The romantic vegetable eaters: the politics and poetics of an active diet

This thesis examines the relationship between the vegetable diet and change in the Romantic period. Romantic vegetable eaters believed that by reforming their diets they could reform the world, creating change that would benefit all. Through a boycott of the consumption of animal flesh, animals would lose their property status and have their rights recognised. Individuals in society would also become healthier as they ate a natural diet, and there would be a greater quantity of food to feed the growing population. Society would become more equitable as a result, and the natural world would flourish. Spearheaded by Percy Shelley, the romantic vegetable eaters passionately and ardently attempted to persuade their readers with this active and driven rhetoric. They wanted the world to change, as they themselves had changed. Percy Shelley, of all the vegetable eaters, was most idealistic as in his poetry he created a vision of the future based on these principles. These dreams of reform, however, were tempered by the reservations of Mary Shelley’s literary representations that highlighted the difficulties of creating change in the real world. This thesis examines the relationship between the vegetable diet and reform, highlighting its potential to create change. It also establishes how pertinent these arguments are today, and how they reflect contemporary versions of the same points of view. The thesis, however, concludes with the recognition that although these arguments have a strong legacy, they ultimately remain a Romantic ideal, yet to be achieved, as people have not universally adopted the regimen. As the creature in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein is denied a mate and is unable to make a society in his ecologically driven image that unifies the human and animal worlds, the vegetable eaters did not create the degree of change they wished for. However, their legacy and ambition live on.