Introduction

Abstract

AbstractJonathan Swift's relations with women, and particular representations of women in his works, have obtained strong reactions and tempted assumption from his own generation to ours. Swift never married, and there is no proof that he ever had a sexual relationship. Sexual pleasure is not injected into his writing, much less valorized, and implied references to sex are negative. As a satirist, Swift is often instructive, but when he turns his focus to a couple's wedding night and discusses proper marital behavior, sex is concealed by excretion. At the same time that he criticized women as a sex and as a gender, Swift also collected a positive record of friendship with and admiration of individual women. The closest and most content of his relationships with women was with Esther Johnson, an intimate friendship that started from youth into middle age and ended only with her death.