Veganism and the Romantics Part 1: Communion with nature.

Welcome back! In the next few blog posts, I want to address the concept of veganism and vegetarianism in the Romantic period. This was a period where the movement gained some serious momentum and the writing of the time reflects a growing awareness of the importance of a plant based diet.  However, this importance rarely stemmed from a concern over health alone and there were several factors that played into changing opinions. To avoid cramming too much in all at once, I have decided to separate the information into three more easily digestible chunks:  Veganism and the Romantics Part 1: Communion with nature, Veganism and the Romantics Part 2: Battle against Consumerism and Veganism and the Romantics Part 3: The Representation of the Body.

A communion with nature is, undoubtedly, present throughout Romantic poetry. In particular, it is the emphasis on the importance of preserving nature that fuelled ideas about a plant-based diet. Moving away from the simple aesthetics of sublime landscapes and wild flowers, the preservation of animals as nature also applies. Although animal rights were nowhere near as prominent as they are today, several texts at the time addressed the issue of cruelty towards animals and this exposure was used as a kind of vegan/vegetarian propaganda.

One of these texts is ‘Badger’ by John Clare (http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/badger/). The poem is about a badger that is constantly ‘followed and hooted by [the] dogs and men’ and the animals suffering is documented right up until its brutal death:

‘He falls as dead and kicked by boys and men,
Then starts and grins and drives the crowd again; 
Till kicked and torn and beaten out he lies
And leaves his hold and cackles, groans, and dies’.

This imagery is graphic and the relentless violence towards the badger exposes the barbaric side of human nature. Unlike the badger, who is content to ‘root[s] in the bushes and the woods’, humans are shown as violent and essentially inharmonious with nature. It is this idea of harmony that made a vegan and vegetarian diet so popular among the Romantic poets and their readers; for one to appreciate nature and benefit from its pleasures, one had to be against its destruction.