Paper 102: Exploring Religious Hypocrisy in Restoration and Eighteenth-Century Satire
Assignment of Paper 102: Literature of the Neo-classical Period
Academic Details:
Name: Adityarajsinh.R.Gohil
Roll No.: 1
Enrollment No.: 5108250015
Sem.: 1
Batch: 2025 - 2027
E-mail: adityarajsinh.r.gohil@gmail.com
Assignment Details:
Paper Name: Literature of the Neo-classical Period
Paper No.: 102
Paper Code: 22393
Unit: 1
Topic: Exploring Religious Hypocrisy in Restoration and Eighteenth-Century Satire
Submitted To: Smt. Sujata Binoy Gardi, Department of English, Maharaja Krishnakumarsinhji Bhavnagar University
Submitted Date: November 10, 2025
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Exploring Religious Hypocrisy in Restoration and Eighteenth-Century Satire
Abstract
This work looks at how writers and artists in Restoration and early eighteenth-century England used the idea of religious hypocrisy in dramas, poems, and satirical texts. By focusing on Jonathan Swift's A Tale of a Tub and the cartoon The Turncoats (1711), the text shows how these works exposed fake religious behavior. Satirists did more than make fun of people; they also asked deep questions about what it means to be sincere and honest in a world with many different religions and opinions. This paper examines three main areas: theatrical representations of hypocrisy on the Restoration stage, visual satire and political critique in graphic prints, and the complex literary techniques Swift used in his prose satire. Through careful analysis of these different forms of satire, we can see how writers helped their audiences think about sincerity, authenticity, and the difficulty of knowing who to trust in public life.
Research Question
How did writers and artists use religious hypocrisy in their works to highlight the problems caused by religious differences, political conflicts, and people pretending to believe things after the Glorious Revolution in England? More specifically, how did these satirists use literary and visual techniques to expose hypocrisy while raising questions about the very possibility of distinguishing real belief from pretended belief?
Hypothesis
Satirists used religious hypocrisy as their main tool to explore the confusion about real belief and honesty that grew after the 1688 Revolution. By using stories with unreliable narrators, irony, and symbolic allegory, these writers not only criticized their rivals, but also raised important questions about truth and belief. They both showed why hypocrisy was bad and used tricks themselves to make their point. The key insight is that satire cannot stand outside of hypocrisy; instead, it must use the very tools of deception and disguise that it claims to expose. This paradox became central to how literature worked in the eighteenth century and beyond.
I. Introduction: Changing Views on Faith After the Revolution
The Glorious Revolution in 1688 brought major changes for religious and political life in England. When William and Mary became the new rulers after James II was removed, new laws gave more freedom to Protestant groups who were not part of the official Church of England. These groups had been kept down during earlier periods, and many hoped that new freedoms would bring peace. However, instead of bringing unity and peace, these new freedoms made church arguments even stronger and more bitter. Each religious group wanted more power and accused others of lying or pretending about their faith. Churches that had once been silent now competed openly for influence, money, and followers.
One major issue was called "occasional conformity." This meant that some people went to Anglican church services just once per year to keep their government jobs, but they spent most of their time going to their own religious group's meetings. Many Anglicans said these people were being fake just to get ahead. They believed that true believers would not pretend to follow the official church if their real faith was different. This practice made Anglicans very angry, and debates about occasional conformity became one of the biggest political fights of the time.
Soon, calling someone a hypocrite became common in debates between all religious groups. Dissenters accused Anglicans of being too proud and thinking they were better than everyone else. Anglicans accused Dissenters of being dishonest about their beliefs. Catholics were accused by both Protestant groups of being deceptive and dangerous. Everyone blamed everyone else for pretending or lying about religion. In this climate of suspicion and argument, sincerity became almost impossible to prove. How could anyone know if their neighbor really believed what they said, or were just pretending for money, power, or social acceptance?
Writers and artists used satire which includes humor, irony, exaggeration, and mockery to point out this hypocrisy. By looking at their works, we can see they did several things at the same time. First, they criticized specific religious groups and their rivals. Second, they showed their own worries about fake faith and dishonesty in society. Third, they raised deep questions about whether it is even possible to know who is sincere and who is pretending. The satirist, in fact, often used the same tricks like irony, pretense, and disguise as the people they mocked. This made it hard to say who was truly honest, even the writer making the satire.
II. Hypocrisy and Pretending in Restoration Plays
After 1660, when King Charles II returned to power, English theater became famous for showing religious hypocrisy. Playwrights created characters who pretended to be holy but acted badly. Some wore religious clothing but did corrupt things. Others talked about their faith while secretly working against it. This theatrical interest in religious hypocrisy reflected the real arguments happening in English society. Many church officials had been kicked out for not following the new rules after 1660. Some said these expelled ministers had good moral reasons for their resistance, but others believed they were just being stubborn or hiding rebel and dangerous ideas.
The stage provided a perfect place to show these religious conflicts. Theater audiences could watch characters pretend to be religious while pursuing selfish goals. Plays mocked religious figures from every group. Jeremy Collier, a writer who criticized theater, noted that playwrights went after all kinds of believers: Catholics, Puritans, Jews, Anglicans, and many others. They often made fun of strict Puritans for being very serious and judging other people harshly. They criticized Catholic priests for being greedy and interested only in money. They showed low church ministers as weak and useless. The variety of religious mockery showed that no group was safe from satire, everyone was a target.
In John Crowne's The English Frier (1690), based on Molière's famous French play Tartuffe, the main character, Father Finicall, shows just how easy it is for religious leaders to hide their real plans. He pretends to be holy and wise but secretly tries to steal money and seduce a young woman. Finicall's confession near the end of the play reveals how deeply dishonesty is built into the Catholic Church as an institution. He says that their "frauds [are] holy beings for holy ends" and that priests must "appear in many shapes." This means that lying and pretending are not just personal failings of bad individuals but are actually part of how the whole church system works. The character suggests that religious institutions themselves teach people to be deceptive. They train priests to hide their true intentions and to use religious language to fool people.
On stage, characters often put on disguises or change their identity, a theatrical style called masquerade. This style was popular because audiences and writers believed that real-life religious figures did the same thing. They wore certain clothes or acted politely and refined to fit in with society, even if their true beliefs were completely different underneath. A Dissenter might wear fashionable clothes and speak in polite ways to hide their real religious commitment. A Catholic might pretend to be a good Protestant while secretly working for the Pope. A politician might use religious language while actually caring only about power. This made it impossible for anyone to know what people really believed, which was exactly the kind of confusion satirists liked to show in their plays.
The theatrical convention of the masquerade became a symbol for the whole confused state of religion and politics. If you could not trust what people said about their faith, and if people could change their appearance and manner so easily, then society became a stage where everyone was acting a part. No one could be certain of anyone else's sincerity. This theatrical uncertainty mirrored the real uncertainty people felt about trusting their neighbors, their leaders, and their priests. The plays helped audiences think about these serious questions while also entertaining them with humor and exciting stories.
III. Drawing Attention to Fake Belief in The Turncoats (1711)
The Turncoats is a political cartoon published in 1711 after the Tories won an important election. It used humor and visual tricks to make fun of Dissenters who joined the Anglican Church to support the new rulers. The cartoon shows two men having their church clothes changed by a tailor, making it look like their change of religion was only about what they wore, not what they truly believed. The tailor is measuring them and adjusting their clothes so that their dissenting garments become proper Anglican vestments. This visual joke suggests that changing one's religion is as simple and superficial as changing one's outfit.
When one of the men asks if his new gown can be arranged "into a cloak upon occasion," he is admitting something very important. He is suggesting that he might change back to his old dissenting clothes again if political circumstances change. This means he is not sincere about becoming Anglican; he is just pretending for now because it helps him politically. The cartoon uses this single line of dialogue to expose what the artist sees as the fundamental dishonesty of occasional conformity. These people, the artist suggests, have no real faith at all. They simply follow power and money.
The cartoon praised the Tory victory as honest Anglicans beating fake Dissenters. The election result was seen as the public choosing sincere believers over hypocrites. But the cartoon also highlighted a deeper worry that goes beyond simple political triumph. The cartoon shows that changing beliefs is as easy as changing clothes, so maybe no one can tell who is genuine anymore. If conversion can happen this quickly and this superficially, what does faith even mean? How can leaders or ordinary people know who is trustworthy?
Dissenters faced a difficult situation that had no good solution. If they acted polite and wore fashionable clothes like everyone else, they were accused of blending in and hiding their true beliefs just to avoid trouble and gain advantage. People said they were hypocrites pretending to fit in. If they acted differently, sticking to their old modest ways and keeping their distance from fashionable society, then people accused them of showing off their piety on purpose. They were said to be acting superior and trying to look better than other Protestants. Either way, Dissenters could not win. Their behavior, whether conventional or distinctive, was read as evidence of hypocrisy.
This confusion about politeness and proper manners added greatly to the suspicion and distrust in society. New ideas about politeness said that well-mannered people should be refined, controlled in their emotions, and careful not to show strong feelings or opinions. For Dissenters, this created a real problem. Their old tradition of serious behavior and modest dress was not considered polite by new standards. But if they adopted the new polite manners, then they looked just like everyone else, and people questioned whether they really believed anything at all. The culture of politeness created new ways for people to hide and disguise themselves. People wondered whether anyone was being sincere or just pretending for social and political reasons. The entire system of manners and politeness might just be another form of hypocrisy.
IV. Stories and Satire in Swift's A Tale of a Tub
Jonathan Swift's A Tale of a Tub, published in 1704, is one of the cleverest and most complex attacks on religious hypocrisy from this time period. The story is about three brothers Peter, Martin, and Jack who represent three main Christian groups: the Roman Catholic Church, the Church of England (Anglicans), and Protestant Dissenters. Each brother is given a coat by their father with clear and simple instructions: do not change the coat, keep it in perfect condition, and wear it exactly as given. The coat represents the Bible and the pure teachings of Christianity as written in scripture.
However, over time, each brother finds ways to bend those rules or even destroy their coats, showing how each religious group altered and changed their faith over the centuries. Peter, the Catholic, is very creative and clever. He invents new "rules" and fake additions to his father's will to justify making big changes and additions to his coat. He adds ribbons, gold trim, and all sorts of decorations. He tells his brothers that these changes are actually allowed if you read the will carefully and look for hidden meanings. This represents how Swift believed Catholics added new rules, new saints, and new practices that were not in the original Bible. Jack, representing radical Protestant Dissenters, goes too far the other way. He tries to keep the coat pure by ripping it to pieces and destroying it. He thinks that if he removes anything that is not explicitly mentioned in the father's will, the coat will return to its original perfection. Of course, he just destroys it completely. This represents Swift's view that radical Protestants, by rejecting all church tradition and authority, ended up with nothing, no church, no order, just chaos.
Martin, the Anglican, tries to find a middle way. He carefully tries to repair his coat and remove the bad additions without destroying it completely. He keeps some traditional practices but also reforms things that he thinks have gone wrong. Swift presents Martin as the most reasonable character, which shows Swift's support for the Anglican middle way.
What makes Swift's tale truly complex and interesting is his use of an unreliable narrator, a narrator that the reader cannot fully trust. The story's main voice keeps changing opinions, gets distracted with odd side notes called digressions, and is hard for readers to trust or follow. This unreliable narrator talks about strange topics, goes off on long tangents that seem unrelated to the main story, and often contradicts things he said earlier. This makes the act of reading the story similar to the confusion in religion and society. No one knows for sure which character is truthful or what the real point is. Is the narrator being serious or joking? Is he criticizing one group or another? It becomes hard to know.
Swift plays clever tricks with the style of learned academic books. He adds fake introductions, pretend notes from editors, and fake scholarly commentary. These tricks make it unclear if Swift is being serious or joking, which reflects the real-world confusion about sincerity in religion and writing. A reader might think Swift is presenting serious scholarship when he is actually making fun of it. This uncertainty shows that just as religious leaders and believers can be hypocrites, so can authors and even readers. The person writing might have hidden motives, and the person reading might not understand what is really happening.
The mock book form itself is important. Swift imitates the appearance of real scholarly books with all their apparatus and decoration prefaces, explanations, scholarly notes in the margins, complicated arrangements of text. But he uses this appearance to hide and confuse, not to explain clearly. This shows that the very tools that are supposed to help us understand truth scholarly apparatus, careful explanation can be used to hide truth and spread confusion. The form of the book becomes a kind of hypocrisy itself.
V. Conclusion: Satire and the Search for Sincerity
Looking at religious hypocrisy in Restoration plays, satirical drawings, and Swift's writing shows that writers saw hypocrisy as a very deep problem not just a personal flaw of bad individuals, but something built into religious institutions and public life itself. After the 1688 Revolution, it became almost impossible to tell real belief from fake, as people used politeness, clothing, clever speech, and careful behavior to hide their true feelings and intentions. The very tools that were supposed to help people communicate clearly, manners, politeness, and religious language became tools of deception.
Satirists who tried to expose hypocrisy often used the same tricks they criticized irony, unreliable narration, disguise, and ambiguous statements. They could not stand "above" the problem looking down at it from outside but were part of it themselves. In A Tale of a Tub, Swift proves that pointing out hypocrisy only leads to more questions: Is anyone truly honest? Can we ever know who is sincere and who is pretending? What is the difference between a real belief and a pretended belief? If an author uses irony and tricks to expose hypocrisy, does that make him a hypocrite too?
Satire became a complex way for readers to look at themselves and society. It showed that confusion about sincerity was not just about religion, but about everything: politics, manners, writing, and all human communication. When you read satire, you must work hard to figure out what the author really means. You must look for hidden meanings and understand jokes and tricks. This work of reading teaches you to be suspicious and doubtful about everything you read and hear. You learn that things are not always what they seem on the surface.
Swift and other satirists laid the groundwork for future literature by making us think deeply about truth, performance, and the meaning of honesty in public life. They showed that the question of sincerity and hypocrisy cannot be solved simply by exposing liars or punishing hypocrites. The problem goes much deeper: it is built into how society works, how language works, and how we communicate with each other. Their satire teaches us that we all play parts, we all perform identities, and we all hide parts of ourselves from others. The satirists were honest about this fundamental human condition. They did not pretend that honesty is simple or easy but showed how complicated and impossible it really is. This honesty about the difficulty of honesty became one of the most important lessons that eighteenth-century literature passed on to modern literature and modern readers.
An analysis of how Restoration and 18th-century English satirists used religious hypocrisy to question the very nature of sincerity in a world of political and religious conflict.
The 1688 Glorious Revolution, followed by new laws on religious toleration, did not bring peace. Instead, it intensified competition between religious groups, making "sincerity" a public battleground. The climate of suspicion created a perfect storm for satirists.
Satirists used three primary forms to expose hypocrisy, each targeting a different aspect of the crisis.
Plays used disguise and role-playing to show how public identity was a performance. e.g., The English Frier Political cartoons used visual metaphors to mock the superficiality of belief. e.g., The Turncoats (1711) Complex prose satires used unreliable narrators to mirror the reader's own confusion. e.g., A Tale of a Tub
Restoration plays argued that hypocrisy was not just a personal flaw, but an institutional strategy. Characters like Father Finicall showed how deception was taught.
Greed, Seduction, Ambition "Holy frauds for holy ends" (e.g., Father Finicall)
Visual satires like The Turncoats exposed the superficiality of "belief" (like changing clothes) and highlighted the unwinnable social position of Dissenters.
They are accused of being fake, hiding their beliefs to get ahead (Hypocrisy of Conformity). They are accused of being proud, showing off their piety to seem superior (Hypocrisy of Pride).
In A Tale of a Tub, Swift uses a story of three brothers and their coats (representing pure faith) to show how all groups corrupted the original message. Martin (Anglican) is shown as the most reasonable, but even he must alter the coat.
This chart conceptualizes each brother's deviation from the original "will" (pure faith). Peter adds, Jack destroys, and Martin attempts a moderate reform.
Swift's true genius was not just the story, but the *form* of his book. By using an unreliable narrator and a confusing "mock-book" format, he forces the reader into the same suspicious mindset as the society he's critiquing.
Wields the tools of deception: Is forced to be suspicious, to doubt the text, and to hunt for hidden meanings. The act of reading *mirrors* the social "Crisis of Sincerity." You can't trust the author, just as you can't trust your neighbor.
The paper's key insight is that satire cannot exist "outside" of hypocrisy. The satirist and the hypocrite use a nearly identical toolkit of disguise, irony, and performance. The only difference is the final goal: one hides the truth, the other uses deception to reveal it.
As the chart shows, the "profiles" of the Hypocrite and the Satirist are alarmingly similar, differing only in their ultimate aim.
The Satirical Paradox
The Crisis of Sincerity
(More group freedom)
(Groups compete for power)
(Flashpoint for hypocrisy)
(Satirists respond)The Satirist's Arsenal
Theatrical Masquerade
Visual Caricature
Literary Allegory
On Stage: Institutional Deceit
Personal Vices
Institutional Doctrine
The Theatrical Hypocrite
In Print: The Double Bind
The Dissenter's Double Bind
In Prose: Swift's Allegory of Corruption
The Author's Paradox
The Satirist (Swift)
The Reader
The Result
Conclusion: The Satirist's Profile
References:
A. C. Guthkelch. “Swift’s ‘Tale of a Tub.’” The Modern Language Review, vol. 8, no. 4, 1913, pp. 454–63. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/3712591. Accessed 6 Nov. 2025.
Fawcett, Christina. “MATERIALITY AND OMISSION: SWIFT’S NARRATOR AND THE TALE OF a TUB1.” Academia Jan. 2013, www.academia.edu/2484381/MATERIALITY_AND_OMISSION_SWIFTS_NARRATOR_AND_THE_TALE_OF_A_TUB1.
Fletcher, David. “‘A Herd of Snivelling, Grinning Hypocrites’: Religious Hypocrisy in Restoration Drama.” Studies in Church History, vol. 60, May 2024, pp. 290–311. https://doi.org/10.1017/stc.2024.12.
Koon, William. “SWIFT ON LANGUAGE: AN APPROACH TO A TALE OF A TUB.” Style, vol. 10, no. 1, 1976, pp. 28–40. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/45108735
Morton, Adam. “Laughing at Hypocrisy: The Turncoats (1711), Visual Culture and Dissent in Early Eighteenth-Century England.” Studies in Church History, vol. 60, May 2024, pp. 312–39. https://doi.org/10.1017/stc.2024.13.
Walsh, Marcus. “Text, ‘Text’, and Swift’s ‘A Tale of a Tub.’” The Modern Language Review, vol. 85, no. 2, 1990, pp. 290–303. JSTOR, https://www.jstor.org/stable/3731810
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