Figures in Farming: Carrie Tiffany’s Mateship with Birds (2012) and the Sexual Politics of Animal Figuration

ABSTRACT

This paper presents new scholarship on the complex figuration of the animal in Australian fiction through the significantly under-analysed Mateship with Birds (2012). Carrie Tiffany’s acclaimed second novel explores the hidden loves and traumas of post-war regional Australia in explicitly cross-species terms. Contemporary reviewers lauded the novel’s celebration of an authentic Australian farming life. Its animal representation, however, is not simply realism. Rather, it is a complex interrogation of animal as metaphor in human lives, and the consequences of that figurative displacement for both human and nonhuman material existence. I read the novel specifically through Carol J Adams’ the ‘absent referent’ alongside notions of an aesthetics of care, as envisioned by Josephine Donovan, to probe the limits and affordances of mutual and agentic interspecies engagements on the farm. Tiffany evokes a reverence for quotidian animal life and human lives: human lives are animalian. In evoking and exposing the place of animal figuration in the lives of people working, and living closely, with material, nonhuman animals, however, Tiffany intricately interrogates the ways in which, as Adams says, discourses of animality, sexuality, gender, and violence intersect, particularly in a 1950s Australian masculinist, pastoral economy.

KEYWORDS:

• Animal/s; Australian fiction; farm narrative; critical animal studies
• literary animal studies

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Carrie Tiffany, Mateship with Birds (London: Picador, Pan McMillan, 2012), hereafter cited in the text.

2 Laura-Jean McKay, Fauna Fiction: Interspecies Communication in Contemporary Literature’ and The Animals in That Country. PhD Exegesis, available at https://minerva-access.unimelb.edu.au/handle/11343/208987

3 Lucy Neave, ““The Distance between Them”: Sheep, Women, and Violence in Evie Wyld’s All the Birds, Singing and Barbara Baynton’s Bush Studies Source,” Antipodes 30.1 (June 2016): 125–36. Published by: Wayne State University Press Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.13110/antipodes.30.1.0125 hereafter cited in the text.

4 Clare Archer-Lean, “Revisiting the ‘Problem’ of Anthropomorphism through Ceridwen Dovey’s Only the Animals (2014),” Australian Literary Studies 34.1 (2019) doi: 10.20314/als.80ac7927cd, hereafter cited in the text.

5 Leigh Dale, “Empire’s Proxy: Sheep and the Colonial Environment,” in Five Emus to the King of Siam: Environment and Empire, edited by Helen Tiffin (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2007): 1–14.

6 Ken Gelder and Rachael Weaver, Colonial Australian Fiction Character Types, Social Formations and the Colonial Economy (Sydney: Sydney University Press, 2017). ISBN: 9781743324615.

7 Ethel Pedley, Dot and the Kangaroo (London: Burleigh, 1899); Norman Lindsay, The Magic Pudding: The Adventures of Bunyip Bluegum (Pymble, NSW: Angus and Robertson, 1918/2018)

8 Mateship (elevation of masculine friendships) and larrikinism are defining characteristics of the Australian ‘bloke’ an archetype of masculinity emerging with local, national literature in the nineteenth century. The larrikin incorporates paradoxes working class pragmatism, casual sexism, irreverence, humour, fearlessness, and a willingness to fight physically, especially in defence of a male friend (mate) see Karenlee Thompson, “The Australian Larrikin: C.J Dennis’s [Un]sentimental Bloke,” Antipodes 21.2 (2007): 177–83 at https://www.jstor.org/stable/41957652

9 Clare Archer-Lean, “Animal Representative Presence: Problems and Potential in Recent Australian Fiction,” in The Routledge Companion to Australian Literature, edited by Jessica Gildersleeve (London: Routledge, 2021): 282–91, 284, hereafter cited in the text.

10 Katherine Bode, “Aussie Battler in Crisis? Shifting Constructions of White Australian Masculinity and National Identity.”, ACRAWSA e-journal 2.1 (2006): 1–18, available at https://openresearch-repository.anu.edu.au/bitstream/1885/8651/1/Bode_AussieBattler2006.pdf.

11 Sylvia Alston, “Review: Mateship with Birds,” Journal of Australian Studies 36.4 (2012): 516–7, DOI: 10.1080/14443058.2012.729345; Andrew Riemer, “An Author Spreads Her Wings: Review of Mateship with Birds.” The Sydney Morning Herald (18–19 February 2012): 34 downloaded from Proquest, https://www.proquest.com/newspapers/author-spreads-her-wings/docview/921753362/se-2?accountid=28745.

12 Karen Alexander, “After the Future – Australia’s new extinction crisis; Mateship with Birds [Book Review],” Park Watch 252 (Mar 2013): 35. Availability: https://search.informit.com.au/documentSummary;dn=254882969855794;res=IELHSS. ISSN: 1324–4361 (accessed 01 October 2020); Jena Woodhouse, “‘Love’s Instinct: Carrie Tiffany,” Mateship with Birds’ Australian Women’s Book Review 25.1 (2013): 19–22 ISSN: 1033 9434.

13 For criticism of the link between human sexuality and animal see Bethanie Blanchard, “Observations of Desire at Cohuna: Carrie Tiffany’s Mateship with Birds: Review,” Crikey (March 1, 2012), available at https://www.crikey.com.au/2012/03/01/carrie-tiffanys-mateship-with-birds-observations-of-desire/ ; Wyndham’s article is more an interview with Tiffany and notes in passing Tiffany is interested in psychoanalytical ideas of humans with animal instincts, see Susan Wyndham, “A Sheep’s Fair Tale,” Sydney Morning Herald (February 11 2012), available at https://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/books/a-sheeps-fair-tale-20120210-1shav.html, both hereafter cited in the text.

14 Tony Hughes-d’Aeth, Like Nothing on this Earth (Perth: UWA Press, 2017).

15 Carol J. Adams, The Sexual Politics of Meat: A Feminist-Vegetarian Critical Theory (New York: Continuum, 2015/1990), hereafter cited in the text.

16 Josephine Donovan, The Aesthetics of Care: On the Literary Treatment of Animals (New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2016). ISBN: 9781501317194, hereafter cited in text.

17 Catherine Parry Other Animals in Twenty-First Century Fiction (Houndsmills, Basingstoke: Palgrave McMillan, 2017), 7. ISBN 978-3-319-55931-5.

18 A ‘bobby calf’ is Australian vernacular for a male calf, viewed to be a surplus, unwanted by-product by the dairy industry. They are unweaned calves transported for slaughter and meat processing, usually in the first week of life. See RSPCA ‘Dairy Cattle: What Happens to Bobby Calves’ RSPCA Knowledgebase (2023) available at https://kb.rspca.org.au/

19 Melissa Boyd, “Practicing the Art of War: The Dairy Issue,” Animal Studies Journal 7.2 (2018): 9-24, 21, available at https://ro.uow.edu.au/asj/vol7/iss2/3 (accessed June 2020), hereafter cited in the text.

20 Oliver Berreville, “Animal Welfare Issues in the Canadian Dairy Industry,” in Critical Animal Studies: Thinking the Unthinkable ed John Sorenson (Toronto: Canadian Scholars’ Press, 2014):186–207. 1551305631, 9781551305639; Lena Leneman, “Review: No Animal Food: The Road to Veganism in Britain 1909-1944,” Society and Animals 7.3 (1999): 219–28. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1163/156853099X00095; Richard Twine, Animals as Biotechnology: Ethics, Sustainability and Critical Animal Studies (United Kingdom, Earthscan, 2010).

21 Nik Taylor and Heather Fraser, “The Cow Project: Analytical and Representational Dilemmas of Dairy Farmers’ Conceptions of Cruelty and Kindness,” Animal Studies Journal 8.2 (2019): 133–53, available at https://ro.uow.edu.au/asj/vol8/iss2/10. DOI http://dx.doi.org/10.14453/asj.v8i2.10

22 Carol J. Adams and Matthew Calarco, “Chapter 2 Derrida and The Sexual Politics of Meat,” in Meat Culture, edited by Annie Potts (Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2016): 31–53.

23 I am thinking here of Charlotte Wood’s The Natural Way of Things (Crows Nest NSW: Allen and Unwin, 2015) and Evie Wyld’s All the Birds, Singing (New York: Random House, 2013) (see Lucy Neave’s ‘“The Distance between Them”: Sheep, Women, and Violence in Evie Wyld’s All the Birds, Singing and Barbara Baynton’s Bush Studies’).

24 Louise Peacock Slapstick and Comic Performance: Comedy and Pain (Houndsmills, Basingstoke: Palgrave McMillan, 2014) https://link.springer.com/book/10.1057%2F9781137438973 ISBN: 978-1-349-34929-6, hereafter cited in the text.

25 Phillip Armstrong, What Animals Mean in the Fiction of Modernity (New York: Routledge 2008), hereafter cited in the text.

26 Val Plumwood The Eye of the Crocodile (Canberra, ACT: Australian National University Press, 2012), hereafter cited in the text.

27 Jocelyne Porcher and Tiphaine Schmitt, “Dairy Cows: Workers in the Shadows,” Society and Animals 20.1 (2012): 39–60. DOI: 10.1163/156853012X614350

28 Vinciane Despret, What Would Animals Say If We Asked the Right Questions? (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press 2016).

29 Sheryl Vint S Animal Alterity: Science Fiction and the Question of the Animal. (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press 2010).

30 Douglas Harper, ‘Pet’ Etymological Dictionary (2023) available at https://www.etymonline.com/search?q=pet

31 William Butler Yeats Sailing to Byzantium. (London: Orion Publishing Co, Phoenix Paperback, 1928, 1995). ISBN 1857995473.

32 Harry Modean Campbell, “Yeats’s ‘Sailing to Byzantium,” Modern Language Notes 70.8 (Dec. 1955): 585–9.

33 Nicholas Smith, “The Howl and the Pussy: Feral Cats and Wild Dogs in the Australian Imagination,” The Australian Journal of Anthropology 10.3 (1999): 288–305.

34 Damien Barlow “Interspecies Mateship: Tom Collins and Pup,” Journal of the Association for the Study of Australian Literature: JASAL 13.1 (2013): 12–24, hereafter cited in the text.

35 Shun Yin Kiang, “Friendship; or Representing More-Than-Human Subjectivities and Spaces in J.R Ackersley’s My Dog Tulip,” in Creatural Fictions: Human-Animal Relationships in Twentieth and Twenty-First Century Literature, edited by David Herman (Houndsmills, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016): 127–47, hereafter cited in the text.

36 J. R. Ackerley, My Dog Tulip (New York: Poseidon Press, 1956).

37 Alice A Kuzniar, ““I Married My Dog”: On Queer Canine Literature,” in Queering the Non-Human, edited by Noreen Giffney & Myra J. Hird (Aldershot, Hampshire: Ashgate 2008): 205–26.

38 Kevin A Morrison, “Becoming Human: Dombey and Son and the Economy of the Pet,” Journal of Language, Literature and Culture 67,1 (2020): 28-44, DOI:10.1080/20512856.2020.1735038

39 Jacques Derrida, The Animals That Therefore I Am Edited Marie-Louise Mallet and Trans. David Wills (New York: Fordham University Press, 2008).

40 Dorion Sagan D, “Introduction: Umwelt after Uexküll,”. in Jacob Von Uexküll A Foray into the Worlds of Animals and Humans: With a Theory of Meaning. Trans. Joseph D. O’Neil (London: The University of Minnesota Press, 1934/2010).

41 Alexander Hugh Chisholm, Mateship with Birds (Melbourne, Victoria: Whitcombe and Tombs, 1922), available at California Digital Library. https://archive.org/details/mateshipwithbird00chisrich/page/16/mode/2up

42 Tiffany, Carrie “Wessex,” in Debra Adelaide The Simple Act of Reading (Ebook Penguin Random House Australia, 2015) ISBN 9780857986252, 52.