Human–Animal Relations in Victorian Popular Literature and Culture
Victorian popular fiction is replete with animals – racing horses, loyal dogs, caged birds, exotic creatures, and anthropomorphic companions. These beings carried immense symbolic significance: they could function as status symbols, metaphors for the body or soul, expressions of sentiment, or instruments of moral instruction. Animals also frequently offered a lens through which Victorians addressed issues surrounding empire, industrialisation, science, social mobility, and domesticity. In popular fiction, animals were not merely background – they were moral barometers, class indicators, narrative devices, and symbols of broader anxieties regarding industrialisation, gender roles, and empire.
