On Dogs (1911)

AUTHOR: Gilman, Charlotte Perkins

KEYWORDS: animal rights, domestication, pets

SUMMARY (Deborah Madsen):

Gilman opens this discussion with the remark that contrary to the biblical claim to human supremacy over all creation, in fact the assertion of human superiority has been "a long up hill struggle" (180). Humans have exterminated, competed with, or domesticated "carnivorous competitors" while to "the milder vegetarian animals we have helped ourselves, literally, using their strength, their covering, their meat and milk as we chose; and modifying them to suit our needs or fancies" (180). Modification through selective breeding has distorted away from nature many animals that are completely dependent upon humans for their continued existence and would disappear should the human race ever come to an end. Some are condemned to "the hollow cruelty of pet-dom; and others, again, to direct slavery under chain and lash" (180). Others are modified for food, like the "tortured goose of Strasbourg, the degraded pig, and all the rest of our victims" (180). The species most subject to human transformation, Gilman observes, is the dog.

The susceptibility of the dog to human domination is explained by Gilman in terms of the ancestry of the dog, which she identifies as the hyena: "always a follower, tagging the lion and tiger for their left-overs of bones and carrion, and when man proved the most successful hunter, he tagged him" (181). The dog's greatest value was in hunting, then in the counter-intuitive work of herding that required dogs to protect traditional prey. However, in modern industrial civilization and specifically in cities, the dog have no useful role and, rather, "holds a position of absolute parasitism, and of more or less injury to us" (182). Gilman quotes the problems of public hygiene, the transmission of disease, and the risk of attack that cause dogs to be collared, chained, and muzzled in evidence of the dog's lack of usefulness to contemporary human society:

A slave without any industry to justify his slavery; a prisoner, for no fault to warranthis imprisonment; a captive, led in chains and manacled in his one point of contact with life, his means of inquiry, of expression, of defence, of eating, breathing and panting -- his poor muzzle -- this is the animal we say we love! (182).

 

Last updated on October 12th, 2024

SNSF project 100015_204481

@VLS@veganism.social | VeganLiteraryStudies | @veganliterarystudies | @vegan_lit_studies