ENGL 200 D: Reading Literature: Literature in the Marketplace

Below are the questions that I’d like you to think about as you read the first part of Bernard Mandeville’s “The Grumbling Hive.”

1. In ll. 1-12, what type of community is the hive? How would you describe their economic situation?
2. In ll. 31-54, Mandeville describes the different types of economic individuals present in the community: what are these, specifically? What are the different ways that people can position themselves in regards to value?
3. What makes the economy flow in this poem, and why? What does that mean for economic individuals?
4. What are the different ways of cheating that you see described? (Cite specific lines!)
5. What role does sociability play in economic activity? (Consider this in regards to the Swift and Montagu poems as well).
6. Mandeville writes, in ll. 155-156: “Thus every part was full of vice, / Yet the whole Mass a Paradise.” If you look at the lines that precede this, and that follow it (up to l. 241), why is this? (according to your interpretation)
7. Here is Mandeville’s prose remark on vice, from “The Fable of the Bees,” the prose work that accompanied “The Grumbling Hive:” According to him, why is vice important? Do you think he’s correct? Why, or why not?

IT may be said, that Virtue is made Friends with Vice, when industrious good People, who maintain their Families and bring up their Children handsomely, pay Taxes, and are several ways useful Members of the Society, get a Livelihood by something that chiefly depends on, or is very much influenc’d by the Vices of others, without being themselves guilty of, or accessary to them, any otherwise than by way of Trade, as a Druggist may be to Poisoning, or a Sword-Cutler to Blood-shed.

Thus the Merchant, that sends Corn or Cloth into Foreign Parts to purchase Wines and Brandies, encourages the Growth or Manufactury of his own Country; he is a Benefactor to Navigation, increases the Customs, and is many ways beneficial to the Publick; yet it is not to be denied but that his greatest Dependence is Lavishness and Drunkenness: For if none were to drink Wine but such only as stand in need of it, nor any Body more than his Health requir’d, that Multitude of Wine-Merchants, Vintners, Coopers, &c. that make such a considerable Shew in this flourishing City, would be in a miserable Condition. The same may be said not only of Card and Dice-makers, that are the immediate Ministers to a Legion of Vices; but of Mercers, Upholsterers, Tailors, and many others, that would be starv’d in half a Year’s time, if Pride and Luxury were at once to be banished the Nation.

8. In the last section of this first part (ll. 205-242), what’s the value of honesty? Why do the rogues think they need it? (ll. 224-226)

9. What do you think will happen in the second half of the poem?