Affirming Animal Subjectivity Through Intraspecies and Interspecies Interactions in Jane Smiley’s A Good Horse

Abstract

Different from anthropocentric narration of animals as metaphorical symbols in literature, more and more writers give voice back to animals by focalizing them in the narratives, among whom Pulitzer Prize Laureate Jane Smiley is a case in point. Animals become key characters in her works. Smiley’s A Good Horse is one of the novels from The Horses of Oak Valley Ranch series, of which the main characters are the horses. Meanwhile, animal studies are an emerging trend in literary critical research. It is of great significance to study animal issues in literary works to give further understanding of and enlightenment to humans’ relationship with nonhumans in this era when ecological crisis is an impending threat to humans. Based on Val Plumwood’s dialogical interspecies ethics and Cynthia Willett’s interspecies ethics, this paper will analyze the intraspecies and interspecies interactions about animal community in Smiley’s novel A Good Horse, and explore its animal ethics and interspecies ethics through Smiley’s vivid presentation and antianthropocentric affirmation of animal subjectivity. The paper finds out that Smiley’s narration of inner-and-cross-species interactions in animal community holds the purposes to arouse people’s awareness of animal subjectivity and animal moral agency, and to advocate a dialogical interspecies paradigm for human-animal relationship.