The Political Lives of Victorian Animals —— Liberal Creatures In Literature And Culture

----- 维多利亚时代人们的政治生活：文学与文化中的自由主义者

ISBN: 9781108619424 出版年：2019 页码：272 Anna Feuerstein Cambridge University Press

During the victorian era, animals were increasingly viewed not as property or utility, but as thinking, feeling subjects worthy of inclusion within a political community. This book re-examines the nineteenth-century british animal welfare movement and animal characters in the victorian novel in light of liberal thought, and argues that liberalism was a decisive factor in determining the cultural, ideological, and material makeup of animal-human relationships. While the animal welfare movement often represented animals as desiring submission to the human, animal characters in the victorian novel critiqued the liberal norms that led to the oppression of both animals and humans. Through readings of animal rights legislation, animal welfare texts, and writings by charles dickens, lewis carroll, thomas hardy, and olive schreiner, anna feuerstein outlines the remarkably powerful political role that animals played in the victorian novel, as they offer ways to move beyond the exclusionary and contradictory strategies of liberal thought.