The jungle caged
Tropical nature could be visually domesticated by depictions of animals in association with English pets, homes, and clothing. Part of this project of domestication was about demonstrating complete domination; while the elephant playing golf might not seem terribly upset, part of the function was to display the imperial ability to manipulate the natural world. Images of animals in zoos, visibly caged, presented a less subtle vision of the imperial power to domesticate.[1]
The first and most tangible aspect of zoos is simply that they were zoos—the animals were caged. When animals are visibly behind bars, “the encounter between human and animal is mediated by the awareness of artificiality and confinement and powerlessness.”[2] Consider the shadowy hyenas in More Tales Told at the Zoo (fig. 1). The emphasis is on the fact of their containment, rather than the physical form of the animals themselves. In fig. 2, the bars again have a prominent position mediating the space between the observer and the lion.
The cover of At the Zoo features a particularly proud-seeming lion, but the bars and the faces of two little girls peering through them reduce his pride to laughable posturing (fig. 3). The caged nature of zoo animals expressed the ultimate power of the empire to divorce animals from their natural habitats and display them to the paying public.
However, not all zoo picture books featured caged animals. Several contained mixtures of animals “in the wild” and animals caged. A page in Little Arthur at the Zoo has even combined both freedom and containment in a single, strange collage. The lion is sleeping behind bars, but seems to have hazy dreams of palm trees and plains. This flip-flopping between zoos and the wild served to remind children of the processes by which animals reached the zoos in the first place: violent capture and transport across vast oceans, followed by lifelong imprisonment. The dual vision of animals caged and free encouraged readers “to enjoy the contrast between the wild beasts and their intensely cultivated surroundings.”[3]
But perhaps the most completed dominated and caged animals were not those behind bars, but those giving rides to children (fig. 5, fig. 6). Elephant rides were an extremely popular part of zoos and menageries, earning the London Zoological Society £700 per year by the 1890s.[4] Accordingly, these rides were frequently featured in children’s books. Images of such rides served to illustrate the depth of the animals’ captivity. Not only were they caged, but they could be made into exotic, placid toys for children.
By domesticating and confining animals, the danger and wildness of the tropics was reduced to something cute, childish, and fundamentally non-threatening. The grinding mechanisms of empire were able to transform lions into home decorations, and wild animals into caged spectacles. In this theme, the domination and domestication of nature are a single, smooth process.
Notes
[1] The cultural meaning of imperial-era zoos have certainly been examined by previous historians. See Robert W. Jones, “‘The Sight of Creatures Strange to Our Clime’: London Zoo and the Consumption of the Exotic,” Journal of Victorian Culture 2, no. 1 (1997): 1–26; Gregg Mitman, “When Nature Is the Zoo: Vision and Power in the Art and Science of Natural History,” Osiris 11, 2nd Series (January 1, 1996): 117–143; Nigel Rothfels, Savages and Beasts: The Birth of the Modern Zoo (Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002); Robert J. Hoage and William A. Deiss, eds., New Worlds, New Animals: From Menagerie to Zoological Park in the Nineteenth Century (The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996); Ritvo, The Animal Estate, pt. 3; Vernon N. Kisling, ed., Zoo and Aquarium History: Ancient Animal Collections To Zoological Gardens, 1st ed. (CRC Press, 2000).
[2] Mitman, “When Nature Is the Zoo,” 120.