Rights of Dumb Animals (1869)

AUTHOR: Stowe, Harriet Beecher

KEYWORDS: animals, women's rights

SUMMARY (Bryn Skibo, edited Deborah Madsen)

The article is republished from Stowe’s own publication, Hearth and Home.

Stowe opens with the argument that of all the oppressed classes, nonhuman animals are the most deserving of human intervention because they can neither speak nor write for themselves and are unable to learn (69). She implicitly draws together the activist conventions in support of women's suffrage with the need to advocate similarly for nonhuman beings.

She surveys the moral wrongs of common human activities such as: hunting; caring for domestic animals, and killing household pests like rats.