go into a workhouse and undertake set work to receive money from the parish. ‘In 1776 a Parliamentary enquiry established that there were twenty-five workhouses in the City of London and Westminster, housing over 6,000 individual paupers (London Lives, 2010).’ Poverty was rife in the city. Texts from the time, such as Gay’s satirical poem Trivia Or, the Art of Walking the Streets of London (1716), point out ‘The lurking Thief’, ‘the Sharper’s Dice’, and ‘The Harlots’, warning against the vices of the city in the night.

Hogarth, in London, had set his sights at a much more obvious set of satiric victims. Defoe wrote The Fortunes and Misfortunes of Moll Flanders ten years before Hogarth’s A Harlot’s Progress, about the life of a poor woman in London. However, Defoe’s book has a happy ending, and Hogarth had different intentions for his piece. While they cover similar subjects, such as prison and poverty, Hogarth’s stark ending to A Harlot’s Progress raises questions about society at the time. David Bindman (1997) points out that Hogarth claimed to be attacking ‘vices rather than persons’, in accordance with Joseph Addison in The Freeholder, spoke strongly against satire about ‘persons or things of a sacred and serious nature’, but defended the rights of the satirist to produce works of ‘such production of wit and humour as have the tendency to expose vice and folly’, but in practise, all satirists, including Swift and Hogarth used their work to attack individuals. In their work, the abject is the topic, but not the satiric victim. Ronald Paulson points out that Moll ‘is both criminal and victim, commodity and trophy, beautiful and diseased.’ Hogarth, in Characters and Caricaturas (1743) demonstrates the difference between what he draws, which is a character, as opposed to a caricature. This was because he felt that a moral message was more apparent if the characters were real and not cartoon-like.

In A Harlot’s Progress, there are a number of characters that were famous figures at the time. Plate One depicts Moll Hackabout arriving in London. Mother Needham, who was the owner of a bawdy house, greets her. Hogarth draws her as a predatory and greedy woman, examining her looks with an evil smile on her face. In the background, we can see Colonel Charteris. He was described ‘as one ‘who with an inflexible constancy and inimitable uniformity of life persisted in spite of age and infirmity in the practise of every human vice’ (Gaunt, 1978, p60).’ Gaunt explains he was famous for preying on women just arrived in London, and employed women such as Mother Needham to employ them as servants for his house, where he would use them like sex slaves. He was charged with rape in 1730 after a woman said he raped her at gunpoint, and sent to Newgate, but was pardoned due to his connections from his marriage to the daughter of the Earl of Wemyss, and retired to Edinburgh, where when he died, the crowd threw dead dogs and offal into his grave. Also depicted in Plate Three, is John Gonson, a magistrate known as ‘the terror of thieves and whores. ( Gaunt, 1978, p62)’

Aside from the real people shown in Hogarth’s prints, there are also other elements to Hogarth’s satire. In Plate One, we see Moll, just arrived from Yorkshire. As the owner of a bawdy house accosts her, behind her we see a member of the clergy, ignoring the scene next to him and reading a letter. In another of his works A Rake’s Progress, Plate Five, Friederieke Günther (2008) points out that ‘in addition to addressing other deficiencies of his time, Hogarth... fixed his satirical eye on the double morality of Christian faith: one of his engravings depicts a church collection box covered in cobwebs, which are particularly thick right above its opening.’ Hogarth viewed the church with disdain, as we can see further in Plate Six, where the pastor overseeing the funeral has his hand up a prostitutes skirt, highlighting the double standard of priests preaching a clean, upstanding life at the pulpit and yet acting like oafs in reality. Hogarth aired his views about the church in a number of different prints and paintings, for example, Plate Six has been likened by Paulson to the last supper with its 13 participants, and he points out that on Plate Five ‘the dying harlot is posed like a mourning Mary at the foot of the cross, while the [other characters] recall the trio of soldiers casting lots for Christ’s robes as he suffered on the cross (Paulson, 2003, p45)’.

Another part of the satire in A Harlot’s Progress is about the prison system. In 1728, ‘Mr. Oglethorpe [the MP for Haslemere in Surrey], having been informed of shocking cruelties and oppressions exercised by goalers upon their prisoners, moved the house of commons for an examination into these iniquitous practices, and was chosen chairman of a committee appointed to inquire into the state of the goals in this kingdom... They made a discovery of many inhumanities exercised by the warden, and detected a most wicked system of extortion, fraud, and villainy (Noorthouck, 1773)’. When we look at Plate Four, Moll is in Bridewell prison, beating hemp. We can see that the practises that Mr Oglethorpe found in the Fleet prison had not changed, despite a parliamentary enquiry and it being noted that his reforms led to ‘an improvement in prison conditions, the release of many short-time debtors and the removal of some of the worst warders and overseers (Waverley Borough Council, 2011)’. Moll is being threatened by a jailer holding a switch or whip, and her clothes are being stolen by other prisoners while her maid looks on. There are stocks in the background, with ‘Better to Work/ than Stand thus’ written on them, and William Gaunt points out that ‘Moll Hackabout seems scarcely to know what to do with the hammer she holds ( Gaunt, 1978, p63)’. Hogarth is showing that the prison system was a terrible as Oglethorpe’s enquiry had discovered even after his reforms.

In Plate Five, we see her dying as two quack doctors, Doctor Richard Rock, ‘inventor of the famous Anti-Venereal, Grand, Specifick Pill’ (Bindman, 1997, p118), and Doctor Jean Misaubin argue over the false cures they have brought her for syphilis, which we can see has affected her by the sores on her which started to appear in Plate Three. Her child, presumably mentally deficient from her venereal disease, is putting his hand in a fire and a woman rifles through her clothes, looking for something to steal. In Plate Six, Moll is dead, and the only woman that seems truly upset is her maid, while the rest of the crowd, mostly other prostitutes, are using her coffin as a table for their drinks and continuing with their immoral trade. Doctor Misaubin also appears in A Rake’s Progress, in a setting likened to that of a ‘sorcerer’s cavern (with) the alligator, narwhal’s horn, the anatomical figures... give spurious suggestion of profound research and science (Gaunt, 1978, p69),’ demonstrating his reputation as a quack and useless doctor. Hogarth is satirising the medical profession in these prints, demonstrating their uselessness in curing ailments such as syphilis.

Hogarth, like Swift, represented the Other in his work. He paints foreigners, such as the French dance master in Marriage a la Mode, Plate Four, as a dandy. He depicts black pageboys, a fashion item in the eighteenth century, in A Harlot’s Progress, Plate Two and Marriage a la Mode, Plate Four. David Hume, in Of National Characters (1748) said that ‘the civilised – the European in other words – was entitled to keep the savages (who also included the Irish and other Celts) as slaves because all nations beyond the polar circles, or between the tropics, were, in his view, inferior to the rest of the species and incapable of the higher attainments of the human mind (Wagner, 2009, p24)’. Hogarth, in depicting the Other people, is perhaps parodying the fashion for foreigners, as a way of highlighting the problems with the society that he is painting about. In depicting the Other with normality, he is pointing out that perhaps this is not normality.

Satire is used by Swift and Hogarth as a way of highlighting the plight of the poor in A Modest Proposal and A Harlot’s Progress. Swift’s savage irony about the poor Irish and Hogarth’s depiction of the double standards of the clergy, the ineptitude of the medical profession and the problems with the prison system brought attention to the problems for the poor in society at the time. In doing this, it would become the focus for conversation, and in bringing about conversation, society and parliament could think about changing the situation and reforming society. However, as Rosenheim points out, ‘‘Reforms’ are revolutionary to the extent that they are fundamental, and the ultimate revolution overturns or radically alters the basic premise by which men conduct their activities. Thus, though the satirist is often, in some sense, a reformer, he is rarely... a true revolutionary (Rosenheim, 1963, p185)’. Swift and Hogarth were being satirical, not seditious. They were putting the spotlight onto problems in society to bring about change, not demanding immediate revolution. However, in their own ways, they were reforming society around them. Swift founded St. Patrick's hospital for lunatics in 1745 (Nokes, 1985), and ‘Hogarth was also much involved in urban philanthropy. He seems to have been sympathy with the view held by other philanthropists at the time, that foundlings should be trained to become useful citizens, the boys for trade, agriculture, or the army or navy, and the girls for domestic service (Bindman, 1997, p135)’. Hogarth also petitioned parliament to have a law passed, copyrighting the work of engravers. ‘Hogarth was not thinking merely of himself but of the problems facing all engravers [including] the poorer workers who have no shop or studio to show their prints and have to be reliant on the print sellers (Uglow, 1997)’. In small ways, Swift and Hogarth were reforming society, but it would be many years before the subjects of their satires changed. Their works stand now as a reflection of the anger felt by certain people in society in the eighteenth century. Their satires were not ‘grumbling acquiescence’, but instead a rallying cry to people to look at the terrible conditions that the poor found themselves in, and a step forward into examining what could be done to help them.

Bibliography

Baker, Lyman A. (1999) Conditions in Early Eighteenth-Century Ireland Available from: http://www-personal.ksu.edu/~lyman/english320/sg-Swift-18thC.htm. accessed [22/12/10].

Bindman, David (1997). Hogarth and his times: serious comedy Great Britain: Cambridge University Press

British History (1773) 'Book 1, Ch. 20: George II to the rebellion of 1745', A New History of London: Including Westminster and Southwark [Internet] p. 325-353. available from http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=46737 accessed [04/01/11]

Chowdhury, A (2008) Splenetic Ogres and Heroic Cannibals in Jonathan Swift’s A Modest Proposal (1729). English Studies in Canada [Internet] 34.(2-3), p131-157. available from http://web.ebscohost.com.ezproxy.yorksj.ac.uk/ehost/pdfviewer/ accessed [21/12/10].

Defoe, Daniel (1989) Moll Flanders (1722) England: Penguin Books

Dickson, David (1997) Arctic Ireland White Row Press, University of Wisconsin – Madison

Fitzpatrick, Samuel A. Ossory. (1907). Dublin: A Historical and Topographical Account of the City. [Internet] Available from: http://www.chaptersofdublin.com/books/ossory/ossory6.htm. accessed [3/01/11]

Show details

Gay, John (1716) Trivia: Or, the Art of Walking the Streets of London [Internet] available from http://www.cardiff.ac.uk/encap/skilton/poetry/gay01c.html accessed [3/1/11]

Gaunt, William (1978) The World of William Hogarth London: Jonathan Cape

Günther, F.F.. (2008). Explanations on the Edge of Reason: Lichtenberg’s Difficulties Describing Hogarth’s View of Bedlam. Comparative Critical Studies [Internet] 5 (2-3), p235–247 available from http://web.ebscohost.com/ehost/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?hid=107&sid=bac08b0a-603b-4c70-b4d2-cb608e25963f%40sessionmgr104&vid=5 accessed [3/01/11]

Johnston, Edith Mary (1974) Ireland in the Eighteenth Century Dublin: Gill and Macmillan

London Lives (2010) The Poor Law and Charity: An Overview Available from http://www.londonlives.org/static/PoorLawOverview.jsp#toc5. accessed [4/01/11]

Morgan, G., Rushton, P (2005) Visible bodies: power, subordination and identity in the eighteenth-century Atlantic world. Journal of social History 39.1 Fall, p39(26).

NHCM (2007) New Historicism & Cultural Materialism [Internet] Available from http://www.cultmatnewhist.blogspot.com/ accessed [13/01/11]

Nokes, David (1985) Jonathan Swift: A Hypocrite Reversed Oxford: Oxford University Press

Nokes, David (1987) Raillery and Rage: A Study of Eighteenth Century Satire Great Britain: Harvester Press

Ogborn, J., Buckroyd, P. (2001) Satire Cambridge: Cambridge University Press

Paulson, Ronald (2003) Hogarth's harlot: sacred parody in Enlightenment England USA: John Hopkins University Press

Rawson, C., Higgins, I (2010) The Essential Writings of Jonathan Swift USA: W W Norton and Company

Ricorso (N.D) John Warburton [Internet] Available from: http://www.ricorso.net/rx/az-data/authors/w/Warburton_J/life.htm. Last accessed [4/01/11]

Rosenheim, E.W. (1963) Swift and the Satirist’s Art Chicago: University of Chicago Press

Swift, Jonathan (1720) A Proposal for the Universal Use of Irish Manufacture [Internet] available from http://jonathanswiftarchive.org.uk/browse/year/text_9_2_4.html?page=d2e1045 accessed [21/12/10]

Waverley Borough Council. (2010) James Edward Oglethorpe and Georgia. [Internet] Available: http://www.waverley.gov.uk/site/scripts/documents_info.php?documentID=307&pageNumber=6. accessed [23/12/10]

Wagner, P. (2009) Hogarth and the Other In Meyer, M. ed. Word & image in colonial and postcolonial literatures and cultures p21-45 [Internet] http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=xDj68ypOf4kC&pg=PA21&lpg=PA21&dq=hogarth+and+the+other accessed [5/01/11]

Uglow, Jenny (1997). William Hogarth and copyright. [Internet] Available from http://www.ranadasgupta.com/notes.asp?note_id=51. accessed [13/01/11]

poems of the weasel

Thursday, 7 July 2011

Published!

Saturday, 14 May 2011

Facing Komunyakaa

Tuesday, 5 April 2011

Reviewing

Saturday, 19 March 2011

Extraordinary Rendition

Tuesday, 8 March 2011

essay 2

Morgan, G., Rushton, P (2005) Visible bodies: power, subordination and identity in the eighteenth-century Atlantic world. Journal of social History 39.1 Fall, p39(26).

About Me