Thesis

'Why buy the cow When the milk is free?': changing representations of women and cows, from milkmaid to milking machine

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Awarding institution
  • University of Strathclyde
Date of award
  • 2023
Thesis identifier
  • T16781
Person Identifier (Local)
  • 201889228
Qualification Level
Qualification Name
Department, School or Faculty
Abstract
  • This thesis explores why representations of women and cows changed profoundly in England across early modern period (1500-1800) and nineteenth-century pedagogical and imaginative literature. Existing arguments in women’s history have demonstrated that women were displaced from dairying, but the encroachment of male power into this traditionally female-occupied space has not been adequately analysed before the eighteenth century. Similarly, there has been little attention turned towards the historical relationship between dairywoman and cow, nor a detailed account of the process whereby cows came to be considered as amorphous members of a herd in the field of animal studies. Building upon such debates, this thesis argues that a new scientific philosophy that rose to prominence in seventeenth-century agricultural manuals positioned women as amateurs in dairying, while transforming the industry into one focused more on revenue than communal nourishment. The ramifications of this novel way of thinking ensured that cows came to be characterised as mechanical vessels. This thesis then contends that much of the imaginative literature (novels, poems, and ballads) evoked an emotional relationship between humans and cows to, after the seventeenth century, bring to the fore that such a connection was being lost. But such texts also demonstrate how women were no longer integral to dairying, representing a transformation of the traditional relationship between milkmaid and cow. The impact of mechanistic ways of dairying also affected how conceptions of animality and sexuality were thought of, aiding the separation of the human from the animal. This thesis thus argues that depictions of women and cows were deeply affected by the agricultural revolution, which not only had an impact upon how interactions between women and cows were conceived in literature, but upon how the metaphorical relation between woman and cow, human and animal – and even human and human – came to be culturally considered.
Advisor / supervisor
  • Fudge, Erica
Resource Type
DOI

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