Menagerie to Me / My Neighbor Be”: Exotic Animals and American Conscience, 1840-1900
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“MENAGERIE TO ME / MY NEIGHBOR BE”: EXOTIC ANIMALS AND AMERICAN CONSCIENCE, 1840-1900 Leslie Jane McAbee A dissertation submitted to the faculty at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Department of English and Comparative Literature. Chapel Hill 2018 Approved by: Eliza Richards Timothy Marr Matthew Taylor Ruth Salvaggio Jane Thrailkill © 2018 Leslie Jane McAbee ALL RIGHTS RESERVED ii ABSTRACT Leslie McAbee: “Menagerie to me / My Neighbor be”: Exotic Animals and American Conscience, 1840-1900 (Under the direction of Eliza Richards) Throughout the nineteenth century, large numbers of living “exotic” animals—elephants, lions, and tigers—circulated throughout the U.S. in traveling menageries, circuses, and later zoos as staples of popular entertainment and natural history education. In “Menagerie to me / My Neighbor be,” I study literary representations of these displaced and sensationalized animals, offering a new contribution to Americanist animal studies in literary scholarship, which has largely attended to the cultural impact of domesticated and native creatures. The field has not yet adequately addressed the influence that representations of foreign animals had on socio-cultural discourses, such as domesticity, social reform, and white supremacy. I examine how writers enlist exoticized animals to variously advance and disrupt the human-centered foundations of hierarchical thinking that underpinned nineteenth-century tenets of civilization, particularly the belief that Western culture acts as a progressive force in a comparatively barbaric world. Both well studied and lesser-known authors, however, find “exotic” animal figures to be wily for two seemingly contradictory reasons. For one, these figures often exceed the bounds and norms of “civilized” American society, from connoting the strangeness of distant lands to escaping their enclosures. While such representations affirm the animals’ exoticized status, authors show the difficulty of accounting for the animals’ mental, emotional, and social capacities. Secondly, and arguably because alien animals present impenetrable mysteries, the authors of this study confront the possibility of finding iii correspondence and compatibility with “exotic” animality, even testing the potential for a civil society more open to and tolerant of non-Anglo American difference. This process reveals a public struggling to understand their ethical and cultural identities and responsibilities in the face of global and animal alterity. iv To my dear friend and loving partner, Kevin, for bringing joy, focus, and comfort to my endeavors. v ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Those whom I owe thanks deserve much more than that which I can express here. This project would not have been possible without the consistent support of mentors, friends, and family. First and foremost, I wish to thank my advisor, Dr. Eliza Richards, for encouraging me to be a more insightful and creative thinker and researcher, as well as a more self-aware and incisive writer. From her own brilliant work and her detailed feedback on drafts to her dedication to her students, Dr. Richards models how to be an empathetic and rigorous scholar and teacher. I am also indebted to Drs. Timothy Marr and Ruth Salvaggio, whose valuable perspectives directed me to texts, methodologies, and questions that made this project one of joyful discovery. Many thanks, too, to Drs. Matt Taylor and Jane Thrailkill, who each posed crucial and challenging questions that will continue to shape my scholarship. This project greatly benefitted from institutional support, from the University’s library services (especially Librarian Tommy Nixon’s guidance) to fellowships. I am especially grateful to the English and Comparative Literature Department and the Graduate School for each awarding me a Dissertation Completion Fellowship, which contributed to the timely completion and development of this project. One of the greatest privileges of graduate school has been collaborating with and learning from talented fellow graduate students, who encouraged this project as gifted scholars and as dear friends. Those who deserve special mention are Emma Calabrese, Josh Doty, Mallory Findlay, Vera Foley, Kym Weed, Christina Lee, and Robin Smith. It also must be said that I am a better person and scholar for my husband, Kevin, and my baby girl, Jane. vi TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION .............................................................................................................. 1 Accessing and Understanding the Foreign Animal in Nineteenth-century America ................................................................................... 7 Locating “Exotics” in Americanist Animality Studies ......................................... 14 CHAPTER ONE: THROUGH THE TIGER’S EYE: CONSTRUCTING ANIMAL EXOTICISM IN EMILY DICKINSON’S “BIG CAT” POEMS.……………32 Commoditizing Animal Consciousness ................................................................ 39 Human Hypocrisy in Tiger Clothing .................................................................... 51 The Reciprocated Gaze ......................................................................................... 59 Further Sensationalizing the Animal Mind ........................................................... 66 CHAPTER TWO: APING THE DOMESTIC IN AFRICA: P. T. BARNUM AND DU CHAILLU’S PRIMATES IN POSTBELLUM ADVENTURE STORIES...................... 74 Barnum’s Entrepreneurial Ethics for Killing Kin ................................................. 81 “Something Human in its Discordance” ............................................................... 99 “It looked almost like a black hairy man” .......................................................... 104 Ape Sons and Cross-Species Relations............................................................... 114 CHAPTER THREE: “WE SEEM TO SEE OURSELVES THROUGH THE BARS”: AUTOEXOTICISM THROUGH THE SIMIAN’S CAGE ............................................ 126 Exotic Animal Institutions and Ethical Ambiguities .......................................... 130 “A token of good feeling” ................................................................................... 138 “Exotic exile from some Afric isle”.................................................................... 144 “A Full Blown Chowder Chucker” ..................................................................... 148 vii “A Chinese Infant, stained and disguised” ......................................................... 154 The Soul Selects a Cross-Species Society .......................................................... 158 EPILOGUE ..................................................................................................................... 169 Great Animal Escapes ......................................................................................... 172 From Cannibals to Cowards................................................................................ 175 WORKS CITED ............................................................................................................. 188 viii LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS Figure 1.1 – “At the Zoo” ................................................................................................. 68 Figure 2.1 – “Just Too Late” ............................................................................................. 82 Figure 2.2 – “A Little Fury” ............................................................................................. 93 Figure 2.3 – “My First Gorilla” ........................................................................................ 95 Figure 2.4 – “Gorilla” ....................................................................................................... 98 Figure 2.5 – Image of Mother and Child Gorillas .......................................................... 101 Figure 2.6 – “Mr. Gorilla, Lion of the Season” .............................................................. 108 Figure 3.1 – “It is very queer, isn’t it?” .......................................................................... 141 Figure 3.2 – “Outrageous” .............................................................................................. 151 Figure 3.3 – “A Full Blown Chowder Chucker” ............................................................ 157 ix INTRODUCTION The young narrator of Sarah Orne Jewett’s first book, Deephaven (1877), catches her omission when describing a traveling circus that stirs an otherwise sleepy New England town: “I have not told you that we were to have the benefit of seeing a menagerie in addition to the circus, and you may be sure we went faithfully round to see everything that the cages held” (102). That the narrator, Helen, seems duty bound to see the captive animals speaks to the menagerie’s cultural status as an integral part—even a ritual—of popular recreation in the U.S. Jewett’s portrait of what proves to be a “somewhat dreary” show gestures to the nearly century-long practice of displaying and circulating “exotic” species that accelerated after the founding of the early republic (102). The animals on display—an elephant, monkeys, lions, the empty cage and corresponding painting of a recently dead serpent—appear as relics of this history as old and ragged “as if they had been on the road for a great many years” (102). For Helen and her friend, Kate, the circus and its menagerie have the effect of Marcel Proust’s madeleine,