We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves: A Book Review
This paper reviews Karen Joy Fowler's novel We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves, examining its central ethical and moral arguments about human-animal relationships through the narrator Rosemary's perspective. The review explores the fictional cross-fostering experiment in which Rosemary is raised alongside Fern, a chimpanzee, and considers what this arrangement reveals about language, identity, and the boundaries between species. It also addresses the novel's critique of animal research practices, the legacy of real cross-fostering studies such as the Washoe experiment, and the broader philosophical question of what it means to be human.
- Overview of the Novel and Its Narrator: Introduction to Rosemary, her secrets, and the novel's premise
- The Cross-Fostering Experiment and Its Implications: The chimp-human experiment and Rosemary's suspicions about it
- Animal Ethics and Research Critique: The novel's critique of animal research and institutional cruelty
- Chimp Cognition and Human-Animal Boundaries: Chimp development, cognition, and limits of human cohabitation
- Family Trauma and the Cost of the Experiment: How Fern's disappearance devastates Rosemary's entire family
- The Novel's Broader Moral Arguments: Philosophical questions about identity, species, and ethical coexistence
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What makes this paper effective
- The review moves systematically through the novel's major themes — identity, family, ethics, and animal cognition — giving each substantive attention rather than skimming the surface.
- It connects the fictional narrative to real historical research, such as the Washoe chimpanzee experiment, grounding literary analysis in factual context.
- The paper balances plot summary with evaluative commentary, consistently returning to the ethical questions Fowler raises about animal research and human primacy.
Key academic technique demonstrated
The paper uses a thematic reading strategy, identifying recurring moral and philosophical threads — nature vs. nurture, species identity, the ethics of animal experimentation — and tracing them across multiple scenes and character arcs. This approach allows the writer to treat the novel as an argument, not just a story, which is appropriate for academic literary criticism.
Structure breakdown
The review opens with an introduction to the novel's premise and narrator, then moves through the cross-fostering experiment and its scientific context, the critique of animal research, the consequences for Rosemary's family, and finally the novel's broader philosophical provocation. The conclusion ties these threads back to the central question of what separates humans from animals. Three secondary sources support the analysis throughout.
Overview of the Novel and Its Narrator
We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves is Karen Joy Fowler's sixth novel. It engages a range of sophisticated moral and ethical issues through the funny, witty, and wry voice of a young woman named Rosemary. As narrator, Rosemary works hard to keep certain aspects of her early life secret from other people — and, crucially, from herself. Her sister and brother went missing, her father retreated into research and data, and her mother became a shell of herself. At one point, Rosemary tosses a glass of milk on the floor and gets arrested. But something else, something truly "beside themselves," is going on beneath the surface. It is a secret (Fowler, 2014).
The book analyzes an ostensibly simple experiment in nature versus nurture. If Fern was raised as a human, what would she be capable of — especially in terms of language and literacy? According to Rosemary, a psychologist's daughter, whatever is being studied is never quite what it appears to be under study. She suspects that she herself is the real subject, not Fern. She comes to believe that her father is not raising a chimpanzee with the ability to speak like a human, but rather the reverse: a human who could communicate like a chimp (Calarco, 2014). She grows upset with her father upon reaching this conclusion, though it is possible that Rosemary is simply being unfair.
The Cross-Fostering Experiment and Its Implications
Although Rosemary is not ready to admit it, her mother was equally involved in the experiment. She is defensive and protective of any explanation for her mother's total collapse. According to research Rosemary conducts on cross-fostering experiments, it is often more relevant to study how chimpanzees communicate with each other than how well they can learn to communicate with humans. It took nearly a century to remove humans from the center of the "chimp experiment" (Calarco, 2014). During that time, little to no existing research suggested it was humans who failed to comprehend the chimps, rather than the other way around. Human primacy, intelligence, and communication priorities were not questioned.
Unlike humans, chimpanzees develop faster and are more advanced in almost every measurable way by age two. Rosemary attributes to herself the classic chimpanzee qualities, which are outlined on her kindergarten report card. She describes herself as possessive, impulsive, and demanding. She finds it difficult to keep her hands to herself and perceives the space around her both horizontally and vertically. She is unable to climb as Fern does, but she still views the world as climbable (Fowler, 2014).
Rosemary and her sister understand each other well. However, it remains unclear how much of Fern's communication Rosemary imagines and imposes, and how much truly originates from Fern herself (Kingsolver, 2013). This ambiguity is central to the novel's inquiry into the nature of language, understanding, and interspecies relationships.
Animal Ethics and Research Critique
According to the narrator, science and medical research — including the use of animals in food production — are not inherently wrong, but research facilities and food industries employ indefensible and unnecessary cruelties. It is troubling that animals are raised to live miserable lives. Rosemary argues that things would be more ethical if they were done transparently and openly. The same principle, she suggests, should apply to war, politics, environmental policy, and prisons (Fowler, 2014). Animal rights activists, in her view, are doing necessary work by fighting for animal welfare and raising public awareness of these ethical failures.
It is unethical to treat animals as fundamentally different from humans when both are primates sharing a great deal of DNA. Nevertheless, Rosemary's father makes a pointed observation: making sense of the U.S. Congress is roughly as difficult as interpreting primate research conducted over two hundred years. Although Fern has a decent vocabulary, possessing vocabulary is not the same as being able to communicate on sophisticated subjects (Kingsolver, 2013).
References
Fowler, K. J. (2014). We are all completely beside ourselves. GP Putnam's Sons.
Calarco, M. (2014). Boundary issues: Human–animal relationships in Karen Joy Fowler's We Are All Completely beside Ourselves. MFS Modern Fiction Studies, 60(3), 616–635.
Kingsolver, B. (2013). The other sister: Karen Joy Fowler's We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves. New York Times.
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