Of Mice and Women: The Position of Women and Non-Human Animals in Wilkie Collins' Heart and Science and The Woman in White

Abstract

Two of Wilkie Collins’ sensation novels, The Woman in White (189-60) and Heart and Science (1882-83), represent women and non-human animals as occupying comparable cultural positions of vulnerability in Victorian society. This alignment between women and animals became particularly apparent in the emerging debates over the scientific practice of vivisection in the mid-to-late nineteenth century. The first chapter of this thesis examines the antivivisection movement which protested strongly against the practice of vivisection on animals and came to beled primarily by women. This chapter’s focus is on the reasons behind women’s passionate identification with non-human animals subject to cruel and painful experiment and how this reflected both groups’ vulnerable and subordinate position in society. The second chapter analyzes Collins’ own contribution to the antivivisection campaign in his polemic Heart and Science. This novel demonstrates the cruelty of the vivisector in Collins’ villain, Dr. Benjulia, but also, the strength and value of instinct and emotion as forms of knowledge which are typically feminized and devalued. Collins ultimately recommends a type of medical care that is attentive to both the body and the mind rather than separating them into binary structures. Lastly, the third chapter examines The Woman in White, which was published before the vivisection controversy yet still demonstrates women’s alignment with animals particularly in their relationships with the two different male villains Count Fosco and Sir Percival. This novel represents women resisting these men’s attempts to treat them like inferior animals and instead asserting their own authority as capable beings. By doing so, Collins reveals not only the constructed ideals of superiority and inferiority in society but also the extreme vulnerability of those labeled ‘inferior’ beings.