Dogs in these texts possess the power to seduce and transform their human partners. This transformative potential derives largely from a reworking of cultural and literary conventions which identify canines as marginal. Sylvia, Tulip and Fluke are positioned as denizens of a penumbral zone, between culture and instinct. The connotative potency of canine hybridity has been exploited before in animal literature. Literary canines, such as White Fang are often physical hybrids. In this tradition, Fluke and his companion Rumbo are mongrels; Sylvia is (the human protagonist surmises) half poodle, half labrador. Other recent dog heroes are conspicuous hybrids. The star and namesake of the film Balto is half wolf, half dog, and it is his mixed ancestry which ultimately allows him to prevail.
J.R. Ackerley's bitch Queenie remains a German Shepherd in her literary incarnations as Tulip and Evie, but even so, she refuses to remain canis familiarus: 'It is Africa and she is a jungle beast come down to the river to bathe'; she 'turns into the wild beast she resembles' (Tulip, 134, 32), but her look 'contains too much, more than a beast may give' (138). The first time Frank sees her as an adult dog in We Think the World of You, she is 'A sort of wolf, which must have been sunning itself in the yard outside.' (28); later she stares at Johnny 'with the unflinching look of a wild beast' (135). There are many similar images.
The texts represent as intoxicating, the possibility of canine marginality spreading by contagion to the dog's human partners. In participating in the hybrid status of the canine characters, humans in the texts are empowered with an ability to reconnect to a variety of natural forces. These forces are positioned in contrast to the artificiality or superficiality of modern western culture. In the process of entering this penumbral zone, the texts violate the anthropocentric core of western, Judaeo-Christian philosophy: the gulf between human and beast which was set in place when Adam was made to name the other animals. That the representation of inter-species affiliation is socially controversial is acknowledged by each of the texts, either in a religious or secular context. Ackerley's choice of pseudonyms for the characters he takes from real life is always purposeful, and it must be with conscious irony that the dog who seduces Frank away from the world of humans in We Think the World of You is named Evie.
One of the products of the increase in literary representations of socialisation, equality and emotional closeness between humans and canines, is the immanence of a canine Other. That canines in these texts have acquired attributes of Otherness is a significant development. In a study of animal imagery in 19th century romantic poetry Onno Dag Oerlemans writes:
Even a casual survey of (e.g.)... Levinas, Derrida and
Foucault... reveals that the concept of Other is
commonly assumed to include only the human, the
foreigness of other individuals, races or cultures... The
Otherness of the natural world in general, and animals
in particular, has been overlooked.
By using the terms 'human' and 'natural world' in what amounts to a binary sense, Oerlmans might be said to have some investment in this psychology himself; which only underlines a peculiar and important characteristic of our modern, increasingly generic concept of Otherness. To be Other, one must also be recognisably similar. The increasing proliferation of human-canine crossover stories shows that, in literature, dogs have now acquired this status. The representations of hybridity in the texts discussed here place the canine and human characters together in a zone which is marginal to mainstream society. This anti-anthropocentric affiliation means that in a sense, canine Otherness spreads by contagion to the human characters.
The title character of A.R. Gurney's play Sylvia is a talking dog. The play tells the story of Greg, a middle-aged man who, withdrawing to New York's Central Park after an argument with his boss, is 'picked up' by a stray labrador/poodle cross called Sylvia. Greg and Sylvia immediately fall in love. When Greg expresses curiosity about Sylvia's 'previous owner', she replies, in a rare philosophical moment: "I'm a mystery. I'm what's known as the Other. That's never happened to you before. That's why I'm so exciting. And that's what love is all about." (82)
It's hard to know exactly what is meant by 'the Other', when it's used in 1995 by a dog. Perhaps Sylvia is a strict Lacanian, and means Greg to understand that she is merely his own radical ex-centricity to himself. Nothing in the way Sylvia is presented supports this interpretation, though. Far from representing a type of discourse happening in a non-space traversed by language, Greg consistently associates Sylvia with reality and corporeality, and Sylvia's behaviour does little to gainsay this assessment. In fact, the way she uses 'Other' in this scene has more in common with Oerlmans' meaning; with the somewhat scandalous implication of 'significant other' also discernible.
The central human characters in these texts are presented in the process of moving towards the penumbral zone of Otherness occupied by the texts' canines. Within this zone access is enabled to natural and instinctual forces and modes of perception, and the human character experiences a reconnection to an oceanic sensibility, or a keener awareness of the rhythms of the organic world. The dog becomes the agent of these forces, allowing them to spread to the human with whom she or he interacts.
Of the possibilities enabled by this situation, one of the most potent is the possibility of access to a pre-Lapsarian state of perception, whose salient feature is often represented as the potential for non-verbal communication. In the redemptive capabilities this mode of communication is shown to possess, Sylvia and the other texts engage with a tradition of mythology which encompasses Lorenz's 'paradise which man has lost', Lacan's symbolic order, and the legend of The Fall.
Of these texts, Fluke dwells least on this topic, but largely because the dialogue between canine and human occurs at a purely symbolic level. Fluke is a man reincarnated as a dog, and rather than being separate characters, human and canine are represented as points on a continuum along which Fluke is evolving.
Fluke only speaks with other non-humans. He can understand humans, but only by virtue of having been one in his former life. For the main part Fluke does away with verbal language altogether by making its dialogue telepathy-based. Fluke realises, fairly early in the narrative, that when he conversed with his fellow canine companion Rumbo, 'we hadn't actually been communicating with words: it had been our minds speaking to each other' (62) The implication here is not merely that Fluke realises he has been communicating words via a different medium than speech, but that he has been communicating without words at all; that concepts are being conveyed at a level which eschews verbal symbolism altogether. He goes on to note that he has since come to learn that all animals have an analogous 'way of communicating', which may involve, for instance, 'scent or body display'. The implication here is that non-humans have a privileged, more instinctive and unencumbered means of communication.
A.R. Gurney's play Sylvia is suffused by the often ironic effects of language and verbal communication. Greg's wife Kate is horrified by her husband's increasing infatuation with Sylvia. The play sets up a rivalry between woman and dog whose surface context is a romantic love triangle, but which relies for much of its dynamic power on repeated contrasts between language and what might loosely be called the Real; between the abstract and symbolic on one hand, and the literal, the corporeal and the instinctive on the other.
The rivalry between Kate and Sylvia has repercussions beyond the parameters of a purely romantic relationship. Kate is presented as a representative of society, culture and order - Sylvia is an ambassador of instinct, liberation and anarchy. The concept which is regularly used to symbolise the forces of society and order, is language. Kate is an english teacher who, in her own words, spends her days 'trying to teach urban children the liberating possibilities of William Shakespeare in all his majesty and variety' (41); to 'instil some sense of civility in American life' (59). She makes frequent use of Shakespearean quotations in her dialogue, closing scenes with remarks like "Thus bad begins.. and worse remains behind.' (29) Kate's deification of Shakespeare amounts to a worship of culture and of verbal language itself. She tells her friend Phyllis that she is 'trying to put Shakespeare into the Junior High Curriculum'(58). Phyllis wonders if that isn't a little premature, but for Kate this is the whole point. "If we can hook children in junior high, we might have them for life". Moreover, "It's not just Shakespeare... It's language in general." She wants to take the children's 'energy and curiosity and imagination, and give them words, more words, good words in significant contexts'. When she loses her annotated copy of All's Well that End's Well, she complains to Greg, "I'll bet Sylvia took it and ate it." (76). This image is an emblem both of the threat and the lure of the canine Other to modern civilisation. Sylvia's apparent desecration of Shakespeare - one of the ultimate icons of western culture - is perhaps the closest thing to blasphemy that a secular academic like Kate can imagine. More pointedly, Sylvia takes an edifice of language, a vast world of connotative meaning, abstraction and symbolism, and treats it as raw matter; mere fuel. She doesn't read Shakespeare, she eats him (in We Think the World of You there is a similar image when the jealous Evie attempts to frustrate all of Frank's communication with other humans: 'She can't actually read my correspondence', writes Frank, 'but she seizes it all as it falls through the letter-box and tears it to shreds' (157)). Kate is all too keenly aware of the threat which Sylvia poses, not just to her marriage, but, in her seduction of Greg, to the human institutions which Shakespeare represents. When Greg and Sylvia play 'fetch' in front her, Kate complains to Phyllis, "You see what I'm up against? Notice how all conversation stops. Notice how civilization completely collapses" (66).
For Greg Sylvia represents a re-connection with the 'real' world; an escape from the relentless abstraction of civilised humanity. The argument which leads indirectly to his meeting Sylvia occurs when his boss informs him he is to be moved from manufacturing into finance. "I liked manufacturing", Greg tells Kate later. "I could see what we were making, I could touch it" (23) Trading currencies however, has no such appeal. It is too abstract; too insubstantial; too symbolic. "What's behind currencies? Other currencies. What's behind them? Who knows? Nothing to touch, to see, to get a purchase on." Greg tells his boss to put him into 'something real' (24). "Real? What's real?", Kate wants to know. "Sylvia's real", he tells her.
Although Sylvia and Greg speak to each other, their dialogue sometimes appears to be more a fantasy extrapolation, or translation, of the sort of non-verbal dialogue which we imagine goes on between dogs and human dog-lovers. Many of Sylvia's most passionate and direct lines can be considered literal verbal translations of familiar canine physical actions and responses. On seeing a cat on the street: "I want to kill that fucker!" (47), or when Greg enters the apartment: "I love you! I love you!" (23). When she barks at Kate through the apartment door, Gurney renders it as "Hey! Hey! Hey!" (7). This single unambiguous translation of a canine sound into a human word suggests that what we are witnessing is often not straightforward anthropomorphism, but a linguistic fantasy of canine behaviour.
At other times, when more cerebral topics are under discussion, Sylvia's dialogue is more poised, and more characteristically human. For instance she is aware of her own literary antecedents. In an argument with Greg, when he guiltily tells her that he has agreed to have her sent to another home, Sylvia orders him to go and read The Odyssey - he might learn a thing or two about dogs and fidelity. She's multilingual too; lapsing into sensual French, tossing in impressions of Edith Piaf and Marlene Dietrich. 'Real dogs', observes John Simon of New York magazine, 'do not quote Homer and Tennessee Williams'. This is true, but real humans, on the other hand, don't run up to guests and say "Nice crotch here." Sylvia may be an anthropomorphic canine, but hers is a sophisticated, finely crafted anthropomorphism, and its net effect is to make Greg aware of the abstract, immaterial nature of his life, and awaken in him a desire for instinctual and sensory experience. Importantly, it is Sylvia's sheer presence, her behaviour and her intrinsic nature rather than anything she says which activates this longing. Gurney never makes her ply Greg with verbal, metaphysical arguments, and when Greg does become philosophical, Sylvia's character moves in the opposite direction, becoming entirely prosaic. In other words, when Greg is most human, Sylvia reacts most like a dog. This conversation takes place during a late-night walk:
GREG
"I feel connected to my fellow creatures in a new and special
way, Sylvia... I feel part of some larger pack. Surely
you can understand that.
SYLVIA
Nope. Thought I had it, but it slipped away.
GREG
Maybe it's just the anxieties of middle age. Or the sense of
disillusionment which goes with late twentieth century
capitalism. I mean the Cold War's over, Sylvia. We've
won. But what have we got?
SYLVIA
I wish I could contribute something here, but I just plain
can't." (44)
The idea that Sylvia and Greg's dialogue is an anthropomorphic extrapolation of non-verbal communication receives support in the play's final scene, which is set is set eleven years on, after Sylvia's death. During the intervening period a physical transformation has occurred to Sylvia. A photograph of her as a normal, quadruped dog is projected onto the rear wall of the stage. Greg comments on this transformation: 'It was as if we learned to understand each other without talking.' (133)
In Sylvia communication between human and canine is presented using a fantasy of language which is itself a representation of non-verbal communication. As Marjorie Garber puts it, 'one of the secrets of its success, is in letting the audience hear what it longs to hear: the voice of the talking dog.' (1996: 84) Joseph Ackerley's texts are set in the real world, and do not grant their characters the luxury of a magical inter-species verbal medium. Instead the human protagonists of My Dog Tulip and We Think the World of You establish modes of communication which circumvent verbal language. In essence the contact which Ackerley seeks to achieve in My Dog Tulip is the same perfect, pre-linguistic communication which Gurney turns into a magical spoken language in Sylvia.
My Dog Tulip is a slightly difficult text to categorise. The narrator is not named, and the names of all of the individuals mentioned in the book, including the dog Queenie, have been altered. Nevertheless the text is clearly autobiographical in content that, even allowing for the arguably distinct persona which Ackerley constructs by way of narrative style. My Dog Tulip is an accurate if necessarily incomplete account of Ackerley's relationship with Queenie. The diary entries, letters and research presented in Peter Parker's extensive biography Ackerley make it clear that the incidents related in My Dog Tulip correspond, often in fastidious detail, to real events in Ackerley's life. The accuracy of the portrayal of characters and events is evidenced in the concern shown by Secker and Warburg's lawyers, that 'certain sections might invite a civil libel action, in particular from the dog-owners Ackerley pillories in the course of the book.' (Parker: 321) Parker also notes that to Ackerley it was 'particularly important to get Queenie right', and that he only reverted to the pseudonym Tulip when it was suggested to him that 'Queenie' was 'likely to arouse titters amongst the literati' (311) - presumably because he had by this stage been an outspoken member of London's homosexual community for several decades.
The canines in My Dog Tulip and We Think the World of You resist the anthropomorphic impulse with an audacity equal to that with which Sylvia embraces it. Of Tulip, E.M. Forster writes: 'Where she innovates, where she rebels, is in demanding to be treated as a creature in her own right, as a dog of dogdom and not as an appendage of man.' Peter Parker records the difficulties which beset the publication of My Dog Tulip in 1956. Ackerley's publishers demanded many excisions which he felt would 'destroy the beastliness which I want to restore to beasts' (319).
In Ackerley's book there are no 'talking' dogs, and the linguistic barrier is sometimes achingly apparent. In My Dog Tulip he writes of a visit to the home of a Captain Pugh (in reality, Seigfried Sassoon). Tulip asks to be let outside - he thinks, to accost Pugh's cat - but it proves to have been a request of a different kind, and Tulip goes into an adjoining room to relieve herself. Ackerley writes:
I was more than touched. I was dreadfully upset. My pretty
animal, my friend, who reposed in me a loving
confidence that was absolute, has spoken to me as
plainly as she could. She had used every device that lay
in her poor brute's power to tell me something, and I
misunderstood...
How wonderful to have had an animal come to one to
communicate where no communication is, over the
incommunicability of no common speech, to ask a
personal favor! How wretched to have failed! Alas for
the gulf which separates man and beast: I had had my
chance; now it was too late to bridge it.... I had failed to
take her meaning, and nothing I could ever do could
put that right. (52)
It is a measure of Ackerley's desire for absolute equality in his relationship with Queenie/Tulip that this incident upsets him so intensely. Eventually however the gulf is bridged - though in a different modality; one which involves communion on an intrinsically canine level rather than a human verbal one. The second chapter of My Dog Tulip is titled 'Liquids and Solids', and is almost entirely devoted to the topics of canine defecation and urination (unsurprisingly it was also a source of some anxiety for Ackerley's publishers). Ackerley writes of Tulip, 'She has two kinds of urination, Necessity and Social' (44). After spending some time describing the physical style of Tulip's 'Social' urination, and the variety of objects she urinates on, he reaches the conclusion that 'she was endorsing these delectable things with her signature, much as we underline a book we are reading' (46). This comparison of urine with language, and of urination with writing occurs elsewhere in the text, summarised by the statement: 'Dogs read the world through their noses and write their history in urine' (43). (Fluke also dabbles in the idea of urine as a language. On passing a lamp-post, Fluke, whose canine senses are gradually replacing his human ones, remarks 'I could almost see the dogs who had visited this towering urinal, almost speak to them; it was as if they'd left a recorded message for me' (41)) Some time after the incident with Ackerley and Tulip at Sassoon's house 'There came a day... when we were walking in Wimbledon Woods, and she suddenly added my urine, which I had been obliged to void, to the other privileged objects of her social attention. How touched I was! How honoured I felt!' (55) Concluding the chapter he writes, 'I feel that if ever there were differences between us they are washed out now. I feel a proper dog' (55). In his diary, Ackerley records a song he sings to Queenie as they walk along: a celebration of their new-found level of communion, and a rejection not just of human communication, but humans per se.
'Piddle piddle seal and sign,
I'll smell your arse, you smell mine;
Human beings are prudes and bores,
You smell my arse, I'll smell yours.' (Parker: 270)
What gives Ackerley's earlier yearning its poignancy is the sensation that communication is so near; that the chance of genuine mental interchange existed, but was missed. The impression is of a penumbra; a crepuscular zone where meaningful contact is immanent. It is a type of marginality reminiscent of a concept which Derrida finds in Rousseau's writings on the origin of languages - the 'age of huts': an age 'Between the pure state of nature and society', when, in Rousseau's words humanity had 'no language but that of gesture, and some inarticulate sounds' (231). It is of this penumbral zone between nature and culture, when communication had yet to succumb to the endless substitution of the symbolic, of which Derrida observes:
'it is tempting to return to an archaeological moment, a first
moment of sign without speech, when passion, beyond
need but short of articulation and difference, expresses
itself in an unheard of way: an immediate sign' (234).
Rousseau likens this primordial, non-verbal sign to the movement of a magic wand, which, in Derrida's words, 'does not cut itself off from the desiring body of the person'.
The idea of the magical, non-verbal sign clearly possesses a high degree of appeal and durability. The yearning for non-verbal communication between humans and canines in these texts can be seen as a re-emergence in a new discourse, of the concept which appealed to Rousseau. In its migration from philosophy to contemporary human-canine crossover narratives, the idea of the primordial sign can be found in the writings of the philosopher Mary Midgley. In her 1978 book Beast and Man: the Roots of Human Nature she claims that all higher social animals are capable of extending the range of their symbols, when 'they really want to convey things that their innately supplied range of gestures does not let them convey' (315,6). It is this same yearned after, spontaneous manifestation of meaningful non-verbal communication which informs this pivotal scene from We Think the World of You, in which Evie signals to Frank that, to use his own phrase, his soul is no longer his own.
Evie sits upon the divan, and places a ball upon her forelegs. It rolls across the floor to Frank. He returns it. This happens twice, and then a third time. This time however, Frank writes, as the ball made 'its slow, conversational journey from her to me... she suddenly seized it back with a swift, almost scolding, thrust of her head and replaced it on her legs. It rolled. It fell. It bounced. It crossed the room and came into my hand.' (75)
Frank is disturbed. He has the
uncanny impression that, in a deliberate and purposeful
way, she had gathered up all her poor resources and, in
order to reach me directly and upon my own ground,
had managed to cross that uncrossable barrier that
separates man from beast. (76)
Evie raised her eyes 'and directed at me the kind of look that two scientists might exchange after successfully bringing off some critical experiment in physics.' This passage of writing captures a moment of pure, non-verbal contact instigated by the movement of Rousseau's Magic Wand, and representative of Midgley's account of the creation of unique non-verbal symbols. In this case Evie uses a ball to extend her symbolic repertoire. The realisation that symbolic communication has occurred outside of verbal language is both shocking and compelling to Frank. It is one of several occasions in We Think the World of You, in which he feels some momentous truth has been communicated as a consequence of a symbolic physical action by Evie. In one of their earliest meetings Evie rushes around the room in a 'wild demonstration of joy', finally coming to rest at Frank's feet. She 'lay there panting for a moment, then rolled on to her back with her legs in the air.' Again Frank is both disturbed and compelled. 'It was as though the creature had given herself to me.' (62)
To summarise: dogs in the texts examined here are valued for their powers of non-verbal communication. In Sylvia's case Gurney attempts the feat of transcribing this communication into 'intelligible' dialogue by magically giving his dog a human vocabulary. Ackerley attempts to convey a realistic description of communication involving non-verbal modes.
In the following chapter this theme is extended to show how the texts represent dogs as conduits for, and symbols of natural or primal forces, or as a means for human characters to re-establish contact with instinctual processes and modes of perception. Attention will also be directed towards the means by which the respective texts defuse or defeat the audience's or reader's cynicism or resistance to the idea of humans benefiting from involvement with and proximity to this process.