The Starling and The Mouse

In 1773, Anna Laetitia Barbauld wrote, "The Mouse's Petition," and addressed it to Dr. Joseph Priestley, the renowned English chemist who had used mice for his scientific experimentations. It is a poem that, as Mary Ellen Bellanca suggests, embodies tensions "between the desire for knowledge and misgivings about its ethical costs" (Eighteenth Century Studies 37.1.2003). The figure of the mouse, part metaphorical and part literal, reflects two features of later eighteenth-century fiction: the attenuation of sentimental sensibilities, and the use of anthropomorphic language to represent human oppression on a political scale. Barbaud's poem (I am surpised it has not yet been claimed by PETA &c.) centres on the sufferings of a little mouse in a trap, but quickly unravels as a call against oppression in any form, "Let nature's commoner's enjoy / The common gifts of heaven," in a way that allows its meaning to be easily transfered to popular feelings at this time about, oh, I don't know, slavery, for instance.

The ideas of natural freedom that Barbauld presents in her versed rhyme through the figure of the little trapped mouse, whose "guiltless blood" stains the "hospitable earth," was earlier presented by Laurence Sterne in A Sentimental Journey (1768). In the chapter, "The Hotel at Paris - The Passport," Yorick hears a little voice, which he took to be a child, crying:

... and looking up, I saw it was a starling hung in a little cage,
--'I can't get out--I can't get out'-- said the starling. I stood
looking at the bird: and to every person who came through
the passage it ran fluttering ... --'I can't get out,' said the starling.
--God, help thee! said I--but I'll let out, cost what it will.

The bird flew to the place where I was attempting his deliverance,
and thrusting his head through the trellis, pressed his breast
against it, as if impatient -- I fear, poor creature! said I,
I cannot set thee at liberty--'No,' said the starling,
--'I can't get out--I can't get out,' said the starling.

Disguise thyself as thou wilt, Slavery! said I--still thou art a bitter drought.

This episode of the starling, a bird coincedentally found on the Sterne coat of arms (above), needs little explanation, except I will point to the fact that Yorick was unable to open the cage. In 2007, Shandy Hall held an exhibit on Sterne's starling to commemorate the 200th year since the beginning of the end of slavery in the British Empire. The passage in ASJ got praise from "the extraordinary negro" Ignatius Sancho (who you can read more about here, written by specialist Brycchan Carey, who is very nice), and is alluded to in Volume I, Chapter X of Jane Austen's Mansfield Park (elaborated upon here). While there are plenty of arguments around the starling, and what it means in a Shandean context, I find that it is both an emblem of oppression and a catalyst for Yorick's sensibility, which takes the reader into a tormented and painful representation of feeling, Sterne, and his reader, almost bursting into tears of anguish, even though I still think Sterne is ribbing us, to some extent... but anyway, don't forget Barbauld's poor little mouse.