A large and little-explored subject excavated with a curious
mixture of insight and narrowness. Ritvo's immediate object is to
examine human dealings with animals in 19th-century England. This
she carries off solidly, describing the evolution of the London Zoo
or the late Victorian dog show with wonderful borrowings from such
contemporary sources as breeders' polemical diatribes, naturalists'
studies, and the sardonic eye of Punch. But her design is more
ambitious. The six complementary aspects of human-animal relations
she scrutinizes - cattle breeding, pet breeding, anti-cruelty
activism, attitudes toward rabies, wild-animal collections,
big-game hunting - are finally meant as metaphors of Englishmen's
attitudes toward themselves and the universe. Elephant hunting is
an obvious emblem of dominion at the height of imperialism; the
humane societies' work on behalf of abused animals was also a
disturbing attempt to police what they saw as a vice of "the
uneducated and inadequately disciplined lower classes." This larger
aim is not evenly realized. At her best, Ritvo patiently marshals
her primary material into real illuminations - e.g., the insight
that the prize pet fancy represented the construction of a
toy-world social order "in constant need of reaffirmation" and
implicitly celebrating "the desire and ability to manipulate." More
often she belabors a few points about class attitudes and the
celebration of preeminence, in a conceptual framework top-heavy
with terms like "metonymic association" and nearly devoid of
political or socioeconomic analysis. How often do we need to be
told, in disapproving accents, that respectable English people
thought they deserved to be lords of an often uncooperative
universe? One can only be grateful for the energy with which Ritvo
has tackled a telling chapter of intellectual history. A pity,
though, that she does not bring a livelier range of analytic
weapons to the task. (Kirkus Reviews)
When we think about the Victorian age, we usually envision people
together with animals: the Queen and her pugs, the sportsman with
horses and hounds, the big game hunter with his wild kill, the
gentleman farmer with a prize bull. Harriet Ritvo here gives us a
vivid picture of how animals figured in English thinking during the
nineteenth century and, by extension, how they served as metaphors
for human psychological needs and sociopolitical aspirations.
Victorian England was a period of burgeoning scientific cattle
breeding and newly fashionable dog shows; an age of Empire and big
game hunting; an era of reform and reformers that saw the birth of
the Royal SPCA. Ritvo examines Victorian thinking about animals in
the context of other lines of thought: evolution, class structure,
popular science and natural history, imperial domination. The
papers and publications of people and organizations concerned with
agricultural breeding, veterinary medicine, the world of pets,
vivisection and other humane causes, zoos, hunting at home and
abroad, all reveal underlying assumptions and deeply held
convictions-for example, about Britain's imperial enterprise,
social discipline, and the hierarchy of orders, in nature and in
human society. Thus this book contributes a new new topic of
inquiry to Victorian studies; its combination of rhetorical
analysis with more conventional methods of historical research
offers a novel perspective on Victorian culture. And because
nineteenth-century attitudes and practices were often the ancestors
of contemporary ones, this perspective can also inform modern
debates about human-animal interactions.
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