4-9 Hunting

The motivation, reason, and pleasures of Victorian hunting are encompassed by Gordon Cumming and Frederick Selous, two very successful hunters of the time, both of whom the world could have gone without. Hunting for sport can be divided into two groups, rounding up massive amounts of dead animals, or storing and selling live ones. “Reinforcing the sense of strangeness… animal quarters were arranged for commercial convenience, the result was a confusing and in some cases frightening jumble of animals, with predators and prey closely juxtaposed.”[i] The chapter The Thrill of the Chase opens foreign caged animals. The inconceivable assembly of animals denotes considerable effort and wasted resources to accomplish nothing beneficial for the world. “Young animals were considered referable to older ones as captures because they were more adaptable and easier to transport.” [ii] So from a very young age, the natural course of animal life is disrupted for the brief entertainment purposes of man. Denied any natural course of life, Victorians had the audacity to wonder why some “mothers were apt to fight” – “a lioness with her cubs was characterized as one of the most savage of animals.” [iii] There is nothing more compassionate about sparing the animal for capture and sell; one captured animal usually signified the death of at least one other.


“Dead wild animals symbolized the British suppression of the Afghans… Rows of horns and hides, mounted heads and stuffed bodies, clearly alluded to the violent, heroic underside of imperialism.” [iv] Public appreciation for hunting rested upon the “celebration of naked force.” [v] I agree that animals exhibit an awesome and respectable amount of force, but I can never understand why, revered and impressive, hunters choose to stop it. Victorians believed that “the combination of manual and intellectual skill distinguished the English colonialist from his native charges”, hunting large game then gave this belief physical trophies of reassurance.[vi] Sadly the quality of “trophy” was important. Hunting connoisseurs noticed “the nobler the slain animal, the harder it was to reproduce its living fire.” [vii] Many animal were killed and discarded because of this necessary aesthetic quality.


Hunting is dominating something; dominating something is establishing superiority. This was a fiercely popular and savage Victorian sentient that resulted in crudeness and disrespect of life. “The gratifications of hunting overlapped significantly with those of dominion… and the association of the big game hunter with the march of empire was literal.” [viii] The hunter is a microcosm of military invasion and capture of foreign lands. But unlike when two countries fight man against man, gun versus gun, hunting is much more like exerting physical force over an eight year old girl. The façade defining hunting as “a series of increasingly difficult obstacles to be overcome by superior intelligence, skill, courage, and force” dissipates under any rational consideration.[ix] The speed and range of a rifle’s bullet far exceed any animal’s strengths. Also, hunters often have the element of surprise; killing in cold blood is not simply distasteful but prevents the animal from really rousing its power and brute savagery. Without that primal excitement, which heightens an animal’s senses in the interest of self preservation, hunting is reduced to something safe and dull. More times than not, hunting plays out like this: “he came upon an extremely old and noble black rhinoceros lying fast asleep… I fired from the saddle.” [x]



Ironically, “English sportsmen were full of praise for the extraordinary intuitive knowledge which a few shikaris possess” but could not realize that it was the sympathetic imagination that allowed these men to “know” the animals.[xi] By knowing the animal’s choices, travel patterns, and habits, shikaris exhibited a unique understanding of animals unknown to the white English sportsmen.

George Orwell "Shooting an Elephant" is a plausible, fictional variation of what Ritvo describes as hunting. In that story, a nameless "I", representing the English "gentlemen", recalls his horrific killing of an elephant. An event that "made [him] vaguely uneasy"[xii], though he admits that "in that instant, in too short a time, one would have thought, even for the bullet to get there, a mysterious, terrible change had come over the elephant." [xiii] The elephant's life slowly bleed from him, the crude rounds of rifle poking holes in the canister of his life-force, the life seeping out of the elephant in a most horrific manner. The transmogrification from noble beast to limp mass of flesh "seemed dreadful... to see the great beast Lying there, powerless to move and yet powerless to die." [xiv]







[i] Harriet Ritvo, The Animal Estate, 243
[ii] Harriet Ritvo, The Animal Estate, 246
[iii] Harriet Ritvo, The Animal Estate, 246
[iv] Harriet Ritvo, The Animal Estate, 248
[v] Harriet Ritvo, The Animal Estate, 249
[vi] Harriet Ritvo, The Animal Estate, 252
[vii] Harriet Ritvo, The Animal Estate, 253
[viii] Harriet Ritvo, The Animal Estate, 254
[ix] Harriet Ritvo, The Animal Estate, 259
[x] Harriet Ritvo, The Animal Estate, 264
[xi] Harriet Ritvo, The Animal Estate, 261
[xii] George Orwell, "Shooting an Elephant", 440
[xiii] George Orwell, "Shooting an Elephant", 442
[xiv] George Orwell, "Shooting an Elephant", 443