Women, Horses and Dogs. A Reading of Sorana Gurian's Novel from the Animal Studies Perspective

Abstract

Sorana Gurian's proverbial passion for pets, almost unnoticed in Romanian literary history, deserves a careful analysis, especially because it was directly recognized as and even constituted the foundation of some substantial pages of memoir or fiction prose, written by this cosmopolite, intriguing, and spectacular author, who linked her biographical existence to several Moldavian, Romanian and French spaces. Animals have a completely exceptional importance especially in the novel "The days never come back" (1945) – where the number of animal references is huge (compared to any other Romanian fictional prose, regardless of the era in which they were written). The text contains over two hundred references to dogs and their equivalents from the general semantic field (puppy, whelp), or from the particular one (basset, greyhound, borzoi, fox, etc.), over a hundred references to horses and several hundred other references to cats, rodents (mice, voles, rats, ferrets), birds (from swallows or sparrows to eagles) and insects of various kinds (from crickets to dragonflies). Of all these species, dogs and horses – by far, the protagonists' (Vivian, Ann and her father, nicknamed the Chief) favorites – are frequently particularized even nominally, because from the perspective of the doctor's extended family, they are true friends and communication partners, with rights sometimes superior to servants, acquaintances, or human friends. Far from being perceived as fictional ”commodity objects” or simple tools, used only to build or furnish the narrative world, animals are integrated, to varying degrees, in the families of main characters, they accompany, silently but expressively, their steps – either as partners with equal rights, either as identity doubles or complements – and even reflect, metonymically, the human's narrative evolution. Starting from these premises, my study (which combines elements of gender, trauma, and animal studies) will analyze both the various functions of the numerous elements of bestiary and animal characters, and the provocative stakes of their narrative valorization.