What We Choose to Hear: Researching Human-Animal Violence

Abstract Aware of her pupil’s plans to torture and kill a nest of birds, and with no authority to stop him based on her class, gender, and professional positions, the governess-heroine of Anne Brontë’s (2010/1847) Agnes Grey kills the nonhuman animals to keep them from needless suffering. Building on Brontë scholarship as well as animal studies understandings of violence and embodiment, this article considers expectations that Victorian sympathy will be a simplistic and pretty play on reader emotions to argue that nineteenth-century sympathetic feeling was more theoretically and ethically complex than we might imagine. Agnes Grey demonstrates how human-animal violence was thought to be an acceptable expression of middle- and upper-class masculinity, while proper women were expected to be complicit with this treatment of nonhumans. By looking at the close relationship between wanton and merciful embodied violence, the article shows how grotesque Victorian human-animal sympathy could be.

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Was Jack the Ripper a Slaughterman? Human-Animal Violence and the World’s Most Infamous Serial Killer

Animals ◽

10.3390/ani7040030 ◽

2017 ◽

Vol 7 (12) ◽

pp. 30

Author(s):

Andrew Knight ◽

Katherine Watson

Keyword(s):

Serial Killer ◽

Human Animal ◽

Animal Violence ◽

Jack The Ripper

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Role of Women and Environment in Temsula Ao’s Laburnum for My Head

Bulletin of Advanced English Studies ◽

10.31559/baes2020.5.1.1 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 5 (1) ◽

pp. 1-7

Author(s):

Kailash Kumar

Keyword(s):

Short Stories ◽

Animal Rights ◽

Women Empowerment ◽

The Core ◽

Biological Aspects ◽

Diverse Setting ◽

Human Animal ◽

Biological Environment ◽

Animal Violence

Women and environment play significant role in Temsula Ao’s Laburnum for My Head (2009). Women empowerment relates to giving women more power over their own life and the circumstances they are facing with. Empowering women is to empower them to break the traditional picture of perfect womanhood where patriarchy dominates and women get all the bad things in their life. Women through their self-assertion contribute greatly towards women empowerment. It is this self-assertion of women that forms the core of Temsula Ao’s collection of short stories entitled Laburnum for My Head, and this paper. Writers of literature has always been lured and urged by their physical and biological environment to manifest the beauties of nature in their creative endeavour. Temsula Ao’s Laburnum for My Head showcases the correlation between literature and the physical and biological aspects of nature. This paper relates Ao’s stance on women and environment in Laburnum for My Head by placing the stories in such diverse setting as ecology, environment, non-human animal, violence, bloodshed, marriage, motherhood, animal rights etc.

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Companion-animal-inclusive domestic violence practice: Implications for service delivery and social work

Aotearoa New Zealand Social Work ◽

10.11157/anzswj-vol32iss4id791 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 32 (4) ◽

pp. 26-39

Author(s):

Nik Taylor ◽

Heather Fraser ◽

Damien W. Riggs

Keyword(s):

Domestic Violence ◽

Social Work ◽

Service Delivery ◽

Companion Animals ◽

Service Design ◽

Companion Animal ◽

Human Animal ◽

Animal Violence

INTRODUCTION: Based on an understanding of links between human- and animal-directed domestic violence, this article: 1) argues for companion-animal inclusive domestic violence service delivery; and 2) reflects on the challenges this offers to social work and the human services.APPROACH: We start by considering the importance of companion animals in many people’s lives and then offer an overview of material on “the link” between human- and animal-directed violence, specifically as it pertains to domestic violence.CONCLUSIONS: Implications for service design and provision are discussed. We conclude with brief comments about the importance of centring animals in future considerations of human– animal violence links and outline how this offers an opportunity to challenge and re-think the humanist foundations on which traditional social work is built.

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