"I Promise to Protect Dumb Creatures".

This paper argues that the Christian discourse disseminated by the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (RSPCA) in the early Victorian period represents nonhuman animals as complicit in their own subjection. Using Foucault's notion of pastoral power--a power of care--we can recognize RSPCA discourse as constructing animal subjects who desire to remain subject to humankind. This essay demonstrates how three animal welfare tracts submitted to the RSPCA for a contest in 1837 rely on Christian discourse and construct animal subjects who willingly subject themselves to human needs and desires. These texts, one of which was the winner and published by the RSPCA, demonstrate that the construction of animal subjectivity within animal welfare discourse presents a striking form of power over animals that has not yet been noticed by other critics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]