Woolfian Boundaries - Clemson University

98 WOOLFIAN BOUNDARIES
Th e name of the Sparrow, his Latin name, [Passer domesticus,] ought to have secured
him from…ignorant persecution…. His natural haunt is where men have
their home, and if he ever emigrates, it is only to go along with them, whithersoever
they may direct their steps. He, as it were, says, like Ruth of old, to Naomi,
“Whither thou goest, I will go, and where thou lodgest, I will lodge…his name,
as given to him so long ago by Linnaeus, tells us his natural character…. He is a
most stay-at-home bird, by no means of a roving turn. (3)
Morris’s defence takes the form of an anthropomorphising guarantee of the sparrow’s
moral character. Morris concludes his response to Ormerod with the assertion that “Miss
Ormerod would have employed her time and feminine talents much better if she had confi
ned herself to the use of her needle in working for some charitable object or other” (Sparrow
4). Th ere is no evidence that Woolf knew of Morris’s attack on Ormerod; nevertheless,
the exchange between these two fi gures illustrates the tendency of Victorian protectionism
towards sentimentality, religiosity, and misogyny and suggests why Woolf was reluctant to
align herself with the protectionist position against Ormerod’s modern science.
Th e protection movement was one in which women played a large and often public
role and it might therefore be expected that it would promote a feminist agenda. However,
female protectionists very often justifi ed their participation in this public movement
with the argument that animal protection was an extension of women’s private role as
caregivers. In the fi rst issue of the Animals’ Friend, Mrs Henry Lee appeals as “A Woman
to Women” to take up the work of animal protection, a cause to which “surely no truehearted
woman can be indiff erent” (6). Th is reinforcement of traditional gender identities
was a further obstacle for Woolf to sympathy with the protectionist cause.
In praising Ormerod as “the pioneer of purity even more than of Paris Green” (emphasis
added), Woolf shows herself to be more concerned with the social signifi cance of Ormerod’s science
than with the practical details and environmental ramifi cations of pest control. She never
identifi es Paris Green as an arsenite pesticide and she discusses Ormerod’s campaign against the
house sparrow in terms of the dismantling of a social myth rather than the extermination of
living creatures. Woolf perceived economic entomology primarily in contrast to the moralised,
sentimental, and gender-conditioned view of nature that she disdained in the nineteenth-century
practice of natural history and on these grounds she gave Ormerod her approval.
One question that remains to be asked is whether Woolf should be regarded as remiss
in overlooking the toxicity of Paris Green or whether her failure to address this matter
simply refl ects contemporary ignorance of the danger of arsenite pesticides. As James
C. Whorton states, at least until the end of the nineteenth century, “the medical profession
maintained a virtually unbroken silence on the question of arsenical insecticides”
and agricultural scientists likewise “failed to appreciate the hazard of chronic arsenicism”
(226). However, by December 1924, when “Miss Ormerod” appeared in the Dial, there
was some awareness of the dangers of chronic arsenic poisoning. In the winter of 1900,
an epidemic of peripheral neuritis amongst the poor in Manchester was linked to longterm
exposure to arsenic in cheap beer. Th is contamination was not the result of pesticide
use, but it raised concerns about the presence of arsenic in food and drink and led to the
appointment of a Royal Commission to investigate the dangers of arsenic contamination
and to set an offi cial limit for arsenic levels in foods (1/100th of a grain in the gallon or