Vegetarianism in the Romantic era refers to the rise of vegetarianism associated with the Romanticism movement in Western Europe from the eighteenth to the nineteenth century. Many of the late Romantics argued in favor of a more natural diet which excluded animal flesh for a plethora of reasons including the state of human and animal health, religious beliefs, economy and class division, animal rights, literary influence, as well as from new ideas about anthropology, consumerism, and evolution. The modern vegetarian and vegan movements borrow some of the same principles from the late Romantics to promote the adoption of diets free from animal products.
England, Germany, and France were most affected by the turn to a predominantly meatless diet during this time. Vegetarianism in this period may also have been influenced by views on humanism developed during the Age of Enlightenment in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Romantic literary personalities who gave impetus to the shift to vegetarianism included Percy Shelley in his A Vindication of Natural Diet, Mary Shelley, Alexander Pope, Thomas Tryon, Lord Byron and Joseph Ritson.
Romantic support for vegetarianism
History
Though the establishment of the Vegetarian Society begins in 1847, vegetarianism as a practice dates back long before the formation of this organization. Until the creation of the Vegetarian Society, vegetarians were referred to as Pythagoreans.Spencer, Colin However, The Heretic's Feast: A History of Vegetarianism; Great Britain: Hartnolls Ltd, Bodmin. 1993
Romantic writers like Percy and Mary Shelley, Alexander Pope, Thomas Tryon and Joseph Ritson were promoters of vegetarianism. In her Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus, Mary Shelley depicts The Creature of Dr. Frankenstein as a vegetarian. In an emotional speech the Creature tells how he will live in his self-imposed exile in South America:Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, Frankenstein or, The Modern Prometheus The 1818 Text, ed. James Rieger (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1974, Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1982), p. 142.
My food is not that of man; I do not destroy the lamb and the kid, to glut my appetite; acorns and berries afford me sufficient nourishment. My companion will be of the same nature as myself, and will be content with the same fare. We shall make our bed of dried leaves; the sun will shine on us as on man, and will ripen our food. The picture I present to you is peaceful and human.
Essays and other literary works written by these influential Romantics supported a meatless diet. With ideologies rooted in Romantic aesthetics of compassion and communion with nature, these writers found the consumption of meat sacrilegious and inhumane. With the industrial revolution came a rebellion against the mass market economically centered consumerism that flourished during this period. Romantics favored a more primal communion with nature that had nothing to do with currency or economics. Increased prices on meat products, a result of profit-driven markets, and the growth of humanitarian feelings towards both human and animal rights led to a rise in vegetarianism. During the eighteenth century, with more varieties of vegetables available, practicing a meatless diet became much easier to maintain. Nearly every large town in Western Europe now had numerous gardens fully supplied with fruits and vegetables.'The Heretic's Feast: A History of Vegetarianism; Great Britain: Hartnolls Ltd, Bodmin. 1993, pp. 239–243 Between the new accessibility of meat alternatives, Romantic ideals of nature and humanism, and the desire to rebel against consumerism and class distinctions, the vegetarian movement had begun.
Enlightenment and humanism The vegetarian movement has a beginning during The Enlightenment when a shift in European attitudes towards justice, liberty, freedom, and brotherhood appears.Spencer, Colin, The Heretic's Feast: A History of Vegetarianism; Great Britain: Hartnolls Ltd, Bodmin. 1993, pp 223–24 The adoption of these new attitudes not only were applied to humans but were extended to all of god's creatures. John Locke thought that observation of animals showed that animals too could communicate, feel pain, and perhaps express emotion. Humanitarianism was extended to the animal kingdom because it was felt that there was little difference separating humans from the creatures. Moved by Locke's arguments people started to think that animals and humans were in some way interconnected. Being unkind toward animals man would most likely be unkind towards his fellow man.Spencer, Colin, The Heretic's Feast: A History of Vegetarianism; Great Britain: Hartnolls Ltd, Bodmin. 1993, pp 225 With such principles in mind, vegetarianism became the proper response, one fueled by both humanitarianism and compassion.
Economics and consumerism Timothy Morton noted that, "by the Romantic period 'the consumer' had been born as an economic subject", classifying humans as commodifiable entities for market and economic profit.Morton, Timothy, Cultures of Taste/Theories of Appetite: Eating Romanticism; New York: Palgrave Macmillan. 2004, pp 1 The shift to a meatless diet was seen by many as a way to distinguish oneself from an increasingly consumerist society fueled by industrialized living and profit-driven market conglomerates. An all-plant diet regime allowed those opposed to the present economic practices to exercise protest against consumerism by refusing the purchase of meat products. Romantic vegetarianism was a product of resistance to the "culture of luxury" which wove its way into the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. With literary reformists like Shelley carrying the flag, the public turned to vegetarianism.Morton, Timothy, Cultures of Taste/Theories of Appetite: Eating Romanticism; New York: Palgrave Macmillan. 2004, pp 4–6 Meat had become a symbol of consumerism, so the Romantics, in an attempt to alleviate the oppressive nature of man and politics, boycotted such consumption. Meat had also become a symbol of class separation, with wealthy class consumers demanding red meat, and lower-class families eating potatoes and vegetables. In order to oppose such social separations, a number of individuals from various classes sought to remove meat consumption, therefore removing such class distinctions in the process. Essentially, vegetarianism became a radical response to a consumer-based pseudo-culture driven primarily by commercialization and market profit. The vegetarian movement established a Romantic form of consumerism that rejected raising meat prices in a newly market-driven mass society.
Class The ills of society according to the Romantics had much to do with defining people according to class, both by terms of race and gender as well as economic status. The Romantics were largely concerned with hierarchical oppression within economic classes and on a greater scale were concerned with how humankind fit into the natural world. Eating meat was considered a vice of the wealthy as they were the only class in society at the time who could afford it regularly.Perkins, David. Romanticism and Animal Rights. Cambridge, UK; New York: Cambridge University Press. 2003. Poor society lived on more simple diet consisting of "bread, milk, porridge, potatoes and vegetables". The inability to buy the newest luxury, meat, led to many grievances between the classes. Often constrained by their finances, "vegetarians were to be found almost exclusively among the middle class intellectuals". Consuming meat became a symbol of wasteful decadence and greed, and a means to "gratify a guilty sensuality" as Thomas Day states in the History of Sanford and Merton. As the vegetarian Thomas Tryon espouses, "The eating of flesh and killing of creatures for that purpose, was never begun, nor is now continue'd for want of necessity, or for the maintenance of health, but chiefly because the high, lofty, spirit of wrath and sensuality had gotten the dominion of man, over the meek love, and innocent harmless nature, and being so rampant, could not be satisfy'd except it had a proportionable food".
Consuming meat was a symbol of booming consumerism in the 18th century. The idea emerged that by adopting a simple vegetarian diet that was accessible to all would increase food supply, decrease the demand for land and inevitably, class conflict would decrease. According to Morton, "food is the material embodiment of all kinds of social practices" and as such, the vegetarians of the Romantic Period took to another form of consumerism: the boycott of meat. It was thought therefore that the link between the oppressive nature of man and an "unkind and brutal" diet would diminish and man would take to his natural state of being within nature.
Evolution and nature The eighteenth century brought with it new ideas of evolution and nature. Society now saw the environment and the organisms within it as more physically, biologically, and even emotionally complex. Biologists began to study the embryonic development and differences in individual organisms. With these new studies came new insight on the relationship between human and animal. French naturalist, Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon addressed ideas of common ancestry in his Histoire naturelle stating that many scientists believed "that man and ape have a common origin; that, in fact, all the families among plants as well as animals, have come from common stock".Buffon, Georges-Louis Leclerc Comte de, Histoire naturelle; Vol. 4, pp. 382 Theories of Charles Darwin, who claimed that all species were descended of common ancestors, also became prevalent in the early and mid-nineteenth century. These new scientific ideas stirred a great response from Romantic writers and members of European society who now began to see animals and man as interconnected.
Anthropology and physiognomy
In his Moral Essay upon Abstinence (1802), Joseph Ritson claimed "how unnatural flesh-eating is to human physiognomy and how such a diet of blood will engender ferocity in those who consume it".Spencer, Colin, The Heretic's Feast: A History of Vegetarianism; Great Britain: Hartnolls Ltd, Bodmin. 1993, pp 233 He and other Romantics saw the eating of animals as a violation of nature. Such views on anthropology and physiognomy contributed to the vegetarian movement in Western Europe because of societal desires to both connect with nature, as well as to remain somewhat connected to the past. Much of Romantic literature displayed themes centered on the evocation of the past. Early Romantics, facing a new, modern, shiny, machine-driven world hoped to maintain older values of religion, nature, and imagination by establishing and maintaining attachments to earlier history. A way to maintain this connection with earlier, less mechanic human beings was revert to previous diet practices, and it was thought that the more primitive humans had sustained themselves on a diet closer to a vegetarian lifestyle. Romantic writers including Ritson, Shelley, and Pope perceived the movement to vegetarianism as a way of returning to nature, reclaiming history, and turning away from animal or carnal savagery. Shelley promoted this idealist principle in A Vindication of Natural Diet, writing, "It is a man of violent passions, blood-shot eyes, and swollen veins, that alone can grasp the knife of murder...In no cases has a return to vegetable diet produced the slightest injury: in most it has been attended with changes undeniably beneficial".Shelley, Percy Bysshe, "A Vindication of Natural Diet;" London: Smith & Davy. 1813, pp 15–16 Fueled by literary Romantics like Ritson and Shelley, vegetarianism became a substitute for what had been deemed to be a savage, physiologically conflicted practice of blood consumption.
Health