Veganism and the Romantics Part 3: The Representation of the Body

During the Romantic era, everyone seemed to be fascinated by physiognomy and anthropology. Connections were being drawn between human and non-human bodies and, for some, the similarities were too great to ignore. The man we will be studying today, Joseph Ritson, even believed that the consumption of animal flesh would eventually lead humans to eat their own kind: “As human sacrifices were a natural effect of that superfluous cruelty which first produced the slaughter of animals, so is it equally natural that these accustomed to eat the brute, should not long abstain from the man”. This quote was taking from his 1802 “Essay on the Abstinence from Animal Food as a Moral Duty”, a text that covers everything from the history of man’s diet to the moral implications. However, this post will focus specifically on Ritson’s idea about vegetarianism and the body, both in terms of physiology and health.

According to Ritson, “the two most general distinctions of the carnivorous type of quadrupeds are deduced, one from the conformation of the teeth, and the other from the conformation of the intestines”. He argues that the conformation of the intestines is too short to digest meat easily and that our “blunt teeth” resemble “the horse, the ox, the sheep, and the hare”, rather than “the cat, the dog, the wolf and the fox”. Ritson believed that humans essentially lacked the biological tools to be carnivores and instead were conditioned by habit. 

In 1809, Darwin was born. Years later, in 1871, he would publish his controversial work The Descent of Man, where he outlines human evolution from apes. However, seven years before he was even born, in Ritson’s publication, parallels between the two species are being explored. As a result of the similarities between man and ape, Ritson believed that their natural diets would be the same. He discusses “the ourang-outang which resembles man” and “never meddles with animal flesh, but lives on nuts and other wild fruits”. He also talks about baboons “principally feed[ing] upon fruits, roots and corn”. He believes that a plant based diet belongs to “all the ape or monkey genus except man”.

Ritson was also a great believer in the health benefits reaped from a plant based diet. He noticed that in cultures where less meat was eaten, there was also less disease and death. He claims that the “Orientals live to a great age…owing to their abstinence from animal food”. In fact, he was on to something there. Nowadays, out of the ten countries with the lowest obesity rates, eight are in Asia and the remaining two are in Africa. This is undoubtedly because their diets consist of plain starches such as rice, whole grains, fruits and vegetables.

If Ritson thought things were bad then, he should have a look at this http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-25576400. 

Ritson's essay can be found here https://archive.org/stream/anessayonabstin00ritsgoog#page/n5/mode/2up

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.