A Modest Proposal for Preventing the Children of Poor People from Being a Burthen to Their Parents or Country, and for Making Them Beneficial to the Publick
$5.00
This notorious work by Jonathan Swift, which many of us read as we were introduced to satire and sarcasm in our senior Brit Lit class.
The essay suggests that poor people in Ireland could ease their economic troubles by selling their children as food to the elite. Swift’s use of satirical hyperbole was intended to mock hostile attitudes towards the poor and anti-Catholicism among the Protestant Ascendancy as well as the Dublin Castle administration’s policies in general.
Much of its shock value derives from the fact that the first portion of the essay describes the plight of starving beggars in Ireland, so that the reader is unprepared for the surprise of Swift’s solution when he states: “A young healthy child well nursed, is, at a year old, a most delicious nourishing and wholesome food, whether stewed, roasted, baked, or boiled; and I make no doubt that it will equally serve in a fricassee, or a ragout.”
Offered in it’s original format with a printed, side stitched wrap. $5.00
