Animality and Children's Literature and Film

A. Ratelle

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN: 9781137373151
• eBook ISBN: 9781137373168
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: European Literary Criticism
• Index: Literature

Examining culturally significant works of children's culture through a posthumanist, or animality studies lens, Animality and Children's Literature and Film argues that Western philosophy's objective to establish a notion of an exclusively human subjectivity is continually countered in the very texts that ostensibly work to this end.

1

Animal Virtues, Values and Rights

During the nineteenth century, animal suffering was an appalling constant of both rural and urban landscapes, and one of the most visible forms of this suffering arose from the abuse visited upon the horses used for stagecoach or Hansom cab transport. An integral part of the social and economic structure of human society at this time, equines had also become ubiquitous as symbols and metaphors. Sarah Wintle (1994) notes that, from the seventeenth century onward, horses were used to articulate “ideas and feelings about such central human concerns as status and class, sexuality, and the body” (p. 4). In Romantic iconography, Robert Dingley (1997) observes, the horse is “at least as often the embodiment of untamed natural force as it is representative of subordination to human purpose” (p. 245). During the nineteenth century, horses often simultaneously embodied such human values as status, wealth, nobility and military power, while also functioning in a far less glorified sense as necessary brute labourers in manufacturing and as familiar workers on crowded, polluted urban streets.

The awkward fit of these two roles proved a major catalyst for the animal rights movement. Marian Scholtmeijer (1993) argues that the urban space and cruelty to animals were “strangely interlinked” (p. 143). She contends that the conspicuousness of urban animals makes them significant in discussions of cruelty. She further posits that urban cruelty to animals “jars” with the ideals of civilization embraced by city dwellers (p. 143). The high visibility of the animals, moreover, enhanced empathy for equines, so much so that, by the mid-Victorian period, Robert Louis Stevenson would find himself heavily criticized for portraying himself, in his generally lighthearted Travels with a Donkey in the Cévennes (1879), beating his stubborn travelling companion Modestine.¹ While Stevenson’s actions occurred within a rural context, it was the urban space that offered the most public displays of animal abuse. This very visibility served as a catalyst for animal rights legislation such as the 1822 Cruel and Improper Treatment of Cattle Act (also known as Martin’s Act). Targeted at the condition of horses and other domestic animals, the act stands as the first animal rights legislation in history. Because cities fostered greater communication among those sympathetic to animal suffering, they offered the necessary means of effectively voicing dissent. Postering, rallies and other events were easier to arrange. And because a smaller proportion of city-dwellers relied as heavily on livestock for their livelihood than people from the countryside, a larger audience of potential sympathizers was found in the cities and larger towns.

In this chapter, I explore the way in which horses became the site for capturing the hypocrisy behind the façade of civility and empathy maintained by a society driven economically by an unrelenting productivist ethos. Focusing on the anonymous Memoirs of Dick, the Little Poney, Supposed to Be Written by Himself (1799), Anna Sewell’s Black Beauty (1877) and Enid Bagnold’s National Velvet (1935), I will argue that the equine embodiment of this conflict was recognized as a means of educating the young into a culture of labour and suffering. As I will demonstrate, however, such works did not simply prepare children for the burdens of economic growth and the privileges of middle-class life, but encouraged the young to question the values of their parents. As such, National Velvet in particular depicts the equine body as a site of juvenile resistance to these efforts.

From animal autobiography to animal rights

Early arguments for animal rights were largely the result of a major re-thinking of the relationship between humans and other animals. Indeed, the Romantic Movement arose in part in opposition to the Enlightenment’s scientific rationalization of nature, thereby encouraging a reconception of the relationship of individual humans to their natural surroundings and the animals recognized as a part of those surroundings.² William Blake’s poem “The Fly” (1793) concisely captures the way in which the Romantics often problematized the concept of species segregation: “Am not I/A fly like thee?” the poem’s speaker queries, “Or art not thou/A man like me?” (n. p.). In this brief passage, Blake has his narrator conflate his/her own identity with that of the insect in order to comment on the shared mortality of both humans and animals. On another level, within the context of suffering and death, the passage asserts the arbitrariness of perceived human superiority. It is the narrator’s “thoughtless hand” – like that of some uncaring god – that crushes the life of the other. The oddly anthropomorphic assumption that the insect, until its untimely death, was occupied with “summer play” imbues not only the fly but also the speaker with a child-like naïveté that leaves the principal inquiry unresolved. Nor is this study of a fly a rare consideration for the Romantics. As David Perkins (2003) notes, pleas on behalf of animals and animal suffering were

part of a much broader civilizing, educative, and disciplinary effort […] Stern virtues of the past, such as courage and duty, were admired, but intellectuals now also extolled sympathy, compassion, the person who felt with and for others, who was benevolent not only because it is right but because of a sensitive, tender nature. (p. 31)

As part of this spirit of the age, Jeremy Bentham in 1780 reintroduced and popularized philosophic debates around animal suffering. The critical issue, he proposes, “is not Can they reason? nor Can they talk? but, Can they suffer?” (p. 311). Bentham circumvents the prevailing attention – in animal rights debates of the time – to questions around issues of language, reason and the soul without explicitly undermining the boundaries that Blake questions between humans and other animals. Bentham is not addressing children exclusively in this section of his Principles, but his argument nevertheless opens up a philosophic space within which one can begin questioning previous conceptions of the relation of young humans to animals as predicated on René Descartes’ famous assertions in “Discourse on the Method” (1637) that animals are merely automata performing the signals of pain, without really experiencing it. In this work, Descartes argues that the capability of human thought – what he calls cogito – proves human existence. A key proposition on which this claim is built is that animals do not feel pain as humans do. Rather, he argues, animals only go through the external motions of feeling pain, without the accompanying mental sensations that humans feel. These sensations presumably include physical discomfort as well as dread of the possibility of future pain.

However, as Cary Wolfe (2003) points out, Descartes “insisted not that animals do not feel those sensations we call ‘pain’, but only that they do not experience them as suffering because there is ‘no one home’, no subject of the cogito to do the experiencing; and thus, the pain is not morally relevant” (p. 137). Descartes’ disavowal of animals’ ability to experience pain creates a convenient means by which to excuse the abuse of animals in the context of labour. However, if animals can suffer, as Bentham argues, that suffering is morally relevant. As Wintle (1994) notes further, Descartes’ writings and the subsequent refutations of his postulations “prompted speculation about the nature of animals and how far they could be said to share or not share certain characteristics with humans” (p. 5). Indeed, amateur naturalists began to create species categories established on how much the animal in question shared with the human. In other words, “nearness to man” became the basis of an animal hierarchy (p. 8). More often than not, in this hierarchy, horses were put on top because of their ubiquity, their centrality to travel, communication and commerce, and their physical proximity to human handlers and riders.

Sarah Trimmer (1786) characterizes horses in Fabulous Histories as “formidable creatures” (p. 127) who are fully capable of harming humans in the course of their labour-based interactions, but she adds that

God has wisely ordained that they should not [do] so; and having given mankind dominion over them, he has implemented in their nature an awe and dread of the human species, which occasion them to yield subjection to the lords of creation when they exert their authority in a proper manner. (p. 127)

For Trimmer, then, the subjugation of horses is a part of God’s human-privileging design, a design that also sanctions some degree of animal abuse, or what Trimmer euphemistically describes as humans’ “proper” exertion of authority. This model of species relations also hints at the author’s awareness of the problems with bourgeois class distinctions that are somehow simultaneously essential and yet transcendable through a strong work ethic. Ostensibly unlike the human poor, horses can never move above their position in society, because they lack reason enough to perceive the inequity of their enforced servitude.

Musing on the same class/species correlations and distinctions, Rousseau (1754) remarked that we “only pity the wretched so far as we think they feel the need of pity” (p. 257). As he goes on to observe, this is “one of the reasons why we are more callous to the sufferings of animals than of men, although a fellow-feeling ought to make us identify ourselves equally with either” (p. 257).³ In eighteenth and nineteenth-century Britain, the emergent animal autobiography genre was pivotal in fostering this fellow-feeling with animals, as well as in challenging the normative notions of species hierarchy and the labour-based abuse these notions sanctioned. In England, this challenge proved to be the impetus for enacting many of the earliest laws against cruelty to animals.

Animal rights activists of the time found that emphasizing the proximity of humans’ and equines’ lives proved especially effective for developing a culture of animal sympathy. Within literature, the animal’s-eye view compels the reader into a close emotional bond with the animal as it relates the story of its difficult life. In light of this strategic development of emotional bonds between reader and animal character, Fabulous Histories, for example, reveals a more overtly compassionate purpose for giving animals speech than that of simply performing human virtue. In one scene, Mrs. Benson conjectures to a local farmer’s wife that, prior to killing any animal, we should endeavour to change places with it, to imagine how the animal feels. The farmer’s wife replies, “Indeed, madam […] I have often wished that poor dumb creatures had somebody to speak for them; many an innocent life would then be saved which is now destroyed to no end” (p. 117). By the time Trimmer was writing, the Cartesian assertion that animals cannot speak had become engrained as a cultural maxim, but this very inadequacy on the part of nonhuman species helped foster the powerful idea of animal advocacy. Animals’ inability to speak back demanded that humans, as Trimmer suggests, take on the task on the other species’ behalf, an ethical position aided by a literary form in which the reader is implicitly asked to trade places with the animal. This motivation for advocacy became instrumental during the nineteenth century, with the middle-class children educated by animal autobiographies becoming the adults behind the animal rights movement.

The middle class perceived both the upper and lower classes as particularly cruel to animals. Where upper-class recreation involved the organized ritual of fox hunting, the lower classes engaged in bull or bear baiting, in which the larger animal was set upon by dogs trained to fight to the death. Spectators would place bets on whether or not the canines would succeed in killing the other species. This grisly spectacle was a popular recreational activity for the working class, and the earliest arguments against it were closely connected with social control of the poor, in terms of regulating work hours and restraining public drunkenness (Bailey 1978, p. 31). British Parliamentary debates of the late 1700s also questioned whether it was even possible to change such behaviour. It became the responsibility of the government to educate the lower classes and convert them into “rational” beings (p. 31). The conclusion that the lower classes needed to be made rational implicitly allies them with the animals being protected, allowing the middle class to transpose the poorer members of society into a veritable subspecies. The only distinct difference between species being suggested here is an inherent humanity that supersedes any animality; there is an expectation that the lower classes can be tutored into being more rational – that is, more human.

On 2 April 1800, Sir William Pulteney, a Scottish lawyer and Member of Parliament, proposed the first legislation to outlaw bull baiting. The intention behind the legislation was not a concern for animal welfare, but a sense of a need to eradicate public drunkenness and ensure labour productivity in the working classes. As Hilda Kean (1998) points out, however, participation in animal-fighting events cut across social strata, uniting the aristocracy with the lower classes in enjoying the spectacle or in owning and maintaining fighting animals. Many MPs who opposed Pulteney’s legislation, moreover, were among those practising such “entertainment” (p. 2); they had a vested financial interest in the continued legality of the sport. The bill was ultimately defeated.

Animal advocates needed to develop a new framework in which to generate support for their anti-cruelty cause. In 1809, Sir Thomas Erskine, a barrister, anti-slavery advocate, and former Lord Chancellor, proposed an anti-cruelty bill that focused on “routine cruelty” such as working horses to exhaustion or beating cattle as they are lead to market. This bill was also defeated, but the focus on visible and everyday abuse set the stage for further Parliamentary and public debates around cruelty to animals and animal rights, framed in both Rousseau and Bentham’s language of shared suffering.

In 1822, another Member of Parliament, Richard Martin, proposed the Cruel and Improper Treatment of Cattle Act, or “Martin’s Act.” This made it a punishable offence to

wantonly and cruelly beat, abuse, or ill-treat any Horse, Mare, Gelding, Mule, Ass, Ox, Cow, Heifer, Steer, Sheep, or other Cattle, and Complaint on Oath thereof be made to any Justice of the Peace or other Magistrate within whose Jurisdiction such Offence shall be committed, it shall be lawful for such Justice of the Peace or other Magistrate to issue his Summons or Warrant, at his Discretion, to bring the party or parties so complained of before him. (1822, n.p.)

Offenders charged, tried and convicted under this new Act were subject to fines “not exceeding Five Pounds, not less than Ten Shillings to His Majesty, His Heirs and Successors” (1822, n.p.). If they were not able to pay, or if the abuse was severe enough, the offender was to be “committed to the House of Correction or some other Prison within the Jurisdiction within which the Offence shall have been committed, there to be kept without Bail or Main prize for any Time not exceeding Three Months” (1822, n.p.). The implementation of Martin’s Act was a major achievement for animal rights advocates. It was, however, difficult to enforce because it relied mainly on animal abuse either being observed by law enforcement or being reported by members of the populace, many of whom were at best uninterested in reporting the abuse of livestock, or worse, abusers themselves.

To ensure that Martin’s Act would be properly enforced, the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (SPCA) was created. The SPCA attracted respectable citizens working on a number of other humanitarian causes – an urban, middle-class body defining itself against both the working class and the upper class, tormenting animals for sport. According to Kean, this entry of animal welfare into larger political debates, and the creation of societies dedicated to animal rights and protection, abetted the formation of political and moral perspectives that had not held strong currency in the past:

Changes in the law were invoked not just to defend property nor to regulate the behaviour of the rabble and seditious agitators; they also had the effect of giving protection to those unable to speak for themselves. The role of advocate and protector was being established to invoke the cause of those literally without human speech, dumb animals. (1998, p. 31)

It was now legally recognized that, while animals cannot make themselves understood in human words, they are still fully conscious beings, and thus humane treatment becomes a moral imperative. In fiction, an animal’s ability to speak did not necessarily signify the view that it had a human mind; rather, giving animals human speech simply allowed the reader access to a mind that British law now declared had rights to legal protection and, therefore, ethical value.

Children’s literature proved a major vehicle for the naturalization of these legally acknowledged trans-species responsibilities. Among the many animal autobiographies of this period of animal rights development in England, Memoirs of Dick, the Little Poney (1799) and Black Beauty (1877) offer particularly astute conceptions of the ambiguities and difficulties surrounding eighteenth and nineteenth-century efforts to conceptualize the justification for non-human rights. Moreover, because they both do so through the equine body, these works bring attention to the nuanced divisions Western society placed among diverse species and their use-value to humans. As I will demonstrate, the creative leap to an animal’s-eye view is key to understanding the way in which the rhetoric around not only class, but also race, sexuality and gender was played out in part against the backdrop of the anti-cruelty movement.

Gender, class and race: the multiple rhetorical burdens of horses

On the surface, Memoirs of Dick, the Little Poney appears to be a straightforward story about the life of a simple country pony intended to engender sympathy for the lot of a beast of burden. Dick grows up on Hounslow Heath, happy and carefree, until he is stolen by gypsies and introduced to the wider human world. Only at the end of the story, in his retirement years, does he return to an idyllic, pastoral setting – his forbearance with the vagaries of human cruelty finally rewarded. This prototypical animal autobiography is ostensibly intended to instil prudence, temperance and kindness towards animals in its child audience. But such a reading fails to make any accoun...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1 Animal Virtues, Values and Rights
• 2 Contact Zones, Becoming and the Wild Animal Body
• 3 Ethics and Edibility
• 4 Science, Species and Subjectivity
• 5 Performance and Personhood in Free Willy and Dolphin Tale
• Conclusion
• Notes
• Works Cited
• Index