Houyhnhnm

Houyhnhnms are a race of intelligent horses described in the last part of Jonathan Swift's satiric Gulliver's Travels. The name can be pronounced either [ˈhuːɪnəm] (BE) or [ˈhwɪnəm/huˈɪnəm] (AE).^[1]

Houyhnhnms contrast strongly with the Yahoos, savage humanoid creatures: whereas the Yahoos represent all that is bad about humans, Houyhnhnms have a stable, calm, and rational society. Gulliver much prefers the Houyhnhnms' company to the Yahoos', even though the latter are biologically closer to him.

Interpretation of the Houyhnhnms has been vexatious. It is possible, for example, to regard them as a veiled criticism by Swift of the British Empire's treatment of non-whites as lesser humans, and it is similarly possible to regard Gulliver's preference (and immediate division of Houyhnhnms into color-based hierarchies) as absurd and the sign of his self-deception.

Book IV of Gulliver's Travels is the keystone, in some ways, of the entire work, and critics have traditionally responded to the subject of whether Gulliver is insane (and therefore just another victim of Swift's satire) or not by questioning whether or not the Houyhnhnms are truly admirable. The Houyhnhnm society is based upon reason, and only upon reason, and therefore the horses practice eugenics based on their analyses of benefit and cost. They have no religion and their sole morality is the defense of reason, and therefore they are not particularly moved by pity or a belief in the intrinsic value of life. Gulliver himself, in their company, builds the sails of his skiff from "Yahoo skins." Examples of the Houyhnhnms lack of passion surface mainly during their annual meeting. A visitor apologizes for being late to the meeting as her husband had passed away shortly before and she had to make the proper funeral arrangements, which consists of burial at sea. She ate her lunch same as all other Houyhynms and was not affected at all by her loss, rationalizing that gone is gone. A further example of the lack of humanity and emotion in the Houyhnhms was their laws demanded that each couple produce two children, one male and one female. In the event that their marriage produced two offspring of the same sex, they would take their children to the annual meeting and trade them with a couple who produced two children of the opposite sex. This latter part was viewed by some Swift scholars as his spoofing and or criticizing that the "ideal" family produces children of both sexes.

On the one hand, the Houyhnhnms have an orderly and peaceful society. They possess philosophy and have a language that is entirely pure of political and ethical nonsense. They possess, for example, no word for a lie (and must substitute a phrase — to say a thing which is not). They also have a form of art that is derived from nature. Outside of Gulliver's Travels, Swift had expressed longstanding concern over the corruption of the English language, and he had proposed language reform. He had also, in Battle of the Books and in general in A Tale of a Tub, expressed a preference for the Ancients (Classical authors) because their art was based directly upon nature, and not upon other art.

On the other hand, Swift was profoundly mistrustful of attempts at reason that resulted in either hubris (for example, the Projectors satirized in A Tale of a Tub or in Book III of Gulliver's Travels) or immorality (such as the speaker of A Modest Proposal, who offers an entirely logical and wholly immoral proposal for cannibalism). The Houyhnhnms embody both the good and the bad side of reason, for they have the pure language Swift wished for and the immorally rational approach to solving the problems of humanity (Yahoos); the extirpation of the Yahoo population by the horses is very like the speaker of A Modest Proposal.

After Gulliver makes it out to the shipping lanes he is rescued by a Portuguese sea captain, a level headed individual albeit full of concern for others. The captain's temperament was considered the perfect medium between that of the Houyhnhms and the Yahoos, and Gulliver had remembered that he was the man he had gotten along best with. When Gulliver returns to England at the end of Gulliver's Travels, he finds the smell and look of his countrymen intolerable. He regards all around him as Yahoos, and he spends much of his time in the stables near his horses, with whom he converses, although he did say he has a friendship with the stable boy due to his love of horses.

References

1. ^ Daniel Jones: English Pronouncing Dictionary. Cambridge/New York/Melbourne: Cambridge University Press 1997. ISBN 0-521-45272-4, ISBN 0-521-45903-6

Donate to Wikimedia