The Brobdingnagian King and the Abomination of Creeping Things

Abstract

In the ‘mirror reversal’ which marks the shift from the first to the second Voyage, we find a similar reversal in attitudes toward purity and defilement. When compared with the Lilliputians, the Brobdingnagians appear to be quite relaxed in their views of hygiene and pollution. Eschewing a strict code of conduct at court, the Brobdingnagian king and queen allow their ‘Maids of Honour’ considerable latitude in behaviour. And rather than maintaining hospitals for the incarceration of the old and diseased, they are willing to grant their beggars the liberty to roam freely through the streets of Lorbrulgrud, the capital city of the kingdom. The importance of this shift in attitude is vividly illustrated in a different point of view toward architectural design. Far from being conceived of in formal terms the major structures of the Brobdingnagian kingdom appear to have been erected in total disregard of geometric figures: the royal residence is ‘no regular Edifice, but an Heap of Buildings about seven Miles around’ (XI, 112). Needless to say, this shift in the perspective of Gulliver’s hosts is accompanied by an equally dramatic reversal in his own attitude. Where Gulliver was once willing to disregard the pollution rules of the Lilliputians, he now becomes preoccupied with matters of purity and decorum. The sources of his concern are of course his size and Tearfulness’, but Gulliver’s new attitude affords a striking contrast to the point of view of the Brobdingnagian monarch: where Gulliver is preoccupied with surfaces and appearances, the Brobdingnagian prince brings a perspective in which aesthetic and ethical categories are united.