In Part
IV of clothing comes to have great symbolic significance. It represents
the preconceived ideas and notions that Gulliver brings with him to the land of the Houyhnhmns,
the horse-like race of creatures who dazzle Gulliver with their intelligence and calm
rationality.
The Houyhnhmns are naked, implying that they have no
preconceptions, entirely in keeping with their seemingly inexhaustible capacity for rational
thinking. When they see Gulliver for the first time they immediately assume that the clothes
he's wearing are a part of his body. In symbolic terms, this highlights the fact that Gulliver
brings the preconceptions of Western man with him wherever he goes.
Once he's
understood that clothing is something that Gulliver puts on, the master horse concludes that he
wears clothes in order to hide the unattractiveness of his body. The implication, from the
rational perspective of the Houyhnhmns, is that creatures such as Gulliverwho are not really all
that different to the unspeakable Yahooshave separated themselves from their innately rational
nature by adopting, or "putting on" as it were, customs, opinions, and traditions that
are decidedly irrational. Gulliver may like to think of himself and his fellow man as being a
cut above the Yahoos, but the master horse gently disabuses him of such a notion.
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