Book Reviews
For the Love of Animals
A history of the animal protection movement tells of the early crusaders.
By Randy Dotinga | July 30, 2008 edition
Randy Dotinga talks with author Kathryn Shevelow.
History has forgotten the shocking cruelties unleashed on the animals of Britain in centuries past. But their grim legacy remains in the language we speak.
The word “cockpit” originally referred to the spaces where chickens fought each other to the death. “Bulldogs” – ancestors of today’s pit bulls – attacked enraged bulls in front of bloodthirsty crowds of peasants and aristocrats. Even the word “hangdog,” now used to describe facial expressions, traces its origin to the unhappy fate of canines put on trial.
While many people adored their house pets just as they do now, few cared about the horrors unleashed on animals in a place considered “the world’s cruelest country.” But then humanity began to develop a heart. People started to see animals as something more than property. And cruelty ceased to be seen as a personal right.
“The rescued dogs, cats, rabbits and horses who live with so many of us today ultimately owe their survival” to British reformers, writes Kathryn Shevelow in For the Love of Animals: The Rise of the Animal Protection Movement. These men and women, she writes, “forced the law for the first time to become responsive to the plight of animals.”
“For the Love of Animals” provides a perceptive and eye-opening look at how the British people developed a sense of obligation toward the defenseless creatures in their care. Through vivid anecdotes, Shevelow, who is a professor of British literature at the University of California at San Diego, brings readers on a tour of Britain’s massive contradictions and paints memorable portraits of the motley crew that invented the animal-rights movement.
During Shakespeare’s time, and for centuries afterward, aristocrats adored their coddled lapdogs and fancy birds while half-starved mongrels roamed the streets and children tortured cats in public. Cockfighting and “baiting” – pitting ferocious dogs against creatures ranging from monkeys to ducks – provided popular entertainment for all classes.
Many of the stories of animal abuse in “For the Love of Animals” are disturbing, and Shevelow helpfully advises readers which chapters they can skip to avoid them. Happily, there is also much to appreciate, including tales of the activists who spoke up despite endless ridicule.
Early on, an eccentric duchess dared to question the prevailing assumption that animals are stupid because they can’t speak. Speech isn’t a sign of intelligence considering all the dumb things that people say, she argued. For her troubles (and her feminism), later critics dubbed her “Mad Madge.”
And so it went. A minister who dared to interpret scripture as frowning on animal cruelty was called insane. Members of Parliament who tried to ban bull-baiting were called moralistic meddlers who couldn’t stand the idea of anyone having a good time. What would be next, critics cried, a ban on fox hunting? (Well, yes, but it took until 2004.)
During debate over a law to ban cruelty to horses, members of Parliament howled with glee when someone suggested that dogs might be next. An even wilder notion – the protection of cats – prompted hoots of laughter.
But the voices for animal rights gained influence. They found reasons for mercy in the Bible, in philosophy, and in numerous reform movements, including the fight against slavery.
Shevelow livens her tale with stories of Europe’s obsessions with half-human monsters and complex mechanical animals. She also finds plenty of unusual characters among the reformers, including an early vegetarian who still managed to be fat as a house and Richard “Hair-Trigger Martin,” an Irish leader who challenged a man to a duel over the cold-blooded murder of a gentle wolfhound that didn’t even belong to him.
Despite accusations that he was a “blustering and blundering blockhead,” Mr. Martin founded the influential Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, which gained royal patronage in 1840 and remains active to this day.
While Shevelow does a thorough job of tracking the animal-rights movement’s evolution in Britain, she gives short shrift to events elsewhere. US readers are left to research for themselves how the British movement affected animal rights on this side of the pond.
Some readers may find “For the Love of Animals” a bit academic for their tastes, and many will note that the cover photo of an adorable dog on a chair has nothing to do with anything other than savvy marketing.
Overall, however, this book is thought-provoking and inspiring, reminding readers how much has – and hasn’t – changed over the centuries. The animals treasured by so many of us continue to fall victim to cruelty and abuse. But thanks to the efforts of those who withstood withering attacks from naysayers, justice and generosity are forever on their side.
Randy Dotinga is a freelance writer living with a rescued feline in San Diego.
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Comments
2. David Martosko | 07.30.08
For the Love of Animals is an interesting read, but it sheds little light on the grotesque perversion that today’s animal rights movement has become.
The 21st-century movement is more about elevating chickens to the level of humans (and, as a consequence, lowering the inherent value of people) than about preventing suffering. In the end, it increases human suffering by forestalling the development of lifesaving medicines in the name of saving lab rats and such.
For a look at what’s really going on, please visit http://www.AnimalScam.com
3. Kate Danaher | 07.30.08
I recommend this reading to help open our anthropocentric hearts with empathy and compassion for non-humans enduring profound and seemingly unfathomable suffering as well as for those humans whose own hearts remain hardened.
4. Gwen Lebec | 07.30.08
History is always useful and usually interesting. The most interesting point of this book is how - in the early days - compassion for animals was included in a “package” of compassionate reforms for humans (slaves, women, children, the poor) that comprised the belief systems of a cutting edge group of people who looked at the world and wanted to reduce cruelty and suffering - in all its forms. Unfortunately compassion for animals has lagged behind progress in other areas, but is now on the public agenda and receiving the attention it deserves. Here’s hoping we humans have progressed enough to understand that all sentient beings deserve a decent life, no matter what their end use might be.
5. Elizabeth Fischer | 07.30.08
Mahatma Gandhi said “A nation’s moral progress can be judged by the way it treats its animals.” I appreciate the link given by commenter Paul Shapiro to Californians fighting for humane treatment of farmed animals. Mega agriculture (supported by the US government) profits while the evidence mounts. Heart disease is the number one cause of death for both men & women, yet factory farms keep us well supplied with artery clogging meat and dairy. Factory farms are a chief source of pollution & global warming. Hunger could be eradicated by feeding grain directly to people rather than livestock. How long is it going to take America to completely wake up? But there is hope, and much to learn from the Brits and their history.
6. Rusizmas | 07.30.08
It’s curious… Why every good article about animal rights have a comment of David Martosko? Oh… Surprise! He’s the Animal Food Industry guy!
7. David Martosko | 07.30.08
It’s equally curious — why every article about animals has a comment from Paul Shapiro. Oh, yes — he’s the vegan Gestapo guy.
8. watcher | 08.01.08
I’m all for improvements in animal welfare and support the notion that we should end testing on animals as soon as we can….but I’ll be guided on the latter by scientists and doctors, not animal rights activists. I eat meat (and will continue to do so), but am happy that others don’t….as long as they don’t try and blackmail me into becoming vegan. Mr Martosko is right; the animal rights movement has been hijacked by psychopaths, bullies and thugs. They have done more harm to the notions of animal welfare in the past 10 years than any other group…and they can’t see it.
One last thing; Ms Fischer, you have nothing to learn from the Brits. The UK has the most evil animal rights groups in the world.
9. Nancy Charlton | 08.05.08
Though I haven’t read this book, I will.
Meanwhile, Randy Dotinga, would it be too much to name the duchess who was dubbed “Mad Madge”? She was none other than Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle. Her life story reads like a novel: she learned from distinguished people her family (the Lucases) entertained, such luminaries as Thomas Hobbes. She married William Cavendish, Duke of Newcastle, twenty years her senior, who partially bankrolled the Royalist cause in the civil war and who singlehandedly lost the Battle of Marston Moor. He also wrote a book on dressage and maintained a large hippodrome where horses were trained for military work and for carriage driving. An illustration depicts a ring of centaur-like horses gathered in a circle, performing the levade in honor of the Earl. (It gives me the creeps.)
The Cavendishes had no children, and Margaret called her poems her children, of “Paper Bodies.” She was a scientific-minded woman, two hundred years ahead of her time, but was nonetheless elected to the Royal Academy. She was written out of the history books and the literary anthologies for a long time, but recently has been restored to the canon–along with archrival Lady Mary Wroth, Aphra Behn, Aemilia Lanyer, and others ignored by the male establishment of literary academe.
Randy is right in saying she questioned the axiom that animal have no feelings, and in “The Hunting of the Stag” show the savagery of some hunting practices that nobody gave a thought to. It concludes, after a minute description of the hunt:
But to the last his Fortune hee’ll try out:
The Men, and Dogs do circle him about.
Some bite, some bark, all ply him at the Bay,
Where with his Hornes he tosses some away.
But Fate his thread had spun, so downe did fall,
Shedding some Teares at his owne Funerall.
Margaret Cavendish deserves all the honor she has been accorded in recent years, and is well worth the time of anyone who sees “science” as including the questioning of some basic assumptions. Summaries, links to works, and illustrations are found on lovely Luminarium:
http://www.luminarium.org/sevenlit/cavendish/
And there’s a nice bio on Wikipedia:
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1. Paul Shapiro | 07.30.08
For the Love of Animals is a wonderful book that I highly recommend.
Folks who are interested in continuing the struggle for animal protection today can learn more about a historic effort for animals in California called Prop 2, the Prevention of Farm Animal Cruelty Act.
You can see more about it at http://www.YesOnProp2.com