What’s in Mr. Rogers’ refrigerator?

“I exercise and eat healthy foods. I’ll show you some of them. These are all soy foods. Soybeans–you need to boil those, cook them. You can put sauce over them, like a tomato sauce. There’s vegetarian– vegetarian burgers. It’s all vegetables, no meat in that at all. Of course, it’s a soy food. These soybeans are already cooked. There’s tofu. I eat a lot of tofu. You’ll like it…It will be all healthy…I like being here with all these different foods.  I like to keep trying to add new healthy foods all the time.”

In 1966 Fred Rogers created a television program that became a safe place for generations of children.  He is still today, nearly ten years after his death, a universally loved pop culture figure.

Life started for Rogers simply enough in a small town south of Pittburgh.  He began playing the piano with his mother at the age of 5, and went on to graduate from Rollins college with a degree in music composition.  He was an ordained Presbyterian minister, and it is from his faith that he derived his compassion.

Mister Roger’s Neighborhood is like coming home for generations of Americans.  The man was and continues to be what we all feel we should be, how we should interact with the world around us.

We live in a world in which we need to share responsibility. It’s easy to say ‘It’s not my child, not my community, not my world, not my problem.’ Then there are those who see the need and respond. I consider those people my heroes.

The creator of one of the most famous monsters in the Western world was a vegetarian.  And so was her creation.  So today we feature Mary Shelley, and her creature.

The creature in Frankenstein is indeed a vegetarian.  A vegan really, if you want to get technical.

There are three circles in the narrative of Frankenstein, the innermost being at the point when the creature is out alone in the forest, having been rejected by human society.  It is in this section that the creature declares his compassion.

“My food is not that of man; I do not destroy the lamb and kid to glut my appetite; acorns and berries afford my sufficient nourishment.”

Previously in the novel, the creature does indeed kill, but only when under orders from his master.  He uses his vegetarianism as one way to break with the cruelty of his master.

One note: it has only been in the past fifteen years that the idea of the creature’s vegetarianism has been noted in literary circles.  A rather exciting thing if you ask me!

Mary Wolstencraft  Shelley, like the star of her masterpiece, was a vegetarian.

The 19th century was the first time that a widespread vegetarian movement existed in the West outside of the religious arena.  This movement is called Romantic Vegetarianism and was championed by Shelley’s husband Percy Blysshe Shelley in several essays, including “A Vindication of the Natural Diet,”  and “On the Vegetable System of Diet.”

Her father, William Godwin, was friends with many prominent vegetarians of the time and entertained them in the household when she was a child.  This is, of course, how she met Percy Shelley.  At the time, vegetarianism was radical and subversive.  It was not like it is today, where there is (thankfully) a vegetarian on every streetcorner. The introduction of these elements into her formative years most certainly fed her compassion toward animals.

Frankenstein or The Modern Prometheus is the most widely read book written during the Romantic Period, surpassing the works of her husband and of heavy hitting contemporaries like Coleridge and Wordsworth.

Shelley spent a large portion of her life annotating and publishing the works of her husband, who died after only six years of marriage when he was just thirty years old.  Nontheless, it is her work that stands the test of time and popularity (we might reiterate, with its vegan main character.)

For more on the subject of Mary Shelley’s vegetarianism-

• Vegetarian Bride of Frankenstein
• Shelley and the Revolution in Taste