'Animals Under Man?': Margaret Gatty's 'Parables from Nature'

Cosslett, Anna (2003) 'Animals Under Man?': Margaret Gatty's 'Parables from Nature'. Women's Writing, 10 (1). pp. 137-152. ISSN 0969-9082

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Abstract

Margaret Gatty’s Parables from Nature (1855-71) use the form of the moral tale for children to conduct a polemic against Tennysonian doubt, cleverly deploying the voices of talking animals and plants. The perspectives of animals, plants and children are valorised above those of arrogant male doubters. When this happens, the ironies Gatty uses can escape control, and lead to more subversive readings than the overt message, overturning the conventional hierarchies she has set up. The voices of the marginalised take over the centre, and comic inversion privileges the unprivileged, in a carnivalesque celebration of possibilities that terrify Tennyson, rather than the orthodox rebuttal of doubt called for by the feminine role. The article revalues Gatty’s 'feminine' and ‘animal’s-eye’ take on the problems about the natural world that exercise Tennyson and other canonical male writers, including Darwin and Hardy.

Item Type:
Journal Article
Journal or Publication Title:
Women's Writing
Additional Information:
The final, definitive version of this article has been published in the Journal, Women's Writing, 10 (1), 2003, © Informa Plc
Uncontrolled Keywords:
/dk/atira/pure/subjectarea/asjc/2700
Subjects:
?? medicine(all)arts and humanities(all)pe english ??
ID Code:
4483
Deposited By:
Deposited On:
19 Mar 2008 11:02
Refereed?:
Yes
Published?:
Published
Last Modified:
31 Dec 2023 00:19