The Animal Estate: The English and Other Creatures in the Victorian Age

by Harriet Ritvo

When we think about the Victorian age, we usually envision people together with animals: the Queen and her pugs, the sportsman with horses and hounds, the big game hunter with his wild kill, the gentleman farmer with a prize bull. Harriet Ritvo here gives us a vivid picture of how animals figured in English thinking during the nineteenth century and, by extension, how they served as metaphors for human psychological needs and sociopolitical aspirations.

Victorian England was a period of burgeoning scientific cattle breeding and newly fashionable dog shows; an age of Empire and big game hunting; an era of reform and reformers that saw the birth of the Royal SPCA. Ritvo examines Victorian thinking about animals in the context of other lines of thought: evolution, class structure, popular science and natural history, imperial domination. The papers and publications of people and organizations concerned with agricultural breeding, veterinary medicine, the world of pets, vivisection and other humane causes, zoos, hunting at home and abroad, all reveal underlying assumptions and deeply held convictions―for example, about Britain’s imperial enterprise, social discipline, and the hierarchy of orders, in nature and in human society.

Thus this book contributes a new new topic of inquiry to Victorian studies; its combination of rhetorical analysis with more conventional methods of historical research offers a novel perspective on Victorian culture. And because nineteenth-century attitudes and practices were often the ancestors of contemporary ones, this perspective can also inform modern debates about human–animal interactions.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Animals, Victorian

Paperback

First published October 28, 1987

About the author

Harriet Ritvo is an American historian who specializes in British history, particularly environmental history and the history of natural history.

Reviews

[Kathleen · Rating 4 out of 5]

“Animals appealed as subjects of human activity as well as objects of human curiosity. Many naturalists were attracted by the simple desire to participate, personally or vicariously, in an exciting exercise of human prowess. Natural history was often described as a human struggle against the chaotic and unfathomable variety of nature. Pioneering naturalists were frequently genuine adventurers, braving the unknown dangers of uncharted territories in order to emerge with hard-won bits of new information. […] In 1862 the Literary and Philosophical Society of Liverpool described zoological field work as a contest in order to persuade the merchant marine officers to contribute to the ‘furtherance of Zoology’ on their voyages. The society stressed the excitement of matching wits with nature—‘the field…naturalist…revels in the contemplation of the habits, manners, and instincts of created beings’—and the gratification of ‘captures,’ which might be useful observations or even evidence of whole new species” (11).

[Michelle Taylor]

Ritvo describes the Victorian period as a time in which “animals never talked back”—a time in which mankind was insistent on maintaining its elevated position over the rest of creation despite the shock imposed by Darwin. Even as On the Origin of Species (1859) led the way for humans to see themselves as highly-modified or even perfected animals, Darwinian thought could even be used to justify man’s dominance over the rest of the animal kingdom—after all, evolution led to man as its culminating achievement. Ritvo’s book describes the attempts of the middle-to-upper class man to assert his superiority over both animals (in the pre-Darwinian sense, which excluded humans) and over the humans that those animals came to represent: the lower classes and the aliens or “exotics” with which the imperialist period brought the Victorians into contact. Animals were valued, then, for their utility and tractability—their ability to serve man and to serve him willingly and well. The more an animal met these needs, the higher the position it was given on the scale, or the more human-like it was able to become in the eyes of the human judges. Ritvo grounds her study of changing human-animal relationships in the domestic institutions that, perhaps ironically, knit them together ever more tightly—breeding experiments, dog shows, rat-killing events, and more.

[Paul O'Leary · Rating 5 out of 5]

Before we had Millennials to pick on, there were the Victorians. Whether it be the proliferation of pornography or the hysteria surrounding diseases and their control, the Victorians have always availed themselves as a congenial target for social historians. This book takes a fun Foucauldian swipe at their antics pertaining specifically to their changing relationship with animals, and those who owned them. This was quite the popular book when it first came out in the middle 80s and it's easy to understand why. Ritvo's writing is very readable and the material both accessible & entertaining to the general reader. Each chapter deals with a separate subject that relates to the overall theme of animals and the Victorians' use of power to dominate and then management them. One chapter focuses on the special Victorian cachet of raising prized beef. A male aristocratic pastime that masqueraded as public service. This fatty nonsense is enhanced by the reflexive fad of aristocratic ladies fascinated by the prestige of serving a roast "that could be identified by name". The next chapter targets the Victorian need for control through "pure" breeding of pets. The quest for the creation of the ideal breed in a dog denotes the Victorian imagination, rather than any scientific prowess. Breeds were spun mostly out of fancy. The search for cat breeds met with much less success as fur coloration proven almost entirely the sole distinction between felines. The example of the bulldog is especially entertaining as the author accuses it of being hardly a breed to begin with, but rather "a motley group of similarly talented animals". Talented as to bull baiting, it's original job function, the rise of the breed is particularly noteworthy as its extinction seemed almost certain after parliament banned bull baiting in the early nineteenth century. A national symbol created at the same time it's bereft of its utility. There's a moral packed in there, somewhere..... The emergence of humane institutions gets and deserves their own chapter. Victorians might not have cared a whit for their neighbor, but the sight of a horse being beaten on the thoroughfare plagued their sensitive nerves. The progress of the stigma against the abuse of animals is chronicled alongside the necessary beginnings of enforcement. The author takes note that if the upper classes couldn't outlaw the lower classes, they could still take them to court. There's progress for you. Ritvo then moves from the domestic scene to the international, the last two chapters focus on the transformation of menageries into zoos proper, as well as the journey from "big game hunting" in the extended empire to the management of animal species through preservation and law enforcement, however feeble and class oriented. This is history compartmentalized into its delimited period. A reader might get the mistaken and farcical impression that the Brits paid no mind to animals before the late eighteenth century. The English, or some of them, anyway, have undoubtedly always loved their pets and then went hunting when the mood attached itself. Yet the nineteenth century on the whole does appear to be a singular time of transition in England and its power politics in social life seems somewhat ever-present. Certainly, Ritvo's book ably demonstrates that subtle and unsubtle power dynamic is as much a four legged affair as two. This begs the question: when man eventually casts his eye of concern on other living creatures, is this the moment when the problems of those others really begin?

[Michele]

Ooh, this sounds like fun!

[Aaron · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ritvo is a subtle, clever writer and a dedicated historian. This book was one of the first to make Animal History be taken seriously within the field, and you can see why.

[Dipika · Rating 4 out of 5]

She explores the relationship between animals and British empire building in this book, looks at what was happening in the metropole and its relation to the colonies, but not really vice versa.

[Sus · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is one of my favorite works of cultural criticism and history. The Victorian period has seldom seemed so accessible, so interesting, and so close.