Abstract
These verses by Samuel Jackson Pratt, excerpted from his epitaph to a lapdog in Liberal Opinions, Upon Animals, Man, and Providence (1775), articulate the function and characteristics of the ideal lapdog in the eighteenth century (quoted in Tague, 2008). A “Skill’d” “Friend,” the “faithful” lapdog offers company and amusement to its, specifically “female,” owner. The strength of the attachment is emphasized through the reference to partnership and the suggestion of intimacy implied by the bower; this diction, coupled with the allusion to common marriage vows in the fifth line of this passage, aligns the lapdog–owner relationship with that of husband and wife, a bond culturally understood as among the strongest connection between human beings. Indeed, this touching ode to “woman’s best friend” could just as easily have been written to describe a human. Not only does the poet anthropomorphize his subject, but the characterization of the lapdog is equally applicable to another common companionate figure in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century England: the paid female companion. Paid female companions were the hired friends of other women and, like the lapdog, they were expected to provide their mistresses with company and entertainment in addition to serving as a confidant and chaperone.
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Notes
- 1.
Both Wyett and Precious McKenzie Stearns have interpreted the pug in Austen’s novel along these lines. Wyett contends that Austen’s “characterization of a favored lapdog on English soil not only serves to indict its mistress, but also emphasizes the indignity of a lapdog living in luxury made possible by the unspoken sufferings of human slaves on West Indian soil” (292), while Stearns reads Pug as an “imperial presence in the mistress’s lap” and argues “the lapdog’s symbolism is less about femininity, gender roles, and confinement than the silent presence of imperialism in British family life” (451).
- 2.
There has been almost no scholarship on the companion in literary or historical studies. My work on the figure thus draws heavily upon fictional representations of the companion in nineteenth-century literature and has also benefited from valuable studies by scholars such as Kathryn Hughes and Bronwyn Rivers, whose work on the analogous but distinct figure of the governess provides some insight into the daily conditions of actual companions.
- 3.
The only human being Lady Bertram seems willing to set Pug aside for is her husband, and this only after Sir Thomas has been away on an extended, dangerous trip to Antigua: “She had been almost fluttered for a few minutes, and still remained so sensibly animated as to put away her work, move Pug from her side, and give all her attention and all the rest of her sofa to her husband” (140).
- 4.
Regarding this particular scene, Palmer writes, “[Austen] points up the faults in Lady Bertram’s character not so much by anthropomorphizing the pug, as by caninizing its owner. Yet she judges the dog’s personality, along with Lady Bertram’s, by using human standards of behavior. The pug is lazy, selfish, worthless; it sits and dozes on the couch all day rather than accomplishing some constructive purpose. This is the criticism Austen makes of Lady Bertram” (Palmer).
- 5.
Like governesses, companions usually found employment by posting or answering advertisements or through familial connections; in fact, many ladies served as companion to extended family members when their financial situations required that they find some form of genteel labor. As the daughter of her “mistress’s” sister, Fanny falls into this category. Companions who are also relations or close family friends, at least as they are represented in the literature of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, rarely received an actual salary but were instead compensated with room and board, as Fanny is in Mansfield Park.
- 6.
The etymology of the word “fetch” as a reference to the actions of a dog dates back to at least early modern England, according to Oxford English Dictionary. William Shakespeare’s Two Gentleman of Verona (1591) contains the line “Her Masters-maid…hath more qualities then a Water-Spaniell…Imprimis, She can fetch and carry”; like Austen and her contemporaries, the bard draws a parallel between a female and canine figure here (III. i. 274; qtd. in OED).
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Hoffer, L.N. (2011). Lapdogs and Moral Shepherd’s Dogs: Canine and Paid Female Companions in Nineteenth-Century English Literature. In: Blazina, C., Boyraz, G., Shen-Miller, D. (eds) The Psychology of the Human-Animal Bond. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-9761-6_6
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