The Oasis (1834)

AUTHOR: Child, Lydia Maria

KEYWORDS: animals, feminine etiquette, food, race, slavery, Temperance

---. The Girl’s Own Book

SUMMARY (Bryn Skibo, edited Deborah Madsen)

Lydia Maria Child states explicitly in the Preface that the purpose of this book, which she believes will offend many, is to convince its readers that African(-Americans) “are human beings” (original emphasis vii). She explores diverse instances of enslaved humans being treated like, or worse than, animals. Thus, animal welfare is treated indirectly and rhetorically. For example, she describes how “The attempt to excite prejudice against Anti-Slavery Societies, by representing them as violent and blood-thirsty, reminds me of the Roman persecutors, who first dressed Christian converts in the skins of wild beasts, and then set the dogs upon them” (x). The text includes only one reference to abstaining from “animal food” in order to improve health: the narrator of the story “Joanna,” Captain Stedman, contracts a fever, but claims that “By abstaining from animal food, and using plenty of acid with my drink, I had no doubt of getting well in a few days."

In “William Wilberforce,” Child's summary account of the education and accolades received by William Wilberforce, until he became a member of Parliament who strongly supported abolitionism, she highlights one of a number of reasons why slavery should not be abolished. Mr. Grosvenor argues that “The slave trade was certainly not an amiable trade; neither was that of a butcher; but yet it was a very necessary one” (7). Her history of “Malem-Boo: The Brazilian Slave” is based on the true story of the eponymous character who was enslaved in Mozambique and taken to Brazil. His description of his first sight of Rio likens human slaves to animals: “‘Some [were] yoked to drays; some chained together by the neck and legs; some carrying heavy weights on their heads, singing in a most inarticulate and dismal tone, as they moved along; some munching young sugarcane, like cattle eating green provender; and some lying [sic] on the bare ground, coiled up among filth and offal, seeming neither to expect, or require, any better accommodation. The horses and mules, pampered, spirited, and highly caparisoned, looked proudly down on these poor fettered wretches, as if conscious they were passing beings of an inferior rank in creation’” (35). At the market, “the driver’s whip compelled them to go through their paces, like horses offered for sale; while the purchasers, with many a coarse jest, turned them round, felt their limbs, and ordered them to shout, to test the soundness of their lungs. / Some, who lay about the ground, drooping and dying, were bought at a venture by speculators, for something less than the price of a hog” (37).

“Illustration of the Strength of Prejudice” indirectly addresses the issue of speciesism, through the morif of skin color. The story tells of the son of Mr. James Exxx, a Black man living near Boston, who bought a pew for his large family from a widow. The church committee raised a complaint and he quoted “the first Epistle to the Corinthians; ‘All flesh is the same flesh; but there is one kind of flesh of men, another flesh of beasts, another of fishes, and another of birds” (55). The committee argued that the difference of features and skin color indicated a difference of flesh, but Mr. E reminds them that “God had distinctly declared, ‘He made of one blood all nations of men to dwell on the face of the earth’” (56). The pew is slowly destroyed and rendered useless, though Mr. E and his son continue to attend the church. Eventually, the father is excommunicated from the church. Responding to a letter from the church, the wife writes that “’The Bill of Rights declares that all men are born equal, and endowed with certain inalienable rights; among which are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Nothing is said concerning color, whether it be white, red, black, or yellow’” (61). The wife separates herself from the church in protest.

The poem “The Runaway” addresses the combined issues of speciesism, anthropocentrism, and slavery through the switching among different voices and points of view, as well as the explicit similes that connect human and nonhuman animals: