The Victorian aquarium as a miniature sea

During the Victorian era the underwater world became, more than ever before, an object of fascination, curiosity and debate. The invention of the saltwater aquarium in the early 1850s further boosted this interest, and Victorians enthusiastically embraced the exciting novelty, which gave them the possibility to observe, for the very first time, the life of sea animals. Numerous aquarium manuals were published during the 1850s and early 1860s, teaching readers not only how to build and stock their home tank, but also how to enjoy it and make sense of what happened inside it. My essay explores how these descriptions of tank-life gestured toward a wide range of cultural references, weaving multiple, at times surprising connections between the miniature sea recreated in the tank and the world outside it. In particular, I investigate the descriptive strategies adopted by mid-century aquarium manuals, focusing on three kinds of analogy: in the first place, I discuss the similes and metaphors used to ‘domesticate’ the inhabitants of the tank by describing their behaviour in humanising terms; I argue that, in most cases, this was not just the result of a naïve anthropomorphization, but was rather meant to help aquarium owners to relate to their marine animals, enriching the visual pleasure they offered with further meanings, and thus turning a detached observation into an interested, amused and participating one. Then, I examine comparisons used to make sense of the complicated, still partially obscure biology of sea specimens. The purpose of these analogies was to draw attention to their anatomical complexity, teaching readers how to observe, but also how to interpret what they saw in the proper light from a scientific, moral, or religious point of view. Finally, I illustrate how similes and metaphors also worked in the other direction, drawing comparisons that de-familiarised the human world by reimagining it in submarine terms. I suggest that this set of analogies was used to cultivate surprise, encouraging readers to grasp the true degree of ‘strangeness’ that characterised some marine species, which were still a puzzle to scientists and taxonomists. Therefore, while the inhabitants of the tank were ‘domesticated’ and described in humanising terms, they were also presented as deeply ‘alien’, thus providing an intriguing mixture of the familiar and the exotic, the homely and the outlandish. But these texts also depicted the aquarium as a perfect replica of the submarine environment, and so contributed to make the underwater world more familiar and – most importantly – less threatening, while at the same time presenting it as a fascinating mystery, still to be explored. Indeed, as these texts catered to the growing interest in the sea, they also boosted it, enriching and complicating people’s ideas through a captivating blend of scientific observation, literary allusions and imaginary journeys under water.