in the shadow of dominion
The lament of oppressed humans and other animals has echoed across time, rarely heard and even less often acknowledged. Within the immense sphere of human and animal oppression, the life and death of an elephant named Topsy is one example of the repercussions of human dominion. Her story has become ingrained in the history and folklore of American culture, not for how she lived but for the manner in which she died. Ironically, the giant mammal was named after a fictive young slave girl torn from her mother at a very young age, as depicted in Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin.1 Much like her namesake, Topsy the elephant came to the United States and lived under the stringency of oppression. She was taken from her mother and home in an Asian jungle, loaded on a ship and brought to America, where she was enslaved by showmen and forced to perform in the Forepaugh Circus for nearly three decades.2 Her life consisted of continual abuse; she was mercilessly beaten, cut, and burned by her masters. Topsy's rise to historical notoriety began after she killed one of her handlers who had tried to feed the normally docile animal a lit cigarette.3 The episode would forever bind one of the country's innovative giants, Thomas Edison, with the three-ton animal in a spectacle that would transcend the time.
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