The Appeal of Animal Narratives and Narrators
I recently began reading Virginia Woolf’s “Flush,” a novel that portrays the life and inner world of Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s cocker spaniel. “Flush” was written in third person, but for most of the novel, the third person is close enough to Flush that he, a dog, is narrating his own story. “Flush” has inspired me to consider what role animal narrators and narrations have in literature, what world and personal themes an animal narrator allows an author or reader to…