Details
Women against cruelty
Protection of animals in nineteenth-century BritainGender in History
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32,99 € |
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| Verlag: | Manchester University Press |
| Format: | EPUB |
| Veröffentl.: | 23.10.2019 |
| ISBN/EAN: | 9781526115447 |
| Sprache: | englisch |
| Anzahl Seiten: | 296 |
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Beschreibungen
This is the first book to explore women’s leading role in animal protection in nineteenth-century Britain, drawing on rich archival sources. Women founded bodies such as the Battersea Dogs’ Home, the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds and various groups that opposed vivisection. They energetically promoted better treatment of animals, both through practical action and through their writings, such as Anna Sewell’s <i>Black Beauty</i>. Yet their efforts were frequently belittled by opponents, or decried as typifying female ‘sentimentality’ and hysteria. Only the development of feminism in the later Victorian period enabled women to show that spontaneous fellow-feeling with animals was a civilising force. Women’s own experience of oppressive patriarchy bonded them with animals, who equally suffered from the dominance of masculine values in society, and from an assumption that all-powerful humans were entitled to exploit animals at will.
This is the first study of women’s leading contribution to animal protection in nineteenth-century Britai
Preface
Prefatory note: The archive of the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals
Introduction
1 Sexual distinctions in attitudes to animals in the late Georgian era
2 The early history of the RSPCA: its culture and its conflicts
3 Animal welfare and ‘humane education’: new roles for women
4 The ‘two religions’: a gendered divide in Victorian society
5 Anti-vivisection: a feminist cause?
6 Sentiment and ‘the spirit of life’: new insights at the <i>fin de siècle</i>
Index
Prefatory note: The archive of the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals
Introduction
1 Sexual distinctions in attitudes to animals in the late Georgian era
2 The early history of the RSPCA: its culture and its conflicts
3 Animal welfare and ‘humane education’: new roles for women
4 The ‘two religions’: a gendered divide in Victorian society
5 Anti-vivisection: a feminist cause?
6 Sentiment and ‘the spirit of life’: new insights at the <i>fin de siècle</i>
Index
Diana Donald, now an independent scholar, is the author of <i>Picturing Animals in Britain 1750–1850, </i>and the prize-winning <i>Endless Forms: Charles Darwin, Natural Science and the Visual Arts</i>
This is the first book to explore women’s leading role in animal protection in nineteenth-century Britain. Its originality lies in uniting feminist perspectives with the fast-developing field of animal-human history, and it opens up rich archival sources for further research.
Women founded charities devoted to animal protection, such as the Battersea Dogs’ Home and the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds. They intervened directly to stop abuses, passionately advocated greater kindness to animals, schooled the young in humane values, wrote imaginative stories of animal suffering, and debated the causes of human cruelty in polemical works. In all these enterprises they encountered opponents who sought to discredit their efforts by invoking age-old notions of female ‘sentimentality’ or ‘hysteria’. However, the gradual emancipation of women in the later Victorian era led also to the formulation of a body of feminist theory on the centrality of ‘sentiment’ as a positive force in animal advocacy. The power of patriarchy in repressing women’s aspirations to personal independence and voting rights gave them a sense of common cause with animals, who equally suffered from the dominance of male values in society, and from an assumption that humans were entitled to exploit animals at will.
<i>Women against cruelty </i>will be essential reading for those studying and working in the fields of animal history, feminist theory, women’s history, nineteenth-century literature and Victorian society and institutions.
Women founded charities devoted to animal protection, such as the Battersea Dogs’ Home and the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds. They intervened directly to stop abuses, passionately advocated greater kindness to animals, schooled the young in humane values, wrote imaginative stories of animal suffering, and debated the causes of human cruelty in polemical works. In all these enterprises they encountered opponents who sought to discredit their efforts by invoking age-old notions of female ‘sentimentality’ or ‘hysteria’. However, the gradual emancipation of women in the later Victorian era led also to the formulation of a body of feminist theory on the centrality of ‘sentiment’ as a positive force in animal advocacy. The power of patriarchy in repressing women’s aspirations to personal independence and voting rights gave them a sense of common cause with animals, who equally suffered from the dominance of male values in society, and from an assumption that humans were entitled to exploit animals at will.
<i>Women against cruelty </i>will be essential reading for those studying and working in the fields of animal history, feminist theory, women’s history, nineteenth-century literature and Victorian society and institutions.
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