American Society for Eighteenth Century Studies (ASECS)

Science, Animal Sympathy, and Anna Barbauld's "The Mouse's Petition" Author(s): Mary Ellen Bellanca Source: Eighteenth-Century Studies, Vol. 37, No. 1, Exploring Sentiment (Fall, 2003), pp. 47-67 Published by: The Johns Hopkins University Press. Sponsor: American Society for Eighteenth Century Studies (ASECS). Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25098029 . Accessed: 07/03/2011 05:52
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ciENCE, Animal Barbauld's

Sympathy, "The Mouse's

and Anna Petition"

Mary

Ellen Bellanca

"The

immediate

use of natural Priestley,

science

is the power and

it gives

us over

nature."

Joseph

The History

Present

State

of Electricity

"An

infant may Anna

destroy Barbauld

life, but and

all the kings Aikin,

of the earth Animals

cannot

restore

it." For"

John

"What

Are Made

of Joseph Priestley could evidently be an un of newly caught animal speci orthodox affair, punctuated by the introduction mens As the natural philosopher's for his scientific experiments. friend, Anna to observe first this phenomenon had occasion Letitia Aikin (later Barbauld) Mealtime in the household lead to his discovery of oxygen, Priest that would hand. In 1771, in experiments was using live mice to test the effects of mixing air with various gases. One ley to memoirist William when Barbauld was visiting, according Turner, "It evening in after that a captive [mouse] was brought to be made with it that night, and the servant experiment while Priestley may have till next morning." Overnight, of her own: of air, Barbauld made a composition position happened which was Turner "twisted supper, too late for any was desired to set it by the com contemplated her poem "The Mouse's among the wires of the Cast in the mouse's
for the rodent's

reports, Petition," found, it "was brought in after breakfast." cage" the next day when
voice, release: the poem makes an eloquent, if tongue-in-cheek,

argument

Mary Sumter.

Ellen

Bellanca

is Assistant articles

Professor on Pope, entitled and

of English George Eliot,

at

the University and Gerard

of Manley

South

Carolina She in Nine

She has

published

Hopkins. Nature

is completing teenth-Century

a book

manuscript Diaries British

Days

of Green

Discovery:

Writing

Journals. Studies, vol. 37, no. 1 (2003) Pp. 47-67.

Eighteenth-Century

48
Oh! For And hear liberty never

Eighteenth-Century
a pensive that prisoner's be prayer,

Studies

37/1

sighs; heart cries. shut

let thine

Against

the wretch's

If e'er And Let A

freedom thy breast with a tyrant's chain, spurn'd not thy strong oppressive mouse detain.

glow'd, force 19, lines 1-4, 9-12)1

free-born

(Poem

go.2 struck a responsive chord as well with contem porary and later readers. It has been reprinted often, by admirers ranging from to the World Wildlife Fund, and it may have influenced Mary Wollstonecraft Robert Burns's "To aMouse." The text was first published in Barbauld's Poems "The Mouse's Petition" in 1773, Confined "The Mouse's Petition, Found in the Trap where he had been all Night" "To Doctor Priestley." Readers and dedicated immediately seized upon it as an indictment of animal experimentation.3 Barbauld disclaimed any intent of criticizing Priestley, but her critics saw the poem as a denunciation entitled

According

to Turner,

the plea was

so effective

that Priestley

let the mouse

of "the cruelty practised seem to think the who by experimental philosophers, brute creation void of sensibility, or created only for them to torment."4 By 1796, two years before The Rime of the Ancient Mariner?"the great English romantic about the consequences of mistreating the animal kingdom"?Samuel poem Tay lor Coleridge could write, "thanks toMrs. Barbauld,... it has become universal ly fashionable to teach lessons of compassion towards animals."5 Petition" lends it Invoking liberty and decrying tyranny, "The Mouse's a mouthpiece in which self to interpretations the suppliant mouse, for liberal reform, stands in for detained and oppressed humans. Marlon Ross, for example, asks whether it is "a political poem that uses the occasion of an 'imprisoned'
mouse ous to petition satirize for the the 'enlighteners'" rights of or "a political The poem caged, that trapped, . . . make[s] or abused a seri animal commoners."6

was

admittedly

a powerful
whether

image

in print and
psychological,

iconography
or social.

for various
In a complex

kinds
texture

of
of

imprisonment,

physical,

reciprocal
slaves were

signification,
represented

one vulnerable
as confined or

group
exploited

often

pointed

to another,
as slaves

so that
or as

animals,

women

to injurious uses of nonhuman caged birds, pet animals as slaves. Opposition such as hunting, blood sports, and scientific experiments, increased in creatures, the 1770s alongside debates about slavery. Barbauld's a rheto "Petition" wields ric of sensibility that sought to change attitudes about inequality?and the poten tial violence of unequal power relations?in forms: chattel slavery, incar many In the 1790s, while publishing ceration, marriage, labor, and animal ownership.7 children's texts that promoted animal sympathy, Barbauld would mobilize what Moira gate
slave

Ferguson the nation,

trade.8

calls the century's "multilayered discourse on cruelty" to casti in her "Epistle to William Wilberforce," for failing to halt the I focus on the more immediate and literal context use of living animals in scientific experiments, had emerged as a topic of public debate9?and on the role

of "The Mouse's which

In this essay, however, Petition"?the

by midcentury

Bellanca of science
rationale

/ Anna work.
antiquity,

Barbauld's Defenders
that

"The Mouse's of animal

Petition" maintained,
to serve

49 in a
human

in Barbauld's
argued since

experiments
creatures exist

nonhuman

needs

because they possess neither souls nor and require no ethical consideration cen and social changes in the eighteenth rational minds. But scientific, political,
tury, including some shifting ancient constructions assumptions. of Rapid human-animal discoveries relations, of exotic worked species to un around

dermine

the globe,
extinct

including
that

thousands
no human

of insects and microorganisms?to

had ever seen?challenged

say nothing
com

of

animals

anthropocentric

placency. creation" therefore

Extending

for the "brute of feeling, advocates sensibility's valorization sensation and can the new belief that animals experience promoted suffer pain.10 The first-person plea of Barbauld's mouse, who claims to (line 34), gives voice to the concern with "myth of kinship"11 based on fellow-feeling. soul" Petition" animal suffering

have a "brother's and to a cultural

late also provides an entry point for exploring from the excluded century dynamics of science and gender. As a young woman on Priest Barbauld commented natural philosophers, fraternity of experimental "The Mouse's but in the domes ley's work not in the laboratory or in scientific correspondence in a tradition of wom tic spaces of the dining room and the meal table. Working en's anthropomorphic writing about animals, Barbauld does "challenge the male as Stuart Curran ob universe exemplified scientific experiments," by Priestley's between scien serves.12 Yet the "Petition" does not simply inscribe a showdown the "universe" of experimen tific patriarchy and feminine sensibility. Alongside another world of women's scientific tal inquiry flourished learning. Barbauld, as well as the qual of scientific knowledge like Priestley, valued the advancement ity of "humanity"
insensitive ness about to animal hurting

or compassion
welfare; as we creatures promote between weaker

toward
shall

nonhuman
see, his own

animals. Nor was

writings betray Barbauld's and an

Priestley
uneasi works,

in the pursuit science the

of knowledge. for women

in general, force cultural

simultaneously boundaries

knowledge sexes' intellectual

men, and

rein warn

territories,

the excessive ambition of male scientists. Her poetry both celebrates and science that increased the physical comfort of human critiques an Enlightenment about their bodies, and opened intel yet destroyed animals for knowledge beings them well behind its frontiers of discovery. lectual avenues to women yet kept against As a crowded
poem captures

discursive

space, then, the mousetrap

dialogue

imagined

in Barbauld's
the poet, the

a moment

in a multivocal

encompassing

natural

and the cultures of science and sensibility. The "Petition" philosopher, but does not reconcile, tensions in both Barbauld's and Priestley's work embodies, between the desire for knowledge and misgivings about its ethical and humanitar ian costs. In addition, the poem experiments with a motif that recurs subtly but in the manipulation of na

in Barbauld's work: the dangers inherent persistently ture by an increasingly technocratic world view.

SCIENCE FOR "BOTH SEXES," WOMEN'S

"BOUNDED Barbauld may women studied SPHERE" be situated in the eighteenth-century culture of science in for "rational amusement" and personal herbal healing, women also became

which

the natural world

improvement.

Practitioners

of traditional

50 enthusiastic

Eighteenth-Century "consumers of scientific

Studies

37/1 and by col studied and

plants and astronomy.13 Barbauld's books for children entomology, patronized exerted an important influence on younger writers such as Charlotte Smith, Priscilla and Sarah Trimmer, who earned public authority and success by pop Wakefield, As an author and educator, Barbauld encouraged scientific knowledge. ularizing the natural world.14 of both sexes" to study and appreciate "many young persons botany, At in attitudes of a "cultural paradox" the same time, her career is emblematic was toward women's including science knowledge, learning: general knowledge, serious pursuits were ridiculed as pedantic and un but "excessively" approved, feminine.15 Anticipating itmay ed?reluctantly,
to their domestic vocation.

lecting and sketching

knowledge" by reading books and flowers. Some aristocratic women

a backlash be?to

against female learnedness, Barbauld acced interests of women's intellectual the subordination

Learning but
father,

about
was

natural

processes Academy,

imperative.
the

At Warrington

was, for Barbauld, not only desirable the Dissenting college founded by her
strong in natural science."16 There Bar

curriculum

"particularly

friends with Priestley, who was a tutor at the academy, and his an advocate of scientific knowl wife, Mary Priestley, as well as Hester Chapone, writer and editor Barbauld's work as a collaborating for women.17 Later, edge a polymath with interests inmedicine, with her brother, John Aikin, natural phi bauld became in natural losophy, and chemistry, brought her into contact with current work she founded with her husband, Roche science.18 At the Palgrave School, which mont Barbauld, she instructed scores of boys, including Joseph Priestley Jr., about "the natural history of animals," reportedly in an engaging way.19 Although Charles Lamb crew" for "cramming" the "cursed Barbauld chil famously condemned dren with the "sore evil" of science, modern scholars have found that Barbauld's students enjoyed and fondly remembered her "imaginative and entertaining" teach ing, especially
introduce readers

in natural

history.20 of Smith, Trimmer,

observation

Like the works

to

and Wollstonecraft,
early age. Her

Barbauld's
Lessons for

books

factual

at an

Children

to follow the stages of insect metamorphosis?"all the pretty prompts youngsters butterflies that you see flying about were caterpillars once, and crawled on the on animal habits and habitats her instruction fosters sympathy: ground"?and "Here is a poor little snail crawling up the wall. Touch him with your little finger. Ah, the snail is crept into his shell. . . . Let him alone, and he will soon come out or, the Juve again."21 Barbauld and Aikin's prose collection, Evenings at Home: nile Budget Opened, if relentlessly empirical, revels in the passionate, fascination texts of the 1790s. Replete with with nature that characterizes many educational
facts about oaks, pines, grasses, "Leguminous Plants," and "Compound Flow

to form of the edifying adult-child ers," the volume uses the popular dialogue In older students, including women, cultivate a sense of wonder.22 Barbauld urged reverence for nature as well as knowledge. In a series of letters to "Young La she wrote: "The great laws of the universe, the nature and properties of dies," those objects which not to know: it ismore un surround us, it is unpardonable to know, and not to feel the mind struck with pardonable lively gratitude."23 General science was a topic of lifelong learning: in 1800, attending a lecture at the the poet was "much pleased to see a fashionable and very at Royal Institution,

Bellanca tentive
and

/ Anna one

Barbauld's ladies,

"The Mouse's assembled

Petition"

51 of science

audience,

about

third

for the purposes

improvement."24 Barbauld's early poems dramatize interactions with nature that were cul

turally Birds and Insects,"

bly her own

sanctioned

for women. she consulted

The

For "To Mrs. Thomas

acts out

some Drawings of P[riestley], Pennant's British Zoology25 and possi with

the naturalist's essential tasks, cata

observation.

poem

loguing and classifying 3, line 21). The poem eighteenth-century

When Nor winter food nor

behaviors

and habitats

also discusses

bird migration,

of "various [bird] nations" (Poem a topic of keen interest to

ornithologists:
bites upon the naked plain, remain;

shelter

in the groves

The

congregated In dusky columns of the

nations o'er

wing the

their way sea. (lines 61-2, 65-6)26 nature as a

trackless

In

this

portrait

poet

as

a naturalist,

Barbauld

embraces

study

leisure activity to fill the "lonely female friendship.

However, her writings

hour"

(line 121) and as a satisfying medium

the view that men and women

of

also

propagate

are

not

entitled

Complaining with the sexes' divergent that she and her brother ent assignments: bours of a manly

to the same degree that she neglected shared

of learning about nature. "To Dr. Aikin on his him" (Poem 7) describes Barbauld's experience "paths." The poem recalls the interests and "sympathy" sent them on differ in their youth, until maturity thee fair fate assign'd / The nobler la In adulthood, the sister's scope is con

"Our path divides?to mind" (lines 20, 50-1).

fined to "more humble works, and lower cares" (line 52). While John Aikin will acclaim for his medical work and his writing, Barbauld acknowledges her garner own "bounded sphere" (line 6). The poem's negatives suggest the self-restraint of desire: Barbauld will not "strive to soar too high, /Nor for the tree of knowledge sigh"; rather, she will "Check the fond love of science and of fame, / A In Harriet Guest's view, the flame" (lines 56-9). bright, but ah! a too devouring . . . chafes" the prescribed difference in life paths; William poet "briefly against "wistful goes further, arguing that these passages express Barbauld's McCarthy enviousness" of Aikin's opportunities: the text "documents] her resentment of vainly
woman's restricted fate [and] her imaginative resistance to that fate."27

Barbauld's lectual female Guest could aspirations learnedness

"bounded of women's intel sphere" limns the containment as Ann B. Shteir has written, in an era when, the "fear of was a leitmotif" in texts about women and science, which

often brandished

has documented

the horrifying "specter" of overeducated spinsterhood.28 Harriet the host of contradictory roles inwhich the "learned lady" be cast: public spectacle, icon of British progressiveness, sexual potential

Women's scandal, imitator of male scholarly over-specialization.29 participation in "science culture" notwithstanding, the perceived benefits of formal scientific study were limited. Shteir notes that until well into the nineteenth century, women were "excluded from formal participation in the public institutions of... science. of the Royal Society [which admitted Priestley] or the They could not be members Linnean Society, could not attend meetings, read papers, or (with very rare excep in the journals of these societies."30 tions) see their findings published

52

Eighteenth-Century

Studies

37/1

The disapproval that could shadow intellectual women helps to contex the much-debated letter of 1774 inwhich Barbauld declines an invitation to establish a young "ladies'" academy.31 For women "to be taught in a regular tualize
systematic ly produce liere, than manner "such good the various as agreeable branches the of science," or the she writes, 'Femmes would scavantes' learning more like of Mo for women characters wives or 'Pr?cieuses' companions."

Advanced

entails

deception
Young

and risks public

humiliation:

to have such a general tincture of ladies, who ought only as to make to a man them agreeable of sense, knowledge companions and to enable them to find rational entertainment for a solitary hour, should in a more these accomplishments gain quiet and unobserved . . .The carefully of knowledge in our sex are only connived at and if displayed, with concealed, punished disgrace.32 thefts

manner. while

A woman's intellectual
The

ultimate pursuits:
line of

calling

is the domestic

sphere, which

affords

little room

for

woman excused

appears from

separation to me

between

the

studies fixed

of a young by this,?that . . Women . the same ....

man

and

a young is one

to be chiefly

a woman have but

wife,

[department a mother, is your

all professional knowledge. in life], and all women have a mistress professional of a family. knowledge, The

duties excuse.

knowledge the want of which

It is, to be a to these belonging nothing will

Young

women

are

also

"excused"

from

hands-on

scientific

research:

the most

suitable
ments or

lessons

for them are those

that "may be learnt at home without to govern

P," for

experi

apparatus."33

These
a rural retreat

rules of engagement
poem written, like

appear
"To Mrs.

"The Invitation"
an absent woman

(Poem 4),
friend.34

is a scene of female pleasures both sensory and Early in the poem, the outdoors are represented cerebral. Nature's energies through feminine bird and plant imag of the botanical world, wields the spring's "transforming ery: "FLORA," deity
power," and "heav'n-born" science, a key attraction at Warrington, is also fem

inine, a proud, By the poem's delights zoology,

eagle that can soar almost anywhere (lines 42, 98, 101). the emphasis moves from the country's end, however, leisurely to the academic pursuits of Warrington's include (male) inmates, which and entomology: botany, "ardent"
[students] the silky pensive texture creep along of a flower; the shelly shore; an hornet's

Some Unfold With And Some Of

eyes sharpen'd all the wonders trace with

[that is, microscopes] of an insect's wing. search her the hidden laws; her and various disrobe forms,

inspect cause

sting,

curious

nature's her

changes, beauteous to her her

Untwist And hunt

web, elemental

charms, 155-62)

(lines

the Along with the poem's focus, power relations have radically shifted. When school's formal studies enter the picture, feminine nature diminishes in strength. No acted force, "she" becomes passive and sexualized, longer a transformative

Bellanca

/ Anna

Barbauld's

"The Mouse's

Petition"

53

upon rather than acting?even preyed upon. The earth makes herself available for the students' searching, inspection, and analysis, and she obligingly "opens all secret springs" for the "inquiring youth" who would "hunt" and "disrobe" her her (lines 97, 95). The
nature

people

who
are

perform
laborers,

all this
the

inspecting,
of toil"

tracing,
who

and disrobing
the hard

of
bo

are male.

Some

"sons

"scoop

som of the solid rock" to build the Duke of Bridgewater's canal. "Resistless" and flood" to make the river these men "compel the genius of th'unwilling patient, run where designing humans choose 61, 63). But the most (lines 59-60, impor are Warrington's tant masculine the alumni who, "MAN," product, players by some resistless force" like the canal builders, will assume important in trade and the professions (lines 153, 145). The triumphant power of positions science contrasts feminine "Muse," who appears at the with Barbauld's starkly . end: "Unequal far such bright designs to paint, / . . My drooping Muse poem's folds up her fluttering wing" (lines 185, 187). "impell'd "The Invitation" women both from advanced does not attack scientific activities or the exclusion of formal study. On the contrary, the poet expresses pride in of students whom "their country calls" and the canal,

which will

the "little group" foster "social plenty" (lines 135, 78). Barbauld's portrayal of feminine in a cultural language that subjects the femi "Nature" suggests her immersion nine to a knowledge used largely by men. As gender theorists have argued, system the myth of nature as "Woman" both describes and fosters an agenda of mastery in Enlightenment

science. The metaphor does not empower actual flesh-and-blood women but identifies them with passive, pliable "Nature" and empowers actual men to control both women In "The Invitation," and the material environment.35 women look on with awe as male scientists and engineers apply knowledge that
has valued real-world consequences, using powers that surpass the "drooping,"

"fluttering" The knowledge

capability

of the feminine. in Barbauld's writings limitations between insistence on

of feminine exemplify her culture's about nature, gender, and knowledge. Women could and did pursue ambiguities natural history in its descriptive, aesthetic, and noninvasive modes; they became serious students of science, taught the young, and produced successful books for
general readers. But women were not encouraged to become experimental or the

shifting borderlines for all and acceptance

and "shapers" of new knowledge.36 Barbauld's scientists, the producers as she writes in A Legacy for Young Ladies, women is suggestive: very phrasing were "excused" from the professions, but "nothing [would] excuse" them from their domestic duty. Harriet Guest suggests that the public/professional and pri so vate/domestic realms were more fluidly interactive than previously recognized, oretical from [professional] may have been vital "exemption productivity" role of "civilizing" men.37 Even so, Barbauld's language of offense and judgment, pardon and excuse hints that the stakes were high for the trans intellectual woman. The anecdote of the surreptitious gressively deposit of her to their valued
"Petition" in Priestley's mousetrap epitomizes women's need to maneuver around

that women's

cultural Barbauld's
criticism

proscriptions acquiescence
of one man's

when

to speak about science. Nonetheless, they wanted to gender divisions in scientific study did not preclude

practice.

54

Eighteenth-Century

Studies

37/1

"SO MUCH MANGLED": PRIESTLEYAND VIVISECTION

If Barbauld was an outsider to experimental science, she was an insider influence raised [her] pen "brightening a safe environment home provided for

in the Priestleys' "social circle," whose sive mind" (Poem 1, lines 41-2). Their intellectual

the young poet's horizons beyond the bounds dialogue and broadened the only Petition" her parents.38 By no means was "The Mouse's by prescribed text inwhich she challenged Joseph Priestley; rather, itwas one volley in an ongo ing battle of wits between the friends about the pursuit of knowledge. reaction to Priestley's History Their dialogue begins with Barbauld's of In the preface to the second edition, Priestley lo the Present State of Electricity. cates himself with other natural philosophers of knowledge: atop the mountain "To look down from the eminence, and to see, and compare all those gradual in the ascent, advances seated on the eminence, cannot and who to those who are but give the greatest pleasure feel all the advantages of their elevated situa

his claims for science sweeping: "The immediate tion." His agenda is ambitious, use of natural science is the power it gives us over nature, by means of the knowl edge we acquire of its laws; whereby human life is, in its present state, made more comfortable and happy .... And by these sciences also it is, that the views of the
human bled."39 mind itself are enlarged, and our common nature improved and enno

a prose work is "The Hill of Science: A Vision," response In it she echoes Priestley's the same year as "The Mouse's Petition." published own phrasing while she rewrites the hill-of-science the value allegory to question on which her friend is "seated." In Barbauld's of the "eminence" Pil text?part Barbauld's
grim's Progress, part Purgatorio?a pilgrim-dreamer labors toward the moun

is noticeably messier than Priestley's, taintop "temple due to the "heaps of rubbish, [which] continually tumbled down from the higher Some climbers become "disgusted" and give up: "sitting parts of the mountain." on some fragment of the rubbish, down the multitude below [they] harangued Barbauld's
with the greatest marks of importance and self-complacency." But Barbauld's pro

of Truth."

hill

tagonist
"form nounces, of

is rescued
diviner "Science

by a sudden
features may raise and you

apparition:
a more to benign eminence,

not Truth
radiance," but I alone

but the goddess

who can guide you

Virtue,
an to felici

imperiously

"Hill of Science" reads like a reminder to Priestley of his own ty!"40 Barbauld's assertion that the claims of "benevolence" and moral virtue supersede the pursuit of "The greatest, and noblest use of philosoph power over nature. As he had written, ical speculation is the discipline of the heart, and the opportunity it affords of
inculcating benevolent and pious sentiments upon the mind. . . .The contempla

should give a sublimity to [the philosopher's] virtue . . . and teach him to aspire to the moral perfections of the great author of all things."41 One realm inwhich virtue might cultivate a "discipline of the heart" was tion of the works of God sympathy for animals. on animals had begun of sensibility began emphasis on animals' demnations In parallel but not coincidental developments, experiments to attract criticism around midcentury, when the discourse to assert nonhuman creatures' capacity to suffer pain. The

feeling departed from debates of previous eras, when con of cruelty usually cited human-centered reasons such as animals' val

Bellanca

/ Anna

Barbauld's

"The Mouse's

Petition"

55

ue as property or the belief that animal abusers would likely abuse humans as well.42 In Barbauld's lifetime, while English culture remained strongly anthropo
centric, animal "feeling"?a conflation of physical sensation and emotion?took

on unprecedented importance.43 More people insisted that to inflict needless suf or not it [had] any human on animals was "wrong regardless of whether fering Like Tristram Shandy's uncle Toby, who spares a fly's life, sensi consequences."
tive persons decided that even unpopular creatures such as snakes, toads, and

spiders deserve
ing mice

respect,

and some expressed

qualms

about killing

insects or catch

in traps.44

a menagerie Barbauld's writings, of beset birds, cats, dogs, Throughout and other "small vulnerable animals" provides company for the furry captive of 45 "The Mouse's Petition." Barbauld and Aikin's Evenings at Home contains many In "The Trans that imagine the world from animal characters' viewpoints. a kind man realizes his wish to become differ of Indur," for example, migrations pieces
ent animals with "rational souls" and memory, whereupon he experiences first

and pr?dations of animal existence.46 These stories clearly imply that living things exist for their own reasons, not merely for human exploitation. are Made is propounded in the dialogue That message "What Animals explicitly hand For," inwhich a father exhorts she finds them annoying:
[T]he Creator down

the dangers

his young

daughter

not to kill flies simply because

desires the happiness of all his equally as much with these flies upon benignity . . . We around ourselves. have a right to us, as upon use of all animals for our advantage, and also to free looks such extend. take as are hurtful But we their upon to us. So far our abuse should never

creatures, that make are

and sporting

a reasonable from

ourselves

over them may superiority fairly nor them for our mere amusement, infant may destroy life, but all

away

the kings

lives wantonly. earth cannot

. . .An restore

it.47

If destroying attached
medicine.

to experiments
In the

since the Renaissance,

flies was questionable, it is not surprising that disapproval on animals. Such experimentation had played a key role, in advancing knowledge about anatomy, physiology, and
century, vivisection?that is, dissection or other sur

seventeenth

been gical procedures performed on living animals for research or teaching?had as the "lacteals," or lymphatic system, involved in such fundamental discoveries and circulation of the blood. By the eighteenth century, animal experiments were
generating controversy outside the scientific community. Defenders of vivisection

argued
that, as

that the knowledge

creatures without

gained was
reason,

unavailable
could be

through
treated

other methods
as objects with

and
no

animals

moral

Swift's satire of speculative science in Gulliv er's Travels, indignities perpetrated on a dog serve to lambaste experimental prac tices as crude and preposterous, without for the necessarily implying sympathy

claim on humans.48

In Jonathan

the potential dog. Other writers, more respectful of science in general, weighed benefits of research against its costs in harm to animals. The Spectator and the Gentleman's Magazine as well as declared vivisection and unnecessary pointless the "right" to kill animals even for med cruel, while Alexander Pope questioned to human health.49 A particularly ical discoveries important strong indictment appeared in Samuel Johnson's Idler in 1758. Although Johnson usually followed

56 science with

Eighteenth-Century

Studies

37/1

in this essay he expressed "abhorrence" for "the infer enthusiasm, "race of wretches," iour professors of medical knowledge"?a he declared, "whose is to nail dogs to tables and open them alive; to try how favourite amusement or with the excision in various degrees of mutilation, long life may be continued or laceration of the vital parts .... if the knowledge of physiology has been somewhat learns the use of the encreased, he surely buys knowledge dear, who lacteals at the expence of his humanity."50 The phrase "at the expence of humanity" must have resonated with Jo some nine years later in his account of his own seph Priestley, for it appeared
work. Priestley performed "a great number of experiments on animals," begin

in his History ning with the research discussed of the Present State of Electricity. some distinction: These experiments earned him according to Benjamin Franklin, "Animals larger and more difficult to kill, appear to have been killed by the doc than by any other before used."51 But the History also betrays even distaste, about this aspect of his work. Narrating his Priestley's ambivalence, of the physiological effects of lightning strikes, Priestley describes his sub study jection of a rat, a shrew, cats, and dogs to electric shock and the resulting "vio lent" convulsions and other disturbing effects. In one instance, to spare a cat so to administer a "second from a "lingering death," Priestley was moved to put the creature out of its misery. When he tried a larger shock on the head of a dog, "all his [the animal's] limbs were extended, he fell backwards, and or sign of life, for about a minute." After half an hour of any motion, lay without treated stroke" a great quantity of saliva; and there was the dog "kept discharging convulsions, also a great flux of rheum from his eyes, on which he kept putting his feet; though in other respects he lay perfectly listless." The dog survived in this condition until the next day, when Priestley part of his head."52 "dispatched [him], by shooting him through the hinder tor's Apparatus,

in connection with Priestley expresses explicit doubts about these methods an experiment on a frog. He had dissected the frog's thorax the dramatic result of to observe its heartbeat, an electric shock: "Upon receiving the then administered stroke,
the

the lungs were

thrown quite

instantly
out of

inflated;
the body."

and, together with

After some

the other contents

movements,

of
"at

thorax,

tentative

last the creature seemed as if itwould have come to life, if it had not been so much In an uneasy echo of Johnson, Priestley concludes that "it is paying mangled." to purchase dear for philosophical at the expence of humani them discoveries, if ty."53 Barbauld probably knew about these episodes from reading the History, not from firsthand observation. At Warrington, his experi Priestley performed ments near his house; he welcomed in an outbuilding and it seems witnesses, he would discuss his work with Barbauld and other friends. Even if Bar likely bauld did not witness in person, she may have heard their audi any experiments ble results?such Priestley, work that an explosion of mixed gases on one occasion that, according "burst a glass and had like to have done me a mischief."54 entered led to his to

lab in the early 1770s when, the Priestley's undertaking isolation of oxygen, he sought "a farther insight into the constitution of the atmosphere."55 Curious about the differences between ordi and "noxious" a "full-grown mouse" determined that enclosed nary air, Priestley in a glass vessel of "common air" could survive for "about a quarter of an hour."

Mice

Bellanca He

/ Anna

Barbauld's

"The Mouse's

Petition"

57

and ob then placed mice in vessels of air mixed with various contaminants as well as the effects of their breathing on the effects on their respiration, call adding in the contained air. In what vivisection opponents would doubtless on live mice of sult to injury, Priestley studied, among other things, the effects served

air that was "generated solely from putrefying mice, which I have been some months, than which nothing can be more deadly."56 Itwas while collecting in a that Barbauld placed her poem of animal advocacy he was thus engaged itwas discovered "after breakfast," mouse's where cage, breathing

THE "FELLOWSHIP OF SENSE": "THEMOUSE'S PETITION"

Infiltrating the workspace of experiment via the domestic spaces of Priestley's Petition" brings the cultures of science and sensibility into home, "The Mouse's nor strictly private, Priestley's house intimate proximity. Neither strictly public may qualify as Harriet Guest's "third site" of social exchange, an cum-laboratory interactions could incubate public virtues.57 The mouse's private a cri is a compact rhetorical performance that deftly weaves postprandial plea poem and a tique of Priestley's work with the playful wit of the light occasional web of allusion to the serious debate about animals. The poem deploys two cul ven the language of feeling and anthropomorphic apparatus, turally powerful to imagine a sentient but subject creature as an effective speaking subject. triloquism, To begin with the critique of vivisection, entrapment though the mouse's can certainly symbolize human bondage, its immediate poignancy arises from the literal details of Priestley's method. The mouse's sighing is not only a convention of sentimental literature; it also puns on the fact that the actual mouse may suffo captive's desire for "the vital air" (line 21) is thus quite literal as well. its assertion that light and air are "common Further, (line 24) plays on gifts" references to "common air"?air both ordinary and meant to be shared Priestley's by all:
The Are Let The chearful blessings nature's common light, the vital air,

arena where

cate. The

given; widely commoners enjoy gifts of heaven,

(lines

21-4)

The

takes advantage of the "overlapping rhetorical strategies" noted Sant in narratives of suffering and scientific accounts: like Priestley's Barbauld's poem "isolates] the creature and mak[es] it suffer."58 The experiment, scene of sensibility in humanitarian and literary poet literalizes the conventional texts?the and scrutiny of a representative display feeling captive?to figure the by Ann Van distress of an actual flesh-and-blood victim. than of on Barbauld's warning that "Virtue" ismore desirable Elaborating intellectual the poem casts a dubious "eminence," eye on the manipulation

"Petition"

weaker

creatures.

The

mousetrap's

"wiry

grate"

is associated

with

the

"tyrant's

chain," which Priestley ordinarily would "spurn," and with the traps of fate that threaten "men, like mice" thus joins the dreamer (lines 6, 10, 48, 46). The mouse "Hill of Science" in raising moral rectitude above callous or soul of Barbauld's In place of ambition, less scientific achievement. the "Petition's" language of feel

58

Eighteenth-Century

Studies

37/1

the mouse imagination: appeals not sympathetic ing seeks to ignite Priestley's to its captor's head but to his "breast" or heart, which the mouse implores only him to open so he may open the trap (line 9). The "well taught philosophic mind" to other creatures; indeed, it should feel should be more, not less, compassionate "for all that lives" (lines 26, 28). The mouse's plea is concerned not so much with as with the painful emotions it already feels: "For prospective bodily discomfort /Which here forlorn and sad I sit, / . . .And tremble at th' approaching morn, in is that modeled fate" (lines 5, 7-8). The desired response brings impending in which of the speaker's recognition Barbauld's later poem "The Caterpillar," her kinship with a "helpless thing" makes her "feel and clearly recognise / .. . [its] fellowship of sense with all that breathes" (Poem 133, lines 1, 25-7). In this approach Barbauld allies herself with other writers, such as Anne in human terms. G. J. Finch and Anna Seward, who imagined animal subjectivity asserts that women writers in particular, who found themselves Barker-Benfield in a culture dominated and "dependent" "vulnerable" by men, "put themselves 'in the place' of animals" even more than they did that of poor people, prisoners,
slaves, or other intended beneficiaries of reform.59 Women's texts about animals,

Anne Doody, says Margaret the immediate and physical

another creature.60 In

"mix humour and compassion as the speaker projects herself

the mouse's subject position,

with a strong sense of . . . into the being" of

Barbauld's "Peti

adopting

inHymns tion" anticipates her admonishment must speak on behalf of "dumb" nature.61 In addition philosophical to time inWestern that animals

in Prose

for Children

that humans

to its literary genealogy, is also descended the "Petition" from creatures. From time debates about humans' relationship with other

the argument of cruelty have countered history, opponents lack mind or spirit by hypothesizing that they may have "rational notion that implies both reasoning power and the potential souls"62?a for an afterlife. In this vein, the mouse warns Priestley:
If mind, A never Still as ancient sages taught,

flame, dying shifts thro' matter's form lest the same,

varying

forms,

In every Beware, A brother's And

in the worm soul you find;

you

crush

tremble

Dislodge

a kindred

lest thy luckless hand mind, (lines 29-36)

A few commentators

believed in the transmigration of souls, as uses the scientist's did Priestley for a short time, and Barbauld's mouse craftily former belief against him.63 The animal may, after all, be a kindred spirit who shares the fellowship not only of "sense" or feeling but also that of mind. The mouse appeal to Priestley's
feelings: the

on animal welfare

draws

on philosophical issues in other ways. It backs up its with an argument older than the interest in ani sympathy
to humans of their own cruelty. The mouse wish

mals'

consequences

"health," "peace," and "heartfelt ease" if he spares its life (lines and more ominously, it hints at what may happen if he does 42, 43). Conversely, not: "when destruction lurks unseen, /Which men, like mice, may share," there

es the scientist

Bellanca may

/ Anna

Barbauld's

"The Mouse's

Petition"

59

be no "kind angel" around to "break the hidden snare" for Priestley (lines with playful The poem thus affirms human-animal kinship irony by re that what happens to the mouse can easily happen to the man. Priestley minding 45-8).

RESISTING THE TECHNOLOGY OF ENTRAPMENT

is not the only natural entity in Barbauld's poems en caged mouse Other creatures, as well as energy bearing forces snared by human machinery. confined or chan such as rivers and lightning, share the mouse's predicament, a pheasant caught in a "wiry net" In "To Mrs. P[riestley]," neled by technology. The in its grate, for liberty and longs, like the mouse feels "Oppress'd by bondage" a mourns lines 51, 54). The prose poem "Epitaph on a Goldfinch" (Poem 3, animal with bird abducted by the "pitiless hands of a two-legged freedom-loving out feathers" and "confined in a grated prison." The goldfinch's repeated "peti until at last the bird dies.64 In other poems, as tion for redress" goes disregarded in "The Mouse's gets wielded Petition," natural entities yearn for release from scientific gad by Priestleyesque projectors.

arose in self-confessed "enthusiasm" for natural philosophy Priestley's In the History instruments." from his delight in "philosophical part of Electricity he recommends financing equipment purchases by spending less money on books, "which are generally read and laid aside, without yielding half the entertainment." Instruments and reveal nothing less than provide "an endless fund of knowledge" ... of the God of nature himself, which are infinitely various. By the "operations we are able to put an endless variety of things into an the help of these machines,
variety recalcitrance of situations." creates a need Nature for does substantial not always resources, cooperate, especially however, experimental and

endless that

to be "Nature will not be put out of her way, and suffer her materials apparatus: . . . thrown into all the variety of situations, which philosophy without requires,
trouble and expence."65

In this struggle between the "requirements" of natural philosophy and a stubborn feminine nature, Barbauld's poems may be rooting for the latter. Several of them concern devices contrived to manipulate natural forces, but those devices
dominate phenomena only for a time. In "Inscription for an Ice-House," the sea

son of winter is imprisoned by "man, the great magician," the ele who molds ments to his will and presses winter into the domestic service of preserving food brothers' hot-air balloon, an exciting in (Poem 95, lines 4-5). The Montgolfier
vention that appears in "Washing-Day," enables men to harness warm air and

elude gravity (Poem 102). "An Inventory of the Furniture inDr. Priestley's Study" lists among the scientist's equipment Leyden jars containing electric charges (Poem that is, specifically 21, line 19). Like the icehouse, these devices are manmade,
masculine; as Isobel Armstrong asserts, the phrase "man, the great magician"

men who "surely [signifies] subject "control the genius of th'unwilling in Barbauld's flood" "The Invitation," all these technologies of entrapment seek to appropriate the creatures and powers of (usually) feminine nature. the masculine alone."66 Like the "resistless" These about the hot-air science. of Barbauld's other texts poems share the ineradicable ambivalence In general they approvingly treat inventions like the icehouse and balloon as instruments of progress that will better the human condi

60

Eighteenth-Century

Studies

37/1

that these technologies tion. But the mastery represent entails a price, the poems in the uncertainty of what trapped phenomena, "oppress'd by bondage," imply, and will inevitably in the icehouse only temporarily is confined may do. Winter "To rush in whirlwinds and rule the year" (line 31). The hot-air forth, escape balloon in "Washing-Day"?whose first, experimental passengers were three do crash or go awry. The poem wryly deflates, as it were, mestic animals67?could "the that resemble triumph, an instance of "the toils of men" line 84), The lightning in Priestley's of children" (Poem 102, laboratory sports like the exploding gases that "phials" could wreak havoc in the neighborhood, a rogue spirit, if released these electric once almost did him "a mischief." Like the balloonists' / And kill houses, charges could "Bring down the lightning on [the neighbors'] In these texts, their geese, and fright their spouses" (Poem 21, lines 16, 21, 23-4). tranquility and normalcy? experimental gadgetry disrupts or threatens domestic work in "Washing-Day"?as well as the lives of helpless such as the women's creatures. on the problematic entrapment Elaborating these images of incarcerated nature call into question technocracy?an optimism
to share.

aggressive

in "The Mouse's Petition," a headlong optimism about Barbauld was inclined that, paradoxically,

BARBAULD'S DISCLAIMER AND THE "PETITION'S" RECEPTION

Turner reports that the "Petition" moved Priestley to Although William one particular mouse, to use mice in his work with the philosopher continued free gases until at least 1775 (then, citing imprecise results, he decided "not to make in contrast, took the any more experiments with mice"),68 The reading public, poem's antivivisection with dialogue Critical Review, to say sarcastically critics implications more to heart. At the same time, Barbauld's in her attitudes. The conflicts further exposes unresolved its subtitle the poem as an attack on Priestley, amended treating

that the petition was found by "the humane Dr. P." (emphasis the reviewer in original). Evidently familiar with Priestley's work on electricity, that the mouse had been caught "to be tortured by electrical experi misreported not for experiments with gases. The writer went on to "commend the ments," to extricate the little wretch from misery" for endeavouring and lady's humanity to "testify our abhorrence of the cruelty practised by experimental philosophers."69 "be of Review desired that "The Mouse's Petition" would Similarly, The Monthly as well as other experimental service to that gentleman [Priestley] philosophers, to the poor harmless animals, that are who are not remarkable for their humanity so ill-fated as to fall in their way."70 In later editions of her Poems, Barbauld over Priestley's herself from faultfinding A note in the distanced experiments. to find, that is concerned and fifth editions reads, "The Author third, fourth, was intended as the petition of mercy against justice, has been construed as what of humanity against cruelty. She is certain that cruelty could never be to whom this is addressed; and the poor animal from the Gentleman apprehended would have suffered more as the victim of domestic economy, than of philosoph the pleas
ical curiosity."71

Barbauld's tice" to experiment

here is puzzling. Her implication that itwas "jus backpedaling with the mouse undercuts the poem's message of sympathy.

Bellanca On

/ Anna

Barbauld's

"The Mouse's

Petition"

61

but horrified the other hand, the poet may have been not merely "concerned" in print as "not remarkable to see her good friend condemned for [his] humani as much as a disclaimer ty." Her note may be a defense against such a perception

the intent of the "Petition." (She may also be dryly hinting that animal sympathy, as a practical matter, has its limits: just as the mouse would have been vermin in their killed as a pest, most people would not hesitate to exterminate after Barbauld's death, Turner's account of the poem's gen Decades later, homes.) about esis reproduced her efforts at damage control, possibly out of loyalty to the Aikin and circle. Like Barbauld, Turner represents Priestley's use of mice as unavoidable treats their fate in the lab as relatively humane: "no more easy or unexceptionable such experiments way of making [on gases] could be devised, than the reserving of these little victims of domestic economy, which were thus at least as easily and as speedily
other readers,

put out of existence,

"The Mouse's

as by any of the more

clearly asserts

usual modes."72
a humble creature's

For many
right to

Petition"

exist
Mouse,"

unmolested
variations

by human
on the

machinations.
"men,

Possibly
like mice"

by way
have become

of Burns's
shorthand,

"To a
an

phrase

equation
cissitudes

representing
of an uncertain

humans'
world.73

and other

animals'

shared vulnerability

to the vi

about the poem's reception speaks to the final irrec is desirable, in her dialogue with Priestley. Knowledge oncilability costs of knowledge?in animal suffering, inmanipula both writers agree, but the tion of nature, in "trouble and expence"?are "Truth" at the high. Discovering is a purchase and "humanity" expense of compassion "dear," as disturbingly Barbauld's anxiety of the tensions is neither a definitive had put it. In the end, "The Mouse's Petition" on animal experiments nor a broadside attack on science, but a pronouncement nonce utterance provoked board" by a caged animal at Priestley's "hospitable Priestley (Poem 19, line 40). Mock-serious though its tone may be, this slight poem about a small mammal is a nexus of more epochal phenomena: science, experimental the culture of sensibility, advocacy for animals, and the gendered politics of knowl "The Mouse's Peti edge. A sidelong subversion of Enlightenment technocracy,
tion" is a scene of engagement among competing but interdependent discourses

to terms with struggling and men. thinking, feeling women

to come

the material

world

and with

its meanings

for

NOTES
Iwould Knowles, like to thank Christopher D. Johnson, E. Lorraine comments and the ECS readers for their helpful de Montluzin, on this essay. David L. Cowles, Travis W.

1. William Ga.: Univ. cited

and Elizabeth eds., The Poems Kraft, McCarthy (Athens, of Anna Letitia Barbauld of Georgia of Barbauld's hereafter Press, 1994). Quotations poems are from this edition, in text by poem number and line number. For the full text of "The Mouse's see Petition,"

appendix. 2. William "Mrs. Barbauld," Newcastle n.s., 4 (1825): 184, qtd. in Turner, Magazine, McCarthy and Kraft, Poems, was an early historian 244. Turner, of Newcastle, an of Warrington Academy, Aikin of Anna Letitia's poems. and a collector See McCarthy and Kraft, Poems, family acquaintance, 204, 377.

62 Eighteenth-Century
3. McCarthy 4. 5. Review Lawrence and Kraft, of Poems Poems, 245. Letitia Aikin],

Studies

37/1

[by Anna

Critical

Review

35

(1773):

192-5.

tion of American The Watchman, don: Routledge 6. Marlon of Dissent," en Writers, 7. Donna

Thor eau, Nature and the Forma Buell, The Environmental Imagination: Writing, Univ. Press, 1985), Culture 185; Samuel Taylor Coleridge, (Cambridge: Cambridge vol. 2 of The Collected Works ed. Lewis Patton, (Lon of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Kegan Paul, 1970), 313.

B. Ross, The Woman of Feminine Reform: Writer and the Tradition "Configurations in Carol Shiner Wilson and Joel Haefner, Romanticism: British Wom eds., Re-Visioning 1776-1837 Univ. of Pennsylvania 98-9. Press, 1994), (Philadelphia: Landry, 1671-1831 The Invention of the Countryside: Hunting, Walking, U. K.: Palgrave, 2001), 8, 123-4. and Ecology in English

Literature, 8. Moira

(Basingstoke,

Animal and Englishwomen, 1780-1900: and Patriots, Nation, Ferguson, Advocacy on anti-slavery 3-4. For more and rhetoric (Ann Arbor: Univ. of Michigan Press, 2001), see Markman of animals, and Com Race, Gender Ellis, The Politics representations of Sensibility: merce in the Sentimental Novel Univ. Press, 1996), 50-5. Barbauld's (Cambridge: Cambridge "Epis Empire tle toWilliam 87 in Poems. 9. Ferguson, Animal Advocacy Maehle Century: (London: Man and 175-6. Poetry: The IAltered," Univ. Press, 1988), 197. in Romanticism and Feminism, ed. Anne K. and Englishwomen, 4. Wilberforce, Esq. on the Rejection of the Bill for abolishing the Slave Trade" is number

10. Andreas-Holger End of the Eighteenth Historical Perspective 11. Keith Thomas, 1983),

and Ulrich Attitudes Croom

to the "Animal Experimentation from Antiquity Trohler, inNicolaas and Arguments," A. Rupke, in ed., Vivisection Helm, 1987), 30. World: A History of the Modern Sensibility (New York:

the Natural

Pantheon, 12. Mellor

167-9,

Stuart Curran, (Bloomington:

"Romantic Indiana

13. Ann B. Shteir, Cultivating Science: Flora's Daughters in Eng and Botany Women, Cultivating to 1860 Univ. Press, 2. On women aristocrats and land, 1760 (Baltimore: 1996), Johns Hopkins see Shteir, Cultivating natural history, and David E. Allen, The Naturalist in Britain: Women, 47-50; A Social History on women For broader historical context and (London: Allen Lane, 1976), 28-9. see Barbara T. Gates and Ann B. Shteir, eds., Natural Women Science Reinscribe science, Eloquence: Univ. of Wisconsin (Madison: Press, 1997), 5-7; and Londa Women in the Origins Science of Modern (Cambridge, Mass.: 14. Prose ence, Anna 15. The Mind Has No Schiebinger, Harvard Univ. Press, 1989). Sex?

to A Legacy in Pieces, Lucy Aikin, preface for Young Ladies, Consisting of Miscellaneous and Verse, by the Late Mrs. Barbauld iv. On Barbauld's influ (Boston: David, 1826), Reed, see William at Palgrave: "The Celebrated A Documentary of McCarthy, Academy History Letitia Barbauld's 8 (1997): 280. School," Age of Johnson Gates and Shteir, Natural Eloquence, Interests 1520-1918 Scientific and Kraft, Poems, 227. of Anna Laetitia Barbauld. With a Memoir by Lucy 7; Patricia Phillips, The (London: Weidenfeld Scientific Lady: A Social Histo and Nicolson, 129-30. 1990),

ry of Women's

16. McCarthy 17. Aikin, 18. Pennant

vol. 1 of The Works Lucy Aikin, Memoir, 2 vols. (London: Longman, 1825), x-xi. The Aikin circle was White. connected with

the coterie a friend Poems,

of naturalist-writers

that

included

Thomas

and Gilbert

may have known; Nature from White's gleaned out the book's second to natural 19. 20.

John Aikin was see McCarthy and Kraft, naturalist's in 1802. edition

of Pennant, whose British Zoology Barbauld In 1795 Aikin edited a Calendar 334, 224. of

journals and Natural History of Selb orne, and he brought These collaborations had ample access suggest that Barbauld

history

knowledge. xxv. and Mary ed. Edwin W. Marrs Lamb, at Palgrave," "Celebrated Academy Jr. (Ithaca: 313. Cornell Univ. Press,

Aikin, Letters

Memoir,

of Charles

1975-78),

2:81-2;

McCarthy,

Bellanca
21. Barbauld, Lessons

/ Anna
for Children,

Barbauld's
Part

"The Mouse's
S.C.: J. Hoff,

Petition"
1807), 12, 10-11.

63

I (Charleston,

rev. and at Home; 22. and Anna Barbauld, or, the Juvenile Budget Opened, Evenings John Aikin the dialogue and Houghton, York: Hurd ed. Cecil Hartley 1864). See, for example, (New "Eyes, and conservative Barbauld's and Aikin's works also reproduce 274-81. No Eyes; or, The Art of Seeing," in led by female mentors Unlike the dialogues about the gendered pursuit of knowledge. expectations and others, most of the natural history dialogues of Trimmer, Wakefield, the works Wollstonecraft, at Home for adult male teachers. While in Evenings feature boy protagonists specimens identifying are depicted of the earth, equally often they learn lessons of and the movements studying gravity girls moral virtue, compassion including probably wrote most of the natural and female For more on dialogues for animals. history dialogues by Lucy Aikin's Judging at Home; in Evenings attributions, see Memoir, John Aikin xxxvi-xxvii.

see Gates and Shteir, Natural 7-12; teacher-mentors, Eloquence, Rational and 81-103; Mitzi Myers, Governesses, Dames, Women, Shteir, Cultivating "Impeccable in Georgian Children's and the Female Tradition Mothers: Moral Books," Mary Wollstonecraft 14 (1986): for Women The and Greg Myers, "Science and Children: Literature Children's 31-59; in John Christie in the Nineteenth Science and Sally Shuttleworth, of Popular Century," Dialogue eds., Nature Transfigured: 173-81. 1989), 23. 24. 25. Barbauld, Barbauld, McCarthy Legacy Science and Literature, 1700-1900 (Manchester: Manchester Univ. Press,

for Young

Ladies,

29. 2:67.

letter printed and Kraft,

in Works, Poems, 244.

in her poetry; "The wheat Smith also discusses 26. Charlotte bird migration see, for example, Univ. Press, (New York: Oxford 1993), ear," in The Poems Smith, ed. Stuart Curran of Charlotte was fascinated or hibernate. 194-6. Gilbert White of whether swallows migrate by the mystery 27. Women Guest, "Eighteenth-Century in Britain, and Literature in Vivien Character,'" Jones, ed., Univ. Press, 2000), 53; Mc (Cambridge: Cambridge to Appear': in Anna Was Going and Gender Desire, Repression, in Paula R. Feldman and Theresa M. Kelley, Women eds., Romantic Femininity: 1700-1800 Sexual (Hanover, 56. Learning, Patriotism, 1750-1810 (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago N.H.: Univ. Press of New England, 1995), 116. 'A Supposed

'"We Hoped the Woman Carthy, Letitia Barbauld's Early Poems," Writers: 28. 29. Press, 30. Voices and Countervoices Women,

Shteir, Cultivating Guest, 2000), Small 95-110.

Change:

Women,

Shteir, Cultivating

Women,

37.

31. This letter has been for critical debate about Barbauld See Guest, and feminism. "We Hoped"; and Daniel White, "The 'Joineriana': Femininity"; "Eighteenth-Century McCarthy, Anna Barbauld, the Aikin and the Dissenting Public Family Circle, Sphere," Eighteenth-Century a biography 32A is preparing Studies who of Barbauld, maintains that (1999): 530-1. McCarthy, to make her niece, Lucy Aikin, edited the letter in Works Barbauld He appear safely conservative. predicts thy, "A Harriet the Doors 32. seen in "full biographical that the letter, when will context," Christian 'High-Minded Lady': The Posthumous Reception Linkin and Stephen C. Behrendt, Kramer eds., Romanticism of Reception Memoir, (Lexington: xvii-xviii. Univ. of Kentucky Press, 1999), have import; see McCar Letitia Barbauld," in Writers: and Women Opening of Anna 189. a new

a touchstone

Aikin,

nor anyone 24-6. Of course, neither Priestley 33. Barbauld, else was a Legacy for Young Ladies, in the eighteenth ac scientist is marking the difference between century. Barbauld "professional" in addition, that would distract women from their any avocation quiring and producing knowledge; domestic is problematic. scientific work was not without diffi "professional knowledge" Priestley's to get financing, and coll?gial culties; he labored constantly support. His experiments equipment, were and sometimes for violating ridicule, but he was not criticized subject to criticism gender norms as an aspiring woman scientist would likely have been.

34. For an analysis of science see Penny Bradshaw, "Gendering Anna Letitia Barbauld," Women's

in this poem and gender that overlaps with mine in some respects, the Enlightenment: in the Poetry of Conflicting Images of Progress 5.3 (1998): 357-9. Writing

64 Eighteenth-Century
35. Evelyn Fox Keller, Reflections 64. Other key sources on "feminine" in Michelle Is to Culture?" Zimbalist Society Women, Rose, Univ. 36. and 296. 37. 38. 39. Guest, Small Change, 238. 120-2. (Stanford: Stanford Univ. and the Scientific Ecology, The Feminism and Geography: Press, Gates 1993). on Gender nature Rosaldo

Studies
and Science

37/1

include

Press, 1974), Revolution Limits

Yale Univ. Press, 1985), (New Haven: as Nature to Male "Is Female Sherry B. Ortner, and and Louise Women, Culture, eds., Lamphere, The Death 67-87; Carolyn Merchant, of Nature: Harper Knowledge and Row, 1980); and Gillian Minnesota (Minneapolis:

(San Francisco:

of Geographical

"scientist"

Nicholas

"student of science" 6.1 borrow between the distinction and Shteir, Natural Eloquence, in Andrew and and the Sciences," from Trevor Levere, Cunningham "Coleridge Univ. Press, and the Sciences 1990), eds., Romanticism Cambridge Jardine, (Cambridge:

McCarthy, Priestley,

"We Hoped,"

(London: 40. Letitia

J. Johnson

The History State of Electricity, of the Present and J. Payne, 1769), v, xviii, xvii. of Science: A Vision," inMiscellaneous 1773), lxv. 31-4, Pieces,

with

Original

Experiments,

2nd

ed.

"The Hill Aikin

"The Hill 41. 42. 201-2; 43.

(London: [Barbauld] to Barbauld of Science" History

J. Johnson, inMemoir, xviii.

in Prose, and Anna by John Aikin of 38. Lucy Aikin attributes authorship

Priestley,

of Electricity,

of Animals, See John Passmore, "The Treatment Man and the Natural 149-51, World, Thomas, Ann Jessie Van

"Journal 154.

of the History

of Ideas

36.2

(1975):

as of emotion notions that sensibility, informed Sant shows by traditional of physiological in its rhetoric of suf and psychological the categories collapsed and psychological about emotion was experience "prominently "rephysicalized" fering. Language see Eighteenth-Century and the Novel: The Senses in Social Context located in the body"; Sensibility "partly physical," Univ. Press, and theories of the nervous 1993), 93, 97. On sensibility (Cambridge: Cambridge in Eighteenth-Century The Culture Sex and Society tem, see G. J. Barker-Benfield, of Sensibility: Britain Press, 1992), 3-9. (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago 44. Man tudes Thomas, Man and the Natural toward and sys

the Eighteenth mal Estate: The Univ. 45. Press, Mitzi

see Thomas, to destroy vermin, 151. On the reluctance the Natural World, on the complexities atti of cultural 173, 176. For more World, background see Harriet in Natural for Children from Animals: Ritvo, animals, "Learning History 13 (1995): 72-93; and Nineteenth Children's Literature Centuries," Ritvo, The Ani in the Victorian Creatures and Other Age (Cambridge, English and Landry, Invention 113-25. 7-9, of the Countryside, "Of Mice in Louise and Mothers: Wetherbee Mrs. Barbauld's 'New Walk' Mass.: Harvard

1997);

Myers, Literature,"

and Gendered

Codes

in

Children's Women's

in American Experience 1995), 275. This article contains works for children. Barbauld's 46. 47. Aikin Aikin and Barbauld, and Barbauld, 1802),

and Janet Emig, and eds., Feminine Phelps Principles and Rhetoric Press, Composition (Pittsburgh: Univ. of Pittsburgh a useful discussion of "The Mouse's in Petition" and of animals

Evenings Evenings 2:103.

at Home at Home;

(1864

ed.),

114. Budget Opened, 2nded. (Philadel

or, The Juvenile

phia: A. Bartram,

48. Maehle and Trohler, "Animal Experimentation," came to be used more broadly ry, the term vivisection on live animals. cal or otherwise, 49. 50. See Maehle and Trohler, "Animal

14-20, to denote

34-7.

In the later nineteenth of experimentation,

centu surgi

any kind

Experimentation,"

28-32. and The

The Yale Edition (New Haven: 156-7. Lady,

L. F. Powell Scientific

vol. 2, ed. W. J. Bate, John M. Bullitt, of the Works of Samuel Johnson, Yale Univ. Press, see Phillips, 56. On Johnson and science, 1963),

Bellanca

/ Anna

Barbauld's

"The Mouse's

Petition"
E. Schofield remark

65
(Cam in

51. ed. Robert Joseph Priestley, Scientific Autobiography of Joseph Priestley, Institute of Technology Press, 1966), 35. Franklin's bridge, Mass.: Massachusetts a paper of his that is printed in Scientific Autobiography, 67. 52. of Electricity, Priestley, History of the same experiment ley's account 53. Priestley, History of Electricity, 618-20. The reference to "a lingering 35. death"

appears

appears

in Priest

in his Scientific 621-2.

Autobiography,

54. Priestley, to Priestley's 65. On witnesses Scientific Autobiography, see Betsy Rodgers, 22, 32; on his setup at Warrington, Autobiography, and Her Family Barbauld (London: Methuen, 1958), 41. 55. Presses, 56. 57. 58. 59. 60. ture Priestley, 1970), Priestley, Guest, Van Autobiography 113-4. Scientific Small of Joseph Priestley, ed. Jack Lindsay

experiments, Georgian

see Scientific Mrs. Chronicle:

(Teaneck,

N.J.:

Associated

Univ.

Autobiography, 11-12.

88.

Change,

Sant, Eighteenth-Century Culture Poets

Sensibility, of Sensibility, 234,

30,

71. 227, 231. in Vivien Press, Jones, ed., Women 231. and Litera

Barker-Benfield, Doody, in Britain, "Women 1700-1800

of the Eighteenth (Cambridge:

Cambridge

Century," Univ.

2000),

61. Hymns in Prose for Children 10-11. Barbauld writes, "The birds (London: J. Johnson, 1781), can warble, and young lambs can bleat; but we can open our lips in [God's] praise, we can speak of we will all his goodness. thank him for ourselves, Therefore thank him for those that and we will cannot on women For more writers see Barker-Benfield, and animal Culture speak." sympathy, of Sensibility, 62. 63. 232-6, and Mitzi "Treatment Myers, "Impeccable 197-8, Governesses" 208. and the Natural World, 138-41; on (see note 22), 43, 46-7.

Passmore, On

of Animals,"

Priestley's 64. 65. 66. Romantic Voices

beliefs,

the concept of transmigration, see McCarthy and Kraft, Legacy History for Young of Electricity, Ladies, ix-x,

see Thomas, Man 246. Poems, 105. xvi. How M.

Barbauld, Priestley,

Isobel Armstrong, "The Gush of in Paula R. Feldman Period?" and Countervoices

the Feminine: and Theresa

Can We

Read Women's Romantic

14.1 am indebted to (Hanover, N.H.: Univ. Press 1995), to gadgetry for calling my attention in other Barbauld texts. Armstrong notes that "In for an Ice-House," while "not quite the first poem written to a refrigerator," is "certainly scription one of the earliest hymns to technology." this essay 67. See Ann Messenger, His and Hers: Essays Univ. Press of Kentucky, 191. 1986), The Discovery of Poems of Poems 245. and Kraft, and Kraft, Poems, Poems, 245. 245. lists at least and men." of Oxygen: Letitia Letitia Part Aikin], Aikin], in Restoration and Eighteenth-Century Literature

eds., Kelley, of New England,

Poetry of the Women Writers:

(Lexington: 68. 69. 70.

Priestley, Review Review

1 (Edinburgh: Critical Monthly Review Review

E. S. Livingstone, 35 48 (1773): (1773): 193.

1961),

18.

[by Anna [by Anna

138, qtd.

inMcCarthy

and Kraft, 71. 72. Qtd. Qtd.

Poems,

inMcCarthy inMcCarthy

73. and Men may be the most obvious John Steinbeck's Of Mice example; WorldCat five nonfiction books about animals whose titles contain the words "mice laboratory

66

Eighteenth-Century

Studies

37/1

APPENDIX
"The Mouse's Petition, Found in the Trap where he had been Confined

all Night"
Oh! For And hear liberty never a pensive prisoner's that sighs; let thine heart cries. sad I sit, be prayer,

shut

Against For Within And Which If e'er And Let A Oh! here

the wretch's forlorn and

the wiry grate; at th' approaching tremble brings impending fate. freedom chain,

morn,

spurn'd not thy free-born do not

thy breast with a tyrant's strong mouse

glow'd, force

oppressive detain.

stain with

guiltless

blood

Thy hospitable hearth;

Nor that thy wiles triumph so little worth. A prize The My But That The Are Let The scatter'd frugal if thine gleanings supply; betray'd

of a feast

meals

heart unrelenting boon slender deny, light, the vital air,

chearful blessings nature's common

widely given; commoners enjoy gifts of heaven.

The well taught philosophic mind

To all compassion round feels Casts And gives; an equal the world for all that lives. eye,

If mind, A never Still

as ancient

sages

taught,

flame, dying shifts thro' matter's form lest the same,

varying

forms,

In every Beware, A brother's

in the worm soul you find;

you

crush

And

tremble

lest thy

luckless

hand

Dislodge Or, if this

a kindred transient life we

mind. of day

gleam

Be all of

share,

Let pity plead within

That little all to spare.

thy breast

Bellanca
So may With And thy hospitable health every and charm thy roof

/ Anna

Barbauld's

"The Mouse's

Petition"

67

board be crown'd; ease

peace

of heartfelt be found. lurks may clear

Beneath So, when Which May And

destruction like mice, kind angel the hidden

unseen, share, thy path,

men, some break

snare.