Affirming Animal Subjectivity Through Intraspecies and Interspecies Interactions in Jane Smileys A Good Horse

Different from anthropocentric narration of animals as metaphorical symbols in literature, more and more writers give voice back to animals by focalizing them in the narratives, among whom Pulitzer Prize Laureate Jane Smiley is a case in point. Animals become key characters in her works. Smileys A Good Horse is one of the novels from The Horses of Oak Valley Ranch series, of which the main characters are the horses. Meanwhile, animal studies are an emerging trend in literary critical research. It is of great significance to study animal issues in literary works to give further understanding of and enlightenment to humans relationship with nonhumans in this era when ecological crisis is an impending threat to humans. Based on Val Plumwoods dialogical interspecies ethics and Cynthia Willetts interspecies ethics, this paper will analyze the intraspecies and interspecies interactions about animal community in Smileys novel A Good Horse, and explore its animal ethics and interspecies ethics through Smileys vivid presentation and antianthropocentric affirmation of animal subjectivity. The paper finds out that Smileys narration of inner-and-cross-species interactions in animal community holds the purposes to arouse peoples awareness of animal subjectivity and animal moral agency, and to advocate a dialogical interspecies paradigm for human-animal relationship.