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Summary of Gulliver’s Travels Part 2 Chapter 3
Summary of Gulliver’s Travels Part 2 Chapter 3
The narrator is sent for by the court. The queen buys him off his master, the farmer, and presents him to the king. He disputes with his majesty’s great scholars. An apartment at court provided for the narrator. He is in high favour with the queen. He stands up for the honour of his own country. His quarrels with the queen’s dwarf.
The strain of travelling and performing in road shows began to take its toll on Gulliver and he grew very thin. The farmer noticed Gulliver’s condition and resolved to make as much money as possible before Gulliver died. Meanwhile, an order came from the court, ordering the farmer to bring Gulliver to the queen for her entertainment. Gulliver performed admirably and respectfully for her. The Queen, was attracted to the novelty of this tiny man, and after Gulliver pleaded his case in the most humble fashion imaginable—bowing, scraping, pledging undying loyalty, and embracing the tip of the queen’s finger. The queen was delighted with Gulliver’s behaviour and she became his saviour when she bought him from the farmer for 1,000 gold pieces. Gulliver requested that Glumdalclitch be allowed to live in the palace as well.
Gulliver explained his suffering to the queen, and she was impressed by his intelligence. She took him to the king, who at first took him to be a mechanical creation. He sent for great scholars to observe Gulliver, and they decided that he was in fact a freak of nature and unfit for survival, since there was no way he could feed himself. Gulliver tried to explain that he came from a country in which everything was in proportion to himself, but they did not seem to believe him. Gulliver found this ‘a determination exactly agreeable to the modem philosophy of Europe’ where professors used the category of ‘freak’ as a cover for their own ignorance when they came across something that puzzled them.
Glumdalclitch was given an apartment in the palace and a governess was appointed to teach her. Special quarters were built for Gulliver out of a luxurious box by the best court artisans. They also had clothes made for him from fine silk, but Gulliver found them very cumbersome. The queen grew quite accustomed to his company, finding him very entertaining at dinner, especially when he cut and ate his meat. He found her way of eating repulsive, since her size allowed her to swallow huge amounts of food in a single gulp.
The king conversed with Gulliver on issues of politics, and laughed at his descriptions of the goings- on in Europe. He concluded that not only was Gulliver a freak, but he came from a freakish society as well. Gulliver’s stories of Whigs and Tories made the king laugh out loud and exclaim, ‘how contemptible a thing was human grandeur, which could be mimicked by such diminutive insects’ as Gulliver. At first Gulliver was indignant to hear his ‘noble country, the mistress of arts and arms, the scourge of France, the arbitress of Europe, the seat of virtue, piety, honour and truth, the priderand envy of the world, so contemptuously treated.’ But then, he came to realize that he too had begun to think of his world as ridiculous. ‘I really began to imagine myself dwindled many degrees below my usual size.’ His perspective suffered in more ways than one.
The King and Queen were happy with Gulliver, but there was one member of the royal entourage who was not happy: the Queen’s dwarf, who was jealous because Gulliver had replaced him in the Queen’s affection. He dropped Gulliver into a bowl of cream, but Gulliver was able to swim to safety and the dwarf was punished. At another point, the dwarf stuck Gulliver into a marrowbone, where he was forced to remain until someone pulled him out.
The queen teased Gulliver for being so fearful, and concluded that his compatriots must all be cowardly. Gulliver was terrified and sickened by Brobdingnagian flies and wasps. Where the queen was oblivious to their excrement and other droppings, to Gulliver this falling matter was torrential. His revenge against these giant insects was of two types: some he cut into bits as they flew past; others he displayed as freaks when he got back to England.