Pets and the Animal Protection Movement during the Victorian Age

FAIN: FT-62144-14

Keridiana Chez
CUNY Research Foundation, Bernard Baruch College (New York, NY 10010-5585)

Victorian Dogs, Victorian Men contends that the Victorians developed the use of animal companions as emotional prostheses. Focusing on the interface between human and pet, this book reenvisions the historic rise of pet-keeping and the transatlantic animal protection movement. First, the project posits that the advent of modernity inspired the anxiety that humans were becoming less capable of forming emotional connections with others. Second, these anxieties fueled the dramatic change in attitudes towards animals. Third, the end goal of these new values and practices was not, as it would first appear, to use animals as surrogates to fill emotional vacancies, but rather to forge new connections between humans via the dog. Applying the model of prosthesis to the evolution of the human-dog relationship offers the opportunity to investigate how the Victorians purposefully put the dog's love to very specific uses—transforming not only the animals, but themselves.

Associated Products

Affect and Animals in 19th c. Literature & Culture, Victorian Dogs, Victorian Men (Book)
Title: Affect and Animals in 19th c. Literature & Culture, Victorian Dogs, Victorian Men
Author: Keridiana W. Chez
Abstract: The first monograph located at the intersection of animal and affect studies to examine how gender is produced via the regulation of interspecies relationships. Looking specifically at the development of the human-dog relationship, Chez argues that the bourgeoisie fostered connections with canine companions in order to mediate and regulate gender dynamics in the family. As Chez shows, the aim of these new practices was not to use animals as surrogates to fill emotional vacancies but rather to incorporate them as “emotional prostheses.” Chez traces the evolution of the human-dog relationship as it developed parallel to an increasingly imperialist national discourse. The dog began as the affective mediator of the family, then addressed the emotional needs of its individual members, and finally evolved into both “man’s best friend” and worst enemy. By the last decades of the nineteenth century, the porous human-animal boundary served to produce the “humane” man: a liberal subject enabled to engage in aggressive imperial projects. Reading the work of Charles Dickens, George Eliot, Margaret Marshall Saunders, Bram Stoker, and Jack London, Victorian Dogs, Victorian Men charts the mobilization of affect through transatlantic narratives, demonstrating the deep interconnections between animals, affect, and gender.
Year: 2017
Publisher: Ohio State University Press
Type: Single author monograph
ISBN: 9780814213346
Copy sent to NEH?: Yes

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