Dogs and females: Vivisection,feminists and the novelist Rachilde

Abstract

This article explores the somewhat unexpected convergence of the French anti-vivisectionist and feminist movements in the late nineteenth century, asking why, in particular, prominent feminists such as Maria Deraismes, Marie Huot, and even that detractor of feminism Rachilde, banded together to oppose the practice. Claude Bernard’s ‘méthode expérimentale’ had made of vivisection the only reputable approach to medical advancement and its defenders noted, maddeningly, that opposition to the practice excluded the female because she was not intellectually equipped by nature to question it. But women realised that, transferred to the domain of experimentation with humans, as was the case with Charcot’s physically invasive experiments upon female hysterics, Bernard’s method could become a dangerous and cruel weapon.