From fable to farmyard: what does children's literature tell us about animals?
WEEKEND READ: Vegan parents are often faced with a dilemma when choosing children’s books. The classic stories are often rife with hypocrisy and cognitive dissonance, yet they reveal much about humanity’s relationship with animals, as Nina Copleston discusses.
Animals have been featured in written stories with some of the earliest examples from as early as the 6th Century BCE. At this time, Aesop was crafting his fables which, now famous for their place on children’s bookshelves, were originally intended for adults. Aesop turned human characteristics into whole animal characters either seen as good or evil. Animals became archetypes that are still portrayed today: foxes synonymous with cunning; lions with might; crows with intelligence; and wolves with the drive to hunt without mercy. At the time, wolves were respected and assisted humans in hunting before being pushed out into the wilderness as towns and cities grew in the Middle Ages. In The Jungle Book, Rudyard Kipling developed Akela, the mother wolf, as kind and caring, whilst wolves and other wild animals were being hunted into extinction around the world.
During and post industrialisation, in the “Golden Age of Children’s Literature”, many books came to comment on humans and our relationship with animals and the natural world. As workers were expected to stick to working hours and clock-time, as opposed to the circadian rhythms of before, Lewis Carroll presented us with the time-obsessed March Hare in Alice in Wonderland. Indeed, Alice had to enter a magical paradigm to meet these animals, meanwhile, in the increasingly industrialised real world, animals’ homes were being lost and pollution was increasing. In Kenneth Grahame’s The Wind in the Willows, he too paints an appreciation for the natural world and landscape that was starting to erode. This was the first book to only include (talking) animals and build them as complex characters, as opposed to the one-dimensional figures of Aesop’s fables. (“Toad” for instance, represents the British upper class and an erratic attitude towards spending wealth - his obsession with shiny new vehicles a hint at the growing consumerism and technology of the time. He looks down at classes deemed lower than his; however, he cares profoundly for his friends.)
In large part, animals throughout literature have been anthropomorphised to tell us about human values and behaviours. There have been concerns over this, with some scientists worrying that these books can give children a human-centric view of the world, rather than learning about animals and their natural behaviours and habitats. This seems to be more prevalent in those children living in urban areas, who have less opportunity to engage with animals in real life and not just in their stories.
It is true that so many of our beloved animal protagonists have been attributed human qualities - from Mog, the forgetful family cat, to The Tiger Who Came to Tea and was nothing short of gluttonous. These stories vary in their portrayal of animals - many are grumpy, some are cruel, plenty are mischievous, most are loyal and loving. Whilst mostly fantastical (most tigers don’t pop over for dinner), our communities do teach us through these stories that animals are complex and feeling, and that we feel affection for them. In reality, these animals may not be forgetful, or deceptive, but scientific studies continue to tell us that animals do feel pain, joy and fear. These feelings are enough for us to know that they have lives and experiences all their own, without us having to view them through our own human lens.
Indeed, children - on the whole - love animals. There is a kinship between children and animals, a connection of curiosity and wonder. We encourage this connection; we read our children stories about animals, watch animal characters on the television, buy them toys in the shape of their favourite. In fact, studies in Northern America show that in children age six or less, 80 per cent of dreams are animal-centred. Animals also dominate more than 90 per cent of the characters in children’s pre-school books for counting and language learning.
Children learn a great deal from animals. They develop empathy, patience, confidence and respect for other living things. Biologist Edward O. Wilson’s biophilia hypothesis describes our intrinsic human affinity for other living creatures and the natural world, and our desire to foster these connections. This is never seen as purely as when a child is exploring their natural surroundings or playing with a companion animal. Children are uncomplicated and compassionate in their worldview; they value animals simply for being, rather than for what they can provide for us (like adults do). Animals are intrinsically wonderful and precious because they simply are, and not because they can be slaughtered into meat, drained of their milk, skinned into leather.
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Farmyard books begin to influence children’s thoughts about animals. These stories paint a picturesque image of farm-life, an image that many still believe to be true due to extensive marketing from the meat and dairy industries. In these stories, children learn about happy cows, chickens and pigs, all co-existing contentedly on spacious and nourishing farms (when in reality 85 per cent of farmed animals in the UK live on factory farms). These animals are liked by children - seen as friends - and then we tell children that we eat them too. We teach that whilst we love some animals, we eat others. That whilst we cuddle our family dog, Charlie, we tuck into another animal who never had a name nor a family. Whilst we adore our story-book cows, we peel away their real-life skin and turn it into shoes and bags for us to wear. We are told that this is just how it is. No questions. Some animals deserve love; others don’t.
We do not teach these principles because we are cruel or purposefully deceptive; we do so because we have been taught this too. These stories have been told so many times that they disguise a strange, illogical truth. This ‘truth’ is that the animals we eat come from the same loving farms we read about in books; it is moral, and expected as a human, to love some animals and to eat others; animals are here for us to use, and to question otherwise is radical and extreme. In fact, vegan children’s books that offer alternative ways of thinking to the mainstream, such as That’s Why We Don’t Eat Animals by Ruby Roth, are met with fury and claims of “indoctrinating” children. Given that most children’s books lie about where food comes from, and vegan children’s books are honest - which are actually guilty of indoctrination?
Many of our most beloved animal stories are telling us to do better. In Watership Down by Richard Adams, we are warned of the destruction humans cause to animals’ habitats without thought, and that humans may well be happier if we lived in alignment with nature as opposed to trying to control it (much like the “biophilia hypothesis” mentioned earlier). The rabbits are described as multifaceted, feeling beings with lives entirely of their own - a fact we like to forget as humans. Anna Sewell’s Black Beauty - thought to be one of the first fictional animal autobiographies, as in an animal telling us their story in the first person putting the reader very much in non-human shoes - tells us that animal welfare matters, hugely. In the much loved Roald Dahl classic, The BFG, the giant exposes humankind’s hypocrisy - we are disgusted at giants who eat humans, but we continue to eat animals ourselves. Charlotte’s Web by E. B. White hints at our cognitive dissonance - Sophie eats bacon and yet desperately yearns to save Wilbur, the pig. It is no coincidence why these stories hit us so deeply in the stomach because they remind us of the truth, of our inner feelings about animals that we have become so disconnected from.
This is the trouble with reading our children dishonest farmyard books, and teaching children that we can love yet also eat animals; it encourages us to grow into adulthood with ignorance about where our food comes from, and a separation between our values and our behaviours. Much like children’s daemons being severed from them in Northern Lights, we encourage our children to separate themselves from their intrinsic feelings towards animals and tell them to ignore their innate compassion. If you ask a child, before the normalised habits of eating animals are schooled to them, they will probably tell you they would rather not eat that pig, thank you; they are far too fond of Wilbur. And if we listen to the running theme of children’s literature over the past hundred years, we will be reminded that we human beans must live in harmony with the natural world, and not in superiority to it.
“‘That is what the little piggy-wig is saying every day,’ the BFG answered. ‘He is saying, “I has never done any harm to the human bean so why should he be eating me?’”
’The human beans is making rules to suit themselves,’ the BFG went on. ‘But the rules they is making do not suit the little piggy-wiggies. Am I right or left?’
’Giants is also making rules. Their rules is not suiting the human beans. Everybody is making his own rules to suit himself.””
Nina Copleston is a writer and non-human animal rights champion. Having been concerned with social justice issues such as disability rights and homelessness for years, Nina turned her attention to the rights of non-human animals and the moral inconsistencies rife within society's attitudes towards animals. Determined to make a difference, Nina hopes to highlight these inconsistencies with her writing.
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