THE ANIMAL ESTATE The English and Other...

THE ANIMAL ESTATE The English and Other Creatures of the Victorian Age by Harriet Ritvo (Harvard University Press: $12.95)

The Victorian English believed not in Darwin’s theory of evolution, but in an intrinsic moral hierarchy in the animal kingdom. Thus it was not monkeys or chimpanzees who were man’s closest kin, but dogs.

“If there was any doubt about which was the most intelligent animal, the dog was clearly the most sagacious,” Harriet Ritvo writes. “Sagacity indicated not the ability to manipulate mechanical contraptions or solve logical problems, but . . . the ability to adapt to human surroundings and to please people.”

Ritvo’s enlightening examination of Victorians and their pets exposes the prejudices and social underpinnings of English society. In “The Animal Estate,” she presents a well-informed analysis of how Victorians’ dealings with their pets, show horses, beasts of burden or sporting game marked social status in Victorian times.

Breeding prize cattle was the dominion of the landed gentry. The urban middle class, on the other hand, were dog lovers. Fox hunting and zoo keeping, the hobbies of well-bred people, “celebrated Britain’s imperial enterprise.”

Interestingly, the establishment of the Royal Society of the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals had nothing to do with anti-vivisectionism and everything to do with the containment of the working classes.