What happens in Part II of Gulliver's Travels?
After a storm reroutes the Adventure, a landing party sets foot on an unfamiliar shore, leaving Gulliver behind when the crew flees from a giant chasing them. He is found in a field of towering grain by a farmer—an enormous Brobdingnagian—who takes him home as a curiosity. The farmer's wife reacts with disgust, but their young daughter, Glumdalclitch, cares for Gulliver, making him a cradle-box and teaching him their language. News about the tiny stranger spreads, and the farmer, seeing a chance to make money, starts showcasing Gulliver in the local market town. People pay to see him perform tricks like drawing his sword, marching, and saluting. The shows take a toll on him, both exhausting and humiliating, leading to a decline in his health due to the constant display. By Chapter 4, the farmer receives a royal invitation, and Gulliver is taken to the capital, Lorbrulgrud, where the Queen is so enchanted that she buys him on the spot. Glumdalclitch stays on as his keeper, and Gulliver is brought to court—saved from the market but now a permanent exhibit in a gilded cage, leaving his status as a rational being still uncertain in the eyes of those around him.
Analysis
Swift's brilliance in these opening Brobdingnag chapters lies in how he flips the Lilliput dynamic on its head: Gulliver, once a giant among tiny people, now finds himself miniature. This shift isn't just for laughs; it carries a deeper philosophical weight. While Lilliput revealed the triviality of political ambition, Brobdingnag lays bare the absurdity of the human body itself. Swift focuses on the grotesque features of the giants—pores like craters, nipples like barrels—with a clinical, almost insect-like scrutiny that reflects the same intense examination Gulliver once applied to the Lilliputians. The straightforward prose serves as both the punchline and the source of horror.
The farmer serves as an early capitalism allegory: he sees Gulliver's market value before recognizing his humanity, organizing performances with the precision of a showman. In contrast, Glumdalclitch brings a genuine warmth to a story that otherwise lacks it, and her maternal care sharply highlights the farmer's commodification.
Swift also starts to chip away at the Enlightenment belief that reason defines human dignity. Gulliver clings to his rationality, yet no one in Brobdingnag quite believes it; he’s seen as something between a pet and a machine. The cradle-box—both nursery furniture and showcase—captures this confusion perfectly. The tonal control is meticulous: Swift allows Gulliver's bruised pride to create irony without ever letting the narrator catch on, a disconnect that will dangerously widen as the journey unfolds.
Key quotes from Part II
“The farmer having (as I supposed by their talking) received such an account of me as his daughter had given him, took me up in his right hand, and stroked me gently with the other; having first smiled at my shape, and then looked on me with great curiosity.”
The farmer examines Gulliver for the first time in the field, his 'smile' at Gulliver's 'shape' reducing a self-possessed English traveller to a specimen worthy of amused inspection.
“I was that day shown to twelve sets of company, and as often forced to act over again the same fopperies, till I was half dead with weariness and vexation.”
Gulliver describes the grinding routine of his market-town exhibitions, where performance and exhaustion collapse the distance between entertainer and animal.
“The Queen became so fond of my company, that she could not dine without me. I had a table placed upon the same at which her Majesty eat, just at her left elbow.”
Installed at court after the Queen's purchase, Gulliver occupies a position of apparent favour that is, structurally, indistinguishable from a lapdog's.