Representation of women in Gulliver´s Travels

Many female critics have considered the book Gulliver´s Travels as a misogynist work. The many references to the female sex and body in Swift´s book are negative and they tend to degrade and disfigure the vision of women. Women are continuously separated from men in Gulliver’s accounts and are described in a superficial manner. The accumulation of these descriptions creates a sense of male superiority. These kind of references can be seen through the whole book.

Women are seldom discussed in the first book, during Gulliver’s first voyage to Lilliput.  This shows the minimal role women play in this society. One of the few examples is the event of the Majesty´s apartment on fire. Gulliver says that it was "by the carelessness of a maid of honour, who fell asleep while she was reading a romance”. This illustrates the defects and bad habits of women.

In the second book, in his voyage to Brobdingnag, Gulliver shows his repulsion towards women´s physical appearance. He usually uses women as the objects of refusal to speak about an unpleasant vision of mankind in that country.

In Balnibari, a country included in the third part of the book, women are taxed in a different way than men. While men are taxed on characteristics such as wit, valour, and politeness, women are valued superficially: their most important virtues are fashion and beauty.

I have taken the ideas for this post from:

http://bookstove.com/classics/a-feminist-perspective-of-gullivers-travels/

http://en.allexperts.com/q/Literature-697/Gulliver-travels.htm