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Polymorphous Domesticities: Pets, Bodies, and Desire in Four Modern Writers

2015; Penn State University Press; Volume: 52; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês

10.5325/complitstudies.52.3.0616

1528-4212

Susan Mooney,

Geographies of human-animal interactions

Juliana Schiesari has elegantly grouped together an intriguing study of four modern writers—three women and one (homosexual) man—who have inscribed animals into their lives and imaginations. As she explores the writings of Edith Wharton, Djuna Barnes, Colette, and J. R. Ackerley, she opens up a forum for more conversation about how we cohabit spaces with animals, domestic and borders of the wild. Her study enriches the field of animal studies and raises several questions that could be explored in the future. This collection does not claim to be exemplary or exhaustive. In the growing field of animal studies, it may indeed be more practicable to develop inductive explorations rather than deductive ones. That said, while dense and provocative, Schiesari's discussions could go further, especially in her clear knowledge of other animal studies scholars. An index and a more extensive bibliography would have been welcome, too.In four chapters, Schiesari scrutinizes animality, at times using close feminist literary reading techniques and at times resorting to psychoanalytic interpretation. The authors, diverse as they are, reside in roughly the same modern period of 1880 to the 1970s, and were all writing about intimate cohabitations with animals. Schiesari retrofits an argument she already established in Beasts and Beauties: Animals, Gender, and Domestication in the Italian Renaissance (University of Toronto Press, 2010) that the selected authors (with the exception of Ackerley) function as modern Dianas. Diana or Artemis was the virgin goddess of the hunt, protector of animals, goddess of childbirth, “safeguard of the young and bringer of sudden death, sensitive to the plight of even the tiniest creature yet demanding the bloodiest sacrifices” (12). At times, one can see Schiesari's point; who cannot detect an Artemisian vibe in the rebellious Collette who reclaims selfhood in her writing career partly by immersing herself in a home life of animals?However, the overarching Dianic emblem for the book seems ultimately too limiting for possible interpretations of these (and other) texts. Some feminists find goddess lore and culture empowering; others limiting and essentializing. Schiesari's claim that Wharton, Barnes, and Collette are modern-day Dianas does not always complement the psychoanalytic approach taken elsewhere. Obviously, as she herself acknowledges, Ackerley does not fit into the Diana-Artemis grouping, and no ancient Roman or Greek substitution is offered (could he be considered an Apollo, twin brother of Artemis? or better still, Hermes, half brother of Apollo, and god of animal husbandry among other things?).Nonetheless, the object of the study will fascinate and engage a wide range of readers, from the advanced undergraduate to the more established scholar. The selected writers are countercultural, resisting overly homogenizing social niceties of their day. Such a stance allows them to express an expansive private relationship with animals, but also to remain exquisitely aware of their own limitations in truly knowing the otherness of beasts. In fact, it may be precisely this otherness that seduces them. Seduction is the mode primarily under observation in the texts, whether fictional, creative nonfictional, or autobiographical. The animals portrayed all lure their human counterparts, yet without sentimentality and at times with brutality or crude honesty. While Schiesari explores how the humans desire their animals, or see in their pets aspects of desire, she raises questions of responsibility and reciprocity. Wharton and Colette find deep friendships in their animal companions, often mutually nurturing ones, but sometimes lopsided. Maternal models are examined from many angles; the mystique of motherhood permeates Colette's lines about the gynaeceum. In Barnes, some situations between humans and animals become more extreme. In one instance, Robin, the female human protagonist of Nightwood, communes with her friend Nora's dog to the extent of literally behaving like one, howling, moaning, writhing, and rambling on all fours. This is an exaggerated example, but Schiesari shows how all the selected authors remind of us of our own animality (or our desire to be more animal?). Further, domesticated animals, which have already incorporated something human by their contact with us, blur the distinction between human and the beastly. In Ackerley's writing, we find a man so involved with his dog that he can forego most of his intimate human relationships.While Schiesari bypasses a counterargument of anthropomorphism, there hovers over animal studies something inescapable: we are human beings and, when animals enter our lives, we apprehend them through our senses and language, not directly through theirs. We can accept that animals communicate, experience emotions akin to human ones, have the same basic physical and even some affective needs as human beings. But these needs, appetites, and desires are perceived by us through what we superimpose on animals. When Ackerley refers to his dog Queenie's or a caged tiger's “beastly nobility” or “noble beastliness,” he is framing her in the human concept of “nobility.” He disdains other people stereotyping animals and thereby limiting them to a certain behavior, but he himself knowingly struggles with how to apprehend the animal's otherness with the sophistication of his language and admitted snobbery. If we take a step back, we might suggest that the selected writers' use of animals is self-serving, despite their offering of protection at times. Colette's retreat to a home of animals, and sidelining of her husband(s), is for her pleasure and comfort. And while the animals generally appear to enjoy living with her, their dependence on her is not always pleasant and harmonious. It is a fantasy to say that there is some kind of equality in cohabitations of the human and the animal.Schiesari divides the volume into three loosely chronological chapters. The first, “Revisions of Diana in Edith Wharton,” somewhat confusingly also includes a study of Djuna Barnes's Nightwood in the final pages. Why there is not a separate Barnes chapter (or why the chapter title does not include Barnes) is a little mysterious. Barnes seems deserving of her own chapter.One reason may be to develop a comparative approach. Schiesari writes, “The underlying ‘wildness’ found both in Wharton's short story ‘Kerfol’ and in Barnes's Nightwood leads us to what Teresa de Lauretis has called a ‘psychic space haunted by the muted phantasms of a past both individual and collective.’ In other words, these phantasms, whether they emerge as avenging dogs (Kerfol) or as both beast and dog (Nightwood), are figures summoned by an ‘excess of affect’ that cannot (and will not!) be tamed by normative domestic enclosures” (29).However, a more comparative discussion (and chapter title) might have been offered to make this unusual pairing of two American writers in one chapter more logical, or more writers included in the comparison. Polymorphous Domesticities complements recent excellent contributions to the sub-area of animal studies in literature, such as Carey Wolfe's Animal Rites: American Culture, the Discourse of Species, and Posthumanist Theory (University of Chicago Press, 2003) and Figuring Animals: Essays on Animal Images in Art, Literature, Philosophy, and Popular Culture (Palgrave Macmillan, 2005), Erica Fudge's Perceiving Animals (University of Illinois Press, 2002), and Steve Baker's The Postmodern Animal (Reaktion, 2000) and Picturing the Beast: Animals, Identity, and Representation (Manchester University Press, 1993). Schiesari's work is less historical, however, than some of these other works. But she herself does not aim or claim to be representational in her text selection, and her chosen authors are countercultural, not mainstream. Therein lie both limitations and richness of vision, the profound insights of writers who examine animal-human relations past the sentimental banality (however sweetly satisfying) of pet love. So, although her authors are part of the modern landscape, it is hard to argue that they provide historical insight to the past century. The book's strength resides more in the fascinating choice of texts, the variety of intriguing domestic situations and configurations, and the psychoanalytic treatments of literature. The Colette and Ackerley chapters are the finest, but perhaps this is owing to the trenchant and unexpected views of the authors. Scholars of literature and animal studies will be introduced to innovative approaches and discussions in this book. Schiesari especially shows how animal studies functions as an area within literary studies. Further, her book serves as the middle stepping stone in a three-part book project to examine animals and literature, for in her conclusion Schiesari promises another book in the offing, one that will link human-animal relations to trauma, a project that seems particularly timely.