Representing animals in the literature of Victorian Britain

Abstract

This chapter provides an overview of significant developments and preoccupations in Animal Studies in so far as these have influenced research in Victorian literature, and suggests some possible future directions the field may take. It shows that understanding Victorian perceptions of animals is inseparable from understanding human self-conception in the same period, and that the impact of animals on Victorian Britain's imagination and artistic practices has significant implications for an understanding of its social and cultural life, and vice versa. The chapter deals with two iconic images of the Victorian era. The first is a photograph of Queen Victoria with one of her favourite border collies, Sharp, who is seated on a gothic chair resembling a throne and leaning into his dour mistress's breast. The second is of the celebrity elephant Jumbo, who tragically died after being hit by a freight locomotive, a death that is all too neatly emblematic of nineteenth-century industrialisation.