View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by University of Saskatchewan's Research Archive TRACKING THE REAL THING: REPRESENTATION, RELATIONSHIP, AND MASCULINITY IN THE ANIMAL STORIES OF EURO-CANADIAN MEN Thesis submitted to the College of Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Department of English University of Saskatchewan Saskatoon By K. S. A. Brazier-Tompkins © Copyright K. S. A. Brazier-Tompkins, December 2017. All Rights Reserved. PERMISSION TO USE In presenting this thesis/dissertation in partial fulfillment of the requirements for a Postgraduate degree from the University of Saskatchewan, I agree that the Libraries of this University may make it freely available for inspection. I further agree that permission for copying of this thesis/dissertation in any manner, in whole or in part, for scholarly purposes may be granted by the professor or professors who supervised my thesis/dissertation work or, in their absence, by the Head of the Department or the Dean of the College in which my thesis work was done. It is understood that any copying or publication or use of this thesis/dissertation or parts thereof for financial gain shall not be allowed without my written permission. It is also understood that due recognition shall be given to me and to the University of Saskatchewan in any scholarly use which may be made of any material in my thesis/dissertation. DISCLAIMER Reference in this thesis/dissertation to any specific commercial products, process, or service by trade name, trademark, manufacturer, or otherwise, does not constitute or imply its endorsement, recommendation, or favoring by the University of Saskatchewan. The views and opinions of the author expressed herein do not state or reflect those of the University of Saskatchewan, and shall not be used for advertising or product endorsement purposes. Requests for permission to copy or to make other uses of materials in this thesis/dissertation in whole or part should be addressed to: Head of the Department of English 91 Campus Drive University of Saskatchewan Saskatoon, Saskatchewan S7N 5A5 Canada i OR Dean College of Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies University of Saskatchewan 116 Thorvaldson Building, 110 Science Place Saskatoon, Saskatchewan S7N 5C9 Canada ii ABSTRACT Animal stories by Euro-Canadian men have had a disproportionate influence on the development of the mode, and engage with representations of animals from within the dominant androcentric, anthropocentric discourse of Western cultures. Dominant representations influence public and personal opinions, and these in turn influence both personal actions and governmental policy, which affect wild and domestic animals on individual as well as systemic levels. Animal stories by Euro-Canadian men work within preconceived conceptualizations of animals, as informed by the work of prominent Europeans such as René Descartes and Charles Darwin, and either reinforce those conceptualizations or work against the predominant Western understanding of animals, and can have lasting effects on both cultural and environmental landscapes. Analyses of the primary texts problematize definition and categorization and identify common themes and narrative strategies in texts’ representations of animals and human-animal relationships. The eleven stories examined here use expressions of Western masculinity and femininity as a means of creating identification with their protagonist species. These stories support hegemonic masculinity and prototypically masculine values such as virility and dominance, values that reinforce gendered stereotypes and male dominance in Western culture and that Other femininity and non-binary identities. In large part, these stories perpetuate the status quo and naturalize cultural understandings of masculinity and femininity as biologically based, and in so doing promote emotional bonding through suggestions of shared cultural experience. Stories have the power to change perceptions of entire species, and even to alter human behaviour toward nonhuman animals on a cultural level. Canadian animal stories as a mode have received little critical attention, and future research into this area may provide insights into authors’ contributions to Canadian literature, women and minority writers’ responses to the hegemonic discourse, and the influence of animal representation on readers. iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This work would not have been possible without the support and guidance of my supervisors, Dr. Lindsey Banco and Dr. Kevin Flynn. I would like to thank both of them for their work, detailed feedback, and faith in me. I would like to thank my committee, Dr. Allison Muri (chair), Dr. Wendy Roy, Dr. Yin Liu, Dr. David Bentley, and Dr. Doug Chivers for their commitment to strengthening my work, and to extend a special thanks to Dr. Roy the extra work that she put into this dissertation and for her advice and dedication to detail. Thanks also to the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) for its support of both of my graduate degrees, and the English Department of the University of Saskatchewan for its funding and the research and teaching opportunities the department has afforded me. Last but not least, I would like to thank my family and friends for their support, and for never asking foolish questions like “aren’t you done yet?” and “why don’t you get a job?” Thanks to my mother, Bette Brazier, in particular, for her unwavering support, advice, and humour. And thanks to my cat, Crick, for performing the function of personal space heater and lap rug throughout this process. Portions of Chapter 2 of this dissertation have appeared in “Subject: Animal: Representing the Seeing Animal in Yann Martel’s Beatrice and Virgil” in Studies in Canadian Literature, vol. 41, no. 2, 2016, pp. 5-24. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS PERMISSION TO USE ................................................................................................................... i DISCLAIMER ................................................................................................................................. i ABSTRACT ................................................................................................................................... iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ........................................................................................................... iv TABLE OF CONTENTS ................................................................................................................ v Introduction ..................................................................................................................................... 1 1 The Animal Story: The Problem of Definition ......................................................................... 36 2 “Is It for Children?”: The Relationship Between Children’s Literature and Animal Literature ....................................................................................................................................................... 72 3 Showing the Face of the Animal: Methods and Meanings of Animal Representation ........... 112 4 Noble Victims: Values Education and Conservationist Activism .......................................... 157 Conclusion .................................................................................................................................. 197 Works Cited ................................................................................................................................ 210 v Introduction Animals are not texts that we produce; they are living beings. We must be careful not to dismiss them as we speak and write about them. - Bergman, “Making Animals” B15-16 I.1 Animals in Canadian Literature “What a pity it was such a trivial genre!” Fred Cogswell wrote of the animal story in 1984 (13). Apparently, no one had informed John Burroughs of the animal story’s inconsequentiality. Burroughs instigated what became known as the nature faker controversy, a literary battle waged primarily between 1903 and 1907 (Lutts, “Controversy” 127) in which such notable personages as Theodore Roosevelt and Burroughs sparred with Charles G. D. Roberts, Ernest Thompson Seton, Jack London, and others over how animal story writers were depicting animals. The heart of this controversy was the nature of animals and animal representation. Do animals think? Can they feel? Can they learn? Were the writers of these stories reporting natural history accurately, or were they allowing fancy to run away with their accounts? Burroughs complained that too much “literature” was being added to these stories, and writers were valuing their descriptions of animal behaviour “more for the literary effects we can get out of them than for themselves” (“Real and Sham” 130). “Realism is truth,” Roosevelt avowed, and “giving these books to the children for the purpose of teaching them the facts of natural history – why, it’s an outrage” (Clark 166). He believed that “[i]f the child mind is fed with stories that are false to nature, the children will go to the haunts of the animal only to meet with disappointment. The result will be disbelief, and the death of interest. The men who misinterpret nature and replace fact with fiction, undo the work of those who in the love of nature interpret it aright” (171). Animal story writers bristled: Roberts resented being labelled a nature faker (Roberts, “Charles G. D.