Gulliver's sale to the queen of Brobdingnag

Gulliver's sale to the queen of Brobdingnag is the pivotal event that rescues him from the exhausting and degrading life of a traveling showman and installs him at the royal court, where he gains the protection of the queen and the king but also encounters new forms of danger, humiliation, and a profound crisis of scale and identity.

Background and the Farmer's Decision

By the time a gentleman-usher arrived from court commanding the farmer to bring Gulliver immediately for the queen's diversion, the farmer had already concluded that his tiny captive was near death. The frequent labors of exhibiting Gulliver had made a very considerable change in his health; he had quite lost his stomach and was almost reduced to a skeleton. The farmer, observing this and concluding he must soon die, resolved to make as good a hand of him as possible. Some of the queen's ladies had already seen Gulliver and reported strange things of his beauty, behavior, and good sense, which prompted the royal summons.

The Sale and Gulliver's New Allegiance

When Gulliver was brought before the queen, he fell on his knees and begged the honor of kissing her imperial foot. The gracious princess instead held out her little finger toward him, which he embraced in both arms and put the tip of it with the utmost respect to his lip. She made general questions about his country and travels, which he answered as distinctly and in as few words as he could. Asked whether he would be content to live at court, Gulliver bowed down to the board of the table and humbly answered that he was his master's slave, but if he were at his own disposal he should be proud to devote his life to her majesty's service. The queen then asked the farmer whether he were willing to sell Gulliver at a good price. The farmer, who apprehended Gulliver could not live a month, was ready enough to part with him and demanded a thousand pieces of gold, which were ordered him on the spot. Gulliver then asked the queen that Glumdalclitch, who had always attended him with so much care and kindness, might be admitted into her service and continue to be his nurse and instructor. Her majesty agreed to the petition and easily got the farmer's consent, who was glad enough to have his daughter preferred at court. The poor girl herself was not able to hide her joy. Gulliver's late master withdrew, bidding him farewell and saying he had left him in good service, to which Gulliver replied not a word, only making him a slight bow.

Gulliver's Explanation to the Queen

The queen observed Gulliver's coldness and, when the farmer was gone, asked the reason. Gulliver made bold to tell her majesty that he owed no other obligation to his late master than his not dashing out the brains of a poor harmless creature found by chance in his field, an obligation amply recompensed by the gain he had made in showing him through half the kingdom and the price he had now sold him for. The life he had since led, he said, was laborious enough to kill an animal of ten times his strength, and his health was much impaired by the continual drudgery of entertaining the rabble every hour of the day. If his master had not thought his life in danger, her majesty would not have got so cheap a bargain. But as he was out of all fear of being ill-treated under the protection of so great and good an empress, he hoped his late master's apprehensions would appear groundless, for he already found his spirits revive by the influence of her most august presence. The queen, giving great allowance for his defectiveness in speaking, was surprised at so much wit and good sense in so diminutive an animal.

Life at Court and New Dangers

Once at court, Gulliver's existence changed dramatically. The queen took him in her own hand and carried him to the king, who at first mistook him for a splacnuck. After hearing Gulliver's account and questioning the farmer, the king began to think what they had told him might possibly be true. A convenient apartment was provided for Glumdalclitch at court, and the queen commanded her own cabinet-maker to contrive a box that might serve Gulliver for a bed-chamber. The queen became so fond of his company that she could not dine without him; he had a table placed upon the same at which her majesty ate, just at her left elbow. Yet this new life brought its own perils. The queen's dwarf, not full thirty feet high, became insolent at seeing a creature so much beneath him, and one day dropped Gulliver into a large silver bowl of cream. Gulliver fell over head and ears and would have drowned had he not been a good swimmer; Glumdalclitch ran to his relief and took him out after he had swallowed above a quart of cream. The dwarf was soundly whipped and forced to drink up the bowl of cream, and soon after the queen bestowed him on a lady of high quality. Other dangers included a monkey that seized Gulliver from his box, held him like a baby, and carried him to the roof of the palace, where he was rescued only after a terrifying ordeal that confined him to bed for a fortnight. The monkey was killed and an order made that no such animal should be kept about the palace.

The King's Judgment and Gulliver's Disillusionment

Gulliver's conversations with the king of Brobdingnag became a central feature of his court life. The king, a prince of much gravity and austere countenance, took a pleasure in conversing with Gulliver, inquiring into the manners, religion, laws, government, and learning of Europe. Gulliver gave him the best account he was able, but the king's apprehension was so clear and his judgment so exact that he made very wise reflections and observations upon all Gulliver said. When Gulliver was a little too copious in talking of his own beloved country, the king could not forbear taking him up in his right hand and, after a hearty fit of laughing, asked him whether he was a whig or a tory, and observed how contemptible a thing was human grandeur which could be mimicked by such diminutive insects. After hearing Gulliver's long discourses on England, the king delivered his devastating verdict: the bulk of Gulliver's natives were "the most pernicious race of little odious vermin that nature ever suffered to crawl upon the surface of the earth." Gulliver's offer to teach the king the secret of gunpowder was rejected with horror; the king protested he would rather lose half his kingdom than be privy to such a secret, which he commanded Gulliver, as he valued his life, never to mention any more.

Escape and Return

After two years in Brobdingnag, Gulliver's deliverance came in a manner not very common. While attending the king and queen on a progress to the south coast, Glumdalclitch fell ill and Gulliver was taken to the seaside by a page. He fell asleep in his travelling-box, and an eagle seized the ring of the box in its beak and carried it high into the air. Pursued by other eagles, the bird dropped the box into the sea, where it floated until it was discovered by an English merchantman under Captain Thomas Wilcocks. The sailors sawed a hole in the cover and took Gulliver aboard in a very weak condition. When he returned to England, he found himself unable to adjust to normal human scale: he bent down to go into his own house for fear of striking his head, stooped lower than his wife's knees when she ran to embrace him, and could not see his daughter until she arose because he had been so long used to standing with his head and eyes erect to above sixty feet. His family concluded he had lost his wits, an instance, as Gulliver himself notes, of the great power of habit and prejudice.