This article relates Swift’s critique of science to his view of women by resorting to Lakoff and Johnson’s theory on the function of metaphors in human conceptualization. Through the overarching conceptual metaphor NATURE IS A WOMAN, the gap between these two areas in Swift studies, which have remained largely isolated so far, is bridged. The analysis shows that Swift’s strange aesthetic view of and peculiar attitude toward women were, through the conceptual metaphor, extrapolated to nature, which can explain his condemnation of science as not only “unaesthetic” and “indecent” but also futile and morbid.

October 2019: HE Xiyao received his PhD from Hong Kong Baptist University and is currently a lecturer at the School of English Studies, Zhejiang International Studies University. His research interests include 18^th-century English Literature, Chinese myths and legends, and Pre-1949 Chinese Maritime Customs. He has recently published an article on the criticisms embedded in Chinese myths and legends, and is now working on the collation and translation of historical files from Pre-1949 Maritime Customs in Zhejiang Province, China.