There is a further consideration here as well. In terms of practice and politics, anthropocentric culture is androcentric culture. Many of the most pointed cruelties toward animals are authorized by asinine notions of virility, as in hunting, the bullfight, or the rodeo. In socio-historical terms, one might note that attention to open cruelty toward animals can reveal hidden violence toward women. Coral Lansbury ’ s brilliant work The Old Brown Dog: Women, Workers, and Vivisection in Edwardian England demonstrates the point. In Lansbury ’ s analysis, Edwardian women saw and felt the cold arrogance of the sciences and the medical profession, the ideology and practice of which originated with men. Subconsciously or consciously, they caught the analogy between the image of the dog strapped down for vivisection and images of the bondage of women in pornography. The victimized animal gave a point of focus for rage against men and the social forces victimizing women, forces which, being generalized and nebulous, seemed to elude direct anger. Lansbury ’ s analysis can be extended to the culturally ingrained ideology of the conquest of nature, which can now be seen as androcentric politics masquerading as anthropocentrism. Anthropocentrism is not a given; it is not “ natural. ” Anthropocentrism springs from the same ideology of dominance that elevates the interests of men over the interests of women and sustains those who possess power in practice in the position that allows them to determine that power means oppression.
Though conceiving of women as “ other, ” then, might seem to represent a capitulation to male-determined dualism, it is the first and most important stage in alienation from a culture which, considering its treatment of nonhuman animals, founds itself upon cruelty and contempt. Who would not wish to detach herself (or himself) from a culture that rests upon violence toward all those beings designated “ other ” ? The political thrust of my argument here comes not from denial of the status of other for women and animals, but from denial that “ otherness ” presupposes weakness. Indeed, as has already been suggested above and as women ’ s acknowledgement of animals in fiction confirms, the radical otherness of nonhuman animals provides a double source of power: recognition of the degree to which women are victimized by androcentric culture, and realization of solidarity in defiance of cultural authority. In their work on animals, moreover, women writers perform that most anti-androcentric of acts: thinking themselves into the being of the wholly “ other, ” the animal. It turns out that this act is not an act of self-sacrifice but of empowerment.
The three divisions in the following analysis of the import of animals in women ’ s fiction 4 proceed from the core idea that otherness is powerful. Given this assertion, beginning with the subject of victims, 5 or perhaps simply raising the issue of victimization in any form, has certain risks. Since the focus of the discussion is otherness, one of those risks is the perception that social and cultural outsiders are quintessential victims and that we cannot escape the mechanisms of conquest established by the in-group. The fact that it is not obvious to culture that animals are victims, however, enables women writers to wrest the victimization of both animals and women from the structures of thought that mandate victimization. Women can subvert the assumptions on which victimization is founded through allegiance with animals. The second part of my analysis follows logically from this idea. Identity is the key term here. In this section, we find animal identity confronting and embarrassing cultural presuppositions about the state of the individual as a subject. Finally, in the third section, I focus on three works of fantasy that envision communities of animals and humans. These fantasies show the way toward opting out of dominant culture and joining up with the animals, who already occupy worlds apart from ours. “ Otherness ” is an overarching concern in these stories; it becomes the occasion for imagining a new social system, one that does not frame itself upon victors and victims.
Establishing the legitimacy of outcast experiences is precisely the political cultural work that needs to be carried out in real life for the sake of all beings disenfranchised by sanctioned value systems. In narrative, writers can actualize the power to discount dominant ideology, just as dominant ideologies have effectively discounted much that is genuine in human and animal life. In this essay, I examine some of the ways in which women writers of fiction defy standard conceptions of nonhuman animals and animal/human relations. 1 I am seeking to demonstrate, ultimately, that women employ the creative freedom of narrative to liberate otherness from the norms of dominant ideology. Women writers use fiction to concretize, affirm, and empower the state of being “ other, ” which dominant ideology objectifies as a site of weakness, but which finds living expression in nonhuman animals. 2
Because nonhuman animals are radically “ other, ” there are certain risks in yoking feminism and animal rights. The identification of women with nature and the inferior social status entailed by that identification has been reviewed and contested in ecofeminist literature. 3 The posited identification of women with animals represents a more substantial threat to women than identification with nature. Nature in the abstract is grand and important; animals, particularized, seem lesser beings than ourselves. In the abstract, nature is a powerful system that competes with culture, whereas nonhuman animals seem inherently to have lost the battle with the human species. The suggestion that the otherness of nonhuman animals can inform the otherness of women, therefore, appears to be counterproductive, to pull women down into a condition of defeat along with the animals. It is, however, only from an anthropocentric perspective that animals are defeated. The otherness of the animal remains free and clear, despite human assaults. The responsibility for seeing and honoring otherness resides with the source of the trouble: resides, that is, with culture.
With fiction, we are in the domain of culture. Fiction can expose and then dismantle the unexamined belief systems that authorize violence against free beings. One of the preconditions for acknowledging the rights of animals is freeing them from the cultural constructions human beings have imposed upon them. With animals, this does not mean replacing one cultural construction with another that just happens to work in their favor; it means coping with the animal ’ s autonomy from culture in general. Admittedly, this is a difficult task. One has to use the resources of culture to argue that culture is not all-in-all, is not the omnipotent arbiter of change. Yet if we note that the whole idea of cultural supremacy is a formal extension of the hierarchy of dominance that elevates humans above animals and men above women, it becomes obvious that the liberation of animal otherness from cultural constructions delivers a blow to the whole structure. The radical alienation of animals from culture can be projected in literature, and that alienation is not just ideationally but politically advantageous to feminism. Indeed, the very difficulties and convolutions necessary to honor the animal ’ s defiance of culture within a cultural medium are by themselves valuable to feminism: the infrastructural persistence with which culture denies animal autonomy suggests the magnitude of the problem facing women.
Victims
Humankind ’ s root cultural relationship with animals is that of aggressor to victim. In narrative, as in life, it is difficult to escape the paradigm of victimization when it comes to animals. In narrative, animal victims make for dramatic action; often writers coopt animal tragedies to enhance the impression of pain in the world or simply to round out a plot. Indulgence in the narrative efficacy of killing an animal reinforces the conception of animals as congenital victims who call for the abuse they receive. Too often, the logic of the narrative affirms that the victimization of animals is only natural. Women writers subvert the traditional narrative use of animal victims in several ways. One way is ensuring that animals are not alone in their pain. By means of a posited kinship between victimized women and victimized animals, women writers both reclaim the fact of women ’ s suffering and challenge the isolation of human from animal that permits aggression against animals in the first place. A second way of undermining the idea that animals are foreordained victims is to allow the animal
to escape. The freed animal inherently questions abuse founded upon anthropocentrism. Finally, and with great difficulty, women writers invent the terms whereby power relations are reversed and animals can assault the species that assaults them.
Loneliness is probably one of the most terrible features of suffering. Each animal victim is acutely alone. Nothing signals the status of animals as outcasts more thoroughly than the systematic singling out of individual animals for death coupled with the denial of individuality that society practices for the very purpose of victimizing animals. In other words, cultural abrogation of the individuality of animals leaves the animal victim more chillingly isolated than if their aloneness were at least acknowledged. Thus, the narrative act of conjoining human and animal victims is a step toward affirming the importance of animal suffering. At the same time, the psychic unity of woman and animal victim underscores the pointed rejection of women from the social nexus. In the first two stories, the woman protagonist ’ s fondness for animals signals more than ideological opposition to the forces in society that injure and kill animals: it indicates estrangement so complete that only concurrence with the animal ’ s pain can tell of the entirety of the woman ’ s isolation. Mary Webb and Doris Lessing use the link between women and animal victims to analyze the extent of socially authorized aggression against otherness.
In the novel Gone to Earth (1917), Mary Webb creates a female character who does not and cannot belong in the given, social world. Hazel is an outsider, a different kind of being from the others around her. She possesses the innocence and vitality of the wild. Within her personality, two strains, deemed incompatible by Western culture, 6 coalesce: she is sexually alive and she loves animals. By means of contradictory options in male lovers, Webb points to society ’ s incapacity to accept a woman like Hazel. Hazel has the choice of a minister who can be brought to love animals but cannot satisfy her sexually and a squire who satisfies her sexually but loves to kill animals. Hazel ’ s outrage at acts of cruelty toward animals elevates her morally above conventional society: she is supercivilized. Hazel ’ s lack of restraint in sexual expression, however, aligns her with the natural world: she is a more “ natural ” being than those who are civilized and sexually repressed. Thus Webb works with the persistent and peculiar belief in Western culture that sexually passionate, “ natural ” people must have a lust to kill animals, while those who are “ civilized ” and care about animals must suffer from libidinal deficiencies. That such a convention is foolish does not mean that it has any less power to shape personality or that it presages any less terrible a fate for an outsider like Hazel. The logic of Hazel ’ s very existence is antithetical to the logic of the normal world. Furthermore, Webb creates a convincing character in Hazel. Hazel seems right in herself, not artificially thrust by the author into her position as an outcast.
Narratively speaking, however, Hazel has to die. In her very nature, she is too much of a contradiction to the social norm — perverse as that social norm is — to survive the novel. In addition to being a living affront to society, she moves within an atmosphere of animal suffering. She is deeply attuned to animal pain, and given the extent and persistence of animal pain, it is little wonder that her story has a tragic end. Hazel dies trying to save her totem animal, a young female fox, from the wealthy and religious folk who have banded together to hunt foxes.
Foxy is the emblem of the wild spirit in Hazel that belongs nowhere in human society. Yet Webb has not converted Foxy into a mystical being. Foxy ’ s otherness, and hence Hazel ’ s, is firmly grounded in physical particularity. As is consistent with the tragic vision of the novel, Foxy is most vividly a real fox when she is under assault by human beings. Her totemic value, then, consists not only in representing Hazel ’ s otherness, but also in focusing social and cultural cruelty toward the Other. As Hazel runs from the hunters with Foxy in her arms, the burning image of her fox ’ s impending death enters her mind; she hears the cry the animal would utter as hunters and hounds tear the fox ’ s body to pieces. Hazel ’ s life is completely integrated with Foxy ’ s: “ She knew that she could not go on living with that cry in her ears ” (286). Chased to the edge of a stone quarry, she leaps over and carries her fox with her into death. Both creatures have “ gone to earth, ” as the ironic last line in the novel tells us. The earth alone is home to these two beings whom the world persecutes.
Human society is no home to animals; and human society exiles something essential in women as well. Doris Lessing brings together an old homeless woman and an animal outcast in “ An Old Woman and Her Cat ” (in The Temptation of Jack Orkney, 1974). Tibby, a battered old tomcat, is Hetty ’ s totem animal. Tibby and Hetty manifest the same determination to survive outside of social institutions. The first part of the story finds Hetty living in a tiny, dirty London flat; she collects junk; she frightens people. Addressing Tibby, Hetty speaks with affection the sentiments that society tacitly and callously applies to herself: “ ‘ You nasty old beast, filthy old cat, nobody wants you, do they Tibby ’ ” (24). Hetty seizes hold of social hostility toward herself and converts it into fondness for another individual who is like her. An outsider, she is not weak, then, but strong: so strong that she can translate rejection into love. She escapes the fate of being effectively “ put to sleep ” in a “ Home ” for the elderly — they will not let her keep her cat — but Tibby is less fortunate. Hetty freezes to death in a ruined building: she dies free. An animal, Tibby takes the brunt of social aversion to the frightening “ others ” who roam city streets. He is dirty and decrepit; no one would want him for a pet, despite his willingness to give affection. The city pound kills him. Reflexively, the cold rationality that determines Tibby ’ s end puts into focus social antipathy to Hetty and women like her. Like Mary Webb ’ s Hazel, Hetty has no place in the world; the home for her heart is her companion animal. The measure of Hazel and Hetty ’ s status as outcasts is their love for animals. In turn, the measure of society ’ s contempt for this definitive quality in Hazel and Hetty is its cold-blooded treatment of their animals.
If it is fairly easy to link female outcasts and animal victims, it is harder to drive a narrative toward the liberation of the animal scheduled for death. From the perspective of the system that imprisons and kills animals, the act of releasing them appears absurd. On this score, the fate of the farm animal is unequivocal: since the farm animal ’ s whole purpose in life is determined by her death, the idea of liberty cannot enter into conceptions of her being. Where would she go, what would she do, what would she be, if not delimited by humankind and its plans for her? Liberating an animal whose only significance resides in her incarceration and death subverts cultural meaning in the most radical way imaginable. When Alice Munro and Janet E. Aalfs envision the incredible — the escape of farm animals — they simultaneously defy notions of domesticity that oppress women.
Alice Munro explores the correspondence between women and animals in a world defined by men in her first-person narrative “ Boys and Girls ” (in Dance of the Happy Shades, 1968). The setting is a fox farm. Freedom is a property that men, not women, possess, and men express their freedom in the slaughter of animals. Cultural images of adventurous men, explorers and heroes, surround the girl whose story this is. One sign that she is becoming a “ girl ” in the conventional sense is the reversal of her role in her own fantasies; no longer the heroine who rescues others in her daydreams, she becomes the victim, the one who needs rescuing. Ironically, the girl ’ s one attempt at heroism disbars her permanently from the man ’ s world. Acting on impulse, and no doubt on identification, the girl opens a gate wide for a mare fleeing from the men who mean to shoot her. The girl ’ s impulse is fruitless. Her father and the hired man recapture the horse Flora and kill her: it was her destiny all along. The only real-life opportunity the girl gets to act as a savior marks her as an irrational female. The masculine world converts what should be an act of triumphant rebellion into a shameful capitulation to girlish weakness: “
I was on Flora ’ s side, ” the narrator says, “ and that made me no use to anybody, not even to her. ” Only fools, weaklings, and girls oppose the butchering of animals — at least according to men and farmers. In this story, the two points of view are one and the same, and both the girl and the horse are victims of the combination. Nonetheless, in order to demonstrate the full-scale oppression of masculinist culture, Munro has yoked the idea of female opposition with the idea of the literal liberation of an animal.
Where horses bear the symbolic implication of freedom, chickens are radically excluded from any such idea, culturally speaking. Chickens are archetypal victims, fated for the dinner table or life as an egg-producing machine, and determined by us to be quintessentially witless. To rationalize the liberation of chickens in a narrative, a writer has to heave off a terrific burden of cultural attribution.
Janet E. Aalfs achieves a permanent escape for a chicken in “ A Chicken ’ s Tale in Three Voices ” (in Corrigan and Hoppe, And a Deer ’ s Ear, 1990) because she breaks the boundaries of “ reality ” and has the chicken speak. In the story, Aalfs interweaves a chicken ’ s fate with that of a girl whose resistance to the whole idea of marriage with a man manifests itself in chicken-like behavior. The girl, who has fled her family cackling and flapping her arms, reappears in the part of the story told by the chicken. The chicken ’ s dream at the end of the story finds the girl in the embrace of a female lover, happy, complete, and ready once again to call the chicken by name. The bond between the girl and her lover reminds the chicken of the chicken ’ s sisters, who have been killed to feed the girl ’ s family. In effect, the chicken transforms the girl into an honorary chicken. What else would freedom and self-possession mean if a chicken told the tale of the world? The chicken-like behavior that in the first part of the story was a stigma and mark of victimization becomes a victorious assertion of otherness. By reversing human and animal roles in this manner, Aalfs asserts the power of otherness despite imparting a human voice to an animal. The chicken ’ s view of life holds sway at the end of the story.
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