Abstract
This chapter introduces the study of animals and human–animal relations relations in literature through an examination of the rich and varied representations of animals and animality in Virginia Woolf’s classic work of literary modernism, To the Lighthouse. Woolf’s many examples illustrate how both the metaphorical and the material can stake out different interpretive positions. Moreover, by navigating between them—attending to the tension, the complex relation, between animals’ lived experiences and their literary representations, between their lives and what their lives are made to signify—we can come, through literature, to encounter animal standpoints and to understand animals’ experiences per se. The chapter then outlines how these approaches gained legitimacy within literary studies, and concludes by accounting for the overall organisation of the handbook, in order to offer guidance for how to approach each of its sections.
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Notes
- 1.
Woolf, Lighthouse, 9.
- 2.
Berger, “Why Look”, p. 5. Berger’s essay is often cited as a formative work in the development of a critical field aiming to analyse the cultural representation of animals and its relation to animals’ lives and human treatment.
- 3.
Nussbaum, “The Window”, 742.
- 4.
Felski, “Everyday”.
- 5.
It seems likely Woolf is alluding to discussion leading up to the passing of the Trawling in Prohibited Areas (Prevention) Act in 1909. The political context is complex, but relates to intra- and international tensions between Scottish, English, and foreign fishermen based on disputes about fishing rights in the waters off the coast of Scotland, in which nationalist sentiment certainly played a part. See United Kingdom, Hansard Parliamentary Debates.
- 6.
Woolf, Lighthouse, 123. Mrs Ramsay’s views are extended by Mrs McNab, a cleaner of the house (150), and her co-worker Mrs Bast who “wondered … whatever they hung that beast’s skull there for. Shot in foreign parts no doubt” (153).
- 7.
See Bennett, Vibrant.
- 8.
Woolf, Lighthouse, 195.
- 9.
For critical accounts of this notion see de Waal, “Anthropomorphism”; Simons, Animal Rights, 116—39; Parkinson, Animals, Anthropomorphism.
- 10.
Susan McHugh, Animal Stories, 6.
- 11.
See Derrida, The Animal; and The Beast and the Sovereign.
- 12.
Linné and Pedersen, “Expanding My Universe”, 269.
- 13.
Armstrong, What Animals Mean, 225.
- 14.
We can think of this as a version of the famous question asked by Joan Kelly-Gadol. See her “Did Women Have a Renaissance”?
- 15.
Darwin, Vegetable Mould, 305.
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McHugh, S., McKay, R., Miller, J. (2021). Introduction: Towards an Animal-Centred Literary History. In: McHugh, S., McKay, R., Miller, J. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Animals and Literature. Palgrave Studies in Animals and Literature. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-39773-9_1
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