Here’s the tea: Enlightenment is a method rich, white, educated men use in order to further not only the gap between the elite rich and working class poor, but rich, white, educated women as well. As I looked through my blog posts, I began to realize that social hierarchies and the subject of social status were neatly and meticulously interwoven with the ideas of enlightenment. After all, the Royal Society all but attempted to control scientific advancements as well as the diverse ideas of enlightenment and what it really meant. The truth is, the Royal Society isolate themselves and do all they can to exclude those they deem inappropriate to the cause, Pope as a prime example of those who were unfit. So then, that left the question of who were invited at cool kid’s table and Swift’s ridiculous Gulliver becomes a general contender: nationalistic, to a certain extent wealthy, very educated, and most importantly: English and Christian. Through Cavendish’s passionate skepticism with the microscope, we see the first hints of social hierarchy and the rift between the rich and working class through her attack on hook. However, we also see subtle iterations of rifts between educated men and educated women through Cavendish’s contempt against “boys that play with watery bubbles.” Women could wear all the heels they wanted to, but these rich white men weren’t about to let their heels be shorter. Enlightenment is a one-up, a petty reminder that they are at the top of the food chain, especially in knowledge. In Johnson’s critique on “An Essay on Man,” Johnson does not disagree with Pope’s ideals but rather viciously tears Pope as a person to shreds. Even if his ideas were to coincide with the Royal Society’s own, Pope did not meet the criteria to jump on the enlightenment bandwagon. Maybe that’s why the Houyhnmhms in Gulliver’s Travels were horse people; they are of a specific breed and lack the general humanness that make us who we are. In fact, it’s reminiscent of various biblical stories in which the humans attempt to strive for the things they were not made to do, to reach higher than the mountains cultivated for them, to become more than who they are. Enlightenment is just another chapter, another method to swim against the natural current.

Enlightenment is capitalism; it is that top 1% that insist they overpower everyone else, basking in their wealth and knowledge, basking in the control they have that more than the majority yearn for. Enlightenment is rich government dictating right and wrongs, taking away freedom of the different, freedom of those who they believe do not belong, catering to those that resemble themselves and casting asides the people that need it most. Enlightenment is a gaudy pair of high heels worn by the atrocious rich men whose masculinity is so fragile that they have to flaunt their knowledge, their wealth, their power just to assert their dominance. This is the enlightenment that dominates England then and the capitalistic world today.

-Catherine Pumbaya, your friendly neighbor, the liberal