Monday, February 23, 2015
Barbauld’s “The Mouse’s Petition”
My first thought when reading this poem was one of animal cruelty. It seems like the poet is crying out against testing on animals. Barbauld writes, “For here forlorn and sad I sit/Within the wiry grate;/And tremble at th’approaching morn,/Which brings impending fate” (5-8). Here is this mouse sitting in a cage, knowing that when the sun comes up, so rises the scientist intent upon performing a life-taking experiment. When reading this, I can’t help but feel like the poet is decrying this practice.
However, when reading through this poem a second time, different stanzas stand out to me, changing what I perceive the poem to be about. Barbauld writes, “Beware, lest in the worm you crush,/A brother’s soul you find:” (33-34). These two lines don’t seem to be about animal cruelty. Instead, they are saying that all life is equal. You kill the worm without a thought, but you need to remember that the worm’s life is comparable to the one man harbors within himself. Barbauld goes on to say, “Or, if this transient gleam of day/ Be all of life we share,/Let pity plead within thy breast/That little all to spare” (37-40). She makes the word ‘all’ stand out in two different lines in this stanza, imploring her audience to see that the mouse’s life has equal weight to our own. She is saying that life is very short, be you mouse or man, so we should be merciful to one another, no matter what form we take.
Could this poem actually be about slavery?
The last line refers to a ‘hidden snare’. Of what is Barbauld speaking? I ask because chains, cages, and oppressive forces are mentioned earlier in the poem, so to what hidden obstacle is she referring?
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You are certainly right to consider Barbauld’s poem as engaging with issues beyond animal cruelty. Prison reform and the abolition of slavery are both invoked in Barbauld’s word choice. The lines, “The chearful light, the vital air, / Are blessings widely given” specifically refers to people incarcerated in debtor’s prison, unable to breath the common air that is their natural right (this draws John Howard's work on prison reform in Britain in the 1770-1790s). But these lines also refer to the kinds of experiments with the air pump that Joseph Priestley was performing at the time. Lines 37-40 do suggest the transience of life, and point to the equality of all life, but they are perhaps even more radical than this: by suggesting that mind “Still shifts thro' matter's varying forms” but is “In every form the same,” Barbauld propounds a theory of reincarnation drawn from classical mythology and Eastern religion rather than Christianity. Unlike earlier theories which deny consciousness or souls to animals (Descartes, most famously), Barbauld suggests that a “kindred mind” might appear in any living form (36). This position lends itself to the abolitionist sentiments common in Barbauld’s Dissenting circle, all of whom supported the abolition of the slave trade. But it also indicates a willingness to see animals as sentient, thinking beings—to consider them as interlocutors rather than objects or tools. This is perhaps Barbauld’s most trenchant critique of science: in using animals in experiments, Priestley and his contemporaries may have forgotten to pity, but they also elevated themselves to the level of gods who can give and take life as he sees fit.
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