Women, Men, and Other Animals in Victorian America

Gender identity is never a finished product; it is instead a lived experience, constantly being performed and re-formed in different circumstances. In nineteenth-century America, the conventions of gender roles -- the sets of ideal characteristics delimiting the boundaries of the "normal" in men and women -- were never thoroughly consistent because they were used to respond to and interpret shifting cultural and social situations. Victorian gender ideals, which described a set of characteristics deemed universal and biologically determined, often prescribed overtly contradictory attitudes and behaviors to men and women. For example, women were regarded as both the most profoundly "natural" of beings, whose reproductive systems shaped their human potential, and the most cultural ones as well, as the conservators of the highest achievements of civilization. Popular perception of non-human animals and popular interpretation of the condition of animality were also characterized by dynamism and contradiction throughout the nineteenth century. Paradoxically, this discourse conveniently located the origins of middle-class virtues, such as monogamy and nuclear family life, in nature. When animals from wild birds and whales to the barnyard hen and the family dog were described as loving, intuitively moral beings dependent on the kindness of human stewards, their attributes were congruent with feminine gender ideals. At the same time, animality, particularly in the form of the "animal passions," was troublesome and required careful containment, both in terms of sexual expression and the body politic. This paper will link discussion of some of the ascribed attributes of non-human animals and of the ideals of womanliness in nineteenth-century popular media. It will consider some of the ideological uses of "animality," particularly Victorian culture's use of the perceived qualities of "natural" beings to justify cultural norms. At the same time, the use of gender stereotypes actually created an enhanced moral claim for selected animals as dependent, feminized beings. It also contributed to the articulation of a middle-class ethic of kindness that emphasized the importance of socializing children, especially boys, to be kindly stewards in an idealized gentle hierarchy of humans and animals -- a vision of social life that would be challenged by popular interpretations of Darwin's "survival of the fittest."