Abstract
This chapter brings into focus an underlying theme of the book – the structured antithesis between male and female attitudes to animals, which was induced by social conditioning; especially by the values attaching to aggressive masculinity in the context of empire and, in contrast, the sequestered domesticity and gentleness expected of middle-class women. Sarah Stickney Ellis’s conduct books for women interpreted ‘separate spheres’ as including special female responsibilities for the protection of domestic animals, while Eliza Brightwen’s Wild Nature Won by Kindness and other titles elided domestic and religious ideals with the notion of taming and gentling wild creatures. The nationwide Band of Mercy movement for children promulgated this feminised ideal of tenderness towards animals, often in conflict with the pugnacious ethos in which boys were reared. However, Anna Sewell’s Black Beauty (1877) transcended such gendered and class divides, as a work expressive of the Quaker ideal of sympathetic insight into the minds of animals as fellow-creatures of God.
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