Victorian Animals in Literature and Culture

By: Deborah Morse, The Great Courses

Narrated by: Deborah Morse

While the popular image of the Victorian world is one of stiff formality and old-fashioned values, it was an incredibly transformative time for many people who sought better protections, fairer wages, and greater freedom. And this included an increasingly popular and successful fight for animal welfare. Prior to the 19th century, the mistreatment of animals was rarely questioned, and sports like bullbaiting and dogfighting were common. So, what brought the plight of exploited and suffering animals to the attention of activists, politicians, and the public at large?

In the eight lectures of Victorian Animals in Literature and Culture, Professor Deborah Morse will take you back to the reign of Queen Victoria to explore the transformation of long-held ideas, beliefs, and fears concerning animals—and our own animal natures as well. Through novels such as Anna Sewell’s Black Beauty and Virginia Woolf’s Flush, as well as stories and books by Beatrix Potter, Arthur Conan Doyle, Ernest Thomas Seton, and many others, you will see how a developing kinship with animals in literature and art presented new perspectives that would inform more than just the cause of animal welfare. While many writers were directly concerned with the ethics of animal treatment and our coexistence with the animal kingdom, stories featuring animals often make resonant and vital observations about the human world, too.

As you will see, the ethical considerations that took root and grew in the 19th century still deeply inform the way we think today. Professor Morse brings your journey full circle by examining a 21st-century novel, Karen Joy Fowler’s We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves, which shows how the ideas and explorations of the Victorians affect the present. Through this work and those that preceded it, you’ll see how our conception of the feelings, intelligence, and rights of animals has changed not only the way we think about them, but how we live together with them in our shared world.

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Highly recommended

This scholarly, illuminating and heartfelt offering will captivate anyone who loves animals and literature. It is beautifully narrated by the author, who clearly brings to the project a deep love of animals and an impressive knowledge of the works explored. Very affecting and informative!

Excellent Series

Morse's voice is warm and welcoming. Her historical overview of animal representation and animal rights is masterful. Her close reading of the texts she ably chooses for this journey that precedes Victoria's rise to the throne and takes us into early 20th-century modernism is illuminating.

Black Beauty and more, beautifully explained

With explanations both historical and literary, Professor Morse adeptly weaves threads of Darwinism, Christian witnessing, and the anti-slavery, women’s rights, and especially animal rights movements in England to explain Black Beauty, Beautiful Joe, and other Victorian era writings. With my new understanding, I, for one, am determined to read Black Beauty again. I particularly loved the lecture on Beatrix Potter and Edward Lear, with its fanciful characters and lovely ending, imagining Lear and his beloved cat, “….hand in hand, dancing to the light of the moon.” A great listen—both fun and educational!

Wildly Fascinating, Beautifully Told

A beautiful, thought-provoking, and masterful series, narrated with great warmth and care. Deborah Morse illuminates beloved novels and forgotten stories in new and vital ways, expertly revealing how concerns of animal treatment at the heart of these texts intersect with questions of class, religion, race, gender, and disability. I found Morse’s reflections on care communities and disability in Sewell’s Black Beauty and Saunder’s Beautiful Joe particularly poignant. I highly recommend this series to students and scholars working across fields, and to any lover of animals or literature. Much like the novels Morse explores, her series will leave you informed, enriched, and moved.

An Amazing Analysis of the Role of Animals in Victorian Literature!

As a small animal veterinarian with a life-long love of both animals and literature, this is a fascinating, thorough analysis of how even in the Victorian Era, how animals were treated extends to how we treat people of races and classes other than our own. I particularly loved the sections on Black Beauty. Dr Morse’s love for her chosen area of focus is evident in both her writing and her reading, and with her voice and intonation, she is an impeccable narrator! I highly recommend - brava!

A Must-Listen

In this illuminating and insightful series, Victorian Animals in Literature and Culture showcases Professor Morse’s expertise in Victorian and early modern literature. Morse warmly invites her listeners to reimagine many well-loved stories through her artful exploration of animals and their representations in both Victorian literature and the era at large. Listening to this series transports listeners to a seminar room at William & Mary, where she continues to inspire her students with the same passion and knowledge evident in these lectures. Anyone interested in animals and literature would absolutely adore this series. As a former student, I have found it wonderful to dive back into Professor Morse’s eye-opening interpretations of the novels and stories that will always have a special place on my bookshelf.

Brilliant look at Victorian animal welfare

Prof. Morse's lucid history of the treatment of animals in Victorian England -- and the birth of the animal welfare movement -- is a crucial series of lectures. Drawing on her deep knowledge and research of Victorian culture and literature, and delivered with warmth and understanding, her lectures always engaged this listener. They are often profoundly moving, as she surveys the casual cruelty towards animals as reflected in texts such as Black Beauty. Morse highlights an important shift in human consciousness that we now, perhaps, take for granted -- our awareness of animals as sentient beings deserving of respect, humane treatment, and love.

Enchanting and enlightening

In this warmly read and thoughtfully crafted lecture series, Morse seamlessly weaves anecdote with analysis as she pours a career’s worth of passion and research into a beautiful and moving series. Listeners will love the journey through the Victorian era and into the modern day as Morse engages with current literature and issues in the context of the historical. Morse’s reading of this undoubtedly great course makes her vast knowledge of the overlap between Victorian literature and animal welfare both accessible and enjoyable. “Victorian Animals…” is a must-listen for scholars, readers, and animal lovers alike!

Prof Morse's love letter to animals and literature

In this deeply informed, beautifully performed, and warmly felt introduction to Victorian and early modern literature about the relationship between people and animals, Professor Morse explores the way authors from Anna Sewell to Virginia Woolf have grappled with the notion of animal consciousness. Do these authors anthropomorphize their subjects? Of course, because that's the essence of writing human words about them. But Morse's biographical sketches of the authors she has selected investigate human-animal intersection with intelligence and heart. Morse gives listeners insight into the motivations that led to the creation of horses Ginger and Black Beauty, wolves Blanca and Old Lobo, Peter Rabbit, and many others. She infuses her readings of these authors' literary creatures with her own love for animals in the natural world and invites us to question human actions within the natural world today.

The way the lectures place the literature within the context of the animal rights movement.

These lectures are the culmination of Professor Morse's decades' long research into and teaching about animals and literature. We who have followed her work are thrilled that Audible has made it possible for her to share her insights with the general public in an accessible and engaging way. Thank you Deborah!