아동문학 속의 저항하는 동물들

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the changes in human and animal's relation depicted in the eighteenth and nineteenth children's literature. The intersection between the increasing interests in the animal rights and the sympathetic attitude towards animals depicted in the children's literature seems to open up the possibility to explore the changes in the human and animal's relations from the ecological perspective. For this purpose, I examine Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels, Arabella Argus's The Adventures of a Donkey, E Burrows's Tuppy, and Anna Sewell's Black Beauty. Reason which has been efficiently used to justify human superiority to animals becomes a target of satire and sometimes reversely given to animals in Gulliver's Travels. Moreover in The Adventures of a Donkey and Tuppy, the similarity between humans and animals are highlighted and sometimes animals possess much better quality than humans. Particularly the emphasis on "feeling" seems to elevate animals almost equal to humans in terms of its moral status. Some human's sentimental attitude towards animals and talking animals's strong resistance to human's cruel attitude towards animals persuade the readers into believing that animals are not simply machines but living creatures who feel the pain and pleasure. However those talking animals interestingly are not asking for their freedom, which modern day animal rights activist might argue. In The Adventures of a Donkey, Balaam recognizes their rights based on human's religion and law, but he asks not for a liberation, but for a merciful treatment from his human master. Similar message spoken by a mother of Black Beauty as well. But those animals are only accepting human rules of the upper class, who is described to exercise sympathy towards animals, in contrast to the lower class who is mercilessly inflicting pain and suffering to animals. To the children, the major readership of those texts, human and animal relationship depicted in those texts seem to give a very strong impact on the ways in which they understand the relation between humans and animals. Obviously those texts seem to improve humans's understanding of animals at the advantage of the persecuted animals and in that sense they contribute to the causes of animal rights movement and ecological understanding of humans and animals. However, they also strengthen the boundary between humans and animals at the advantage of the former and tend to discipline the lower class for their lack of sympathy.