This essay considers the role of popular fiction in the vivisection debates of the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries. Specifically, it argues that the fictional narratives of American author Elizabeth Stuart Phelps (a vociferous proponent of humane reform in New England) infused the anti-vivisection movement with a sense of urgency. By exploiting the formal properties of the novel, Phelps encouraged readers to reimagine the anonymous laboratory dog both as a surrogate child and as private property. In doing so, her imaginative literature illustrated, in ways that other discursive forms did not, how vivisection corroded fin de siècle America’s most sacrosanct values.
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I have included it here because of its analysis of Phelps' "antivivisection novel, Trixy (1904)", whose plot is summarised, because Walker demonstrates that in it Phelps was "conveying her antivivisection message as romance fiction."
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Olin Steele proves the cad of Phelps’s love plot when his ruthless professional aspirations render him unredeemable as a romantic hero. Miriam’s disbelief that “any true woman [could] take a vivisector’s hand” suggests the extent to which the narrative’s romantic and humane storylines are intertwined (Trixy 274). In choosing the humane man over the inhumane self-promoter, Miriam also exhibits her sound judgment, moral fortitude, and readiness to face the challenges and responsibilities of marriage. Phelps concludes her story on a bright note with the tail-wagging reunion of the dogs with their owners and a pledge of romantic devotion between Miriam and Philip.
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In Trixy, Dr. Olin Steele gains access to Miriam Lauriat’s home through culturally sanctioned protocols of courtship and with the intention of securing a suitable wife. While an attractive prospect by measure of his wealth and social position, Dr. Steele lacks the requisite personal qualities for intimate companionship and, consequently, poses a liability to any domestic dependents that might come under his purview. As Miriam Lauriat realizes, marriage to such a man likely would produce a home bereft of “tenderness,” “kindness,” “sympathy,” and “the daily shelter of a safe character” (Trixy 298).
Indeed, Dr. Steele’s scientific ethos contravenes the culture of compassionate self-restraint in which the turn-of-the-century family ideal was rooted. His professional mandate compels him to devalue or deny any phenomenon that defies explanation by the scientific method, and his quotidian practice of brutality blunts his emotional acuity. Dr. Steele even contends, for example, that maternal affection does not exist because he is unable to observe it in the brain cells of vivisected dogs (Trixy 54). This finding inspires him to undertake a follow-up investigation into the existence of love. For two months, Dr. Steele probes the brains of laboratory animals in an effort to collect material evidence of love. But love, we are told, was too evasive: “It was not to be cut out by a scalpel or grasped by pincers; and Dr. Steele therefore [wrote] a paper, learnedly contending that love was only a Greek hypothesis, a psychic disease, the dream of the past, the illusion of the present, and did not exist” (Trixy 55). Dr. Steele’s thesis on love’s nonexistence, for which he is awarded the highest degree in physiological science, renders him inadmissible to the affective realm of domestic life. He, thus, constitutes an antagonist on multiple narrative registers, serving as the embodiment of the novel’s most reviled values, the foil to its dog-loving characters, and the chief impediment to its romance plot between Miriam Lauriat and Philip Surbridge.
Here's the abstract:
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I have included it here because of its analysis of Phelps' "antivivisection novel, Trixy (1904)", whose plot is summarised, because Walker demonstrates that in it Phelps was "conveying her antivivisection message as romance fiction."
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