The Beast Prison (1912)

AUTHOR: Gilman, Charlotte Perkins

KEYWORDS: animals, menageries, wild animals, zoos

SUMMARY (Deborah Madsen):

In this short article Gilman objects to the caging of animals, especially undomesticated wild animals, in menageries and zoos as spectacles for human entertainment. She focuses on the suffering of animals that can smell and sense but are restrained from the elements of their natural environment. The opening paragraphs contrast the sensuous signals of seasonal change, with the coming of Spring, and the inability of caged deer that live on a surface of cinders to eat and enjoy the newly sprouting grass. Similarly, the elephant that naturally desires to wallow in water is chained to posts and allowed only a bucket from which to drink, while the mountain sheep is confined to a cell unable to run and jump. Birds, like the eagle and the hawk are constrained in cages by bars and roofs, unable to spread their wings. In each case, natural movement is impossible because of the fences and railings that imprison these creatures.

Gilman considers the justifications commonly given for confining animals and offering them as a spectacle to be looked at by humans; specifically, that children enjoy menageries and that observing wild animals is instructive. She describes children as "primitive and undeveloped; often unable to sympathize with other creatures' suffering" (129) while animals held in captivity offer no useful knowledge about the lives of animals in the wild. Gilman ascribes a lack of imaginative capacity "to once let ourselves think of the long, slow, aching misery, the disease and death, of these blameless, useless victims" (129).

While she concedes that the imprisonment of human criminals, while wrong, may be justified the condemnation of innocent animals to a "Life Sentence" (128) in zoos and menageries is worse even than the exploitation of animals as beasts of burden or as flesh for consumption because no excuse at all can be made for the suffering to which captive animals are subjected. Those humans that enjoy the spectacle of animal suffering or who cannot conceive of suffering that is not expressed in human language "should themselves be subjected to a course of special training to raise them to the level of civilized humanity" (129).

 

Last updated on October 11th, 2024

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