The Wild Animal’s Story: Nonhuman Protagonists in Twentieth-Century Canadian Literature through the Lens of Practical Zoocriticism

Psychology 
(1894), he asserted that “[i]n no case may we interpret an action as 
the outcome of the exercise of a higher psychical faculty, if it can be interpreted 
as the outcome of the exercise of one which stands lower in the psychological 
scale” (53, emphasis added). Unlike Romanes, Morgan’s objective, 
experimental approach reflected everything valued by modern science at the 
time and, rather neatly, coincided with the rise of laboratory science and the 
final acceptance of the professional title ‘scientist.’
Although this meant that comparative psychology was now accepted as 
a science, Morgan’s canon would actually become the central tenet of 
behaviourism
—a field that reached prominence in the 1920s and would 
dominate the study of animal intelligence for most of the twentieth-century. In 
“Animal Mind: Science, Philosophy, and Ethics” (2007), Bernard E. Rollin 
explains the legacy of behaviourism:
From the time of Darwin the existence and knowability of animal 
mentation was taken as axiomatic through the early years of the 20th-
century. But, after 1920, and even today, it is difficult to find British or 
U.S. psychologists or classical European ethologists, who would accept 
that view. (258, emphasis added) 
 
Hence, we encounter a significant intersection of ideas. Despite their vastly 
differing perspectives, we find that the collision of anthropocentrism, 
behaviourism, and animal-sceptical thinking. The scientific discourses of instinct 
through which Seton’s and Roberts’ stories were ridiculed may have instigated 
the perception of animal ‘unknowability’ that informed their dismissal as 
anthropocentric in much literary animal studies work today. This suggests, 
therefore, that to some extent we can attribute Seton
’s and Roberts’ ‘fantasy of 
knowing’ the animal to the absence of such animal ‘scepticism’ before 
behaviourism. 

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Thus, we can begin to perceive the value of practical zoocriticism’s 
interdisciplinary approach. Through this detailed re-contextualization, I have 
demonstrated that, prior to Seton and Roberts, representations of animals in 
Canadian literature were based on the utility of the nonhuman character, 
whether as object or anthropomorphic prop. Likewise, their attempts to write 
about animals who lived for their own ends and on their own terms, can now be 
understood through Canada’s ineffectual animal welfare and conservation laws. 
I have illuminated the shared language of Salt, Seton, and Roberts and 
indicated the possibility that they encountered his work (or its impact) while 
living abroad. I have also given examples of their direct engagement with 
animal advocacy. By exploring the scientific contexts of their work, I have 
elucidated the theory of animal mind that informed their stories. In the following 
chapter, I will argue that Seton
’s and Roberts’ representations of animal minds 
are aligned with Romanes’ work and that, if his criteria are used, they can even 
be described as ‘accurate.’ Finally, I have also demonstrated the crucial role of 
scientific professionalization in shaping the scientific and literary environments 
into which Seton
’s and Roberts’ stories would be received. 

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