54 Sarah Hoffman – Corpse-sharers, Houyhnhnms, and Black Beauty: Representations of Animals in British Written Works Between 937 and 1877
Sarah Hoffman is a Senior majoring in Technical and Professional Writing. She lives in North Carolina. Her submission contains excerpts from her final project in English Literature Survey and the result is a selection of parts from the final draft. Professor Alisa Clapp-Itnyre notes, “Sarah wrote a 27-page paper! This was simply tremendous. She took an already-strong draft and gave tons more: animal-studies terms, definitions, concepts, major critics, etc 🙂 She showed herself to now be an Animal-Studies expert!”
Corpse-sharers, Houyhnhnms, and Black Beauty: Representations of Animals in British Written Works Between 937 and 1877
Picture the scene: A cave wall on the island of Sulawesi in Indonesia with an ancient painting of…a pig – quite a large pig, in fact – created some 45,000 years ago (Hunt “Warty Pig). You may ask how a cave painting of a pig is relevant to animal representations in written works from England. Well, if early cave paintings can be considered a form of record-keeping, humans have been writing about animals for millennia. Animals have been central in the lives of humans in myriad ways, often being represented in written works. This paper examines written works from A.D. 937 through 1877, including “Brunanburh”, Johnathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels, and Anna Sewell’s Black Beauty, among others, to identify the ways in which writers have represented and misrepresented animals, understood and misunderstood them, studied them, and defended them.
In order to examine these works, it is important to look at the relationships between humans and animals as the context for how they are represented, as well as to define the terms used in the paper. Throughout, “the 5 Cs of human/non-human interactions” will help inform how human/non-human interactions are identified and how animals are represented in the works discussed. They are: “Killing (not quite a C): for food, for sport for money; Cruelty; Co-opting and commercializing animals for human gain; Capture and condescension, and Caring and compassion” (Clapp-Itnyre “Introductory Page”). It is interesting to note that at least one of these 5 Cs is evident in most of the works examined here. In addition, Clapp-Itnyre offers some relevant animal-studies terms including “advocacy [and] activism, animal metaphors, animal welfare, anthropocentri[sm], anthropomorphi[sm], bestiary tales, co-opt[ing] and exploit[ation], empathy, evolution, exceptionalism, [the] great chain of being, and human-animal hierarchy” (Clapp-Itnyre “Animal-Studies Terms”). Throughout the paper, Clapp-Itnyre’s definition of a term will accompany the first use, which will help to illustrate human egos, human’s use of animals as moral and satiric symbols, and humans’ empathy for animals.
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These attitudes are evident in the earliest work under examination, the Old English poem “Brunanburh,” which can be categorized as a panegyric battle poem. The work recounts the battle led by King Athelstan in 937 A.D. The poem is “anthropocentric” meaning “to place humans center-stage: anthro=human; centric=center” or “exceptionalism” referring to the “…concept that humans are exceptional over all other creatures on earth” (“Animal-Studies Terms”). The author describes the battle in terms of survival, self-preservation, glory, honor, sacrifice, and triumph at the high cost of human life. While their intent was not to write about animals, but rather to tell of a glorious victory on the battlefield, the author does mention animals in terms of one of the relationships humans had with animals at that time – that of prey and predator:
The corpse-sharers, shadowy-coated,
they left behind them: the black raven
with its horny beak; the brown eagle
of white tail-feather, to feast on the slain
–greedy war-hawk; and the grey one,
the wolf of the weald. (“Brunanburh”)
The reference to these animals as “corpse-sharers” creates an almost-perceptible, almost-palpable stench of decay in the air, and a graphic picture of moldering remains, which is surely deliberate. Furthermore, the use of “corpse-sharers” as a term to describe these animals places emphasis on the animals’ roles as contributors to the decay of bodies. By mentioning animals as devourers of carcasses, the author “co-opts [or] exploits” these animals by “tak[ing] something that isn’t [their] own (such as animal lives) and us[ing] it for [their] own gain” (“Animal-Studies Terms”) to benefit the victors in battle. Moreover, the author uses the ravens’, eagles’, and wolves’ survival instincts and their place in the natural ecosystem to elicit a fear-based response in future challengers. The author seems to say that those who go to battle with this army can expect to be brutally killed, after which the animals will “feast on the slain” (“Brunanburh”).
Finally, by representing the animals in this light, though not inaccurately, the author assigns the animals a rank in the great chain of being, which can be defined as “a medieval concept (stemming from Aristotle) that places all elements on earth in a hierarchy, or chain, in terms of superiority: God on the top, then angels, humans, plants, and minerals on the bottom” (“Animal-Studies Terms). The human-animal hierarchy is another term that could be applied here. Consequently, the animals are considered as lesser beings to be feared.
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As time advanced, many changes affecting both humans and animals began to take place during the period known as the Age of Enlightenment. This period of enlightenment covered the timespan between approximately 1685 and 1815 and overlapped with the Industrial Revolution as well as much of the Romantic era. Regarding this time period, Clapp-Itnyre explained that:
The 18th century would see the beginnings of most of these awful practices [,killing, commercialization, & cruelty,] for a number of reasons: a growing human population, the emergence of crowded cities and city-entertainment, technology (like more sophisticated guns), and colonization of global animals just as with global cultures. (“18th Century Animal Studies”)
A notable work from this period is Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels, written in 1726. While the novel is part travelogue and tells the stories of the voyages of Lemuel Gulliver, the book contains multiple references to animals. Through Swift’s use of heavy satire and scathing social commentary, readers learn of Gulliver’s disdain for how humans treat one another, and one can surmise that these are Swift’s opinions as well. What is also evident is how Swift, and by extension Gulliver, reveres horses. This is illustrated through Gulliver’s encounters with, and time spent living among the Houyhnhnms in Part IV of the book. The Houyhnhnms are, in effect, self-aware horses who have dominion over a less intelligent breed of animal who are depicted as extremely human-like. A notable sample of Swift’s respect for horses is given when Gulliver first meets a Houyhnhnm, whom he tries to stroke. Gulliver describes the curious and intelligent exchange that follows:
…I took the Boldness to reach my Hand towards his neck with a Design to stroak it…But this Animal seemed to receive my Civilities with Disdain, shook his Head, and bent his Brows, softly raising up his Left Fore-Foot to remove my Hand (Swift 168).
Swift intimates from the beginning that the Houyhnhnms are intelligent, capable of disdain, and able to convey what they want and do not want. As author Bryan Alkemeyer noted, “a major satiric function of part 4 of Gulliver’s Travels is to confront readers with the incongruity between traditional beliefs about horses and their systematic exploitation; thus, Swift exposes the human/horse relationship as hypocritical, incoherent, and contradictory” (Alkemeyer 24). This is evidenced by how Gulliver describes the role of horses to the Houyhnhnms who cannot understand how a horse could be valued so highly, yet made to work so hard, the one being antithetical to the other. Swift’s chapters dedicated to the Houyhnhnms represent the start of changing attitudes toward animals. In this part of the book, Swift also seems to create his own great chain of being by putting Houyhnhnms above humans. One could also consider that Houyhnhnms are part of Bach’s animal continuum given that the animals have what Bach terms “human nature.” Regardless of what influenced Swift, chapter four of the novel is decisively in favor of animals which was important given the abhorrent practices of killing, commercialization, and cruelty toward them.
On the cusp of the Romantic era and not long after Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels, philosopher Jeremy Bentham wrote An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation, in 1789. In the seventeenths chapter of his exposition, “Of the Limits of the Penal Branch of Jurisprudence: Limits Between Private Ethics and the Art of Legislation,” Bentham included a lengthy footnote about the treatment of the people indigenous to the English colonies. However, the footnote had relevancy to and bearing on the evolving conversations about animal treatment, as well. This footnote reads, in part:
What else is it that should trace the insuperable line? Is it the faculty of reason, or, perhaps, the faculty of discourse? But a full-grown horse or dog is beyond comparison a more rational, as well as a more conversable animal, than an infant of a day, or a week, or even a month, old. But suppose the case were otherwise, what would it avail? the question is not, Can they reason? nor, Can they talk? but, Can they suffer?” (Bentham “Of the Limits”)
For the time, his ideas, and the all-important questions he asked were progressive. As a result of these statements and questions, many consider Bentham to be one of the founders of animal rights activism. It should be noted, however, that Bentham’s arguments in favor of compassion and caring for animals did not extend to prohibiting the eating of animals or experimenting on them for research purposes. His stance on animal rights, though not all-inclusive, was an important step forward in combatting animal cruelty. The sentiments about both humans and animals which Bentham expressed were similar to the feelings of many other thought leaders of the time.
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Shortly after Catherine Smithies founded Bands of Mercy, Anna Sewell’s poignant and delightful Black Beauty was published in 1877. Her book was another example of the changing views of animal treatment. The story is a first-person narrative told from the perspective of a horse who shares his many life experiences, and those of his friends and keepers. Throughout the book, Sewell comments on how both animals and humans should be treated, using the horses’ good and bad experiences to illustrate how the treatment positively or negatively impacts the animals. Topics addressed through their experiences include how they are trained, harnessed, the quality of their food, the type of work and sport for which they are used, how hard they are worked or ridden, and how much space they are given in the stalls and in the fields. In the end, Black Beauty remarks, “My troubles are all over… and often before I am quite awake, I dream I am still in the orchard at Birtwick, standing with my old friends under the apple trees” (Sewell 188). Some parts of the book are difficult to read due to the abuse and starvation suffered by Black Beauty in later life. Though the story ends happily for Black Beauty, the same cannot be said of his friend Ginger whose lot seems to be one of sorrow and pain. Sewell’s work serves as an important and popular reminder from the horse’s mouth of how humans should treat animals and one another.
Works Cited
Alkemeyer, Bryan. “The Natural History of the Houyhnhnms: Noble Horses in Gulliver’s Travels.” The Eighteenth Century, vol. 57, no. 1, 2016, pp. 23–37. JSTOR, jstor.org/stable/eighcent.57.1.23.
Bentham, Jeremy. “Of the Limits of the Penal Branch of Jurisprudence: Limits between private ethics and the art of legislation.” An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation. T. Payne, and Son, at the Mews Gate, 1789. Eighteenth Century Collections Online, link.gale.com/apps/doc/CW0104763964/ECCO?u=iulib_east&sid=bookmark-ECCO&xid=3b883609&pg=1.
“Brunanburh.” “Image from The Earliest English Poems.” Canvas,
iu.instructure.com/courses/2129077/pages/read-old-english-the-earliest-poetry?module_item_id=28502513.
Clapp-Itnyre, Alisa. “Animal-Studies Terms.” Canvas, 2023, iu.instructure.com /courses/2129077/files/151648469?wrap=1
Clapp-Itnyre, Alisa. “Introductory Page to L301, Part 2: Animal-Studies Concepts.” Canvas, 2023, iu.instructure.com/courses/2129077/pages/read-introductory-page-to-l301-part-2-animal-studies-concepts?wrap=1.
Clapp-Itnyre, Alisa. “18th Century Animal Studies.” Canvas, IU Instructure, 2023, iu.instructure.com/courses/2129077/pages/read-18th-century-animal-studies?module_item_id=28502542
Clapp-Itnyre, Alisa. “19th Century Animal Studies.” Canvas, IU Instructure, 2023, iu.instructure.com/courses/2129077/pages/read-19th-century-animal-studies?wrap=1#_ftn3.
Clapp-Itnyre, Alisa. “Middle English: Poetry of the Medieval Age.” Canvas, IU Instructure, 2023, iu.instructure.com/courses/2129077/pages/read-middle-english-poetry-of-the-medieval-age.
Hunt, Katie. “A Warty Pig Painted on a Cave Wall 45,500 Years Ago Is the World’s Oldest Depiction of an Animal.” CNN, 13 Jan. 2021, cnn.com/style/article/cave-art-indonesia-oldest-figurative-art-animal-image-scn-trnd/index.html#:~:text=A%20warty%20pig%20painted%20on,oldest%20depiction%20of%20an%20animal&text=The%20world’s%20oldest%20known%20figurative,image%20of%20a%20warty%20pig.
Sewell, Anna. Black Beauty. Kappa Books Publishers, LLC, 2020.
Shakespeare, William. A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Dover Publications, Mineola, NY, 2009.
Swift, Jonathan. Gulliver’s Travels. Edited by Stanley Applebaum and Philip Smith, Dover, 1996.