Bad Animals: Vermin, Literature and Modernity

'Bad Animals: Vermin, Literature and Modernity' explores literary treatments of vermin in the works of Richard Aldington, Don Marquis, Virginia Woolf and Jean Rhys, and across disparate contexts, from the trenches of the First World War, to New York City, the Hebrides and the Parisian prison system. The thesis proceeds from turns in animal studies and modernist scholarship towards hitherto neglected subjects, broadening the range of both fields of study and contributing towards the emergent subfield of vermin studies. It argues that verminous creatures constitute important metaphorical and historical-material figures in modernist thought, haunting modernity as what I am terming "bad animals" which cannot be excised from the operations and structures of modern life. Modernist representations of vermin subsequently run the gamut, from fear and disgust to curiosity and humour.

In addition to its broad geographic scope, 'Bad Animals' explores a range of literary forms. These forms include novels, poetry, and short stories as well as supporting materials such as diaries, letters, memoirs, newspapers, visual media, contemporary nonfiction and scientific writings, and archives, including previously unpublished work. In doing so, the thesis provides not only a literary account of vermin but one which historicises modernist literary production, accounting for the frameworks and spaces in which the authors featured in my analysis would have encountered, lived with, and thought about vermin. In assessing the impact of contemporary thought regarding vermin, I also theorise what I term 'verminous form', that is, the manner in which writing about vermin encourages textual strategies which mimic the bodies, movements, and actions of verminous creatures.

The Introduction situates my research within recent turns in modernist and animal studies, identifying key scholarship which forms the critical framework I use to theorise modernist vermin. Chapter One examines rats, edibility and human flesh in Aldington's trench poetry, novel Death of a Hero (1929) and stories from Roads to Glory (1930), before turning to an analysis of the extent to which Aldington's verminous language is co-emergent with early twentieth-century eugenics. Chapter Two begins with an account of Virginia Woolf's thoughts on vermin as they appear in her letters and diaries, proceeding to an exploration of pests in To the Lighthouse (1927) within the context of Scottish ecological history. Chapter Three considers the Archy and Mehitabel poems of the humourist and journalist Don Marquis in order to examine how themes of entrapment, ghostliness and technology are put to satirical use by Marquis's verminous protagonist in his commentary on modern city life. Chapter Four focuses on Jean Rhys's short stories from The Left Bank and Other Stories (1927) and Sleep it Off Lady (1976) to demonstrate how vermin act as powerful metaphors both for psychological disturbance and feature as real-world populations subject to official hygienic regimes. I conclude with an afterword reflecting upon the key findings of this thesis and tracing some directions verminous writing takes in the latter half of the twentieth century.