A Tale of a Tub, Jonathan Swift’s first major and his most masterly work. It presents a satire of religious excess. When it was written, politics and religion were so closely linked in England, that the religious and political aspects of the satire could not be separated.

The story revolves around the exploits of three sons, Peter, Martin and Jack, representing the main threads of Christianity, viz. Catholic, Anglican, and Puritan, respectively. They receive a bequest from their father, of a coat each, with instructions that no alterations whatsoever may be made in the coats. After some time, the sons find that their coats have fallen out of current fashion. They begin to look for loopholes in their father’s will so that they may make the alterations they want. Each son finds his own means of getting around their father’s admonition, and they struggle with each other for power and dominance.

A Tale of a Tub is essentially an allegory. The altering of coats stands for changing the faith. The will of the father represents the Bible. The original state of the coats stands for primitive Christianity. Swift’s satire is unique in the sense that it offers no resolutions. While he ridicules any number of foolish habits, he never offers the reader a positive set of values to embrace. Since Swift does not state what his ideal point is, it is difficult to be clear about the moral thrust of the work.

The book remains one of the top classics in English Literature. Robert Hendrickson notes in his book British Literary Anecdotes that Swift was always partial to his strikingly original The Tale of a Tub. On reading the work again in later years, he exclaimed “Good God! What a genius I had when I wrote that book.”

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