Diana Donald - Women Against Cruelty: Protection of animals in nineteenth-century Britain

Many studies of animal advocacy groups in the modern western world have revealed the striking prominence of women among the activists. Gender also seemingly affects attitudes towards animals among the population at large. For example, one researcher in the 1990s found that, statistically, gender had the greatest total effect on opposition to animal research (vivisection), while feminist attitudes had the second greatest total effect. Also in the 1990s Carol Adams, Josephine Donovan and others proposed a theoretical basis for these proclivities. They argued that patriarchal attitudes still prevalent in society bear down on both women and animals, establishing a sense of common cause between them. For these feminist writers, an ethic of care fellow-feeling with animals and a sense of moral responsibility for their wellbeing is preferable to abstract theories of animal rights. The latter place a premium on rationality, a quality which is often associated with ancient but discredited theories about the masculine mind and womens supposed irrationality or animality.

The reasons for the apparent difference between the sexes in their readiness or their capacity for sympathy with other species nevertheless remain open to further investigation. Does womens attachment to animal causes partly stem from some innate mothering instinct? Or does it arise solely from their life experiences, especially their consciousness of male domination? Perhaps sentiment or tenderness is socially induced, when treated as a desirable aspect of femininity or of female pursuits? Is womens special feeling for animals in fact constant through the centuries, or is it a fluctuating and historically contingent phenomenon? It is only this historical dimension of the subject that my study of womens work for animals in nineteenth-century Britain can have any hope of addressing. I set out to show how these women responded to the problem of cruelty in British society at many levels with strong emotion impelling them to direct action, but also with analytic thoughtfulness and imagination. By the 1890s, some were led to formulate ideas about the special bond between women and animals that anticipate feminist views of the present day, while their rejection of controlling anthropocentrism resonates with the recent emphasis on animals own subjectivity and agency in history.

Several authors, notably Mary Ann Elston, Moira Ferguson, Barbara Gates, Susan Hamilton, Hilda Kean and Coral Lansbury, have made key contributions to our knowledge of womens roles in the Victorian animal protection movement. However, a connected history of this subject its leading figures, literature and institutions has been lacking. There is certainly a need for such a history, to counter the trivialisation, disdain and neglect evinced by many authors of standard works. The biographers of Charles Darwin write dismissively of how his daughter Henrietta, a confirmed hypochondriac, had jumped on the bandwagon of opposition to vivisection. One is glad to know that Darwin himself took Henriettas principled objections to the practice more seriously. The author of a classic history of The Naturalist in Britain suggests that the women who founded the future Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB) typified people on the search for something to protest about, prone to hysteria, often absurdly impractical Obsessed with propaganda, and resistant to the (male) scientific advice that would have guided the Society in its early days towards sound conservationist measures. What is distressing in these and similar judgements is less their misogyny than the travesty of historical facts that is often involved. If my own version of events is open to criticism as parti pris in its celebration of Victorian womens achievements in animal protection, it at least brings to attention the wealth of archival and other primary source material available to scholars who may wish to research the aspect of gender in the history of animal advocacy more widely, and from different disciplinary or ethical perspectives embracing womens writings as well as their practical initiatives. At a time when animal history is expanding in many new directions, there is unlimited scope and promise in this field.