The Importance of Swift’s Duality
As a bit of an outsider with access to the upper class, Jonathan Swift knew how the system worked, but was critical towards it. Jonathan Swift’s work ”A Treatise on Good Manners and Good Breeding” was published 1726, and includes a fair amount of criticism against the importance and relevance of manners. In the piece, he separates people into three cohorts: our equals, those above us and those below us. Socializing with a different cohort is seen as a lack of manners. These manners are made-up rules that the cohorts have united on. Swift states that the reason for this is because people lack common sense, which instead is the greatest factor into good behavior and manners. The fatherless Swift could, through his education and fortune from his writing, see into the upper class and notice how the system worked, and this influenced him to write this satirical and critical treatise.
Already before Swift’s birth, his father had died. Swift has therefore raised by his mother, but an affluent uncle funded Swift’s education. He was therefore able to get a degree at Trinity College, even though he was a very rebellious pupil. By then, his uncle had lost all his wealth, and when the Irish revolution raged, Swift had to flee to England, where he found employment in the hands of the English statesman Sir William Temple. When he did not get a promotion, he got upset and resigned, but failed to succeed at other places and had to go back to the statesman. This made him quite bitter and is a reason why he later published many critical pieces, one being this treatise. Although he grew rich off of his writing and clearly had the common sense needed for good manners, he lacked the good breeding needed to learn the “great compass of knowledge”, as he writes in his text. This means that he did not have very much in common with the upper class, although he could speak the language. As an outsider not knowing his place, his frustration with the divided society grew bigger, which is shown through his intelligent writing. This treatise is only one example of his satirical criticism, with the most famous ones being “Gulliver’s Travels” and “A Modest Proposal”.
Swift found the importance of manners pathetic, as well as wanting to show the hardship of fitting in with a different class, which consisted largely of breeding and learning the different culture, instead of just having good sense and executing the correct behavior. This caused him to write this treatise with some humorous elements so that it would not be taken as harshly as otherwise.
Sources:
https://www.bartleby.com/27/9.html
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