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THE PALGRAVE MACMILLAN
ANIMAL ETHICS SERIES
Creative Compassion,
Literature and
Animal Welfare
Michael J. Gilmour
The Palgrave Macmillan Animal Ethics Series
Series Editors
Andrew Linzey
Oxford Centre for Animal Ethics
Oxford, UK
Clair Linzey
Oxford Centre for Animal Ethics
Oxford, UK
In recent years, there has been a growing interest in the ethics of our
treatment of animals. Philosophers have led the way, and now a range of
other scholars have followed from historians to social scientists. From
being a marginal issue, animals have become an emerging issue in ethics
and in multidisciplinary inquiry. This series will explore the challenges
that Animal Ethics poses, both conceptually and practically, to traditional
understandings of human-animal relations. Specifically, the Series will:
• provide a range of key introductory and advanced texts that map out
ethical positions on animals
• publish pioneering work written by new, as well as accom-
plished, scholars;
• produce texts from a variety of disciplines that are multidisciplinary in
character or have multidisciplinary relevance.
Creative Compassion,
Literature and
Animal Welfare
Michael J. Gilmour
Providence University College
Otterburne, MB, Canada
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature
Switzerland AG 2020
This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether
the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of
illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and
transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar
or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed.
The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication
does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant
protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use.
The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book
are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or
the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any
errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional
claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG.
The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland
Series Editors’ Preface
This is a new book series for a new field of inquiry: Animal Ethics.
In recent years, there has been a growing interest in the ethics of our
treatment of animals. Philosophers have led the way, and now a range of
other scholars have followed from historians to social scientists. From
being a marginal issue, animals have become an emerging issue in ethics
and in multidisciplinary inquiry.
In addition, a rethink of the status of animals has been fuelled by a
range of scientific investigations which have revealed the complexity of
animal sentiency, cognition and awareness. The ethical implications of
this new knowledge have yet to be properly evaluated, but it is becoming
clear that the old view that animals are mere things, tools, machines or
commodities cannot be sustained ethically.
But it is not only philosophy and science that are putting animals on
the agenda. Increasingly, in Europe and the United States, animals are
becoming a political issue as political parties vie for the “green” and “ani-
mal” vote. In turn, political scientists are beginning to look again at the
history of political thought in relation to animals, and historians are
beginning to revisit the political history of animal protection.
As animals grow as an issue of importance, so there have been more
collaborative academic ventures leading to conference volumes, special
journal issues, indeed new academic animal journals as well. Moreover,
v
vi Series Editors’ Preface
• provide a range of key introductory and advanced texts that map out
ethical positions on animals;
• publish pioneering work written by new, as well as accomplished,
scholars and
• produce texts from a variety of disciplines that are multidisciplinary in
character or have multidisciplinary relevance.
grab their legs before they fully woke up, then lift them so they were
upside down. They start flapping their wings immediately so it’s physi-
cally taxing––my arms, shoulders and back ached for days afterwards.
The more experienced and stronger ‘catchers’ managed two birds in each
hand. Once we had our chickens, we took them outside to waiting trucks
and lifted them to others who stuffed the startled birds into small cages.
After each delivery we returned to the barn for more, repeating the pro-
cess until the floor was empty of living birds. The process was not smooth.
A bird might slip away at some point and have to be wrestled down. The
lids on the cages were shut quickly and often caught a wing or a foot or a
head. And worst of all was the feeling of occasional breaking bones when
grabbing or carrying the startled birds. Their bodies seemed brittle.
I now regret my participation in that ‘chicken catch,’ and having since
learned more about the factory farming of chickens for meat and eggs,
I’m left with three lasting impressions. The first is the brutal force of
human domination of some animals. Those birds––manipulated into
docility by the lighting––were completely powerless against the muscle
and machinery driving that business. The second is the unnaturalness of
that low, dark, stinking place. Chemicals, overcrowding, body manipula-
tion (through selective breeding, beak cutting), shortened lives. Third, it
made me realize the enormous distance between the barn and the dinner
plate. At that time, I had no idea what meat and dairy production
involved. Not really.
Literary horses like Black Beauty and his friends, and real, frightened,
fragile chickens. The ones products of the imagination, the others actual,
vulnerable, sentient beings. And all of them, in their own way, whisper-
ing a compelling challenge to my then habitual indifference to animals as
neighbours deserving moral consideration. Stories do not always remain
between the covers of books. They linger, sometimes attach, unbidden, to
the stuff of our lives. To meet and enjoy fictional animals is to risk meet-
ing them again in unexpected ways. I cannot hear a toad without smiling,
as the sound brings Kenneth Grahame’s The Wind in the Willows (1908)
to mind. Am I less likely to throw a stone at one for having read that book?
Another encounter. The punchline of the Good Samaritan parable
comes at the beginning of that famous story rather than the end, and it is
not Jesus who delivers it but instead a nameless onlooker. When Jesus
Preface xi
asks what is required of people to inherit eternal life, that onlooker cites
Torah: love God and love your neighbour as yourself (Luke 10:27; cf.
Leviticus 19:18; Deuteronomy 6:5). Jesus agrees with him, but the man
presses further, asking, Who is my neighbour? Jesus’s story about an
assault and robbery, and the unlikely hero who comes to the victim’s aid
is both commentary on the portion of Torah recited, and an answer to
the man’s question. As the parable illustrates, love is owed to a stranger
left for dead on the side of the road. Your neighbour is the one in need.
Your neighbour is the one in need, even when they are not part of your
community. We are to love across boundaries. Love not only family and
tribe, or those of our race and nation, or gender and religion, or sexual
orientation and socio-economic status. Love not only the citizen but also
the refugee. Simply love your neighbour as yourself, says Jesus. Love the
one in need as you love yourself. That’s all it says. My neighbour does not
always look like me or believe like me but that’s no matter. Jesus collapses
the two great commandments of Torah. If we love God, we love our
neighbours, whoever they are. We love our neighbours because we
love God.
Animals are neighbours too. There’s nothing in the story limiting this
boundary-defying love to bipedal types. If this sounds odd, note the
vague kinship between the parable of the Good Samaritan and Jesus’s
remarks about an animal fallen into a pit (Matthew 12:11): “Suppose one
of you has only one sheep and it falls into a pit on the sabbath; will you
not lay hold of it and lift it out?” Of course you will. Yes, this is self-
serving to a degree (sheep have economic value) but it remains aiding a
distressed animal for its own sake is a religiously sanctioned response. You
are not to pass by one in its moment of need any more than you pass by
the human victim of a robbery laying in a ditch at the side of a road. You
help, and you do so even if it is the Sabbath. Humans extending kindness
to nonhumans––Jesus expects it of the God-fearing. And perhaps it
deserves notice it works both ways in the parable. The Samaritan is not
the only one who helps the injured man because he places the stranger
“on his own animal” to get him to an inn for care (10:34). A brief hint of
cross-species compassion?
The parable of the Good Samaritan is a work of fiction. Jesus often told
stories as a way to teach. For me, just as Grahame’s The Wind in the
xii Preface
Index251
xv
About the Author
xvii
1
Introduction: The Parallel Voices
of Modern Animal Welfare Movements
and a Literature of Compassion
My father recited poems out loud at home. I have vivid memories of him
reading “The Bells Of Heaven” (Ralph Hodgson), “Snake” (D. H. Lawrence),
and a poem I have never been able to relocate about a fox caught in a trap
with young in the den. The innocence of anymals and the cruel power of
humanity was manifest in sorrow, anger, even bitterness in my father’s soft
voice. Already then, his sentiments echoed my own experiences with humanity
and anymals in rural America. I also recall my mother singing the folksong,
“The Fox Went out on a Chilly Night,” and how my father would say, “The
fox has to eat, too.” I realize now that the poems themselves might never have
reached me if my parents had not read and sung to us when we were young.
Through their voices—through this shared experience of literature—I gained
more than what was written on those dog-eared pages.
—Lisa Kemmerer, Montana State University Billings, philosopher-activist
Personal correspondence. On her use of the term anymal, see Prof. Kemmerer’s “Verbal Activism:
‘Anymals’,” Society and Animals 14.1 (May 2006): 9–14. It is a contraction of any and animal,
which indicates all individuals of any species other than the speaker/author. She prefers it to the
regular spelling because it avoids the suggestion humans are not themselves animals, as well as the
dualism and alienation implied by the prefixed term nonhumans or the qualifier other animals.
Animal stories are metonymic. Esther is perhaps the most famous pig in
the world as I type this, and the accounts of her adventures, beautifully
and humorously reported by her caregivers Steve Jenkins and Derek
Walter, belie the idea of pigs as mindless automata. They give her a voice,
they tell her story.1 She is a personality, complete with an emotional range
and a capacity for pleasure and pain. She is mischievous, and able to bond
with humans and other nonhumans. Though anthropomorphism and
sentimentalism invite the ridicule and censure of some, such stories, fic-
tional and nonfictional, are persistently popular and effective tools for
promoting kindness to animals. Jenkins and Walter persuade their read-
ers to see more than meat the next time a livestock truck passes on the
highway. The nameless pigs on that truck are just like Esther. They too
have personalities. They too have a capacity for pleasure and pain.
Though it took me many years to realize the potential of literature to
further the efforts of animal compassion agendas––the long-neglected
copy of Black Beauty mentioned in the Preface left closed and unheeded––
other readers and writers long before and since Anna Sewell credit stories
for awakening an affection for nature and the desire to care for it. Jane
Goodall, for one, identifies fiction as a formative influence:
As a child I was not at all keen on going to school. I dreamed about nature,
animals, and the magic of far-off wild and remote places. Our house was
filled with bookshelves and the books spilled out onto the floor. When it
was wet and cold, I would curl up in a chair by the fire and lose myself in
other worlds. My very favourite books at the time were The Story of Dr.
Dolittle, The Jungle Book, and the marvelous Edgar Rice Burroughs
Tarzan books.2
1
Steve Jenkins and Derek Walter, with Caprice Crane, Esther the Wonder Pig: Changing the World
One Heart at a Time (New York: Grand Central, 2017); and Steve Jenkins and Derek Walter, with
Caprice Crane, Happily Ever Esther: Two Men, A Wonder Pig, and Their Life-Changing Mission to
Give Animals a Home (New York: Grand Central, 2018).
2
Jane Goodall, with Phillip Berman, Reason for Hope: A Spiritual Journey (New York: Warner,
1999), 11.
1 Introduction: The Parallel Voices of Modern Animal Welfare… 3
3
Jane Goodall and Marc Bekoff, The Ten Trusts: What We Must Do to Care for the Animals We Love
(New York: HarperCollins, 2002), 69. In Reason for Hope, she also writes appreciatively of The
Wind in the Willows and George MacDonald’s At the Back of the North Wind (1871), both of which
involve, in very different ways, highly imaginative depictions of animals (11–12).
4
Allyson N. May, The Fox-Hunting Controversy, 1781–2004: Class and Cruelty (New York:
Routledge, 2016), 74. See too chap. 6 of May’s book, “The Flight from Modernity: Nostalgia and
the Hunt.” She closes that chapter observing that fox-hunting’s survival “past the Great War and the
Second World War into the twenty-first century in many ways can be explained by the very fact
that it is not modern” (184). Italics original.
4 M. J. Gilmour
First World War, where horses, unprotected against the green billows of
gas that belched across the fields and cascaded into the trenches, died
screaming out of burning lungs.”5 This is where Lofting’s longing for a
kinder relationship with nature begins:
While he could somehow avoid despair and place the war in the context of
a reasonable explanation––these were apparently rational creatures who
had consciously decided to commit atrocity––he could not accept the
destruction of horses. While the troops could protect themselves against
the green gas that poured into the trenches and coated the landscape, the
horses could not. It sprang into their lungs, blistered their tissues, and
led to agonizing death.6
The Dolittle stories, Lofting explains, began life as letters home to his
children during the War, and the idea of a medical person caring for ani-
mals has direct connection to what he saw:
One thing … that kept forcing itself more and more on my attention was
the very considerable part the animals were playing in the World War and
that as time went on they, too, seemed to become Fatalists. They took their
chances with the rest of us. But their fate was far different from the men’s.
However seriously a soldier was wounded, his life was not despaired of; all
the resources of a surgery highly developed by the war were brought to his
aid. A seriously wounded horse was put out by a timely bullet.7
5
Gary D. Schmidt, Hugh Lofting, Twayne’s English Authors Series 496 (New York: Twayne,
1992), 51.
6
Schmidt, Hugh Lofting, 13.
7
As cited in Schmidt, Hugh Lofting, 6.
8
Schmidt, Hugh Lofting, 2. Schmidt here relates the anecdote as told by Lofting’s son, in Colin
Lofting, “Mortifying Visit from a Dude Dad,” Life 30 (September 1966), 128–30.
1 Introduction: The Parallel Voices of Modern Animal Welfare… 5
Nightshade, the vixen, paused in her story a moment, her ears laid back,
her dainty mouth slightly open, her eyes staring fixedly. She looked as
though she saw that dreadful day all over again, that long terrible chase, at
the end of which, with a safe refuge in sight, she felt her strength giving out
as the dogs of Death drew close upon her heels.13
9
Hugh Lofting, Doctor Dolittle’s Circus, in Doctor Dolittle: The Complete Collection, vol. 2 (1924;
New York: Aladdin, 2019), 173. He describes fox hunting as “childish” again on p. 170.
10
Lofting, Doctor Dolittle’s Circus, 166–68.
11
Lofting, Doctor Dolittle’s Circus, 168. Dolittle’s opposition to sport hunting is longstanding. The
sound of the horses, dogs, and hunters’ shouts reminds him of an earlier experience that “made him
an enemy of fox hunting for life––when he had met an old fox one evening lying half dead with
exhaustion under a tangle of blackberries” (168).
12
Lofting, Doctor Dolittle’s Circus, 168–71. Dolittle, of course, speaks animal languages.
13
Lofting, Doctor Dolittle’s Circus, 176. Full account, 174–77.
6 M. J. Gilmour
14
Lofting, Doctor Dolittle’s Circus, 177–84.
15
Lofting, Doctor Dolittle’s Circus, 184.
16
Hugh Lofting, The Voyages of Doctor Dolittle, in Doctor Dolittle: The Complete Collection, vol. 1
(1922; New York: Aladdin, 2019), 60.
17
Terry Eagleton, Literary Theory: An Introduction (1983; Minneapolis: University of Minnesota
Press, 2008), 162.
1 Introduction: The Parallel Voices of Modern Animal Welfare… 7
18
Eagleton, Literary Theory, 162.
19
Richard Adams, The Day Gone By: An Autobiography (1990; London: Penguin, 1991), 22.
20
Adams, Day Gone By, 106. If Lofting was progressive in his thinking about animal welfare, he was
also mired in some of the worst prejudices of his historical moment. As often noted in the critical
literature, early editions of the stories include some egregious racist remarks. Later editions of the
books remove offensive passages.
8 M. J. Gilmour
them. What the book contributes, I hope, is a way of reading that brings
the welfare interests of creative writers to the forefront.
Welfarist Reading
From Edgar Rice Burroughs’s Tarzan to the work of primatologist Jane
Goodall; from gassed horses on the battlefields of World War I to Hugh
Lofting’s Doctor Dolittle; from The Wind in the Willows to the sound of
croaking toads I hear. The boundaries between real and imagined animals
are often porous, and the potential for the experience of one to shape our
experience of the other, in both directions, is ever present. Writers help us
see animals we might otherwise overlook. To meet Esther the pig in print
is to view those inside the livestock trucks we pass with new eyes, and our
interactions with real animals intrude on our experience of fiction, the
way Daisy the tripod is for me a marginal gloss to the parable told in
Luke 10:25–37. Readers’ propensity for mingling the imagined with the
real and vice versa makes animal literature a rich resource for the promo-
tion of humane themes. As C. S. Lewis puts it, in verse, our “love” for
Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle or Nutkin in the Beatrix Potter tales “no doubt––
splashes over on the / Actual archtypes,” by which he means the real
hedgehogs and squirrels that lie behind those artistic representations.21
Literature helps us “love” the animals we meet after closing our books.
Those who advocate for animals bring a different set of concerns and
questions to literature than those typical of other critical approaches. A
welfarist perspective, for lack of a better term, is attentive to ways animals
appear in fiction and verse. It considers what this novel or that poem
teaches us about animals and our interactions with them. It looks at ways
art surfaces ethical questions by critiquing cruelty or exhibiting models of
compassion, both of which invite a reassessment of our own actions. Use
of the term welfarist criticism is idiosyncratic so perhaps an analogy helps
to clarify my objectives. This reading strategy employs a hermeneutic of
suspicion like that found in Marxist literary criticism, which maintains
21
C. S. Lewis, “Impenitence,” in Poems (1964; New York: HarperOne, 2017), 5–6. Lewis first
published this poem in 1953.
1 Introduction: The Parallel Voices of Modern Animal Welfare… 9
or green gases those horses sustain. Think of meals around the campfire
or dinner table that say nothing of the sacrificed animals supplying the
meat. Think of the leather and fur characters wear. Think of the animal
labour supplying the muscle for travel and construction in historical fic-
tion. All are untold stories. The unacknowledged animal is everywhere in
fiction. But when writers shift focus, when they privilege animal wellbe-
ing and tell their stories, ‘the way it is’ is suddenly open to scrutiny.
26
Jane Smiley, “Foreword,” to Anna Sewell, Black Beauty (1877; New York: Penguin, 2011), ix.
Many note the contributions of Sewell’s Black Beauty toward greater awareness of animal suffering.
“The novel had a very powerful impact on the public,” writes Paul Waldau, “and it, along with
much other literature modeled on it, increased concern greatly for not only the welfare of work
animals but for dogs as well” (Animal Rights: What Everyone Needs to Know [Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2011], 42).
12 M. J. Gilmour
Questioning Authority
“Do not accept injustice even if you hear it in my name.”27 This, Rabbi
Jonathan Sacks argues, is the import of the strange story related in Genesis
18 about God’s plan to destroy the cities of the plain. When God
announces it, Abraham questions the justice of the intended action: “Will
you indeed sweep away the righteous with the wicked? … Shall not the
Judge of all the earth do what is just?” (18:23, 25).28 It is an extraordinary
scene and an unexpected question to ask. Does Abraham really think he
is more righteous than God? If we go back a few verses, Sacks suggests,
there is an important clue putting the exchange in context:
The LORD said, “Shall I hide from Abraham what I am about to do, see-
ing that Abraham shall become a great and mighty nation, and all the
nations of the earth shall be blessed in him? No, for I have chosen him, that
he may charge his children and his household after him to keep the way of
the LORD by doing righteousness and justice; so that the LORD may
bring about for Abraham what he has promised him.” (Genesis 18:17–19)
27
Jonathan Sacks, The Great Partnership: Science, Religion, and the Search for Meaning (New York:
Schocken, 2011), 243. Italics original.
28
Here and throughout I use the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible, unless otherwise
indicated.
1 Introduction: The Parallel Voices of Modern Animal Welfare… 13
Abraham is to be the voice of the right (tzedakah) and the just (mishpat).
These then become precisely the words he uses in his challenge: ‘righteous’
(tzadikim) and ‘Judge/justice’ (ha-shofet/mishpat). Abraham challenges
God because God invites him to challenge God.
The story contrasts with that of Noah who, while making the ark, does
not protest God’s announced plan to destroy the world. “That is what
made Abraham, not Noah, the hero of faith,” Sacks continues. “Noah
accepted. Abraham protested. The religion of Abraham is a religion of
protest against evil, in the name of God.”29
My interest in this biblical commentary is more rhetorical than theo-
logical. Though hardly an exact analogy with the Abraham story, the lit-
erature discussed in this book is in most cases a literature of protest. What
interests me about this reading of Genesis 18 is the questioning of moral
authority, the challenge of what is otherwise sacrosanct, which in
Abraham’s case would be any and all acts of God. To question this author-
ity, according to Sacks’s reading, is appropriate. Genesis affirms Abraham’s
willingness to protest and question.30
Conventional thinking places humanity at the centre of all things and
there is a tendency to recoil from the idea of any debt of moral consider-
ation owed to nonhuman life. Humans hunt, eat, sacrifice, and vivisect
animals. We use them for entertainment and labour. It is in our interest
to do so. If indeed humans are the measure of all things, an instrumental
use of animals––they are here for our use, to do with as we please––is the
de facto good. To challenge such presumption is akin to Abraham chal-
lenging God but that is, at least in the opinion of many authors, what
righteousness and justice demand. Many creative writers of the last two
hundred years––again, roughly the time of modern welfare reform
efforts––challenge the ‘god’ of anthropocentrism, the elevation of human-
ity above all else. Animal literature is often a literature of protest, putting
before readers human acts toward animals deemed absurd or abhorrent.
Ideal readers of this literature choose not to accept (as Noah does) but
rather to question, protest, and resist (as Abraham does). They creatively
29
Sacks, Great Partnership, 243, 244.
30
Sacks, Great Partnership, 244.
14 M. J. Gilmour
34
Lofting, The Voyages of Doctor Dolittle, 166. Italics added. Polynesia the parrot likens Dolittle
breaking the rules of bullfighting to his sailing methods (166–67; cf. 147). Though he breaks the
rules of navigation, he always gets where he wants to go.
35
Lofting, The Voyages of Doctor Dolittle, 159.
36
Josephine Donovan, The Aesthetics of Care: On the Literary Treatment of Animals (New York:
Bloomsbury, 2016), 95–96.
37
Donovan, Aesthetics of Care, 99.
16 M. J. Gilmour
38
Carol J. Adams, Neither Man nor Beast: Feminism and the Defense of Animals (1994; London:
Bloomsbury, 2018), 34. In a similar spirit, cf. S. Louise Patteson’s Pussy Meow: The Autobiography
of a Cat (Philadelphia: George W. Jacobs & Co., 1901), 88–89: “pardon me if I mention something
that may seem very trivial to you, but which I consider of great importance. A cat should have a
name, because it adds to her dignity, and commands respect for her. Moreover, it enhances her
commercial value to be thus individualized, and lifted above the general mass of her kind.”
39
Donovan, Aesthetics of Care, 99.
40
Lisa Sainsbury, Ethics in British Children’s Literature: Unexamined Life, Perspectives on Children’s
Literature (London: Bloomsbury, 2013), 167.
41
See e.g., Ernest Hemingway, Death in the Afternoon (New York: Scribner, 1932).
1 Introduction: The Parallel Voices of Modern Animal Welfare… 17
42
Hadas Marcus, “An Ecocritical Approach to Cruelty in the Laboratory,” Journal of Animal Ethics
6.2 (2016): 228.
43
Hugh Lofting, Doctor Dolittle’s Zoo, in Doctor Dolittle: The Complete Collection, vol. 3 (1925;
New York: Aladdin, 2019), 228–29, 247–48.
18 M. J. Gilmour
44
E. B. White, The Trumpet of the Swan, illustrated by Edward Frascino (New York: Scholastic,
1970), 196–97.
45
White, Trumpet of the Swan, 197. Italics original. There is also a storyline about hunting to
extinction in Kathi Appelt and Alison McGhee’s Maybe A Fox (New York: Atheneum, 2016). See
e.g., 169–70.
46
Donovan, Aesthetics of Care, 117.
1 Introduction: The Parallel Voices of Modern Animal Welfare… 19
that as the horse and the dog had now secured a public hearing [in those
books], some one [sic] would be willing to undertake the same for the cat.47
Its only object is to breathe out the joys, the sorrows and the longings of a
misunderstood and much maligned fellow-creature, and to secure for her
the consideration which humanity owes to the dumb.48
There are homes for cats in Dublin, in London, and other English cities, as
well as some in Egpyt [sic] and India. The Gifford Sheltering Home for
Animals, in Boston, is doing great work; also the Frances Power Cobbe
Refuge in Indianapolis, Indiana. We are teaching our children to be kind
to every living creature. May this story of “Pussy Meow” help forward the
good work.52
51
Patteson, Pussy Meow, 87.
52
Sarah K. Bolton, “Introduction” to Saunders, Pussy Meow, 15. Italics added.
53
Peg Kehret, Ghost Dog Secrets (New York: Puffin, 2010), 12. Italics original. There are numerous
references to the Humane Society, Animal Control, and animal control officers throughout (e.g.,
73, 76, 130–135, 139, 142, 149, 165, 181, 186).
1 Introduction: The Parallel Voices of Modern Animal Welfare… 21
inviting readers to let the former intrude on the latter. Do not stay in
imagined spaces, they insist, but turn to the actual animals you see around
you. Black Beauty does this when he highlights one of the takeaways
from the story: “if any one [sic] wants to break in a young horse well, that
is the way.”54 The dog Beautiful Joe closes his autobiography with a direct
address, asking boys and girls to “‘be kind to dumb animals, not only
because you will lose nothing by it, but because you ought to; for they
were placed on the earth by the same Kind Hand that made all living
creatures.’”55
In Ghost Dog Secrets, Kehret’s clearest invitation for audience participa-
tion connects to Wendy, a girl who is enthusiastic about helping home-
less cats. She knits cat blankets for the Humane Society, even starting a
club to get others involved, and then delivers them to the shelter at the
close of the story. Just five pages later, in the back matter of the book,
Kehret supplies instructions for readers to make cat blankets themselves
for the same purpose: “Using two strands of 4-ply yarn, cast on 33
stitches. Knit every row for 66 rows,” and so on. The knitting instructions
are an invitation to continue the kindnesses modelled by Wendy, Rusty,
and their friends. This novel breaks out of the confines of an imaginary
world in other ways too. The backmatter includes website addresses for
the Humane Society of the United States and the American Society for
the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals so readers know where to find fur-
ther information about animal cruelty laws (under the heading, “Learn
how to help”). In addition, the author’s biography on the inside back
cover notes Kehret is a past winner of “the Henry Bergh Award from the
American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals” and that she
“help[s] animal rescue groups.”56
Susan Hughes’s Wild Paws series also combines storytelling with a
humane education and mentions welfare organizations both real and
imagined. She bridges fiction with nonfiction most explicitly in her dedi-
cations. The books Lonely Wolf Pup (2003) and Bunnies in Trouble (2004),
54
Anna Sewell, Black Beauty (1877. New York: Penguin, 2011), 13.
55
Margaret Marshall Saunders, Beautiful Joe, ed. Keridiana Chez (1893; Peterborough: Broadview,
2015), 270.
56
Kehret, Ghost Dog Secrets, backmatter, pages unnumbered.
22 M. J. Gilmour
57
Hughes further grounds the last-mentioned book in a real-world situation, noting, “This story is
based on [De Guise’s] real-life rescue of an upriver beluga whale in Canada” (Susan Hughes,
Orphaned Beluga, Wild Paws [Toronto: Scholastic, 2004], frontmatter, unnumbered page).
58
Holly Webb, Harry the Homeless Puppy (London: Little Tiger, 2015), 9; The Shelter Puppy
(London: Little Tiger, 2018).
59
Melissa Hart, Avenging the Owl (New York: Sky Pony, 2016), 214.
60
Donovan, Aesthetics of Care, 10, referring to Iris Murdoch’s Metaphysics as a Guide to Morals (1992).
1 Introduction: The Parallel Voices of Modern Animal Welfare… 23
61
David Duchovny, Holy Cow (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2015), 56.
62
Duchovny, Holy Cow, 55, 57.
24 M. J. Gilmour
For the most part … courses in literature have left animals to one side. This
is a rather puzzling omission. Puzzling because writers of all genres have
written extensively, perceptively, and almost always provocatively about
our relations with animals—and often to significant moral effect. None
have done so more forcefully than poets who have frequently anticipated
and championed a more peaceful and less exploitative relationship with
other creatures.64
63
Susan McHugh, “Literary Animal Agents,” PMLA 124.2 (2009): 487.
64
Andrew Linzey, “Preface: Animals, Literature, and the Virtues,” in Other Nations: Animals in
Modern Literature, ed. Tom Regan and Andrew Linzey (Waco: Baylor University Press, 2010), xvi.
This book is an anthology “designed to employ the power of fiction to illuminate our moral rela-
tionship with animals” (back cover). I discuss a number of stories found in this anthology.
65
Tzachi Zamir, “Literary Works and Animal Ethics,” in The Oxford Handbook of Animal Ethics, ed.
Tom L. Beauchamp and R. G. Frey (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 932, 953. For his
more extensive discussion of morality and the nonhuman, see Zamir’s Ethics and the Beast: A
Speciesist Argument for Animal Liberation (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007).
1 Introduction: The Parallel Voices of Modern Animal Welfare… 25
Franz Kafka, The Metamorphosis, in The Metamorphosis and Other Stories, ed. Jason Barker, trans.
66
Donna Freed (1915; New York: Barnes and Noble Classics, 2003), 7.
26 M. J. Gilmour
What is disturbing about this scene is the suggestion that the everyday,
monotonous responsibilities of modern life distort and destroy the indi-
vidual. Samsa dutifully provides for his family’s needs, doing what his
parents and sister, and his society expect of him. It is the drudgery of this,
the banality facing modern, urban people that transforms Samsa. The
possibility we might also wake up into such a nightmare is what makes
Kafka’s parable so distressing. But again, it is not really about the nonhu-
man in any real sense.
Instead, the animal books concerning us here are actually about ani-
mals, not humans disguised with feathers and fur and exoskeletons. In
addition, such writers who tend to be sensitive to welfare issues usually
resist diminishing the nonhuman through simile and metaphor. “Yeah,
we care about how we look,” says Elsie, “And we don’t appreciate it that
when you people think someone is fat you call them a cow. And pigs
aren’t very happy about the whole ‘pig’ or ‘swine’ thing, and chickens are
pissed too about the ‘chicken’ thing.”68 In the 1967 film Doctor Dolittle,
the titular character also bemoans the frequent use of animals in insults
directed at other people. Remarks like stubborn as a mule, stupid as an
ox, slimy as a snake and crafty as a fox, “really get my goat,” sings Rex
Harrison.69 Josephine Donovan argues such language is a form of fic-
tional violence against nonhumans:
67
Kafka, The Metamorphosis, 7–8.
68
Duchovny, Holy Cow, 5. On degrading animal imagery, see too Adams, Neither Man nor
Beast, xxxi.
69
The song is “Like Animals,” in Doctor Dolittle, directed by Richard Fleischer, music and lyrics by
Leslie Bricusse, Lionel Newman, and Alexander Courage (Twentieth Century Fox, 1967). My
1 Introduction: The Parallel Voices of Modern Animal Welfare… 27
…one of the most common devices that exploit animal pain for aesthetic
effect is the animal metaphor, or, more specifically, the animal ‘stand-in’ or
surrogate, where the animal acts as a substitute for a human and/or is
employed as an objectified vehicle through which to reveal or express
human feelings. Using animal death and agony to dramatize, symbolize, or
comment upon the emotional state of the human protagonists continues
to be a standard fictional device.70
She supports the claim with a long list of short stories by reputable writ-
ers in which “the moral reality of the animals’ own suffering is elided.”71
Third, and sometimes overlapping with the first criterium, the books
considered here depict in story form experiences facing actual animals as a
way to inform readers about real-world ethical concerns. Sometimes a
specific situation lies behind the story. One of the better-known examples
from children’s literature of recent years is Katherine Applegate’s Newbery
prize winning novel The One and Only Ivan, mentioned above. As she
explains in an author’s note, the inspiration for her fictional tale was a
true one. The real Ivan spent nearly thirty years in a Washington state,
circus-themed shopping mall.72 Thanks to the persistence of activists on
his behalf, Ivan’s circumstances improved dramatically when rehomed in
Zoo Atlanta. Applegate incorporates this example of public intervention
on behalf of a vulnerable animal as well. In the novel, concerned people
mobilize when they see pictures of the sharp-bladed “claw-stick” used to
train the baby elephant Ruby, and they call for the mall to be shut down.73
Inspectors begin to assess all the animals’ health and the conditions in
which they live,74 and eventually Ruby, Ivan, and the others move to the
more spacious environs of a proper zoo where they are able to live with
transcription. Though quite humorous, the lyrics are remarkably progressive, offering a sharp cri-
tique of human indifference to animals. For a rejoinder to the term “stupid chickens,” see Deb Olin
Unferth, Barn 8 (Minneapolis: Graywolf, 2020), 203–204. The novel presents a picture of chickens
as complex beings, most directly in descriptions of the white leghorn hen Bwwaauk, who escapes
from an industrial egg operation (35, 170–72, 200–202, 248).
70
Donovan, Aesthetics of Care, 46. On this, see too 47, 48, 100–101.
71
Donovan, Aesthetics of Care, 47; cf. 46, 168.
72
Applegate, The One and Only Ivan, backmatter, unnumbered page.
73
Applegate, The One and Only Ivan, 229–32, 235; cf. 151–52.
74
Applegate, The One and Only Ivan, 234, 235.
28 M. J. Gilmour
others of their own kind. Julia and her father George, the protestors,
inspectors, and zoo personnel, all acting on the animals’ behalf and agi-
tating for better care, are central to the story. The elephant Stella fore-
shadows their efforts: “‘Humans can surprise you sometimes. An
unpredictable species, Homo sapiens.’”75 Though a highly imaginative
work, it yet remains grounded in identifiable situations (capture of exotic
wild animals, abandonment of dogs, harsh training methods used on per-
forming animals, zoos, etc.).
Fourth, many of the welfare-leaning books discussed employ religious or
otherworldly language and imagery. Authors introduce other-worldly
themes for a variety of reasons. For some, religion provides a source of
moral authority from which to condemn cruelty and promote kindness.
For other writers, the inclusion of ‘animal theologies’ or forms of ‘animal
spirituality’ illustrates the meaning-full existence of other sentient beings.
The species-specific origin narratives in Richard Adams’s Watership Down
and The Plague Dogs, for instance, afford a dignity to rabbits and dogs
respectively; they see themselves in these mythic tales. This is, of course,
analogous to the Hebrew Bible, which in the first creation story presents
humanity as made in the image of God (Genesis 1:27), and in the second
introduces Adam and Eve as its central characters. Adams’s stories do
something similar. Religious language thus provides a kind of ‘vocabu-
lary’ to elevate the perceived worth of animals. To be sure, religion is not
always friendly to animals and a number of authors identify it as part of
the problem, and ultimately at the root of a thoughtless, cruel, human
dominion of nonhuman life. In Robert Burns’s poem “To a Mouse, On
Turning Her up in Her Nest with the Plough, November, 1785” (pub-
lished 1786), which concerns a distressed animal suffering as the result of
an unwitting act, the poet invokes religion by his apologetic reference to
“Man’s dominion” over nature (cf. Genesis 1:28), which he admits has
“broken Nature’s social union, / An’ justifies that ill opinion, / Which
makes thee startle, / At me, thy poor, earth-born companion, / An’ fellow
mortal!” (ll.7–12).76
75
Applegate, The One and Only Ivan, 104; cf. 173.
76
Robert Burns, “To a Mouse,” in The Norton Anthology of English Literature: The Major Authors,
9th ed. vol. 2, ed. Stephen Greenblatt et al. (New York: Norton, 2013), 85–86. Unwitting harm
owing to human action is a topic addressed by other writers too. For instance, we read of “careless”
1 Introduction: The Parallel Voices of Modern Animal Welfare… 29
acts causing the death of animals in Sara Pennypacker’s Pax, among them, the plowing of fields
killing mice, in an echo of Burns, as well as the damming of rivers, which kills fish ([New York:
Balzer and Bray, 2016], 64–65).
77
Donovan, Aesthetics of Care, 1–2.
78
Donovan, Aesthetics of Care, viii.
79
Josephine Donovan, “Attention to Suffering: Sympathy as a Basis for Ethical Treatment of
Animals,” in The Feminist Care Tradition in Animal Ethics, ed. Josephine Donovan and Carol
J. Adams (New York: Columbia University Press, 2007), 189.
30 M. J. Gilmour
No era una maravilla, pero tampoco era un adefesio; una casita muy
mona, sin pretensiones, con su gran alcoba recién estucada y su sala
con balcón a la calle. Estaba en la del Tinte, frente al solar del antiguo
Hospital de San Juan de Dios, de manera que las luces no podían se
mejores, y además tenía la ventaja de que podía vestirse y
desnudarse con las maderas abiertas, sin temor de que le vieran los
vecinos. Los muebles no resultaban tampoco magníficos, n
muchísimo menos; pero como eran los mismos que venía usando y les
había tomado afecto, se alegró muchísimo de poder conservarlos.
La vida del periódico resultaba, como él había supuesto, bastante
dura. Tenía que ir a las nueve de la mañana, salía a la una, volvía a las
cuatro y salía de nuevo a las siete, cuando el periódico entraba en
máquina. Lo que más le molestaba era el carácter de Sánchez Cortina
Este hombre, tan atento, tan fino, tan cortés, era en la intimidad de una
grosería inaguantable. Todo le parecía mal. Por la cosa más pequeña
se ponía a dar puñetazos en los pupitres y a deshacerse en
maldiciones. En el fondo resultaba un infeliz. Los redactores
concluyeron por tomarle la cuerda y no hacerle caso. Luis era el único
que se mantenía a prudente distancia, decidido desde el primer día a
no darle ni permitirle confianzas. «Es el único medio —decía— de no
tener disgustos». Por lo demás, trabajaba como ninguno. Hacía todo lo
que le mandaban, fuese lo que fuese; fondos, artículos, sueltos
noticias, telegramas... Un día se puso enfermo Pedrosa y le
encargaron de la información política en el Salón de conferencias de
Congreso. Otro le enviaron a la tribuna del Senado. Él obedecía sin
rechistar, convencido de que todos los trabajos eran igualmente
desagradables, por lo que tenían de trabajo, y convenientes por lo que
tenían de aprendizaje. Por lo único que no pasaba era por la
información del Juzgado de guardia. «No, eso no; eso de alternar y
quedar diariamente agradecido a guardias de orden público y
alguaciles, no entra en mi carácter».
Otro día se le ocurrió a Sánchez Cortina enviarle a Palencia de
corresponsal especial, con motivo de la celebración de una Asamblea
agrícola. Cuando regresó a Madrid, se encontró con que se habían
reforzado los muebles de su casa con un armario de luna y una chaise
longue. Por más preguntas que hizo a la portera no pudo averigua
nada. La portera se limitaba a decir que habían venido unos mozos de
parte del señorito y que, como en el tomar no hay engaño, les había
abierto ella misma la puerta con la llave que le dejara. Pedrosa juraba
y perjuraba que no sabía una palabra del asunto. Como el regalo no
podía venir más que de María, se decidió, después de muchas
vacilaciones, a visitar a esta para suplicarle que no volviera a repetirlo
Luis esperaba un recibimiento teatral; una serie inacabable de
reconvenciones y preguntas. Nada de eso. Su tía le recibió como si le
hubiera visto la víspera; con tal amabilidad, con tal ternura, con tan
afectuoso cariño, que Luis salió de allí más enamorado que nunca. Po
lo que se refería a los muebles, ella negó que los hubiera enviado
Claro que es ella, ¿quién va a ser si no? —pensaba Luis—; pero como
al fin y al cabo no podía comprobarlo, tuvo que conformarse.
Desde entonces comenzaron a ocurrir en su casa cosas muy
extrañas. Cada ocho o diez días aparecía un objeto nuevo; unas veces
era una silla, otras una mecedora, una lámpara para la mesa, un libro
un par de botas... La portera seguía diciendo que ella no sabía nada.
—Pero, mujer, usted es la que tiene la llave, usted es la que tiene
que abrir.
—No, no; yo no. Como el señorito ha puesto ese cordelito en la
puerta, se conoce que lo han averiguado y tiran de él.
En efecto; Luis, para no llevar encima la llave, una de esas llaves de
Madrid que pesan medio kilo, había establecido un sistema muy
conocido en las casas de huéspedes: una cuerda de guitarra atada a
picaporte, pasada después por una argolla y luego por un agujero
hecho en la madera, y al final de la cuerda un nudo, lo más pequeño
posible para que no se viera e impidiera, sin embargo, que la cuerda
corriese.
—¡Vaya! esto se acabó —dijo una noche que se encontró sobre la
cama media docena de camisas—; desde hoy me llevo la llave.
Y se la llevó, en efecto, pero solo tres días. Al tercero le molestó e
peso, y después de muchas combinaciones volvió otra vez al sistema
del cordelito, que, después de todo, era el que le resultaba más
práctico. Sin embargo, anunció a la portera que como el caso volviera
a repetirse, se quejaría al casero para que la echara. Desde aquel día
cesaron los regalos.
Fuera del periódico, su vida continuaba siendo la de siempre
Acudía todas las tardes a la tertulia de Fornos, que tampoco había
variado. Paco el mozo y Antoñito Bedmar eran los únicos que faltaban
El primero se había retirado, según decían, para establecer un
merendero en La Bombilla, y el segundo iba de tarde en tarde, e
tiempo preciso para tomar café y marcharse en seguida. Ya no bebía
Su nariz empezaba a perder el rojizo color que tanto le afeaba; sus
ojos parecían más abiertos y mayores, y su continente era, a no
dudarlo, más apuesto y airoso. Aseguraba que trabajaba mucho; lo
cierto es que su firma se prodigaba en todos los periódicos con
fecundidad asombrosa.
Boncamí había terminado el retrato de Rose d’Ivern y cobrado sus
mil y pico de pesetas. Sin embargo, como hombre práctico y precavido
que sabe lo que vale el dinero, las conservaba lo mejor que podía, sin
gastar un céntimo en cosas superfluas. Cumpliendo punto por punto
su programa, se mudó de estudio y empezó a pintar su gran cuadro
aquel gran cuadro que iba a dejar a todo el mundo chiquitito.
—Me han asegurado que al fin hay este año Exposición; como no
ha podido celebrarse en primavera, se verificará en otoño, cuando la
Corte regrese de San Sebastián. Y entonces, ¡ah, entonces...!
Y se quedaba mirando al techo con el arrobamiento del enamorado
que contempla en sueños la imagen de la mujer querida.
XVI