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affection and sentiment, and by revealing the patriarchal domination at the heart of
both the domestication of animals and the ideal of domesticity itself.
Acknowledgements
For various references, many thanks to Iain Black, Laura Cameron and Liz and Paul
Crisp. Thanks also to Chris Philo for his encouragement. Above all, though,
Elizabeth Mozzillo collaborated from the very beginning on the research and
discussion that went into this chapter, and this is for her, 'for love's sake only'.
Notes
1 This episode is related in Elizabeth Barrett's correspondence, and from this source in
numerous biographies (see, for instance, Markus 1995:58-64).
2 Compare Elizabeth Barrett's reaction to the denizens of Whitechapel—'The faces of
those men!' (Karlin 1990:311).
3 The best short introduction to the topic and its themes is by Flint (1998) in the recent
World's Classics edition, which came to my attention after this article had been
written. Flint is especially strong and perceptive on the personal and societal contexts
for Woolf's sustained concern for the connections between humans and animals. As
Flint notes,
Flush
has not received much critical attention, but see Szladits (1970),
DeSalvo (1989:285-288) and, especially, Squier (1985: esp. 122), whose judgement
of the topic, that 'it ultimately framed a serious critique of the values organizing
London's social and political life', ought to be enthusiastically endorsed.
4 An early reviewer, Burra in
The Nineteenth Century,
noted that Woolf used Flush
'almost as Swift used the Houyhnhnms, but without anger, rather with the gentlest
irony, weaving together the lives of beast and man' (see Majumdar and McLaurin
1997:321). If its satire is not quite Swiftian, however,
Flush
is certainly no mere
anthropomorphic whimsy.
5The
Report from the Select Committee on Dog Stealing
gives the addresses of the dog-
stealers as follows: Whetstone Park, Lincoln's Inn Fields; Chapel Mews, Foley Place;
Keppel Mews South and Woburn Mews, Russell Square; Kensal New Town,
Paddington; New Road, St Pancras; Hammersmith; Shepherdess Walk City Road;
Bateman Street, Spitalfields; and Cottage Place, Goswell Road.
6
In this regard note the reaction of
The Times
(2 August 1844:4) to the evidence of
William Bishop at the Select Committee, acknowledging that '[t]he mode in which
the feelings of the fair sex are played upon forms one of the most instructive points of
his evidence.'
7
Anderson (1997) has argued that domestication was the preeminent marker of animal
virtue, so that animals were routinely arranged in terms of the nature of their
domestication conceived in terms of utility for 'man'. Dogs, of course, have a
privileged place in this story, as arguably the first domesticated animals; their gift of
aesthetic satisfaction, their assumption of the role of pets, is an important element of
this argument. But discussion of domestication must allow for the multiple and
competing meanings of the word, its insertion into different discourses, such as, here,
legal
discourse, in which various antagonistic meanings of 'domestication' are obvious.
