ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the way nineteenth-century children were taught to become-with animals through pedagogical literature from both sides of the Atlantic. It argues that through the stories they read—those targeted to children by gender—girl and boy readers were taught to shape themselves to conform to a standard of kindness to animals, whether that standard was aligned with expectations for their gendered development, in the case of young girls, or whether their development as a humane individual would clash with those expectations, as in the case of young boys. To prove the argument, the author explores, through the literary works of women writers such as Johanna Spyri, Mary Webb, and Sarah Orne Jewett, the relationship between the ideals of humane education and nineteenth-century transatlantic gender performativity.
