'A bull and cow': the bovine in Victorian Britain, 1837-1901
Lead Research Organisation:
UNIVERSITY OF READING
Department Name: English Literature
Abstract
This project explores the representation of cattle throughout the Victorian period. By addressing canonical literary works as well as cookbooks, newspapers, pamphlets, and visual art, this project engages with the complex, multi-accentual ways in which the Victorians interacted with, thought about, and gave fictional form to cattle. At a time of urbanisation, population growth, and imperialist expansion, I will show how these animals played a significant - if at times unobtrusive and underacknowledged - role in Victorian literature, culture and society, whether they were treated as meat, milk, spectacle, companion, colonising agent, even deity. My project will also explore how this Victorian significance might be brought to bear upon the present-day conceptualisation and treatment of cattle.
My research addresses a gap in Victorian animal scholarship. As Theresa Mangum expounds, researchers have engaged with Victorian interest in "narratives about animals that lived closest to them, like pets", and "narratives about the exotic wild animals of Africa and India that lived furthest away" (174). Yet a substantive, monograph-length literary analysis of the Victorians and cattle has yet to be completed. The few studies available are chapter-length and explore limited types of interaction. Two prominent works are Harriet Ritvo's 'Barons of Beef' and Liam Young's 'Old and New Beef': Ritvo explores the phenomenon of Victorian animal fancying among the gentry, a practice which rendered animal life into spectacle and plaything; Young analyses the shifting ways in which beef has been experienced, arguing that campaigns for better hygiene and animal treatment had the effect of making "animal lives and deaths invisible to consumers" (45). Erica Fudge's 'What was it like to be a cow?' has a more theoretical focus, looking at Nietzsche, Haraway, and Despret, and offering the idea of "itstory" (268). This recovering of the animal as agent is a key concept in my thesis.
My project will work towards making clear the significance of cattle to Victorian Studies and its particular focus falls on the way in which the novel gave form to cattle. Though often an apparently peripheral concern, cattle remain latent in many popular fictions. During a period which saw the rise of cheaper means of publication, improved rates of literacy, and a boom in serialisation, reading publics expanded significantly. This project looks to re-examine a range of fictions, many well-read and commercially successful, by shining a light on the presence of the bovine. Looking at novels such as Oliver Twist, Shirley, and The Mill on the Floss, enables this project to consider how Victorians consumed and interacted with media that featured cattle.
Examining the novel form, this thesis interrogates how the Victorian novel represents the cow. During a period which saw Smithfield meat market move out of the public eye, did the novel form follow suit in any way? Are bovine lives presented 'realistically?' This project examines how the novel form might sanitise, or elide, animal suffering, and/or present a romanticised portrait of bovine lives. It is interested in how the Victorian novel form shaped the attitudes of its readership. It also looks at the materiality of interactions between Victorians and cattle, as well as how they might symbolically speak to human discourses including class, gender, nation, and empire.
This project also underscores the ways in which twenty-first century society shares, and magnifies, Victorian interactions with cattle. Highlighting these points of connection between Victorians and ourselves, this project details how anthropocentric cross-species interactions between people and cattle have led to air and water pollution and contributed to what we now know as climate change. Facing these fundamental threats, this thesis asks how might we work toward a new interaction, and whether the Victorians can offer us any solutions?
My research addresses a gap in Victorian animal scholarship. As Theresa Mangum expounds, researchers have engaged with Victorian interest in "narratives about animals that lived closest to them, like pets", and "narratives about the exotic wild animals of Africa and India that lived furthest away" (174). Yet a substantive, monograph-length literary analysis of the Victorians and cattle has yet to be completed. The few studies available are chapter-length and explore limited types of interaction. Two prominent works are Harriet Ritvo's 'Barons of Beef' and Liam Young's 'Old and New Beef': Ritvo explores the phenomenon of Victorian animal fancying among the gentry, a practice which rendered animal life into spectacle and plaything; Young analyses the shifting ways in which beef has been experienced, arguing that campaigns for better hygiene and animal treatment had the effect of making "animal lives and deaths invisible to consumers" (45). Erica Fudge's 'What was it like to be a cow?' has a more theoretical focus, looking at Nietzsche, Haraway, and Despret, and offering the idea of "itstory" (268). This recovering of the animal as agent is a key concept in my thesis.
My project will work towards making clear the significance of cattle to Victorian Studies and its particular focus falls on the way in which the novel gave form to cattle. Though often an apparently peripheral concern, cattle remain latent in many popular fictions. During a period which saw the rise of cheaper means of publication, improved rates of literacy, and a boom in serialisation, reading publics expanded significantly. This project looks to re-examine a range of fictions, many well-read and commercially successful, by shining a light on the presence of the bovine. Looking at novels such as Oliver Twist, Shirley, and The Mill on the Floss, enables this project to consider how Victorians consumed and interacted with media that featured cattle.
Examining the novel form, this thesis interrogates how the Victorian novel represents the cow. During a period which saw Smithfield meat market move out of the public eye, did the novel form follow suit in any way? Are bovine lives presented 'realistically?' This project examines how the novel form might sanitise, or elide, animal suffering, and/or present a romanticised portrait of bovine lives. It is interested in how the Victorian novel form shaped the attitudes of its readership. It also looks at the materiality of interactions between Victorians and cattle, as well as how they might symbolically speak to human discourses including class, gender, nation, and empire.
This project also underscores the ways in which twenty-first century society shares, and magnifies, Victorian interactions with cattle. Highlighting these points of connection between Victorians and ourselves, this project details how anthropocentric cross-species interactions between people and cattle have led to air and water pollution and contributed to what we now know as climate change. Facing these fundamental threats, this thesis asks how might we work toward a new interaction, and whether the Victorians can offer us any solutions?
Organisations
People |
ORCID iD |
| Rose Muller (Student) |