Page 142 - Gullivers

and shared religious culture (Christianity), as well as levels of cultural assimilation and identification with the native people by those sent to rule the territory – and latterly the reverse where, post-independence writers
have found a form of cultural colonialism difficult to defeat - all of these factors demand a different account of the relationship between the two parties involved. Jonathan Swist is a good example of the ambivalences that individuals caught up in such a situation were prey to and all of those Anglo- Irish writers most influenced by his writing share this duality and this ambivalent relationship to Ireland.
Swist’s sympathies were never predictable along racial or religious lines. Ostensibly a member of the ruling Anglo-Irish class, he made it the target of his biting political assaults. As he matured he became a radical critic
of power elites, demonstrating as Declan Kiberd points out, both an identity as a frustrated loyalist and as a fledgling nationalist. Over the body of his writing Swist displays a homelessness of mind – one that provided him with a viewpoint as ‘Other’, as outsider, and this is the origin of the anthropological tenor of much of his writing and the source of his incisive judgments and his osten astute insights. This too is a feature of the personal profiles of all of those Anglo-Irish writers most influenced by Swist, Edgeworth, Shaw, Joyce and O’Brien all share this sense of apartness from their respective communities, in most cases sharing a sense of
a conflicted identity.
The contradictions and ambivalences of Swist’s personality are not confined to his political allegiances but are there also in other aspects of his profile. As a Church of Ireland clergyman of rank Swist’s writing could be considered blasphemous and osten included scatological material. Several of his biographers have indicted Swist on issues of his own moral conduct in relation to the women in his life, his companion Stella (Esther Johnson) and his alleged mistress, Vanessa (Esther Van Homrigh). He is a writer for
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