Dickens Hard Times & Swift's Proposal

Satire, as defined by M. H. Abrams (85) is the "literary art of diminishing a subject by making it ridiculous and evoking towards it attitudes of amusement, contempt, or scorn. It differs from comedy in that comedy evokes laughter as an end in itself, while satire �derides'; that is, it uses laughter as a weapon, and against a butt existing outside the work itself. That butt may be an individual, or a type of person, a class, a nation, or even the whole race of man." If we look at Jonathan Swift's A Modest Proposal and Charles Dickens' Hard Times, we see two satirical works whose butt is the wealthy English upper-class elite.

A Modest Proposal, by Jonathan Swift, is undoubtedly one of the finest, if not the finest, examples of satire in the English language. Swift uses irony and parody from the title to the last sentence of this essay, whose narrator honestly argues for cannibalism as a solution to the oppressed, ignorant, populous and starving Catholic population of Ireland. It was a population that was being bled dry, in Swift's mind, by the absent English Protestant landlords with the collaboration of the Parliament, ministers and crown. Swift's use of irony is unparalleled in this essay, from his title which suggests that cannibalism, making ladies' gloves and boots from children's skin, and consuming the poor Irish Catholics is a "modest" proposal, to his final line which reads, "I have no ch

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or solutions to many problems facing humankind. However, Swift shows how blind faith in reason is as dangerous as blind faith in religion when those professing such reason are actually irrationally perverting logic for their own agenda. Nonetheless, the main vehicle Swift uses to expose the irrationality and greed of the wealthy English landowners is humor. Despite the horrific premise being proposed, one is unable to keep a straight face during the reading of some of the "modest" proposals offered by the narrator like the following regarding why women would be better mothers if they knew they would receive income from the sale of their children for food or manufactured goods, "It would increase the care and tenderness of mothers toward their children, when they were sure of a settlement for life to the poor babes, provided in some sort by the public, to their annual profit instead of expense. We should see an honest emulation among the married women, which of them could bring the fattest child to market" (Swift 2149). Therefore, Swift's satire teaches while it entertains. It shows how ludicrous are the supposedly rational social theories of the greedy status-quo in English society. Likewise, Dickens' Hard Times satirizes

Category: Literature - D