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FREUD, FRAZER, AND LAWRENCE'S PALIMPSESTIC NOVELLA: DREAMS AND THE HEAVINESS
OF MALE DESTINY IN "THE FOX"
Author(s): PETER BALBERT
Source: Studies in the Novel, Vol. 38, No. 2 (summer 2006), pp. 211-233
Published by: Studies in the Novel, University of North Texas
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FREUD, FRAZER, AND LAWRENCE'S
PALIMPSESTIC NOVELLA: DREAMS AND
THE HEAVINESS OF MALE DESTINY
m THE FOX
PETER BALBERT
either
"You
-D.
H.
Lawrence,
or you
believe
don't."
of the Unconscious
Fantasia
"If in the present work I have dwelt at lengthon trees..."
-Sir James Frazer, The Golden Bough
"There
a man
wants
-D.
As
any
cumulative
index
of
articles
and
H.
citations
about
the place."
The
Lawrence,
on Lawrence's
Fox
work
suggests, no shortfiction by him has received as much sustained consideration
by critics through theyears as The Fox. This voluminous criticism encompasses
a wide variety of subject material and methodology, including a range of
opinion concerning such topics as the open-ended conclusion of the novella,
the relevance
of the purported
models
for the major
characters,
and
the success
of thework as fictional art.l Surprisingly little attention has centered on the
subtle reiteration and development in imagery and motivation that inform the
characterizations of March, Banford, and Henry. This relative disregard of
thematic pattern and stylistic repetition explains theperplexity and discomfort
of many
commentators
over
the uncertain
of
ending
the work,
as March
and
Henry nervously contemplate their decision to leave England and travel
across theAtlantic. There exists no in-depth and linear study of The Fox that
attempts
Studies
University
to analyze
in the Novel,
organized
patterns
of Lawrence's
Volume
38, number 2 (Summer
of North Texas. All rights to reproduction
techniques
and doctrines
2006). Copyright ? 2006
in any form reserved.
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by the
/ BALBERT
212
as coherent preludes to the necessarily anticlimactic tone of the final scene.2
Similarly, there has been little effort to relate themajor revisions and radical
lengthening of the firstversion (1918) into the novella (1921) to the changing
state of Lawrence's own doctrinal vision within that period-an ideological
realignment connected to thevolatile context of Lawrence's marriage toFrieda
and to his vulnerable emotions in those "nightmare" years during an especially
difficultperiod inhis life. Perhaps themost significant area of neglect involves
the lack of relevant biographical and intertextualmaterial on Lawrence's
personal and aesthetic preoccupations as he moves from the unambiguous and
tightlyresolved tale to themore ambitious novella.3
When Lawrence began redrafting The Fox in the late fall of 1921, he
had just completed final revisions on Fantasia of the Unconscious.
That
often dyspeptic and exhortatory volume of "pollyanalytics"
{Fantasia 65)
offers
an
elaboration
of Lawrence's
theories
about
such
topics
as
sexuality,
parenting, education, marriage, and the unconscious; thework is integratedby
Lawrence's pervasive interest in the strugglebetween emotion and intellect that
has preoccupied Western culture for centuries. At the center of his argument
is a highly charged and cranky attack on Freudian theory. Lawrence asserts,
in effect, that Freud dangerously rationalized erotic life and thus seriously
underestimated the visionary and religious stimulus in human beings, a primal
motivation that Lawrence insists must function irrationally, erotically and
above ail-preeminently over the intellect. Philip Rieff eloquently described
the oppositional stakes forty years ago: "Lawrence knew intuitively, if not
historically, that reason defends mainly against impulse, and against what
he considered the legitimate and undeniable power of love" (iii). Because
of Lawrence's outspoken emphasis on instinct and on the existential primacy
of the five senses, it is no surprise that he held Frazer's The Golden Bough
in high esteem, given thatmonumental work's unpsychoanalytical inquiry
into primitive habits, beliefs, and rituals, all part of a broad and impressive
scholarship by Frazer that involved him in a complex and detailed outline of
myths, symbols, and taboos enacted in a variety of pre-industrial societies.4
Lawrence maintains that"knowledge must be symbolical, mythical, dynamic,"
and that "symbols must be true from top to bottom" {Fantasia 113).
He firstread The Golden Bough in the fall and winter of 1915-16, and he
referred to it in the newly added Foreword toFantasia of theUnconscious (62)
as a
major
on his own
influence
visionary
As
perspective.
he began
sustained
work on revisions of The Fox, he recently had read his friendBarbara Low's
be ok on Freudian theory,and her study did little tomodify his contempt for
doctrine.
psychoanalytical
Lawrence's
adaptation
of
elements
in Frazer's
study of magic, taboo, and superstition often is recognizable in the novella,
and ? regard itas a serious oversight by critics thatFrazer's direct influence on
Lawrence's
Fox."5
work
has
not
been
acknowledged
sufficiently
in studies
Yet the undisguised antagonism to Freud evident inFantasia
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of "The
of the
D.H.LAWRENCE
/ 213
Unconscious provides the special dividend of enabling readers of The Fox to
witness the operative universality of Freud's theories about the unconscious
playing itselfout against thedogmatically un-Freudian intentionof Lawrence,
for the novelist sounds convinced that the symbologies in his fiction primarily
reflect his familiarity with the research of such archetypal primitivists as
Frazer, Blavatsky, and Jung. Thus when salient aspects of Lawrence's life and
marriage are engraved on a foundation of Lawrencian doctrine that for him is
consciously supported by Frazer and unconsciously illuminated by Freud, the
result is a kind of palimpsestic fiction, as the various inscriptions of influence
on Lawrence compete for priority in this dense and revealing work. (See also
Gay 528.) The evidence for these strands of influence emerges at different
points in the novella, and theirvisibility is particularly prominent in the two
dream
sequences
complicate
and
experienced
enhance
by March,
the multi-textured
when
Frazer,
Freud,
resonance
and
of Lawrence's
Fantasia
art.
The opening pages of The Fox quickly emphasize the unnatural and
decreative results of the farming that is so earnestly and awkwardly managed
by March and Banford. Through a combination of bad luck, inexperience,
and
incompetence,
the young
women
encounter
a series
of unfortunate
events
that undermine the fertilityof their land and livestock and thereby harm the
prospects for theireconomic survival. The sudden death of thegrandfather, the
untamable wildness of the heifer, the chickens' obstinate refusal to lay eggs
all seems out of rhythmand recourse even before we learnmuch about these
landowners who attempt an independent life in a difficult and traditionally
masculine domain in themale-decimated countryside of England at the end
of thewar. Lawrence stresses the gender inversion and sexual displacement
early in thework, as if somehow the women's ill fortune is related to their
presumption of unorthodox roles. March pointedly is described as "the man
about the place" and Banford "did not look as if she would marry" (7). Yet for
all the unconventionality of theirhousehold arrangement, Lawrence employs
his familiar imagery of procreative blackness to suggestMarch's potential for
the instinctual, creative depths thathe praises inFantasia of theUnconscious
as the "fathomless blackness" (101) of the eye. He
reiterativelymentions that
March's "eyes were big and wide and dark" (8), leading to his more directive
comment about her unfulfilled passion and repressed needs, that "there was
something odd and unexplained about her" (8). For Lawrence, such qualities
of inexplicability, strangeness, and unknowability remain the signature of the
creative soul: "To know is to lose. When I have a finishedmental concept of
a beloved, then the love and friendship is dead... .To know is to die" {Fantasia
108).6
The farm stands isolated on "the edge of thewood" (9), and from inside
the dark and deep border often emerges a fox that is described as a "demon"
and "serpent" (9) for the vicious and stealthymanner it attacks the fowl that
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214
/ BALBERT
comprise the working economy of the farm. This picture of the adjoining
forest as metaphoric domain as well as literal sanctuary reflects the engrained
primitivism of the novella that is influenced by Lawrence's reading of Frazer
and articulated inFantasia of theUnconscious as his unqualified belief in the
"subjective science" thatwas "taught esoterically in all countries of the globe"
and then "remembered as ritual, gesture, and myth story" (62-63).
In this
context of demonism and magic, Frazer refers in The Golden Bough to the
custom in ancient England of burning foxes in seasonal festivals
of exorcism, and among theBritish Celts the burning is an attempt "to break
the power of witchcraft" and thus "greater would be the fertilityof the land"
(761-62). Frazer furtherexplains that the foxes and other wild animals were
consigned to the flames because "they were believed to be witches who had
Druidical
taken the shape of animals for their nefarious purposes" (762). March and
Banford do not require archetypal justification to seek out themarauding fox,
but themythic implications of serpent and forest alert the reader that rational
explanations will not be sufficient to explain themystical grip of instinct and
emotion that informskey moments of the novella. This sense of the fox as a
devilish and demonic presence in their lives is created by the inexperienced and
hysterical perspective ofMarch and Banford, who feel the animal's underworld
ambience more than they calmly understand the situational normalcy of its
predatory behavior. One of themajor themes in the novella will be whether
March can distance herself from the range of typological associations related
to the fox, and (as a later contingency) whether she can separate Henry from
thatpersistent identificationwith the fox that informsher preoccupations with
thisboy-man. It is here thatelements of Freudian symbology begin to emerge
in themulti-layered textureof the fiction, as the unconscious signposts merge
with Lawrence's appropriations of regional and totemic primitivism. From the
first time thatMarch sees the fox, her awareness appears sublimatingly sexual
and-more precisely-projectively phallic, with her mesmerized awareness of
thewhite tip of its brush, with her intense concern with its ruddy, snake-like
shadow in the deep grass, and with her awkward and mannish use of a long
rifle thatpredictably proves impotentwhen she uses it in the hunt for the fox.
Lawrence's
imaginative
use
of Frazer's
detailed
research
establishes
an
additional meaning for the fox that is relevant toMarch's psychology and
emotional development. The fox resembles what Frazer describes throughout
The Golden Bough as the corn-spirit-that is, the fox as the symbolic incarnation
of successful germination and of a bountiful agricultural season. But the fox
must die for theharvest tobe complete (Frazer 518). The psychosexual theories
of Freud retain viability beyond the documented influence of Lawrencian
doctrine and Frazer's primitivism. Here the emphasis on the tail ("brush") of
the fox inMarch's thoughts recalls the totemic terms of Frazer's analysis of
a ritual in Bourgogne while it also illustrates the rites of manhood
practiced
by an entire village: "The last sheaf [of corn] represented the fox. Beside it
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D.H.LAWRENCE
/ 215
a score of ears was left standing to form the tail, and each reaper, going back
some paces, threw his sickle at it. He who succeeded in severing it, 'cut off
the fox's tail' and a cry of 'you cou cou' was raised in his honor" (Frazer 518).
As an elusive and natural spirit of procreation thatMarch both respects and
reviles, it is difficult to avoid the sexual significance of thepresence of the fox
inher isolated and frustrated life.When she looks at him, "he was not daunted"
(10), for he embodies theLawerencian "otherness" that as yetMarch cannot
accept, the unknowable passion she cannot engage. She is hypnotically drawn
to a part of the fox's body that in its length and bushy prominence seems most
male in its full extension: "She saw his brush held smooth like a feather, and
saw his white buttocks twinkle" (10). March's attraction to the fox (and soon to
Henry) is played off numerous times against thepersistent and whining sounds
of Banford's voice beckoning her to return: "At last she became aware that
Banford was calling her" (10). March is torn constantly between the urgent,
choric calls of Banford and themagnetism of the fox or of Henry-as-fox. The
desperation in Banford's call will increase proportionally as March becomes
more entrenched in the otherness represented firstby the animal, then by the
and
man-as-animal,
then by Henry-as-man.
From themoment Henry enters the cloistered world of thesewomen, two
integrated factors are reiterated by Lawrence as structural and ideological
principles of organization early in thework: Banford insists on seeing Henry
as boyish and inconsequential, and March-through a transparent process of
displacement and repression-identifies him with the fox. But the Freudian
patterns
here
are no more
essential
than Frazer's
research,
for Frazer
is precisely
relevant about the history of the procreative and phallic potential implicit in
the unexpected appearance of Henry, whether he is perceived as fox or corn
spirit:
The
the corn-spirit with an animal
is analogous
to the
a passing
of
stranger. As the sudden appearance
a stranger near the harvest field or
threshing floor is, to the primitive mind,
to identify him as the spirit of the corn
from the cut or
enough
escaping
threshed corn, so the sudden appearance
of an animal
issuing from the cut
corn is enough
to identify it with the
from his ruined
corn-spirit escaping
two identifications
are so analogous
home.
The
that they can hardly be
in any attempt to explain
disassociated
them. (537-38)
identification
identification
of
of him with
The Fox reveals Lawrence's palimpsestic effort to fictionalize the process of
association and identification described by Frazer, as the novelist embroiders
the primitive elements with intentional intrusions of his own doctrine, and
with
unconscious
patterns
of motivation
and meaning
that emerge
regardless
of his intent. Although Freud was not uninterested in the historic importance
of Frazer's expository work, he was more eager to speculate in depth on the
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216
/ BALBERT
psychosexual reasons for the rituals outlined in The Golden Bough. Freud's
theoretical assertions about the structure and significance of dreams often
prove illuminating in the specific case; here they offer a special applicability
in terms of an "identification" thatMarch obsessively ponders in her dream?
like state: "Wild beasts are as a rule employed by thedream-work to represent
passionate impulses of which the dreamer is afraid, whether they are his own
or those of other people" {Interpretation of Dreams 445). Freud furtherand
famously insists-with open acknowledgement of Frazer's contribution-that
such symbolism amounts to "a form of representation recalling totemism. It
might be said that the wild beasts are used to represent the libido, a force
dreaded by the ego and combated by means of repression" (445).7 But
soon March's repressions will take her from an obsession with the fox to a
mesmerized belief in the representation of Henry-as-fox, and this transition
also has credible basis indream theory: "It often happens, too, that thedreamer
separates off his neurosis, his 'sick personality,' from himself and depicts itas
an independent person" (445).
Despite Henry's social inexperience and sexual immaturity,he impresses
his female hosts (and the reader) with his skills at detailed observation. His
firstextended contemplation ofMarch's demeanor ismore curious than erotic,
as he ponders quizzically the repressed look she conveys with her tightknot of
dark hair,man-like clothes, and receptive eyes-an odd combination of elements
capped offwith the unwieldy rifle in her hand. March's perspective on him is
unequivocal, as she confirms the syndrome of projection and repression defined
by Freud: "But toMarch he was the fox... .The boy was to her the fox, and she
could not see him otherwise" (14). His rootlessness and independence are
summarized in his military enlistment after he ran away from his grandfather.
Such deracination and pluckiness early in his life have provided him with a
talent for grasping opportunity and for valuing the virtue of hard work. March
perceives littleabout these qualities during theirfirstencounter. Her immediate
sense thathe resembles the fox permits her to relax and to repress the human
sexual threatand allure he embodies forher. By reductively signifyinghim as
the fox, she avoids (for a time) the full implications of his presence as a man,
as Lawrence typically conveys the sensual significance of his appearance for
March by means of shadow imagery and of the "lapsing-out" that signals the
presence of sexual desire: "There in the shadow of her corner she gave herself
up
to a warm,
on her...
relaxed
.Hidden
peace,
in the shadow
almost
of her
like
the spell
sleep,
accepting
corner..
at last lapse
.she could
that was
into
the
odour of the fox" (18). In Freudian terms,March's daydreams "benefit by
a certain degree of relaxation of censorship" permitted by the dreamer in a
process of "secondary revision" {Interpretation 530). Her lapse "into theodour
of the fox" illustratesFreud's view that "the wishful purpose that is at work"
in theproduction remains the common but deceptive "phantasy" (529) adapted
from childhood memories of passion without disruption or consequence.
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For
D.H.LAWRENCE
/ 217
March this phantasy is, in effect, of the bodily rescue and courtship of an
adult woman without the undertaking of risk and disruption that realmarriage
There
requires.
also
a more
exists
reason
primitive
for the use
of
shadows
as
themetaphor that leadsMarch into intimations of her sexual desire. As Frazer
evocatively describes thehabits and beliefs of earlier civilizations, he explains
how
"some
believe
people
a man's
soul
to be
in his
shadow,"
and-as
we
recall
how Henry's view of the fox's shadow will be crucial in his killing the animal
"a warrior's strengthwaxed and waned with the depth of his shadow" (222).
In The Fox the crucial and catharticmeetings between March and Henry occur
within the shadows produced by encroaching evening. It is during the deeper
darkness ofMarch's sleep thatLawrence begins to chart the full implications
of her needs
March's
and
cautions.
first dream
resonates
as
a fusion
of material
from
Frazer
and
Freud, and it also bears the imprintof Lawrence's central notions about the
demands of the organic self. In it she responds for once not to the beckoning
calls of Banford but towhat she believes are the tempting, inscrutable sounds
of the fox ("singing outside, which she could not understand" 20), an animal
shaped in the long and lean design of phallic imagery, and with the color and
kind of Frazer's famous and totemic subject ("he was very yellow and bright,
like corn" 20). She tries to touch him and he responds with a swipe of the
"brush across her face" (20). Lawrence deploys the phoenix-like metaphor of
flame that throughout his work indicates the painful but necessary forging of
thenew soul: "And it seemed his brush was on fire, for it seared and burned her
mouth with great pain" (2).8 The dream-work insists on what March's receptive
senses
unconscious
and what
Lawrence's
vision
always
mandates:
there will
be strong consequences in her instinctual attraction to the fox, consequences
thatFreud believes are reflectedduring thedreams of women inwhich so often
"the female genital orifice is [represented] by themouth" with the tail often
functioning as phallic "while the fur stands for the pubic hair" {Interpretation
394, 118). When March first sees the fox not only does she note "his brush
held smooth like a feather," but she also "saw his white buttocks twinkle" (10).
That the fox's brush is both phallic in shape and positioned on the buttocks
of the animal, and thatMarch palpably experiences the fox's assault on her
mouth in thedream-such a configuration of shape, organ, and sensation is fully
explicable in termsofmeaningful transpositions thatoften occur in dreams:
instance of a transposition of this kind is the replacement
of the genitals
of unconscious
by the face in the symbolism
usage
thinking.
Linguistic
follows
the same line in recognizing
the buttocks
['Hinterbacken,'
literally
as homologous
to the cheeks, and by drawing a parallel between
back-cheeks']
the 'labia' and the lips which frame the aperture of themouth.
{Interpretation
One
422)
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218
/ BALBERT
Although March "awoke with the pain" of this dream encounter, in the
morning "she only remembered it as a distant memory" (20). This lack of
retention so soon after a disruptive dream is indicative of the intensity of
resistance
March's
to its repressed
significance,
and
it also
reflects
Lawrence's
defiant and stubborn stance that "most dreams are purely insignificant,and it
is a sign of a weak and paltry nature to pay any attention to themwhatever"
extensive discussion of dreams in
{Fantasia 178). Much of Lawrence's
Fantasia of theUnconscious relies on a reductive andmechanically "digestive"
theory of dream-prompting, as he unpersuasively emphasizes thatwhat the
dreamer ate for dinner and how his organs interacted in the body hold major
clues to the source and substance of respective dreams. Freud does not
dismiss the occasional relevance of physical initiatorsof the unconscious, but
he is famously dogmatic on the issue of interpretability,
maintaining without
exception that "every dream reveals itself as a psychical structurewhich has
a meaning and can be inserted at an assignable point in themental activities
of waking life" {Interpretation 35). While Lawrence demonstrates his own
resistance to this seminal notion of psychoanalysis, it is likely that some willed
disingenuousness on his part explains the adamance of his position. For
instance, just a few weeks before Lawrence composes March's dream for the
firstversion of The Fox in 1918 (it is virtually unchanged in the 1921 novella),
he describes his own luminous dream to an importantbenefactor, Lady Cynthia
Asquith:
I dreamed,
I had been to some big, crowded
also, such a funny dream. When
fair somewhere-where
to sell, on booths and on the floor-as
I
things were
was coming back down an open road, I heard such a strange
crying overhead,
in front, and looking up, I saw, not very high in the air above me, but higher
than I could throw, two pale spotted dogs, crouching
in the air, and mauling
a bird that was crying loudly.
I ran fast forwards and clapped my hands and
the dogs started back. The bird came falling down to earth. It was a young
blue all over like a peacock's
peacock,
But itwas not much hurt. A woman
neck, very lovely. It still kept crying.
came running out of a cottage not far
be all right. So I went my way. That
off, and took the bird, saying itwould
dream is in some oblique way or other connected
interpret it. {Letters III 247-8)
Surely
Lawrence
protests
too much,
given
the
with
I can't
your aura-but
accessible
nature
of what
Freud calls the dream-work, "the process by which the latentdream thoughts
were
transformed
into
the manifest
dream"
{New
Lectures
Introductory
on
Psychoanalysis 17). The young and sensitive Lawrence, praised and supported
extravagantly by his doting mother for his blue eyes and special gifts, here
embodied as a proud but vulnerable peacock under assault by the dogs of
England,
rescued
by a mother-substitute
who
cannot
stay with
him-the
whole
vignette, in effect, textured so thatLawrence the artist is both participant (as
the peacock) and observer (as the artist). His assertion of ignorance becomes
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D.H.LAWRENCE
/ 219
all themore transparentwhen he sends off the cathartic letterto a titledwoman
who often has intervened in his life to protect him from themaulings by
friends,
antagonistic
publishers,
and
government
bureaucrats.
Filled with energy and confidence about his role on the farm,Henry uses
his insights about the natural landscape and his skill at hunting to shoot a wild
duck that theproud male brings to thewomen "as a great addition to the empty
larder" (21). After this demonstration of his practical value to the ineffective
farmers, he brings up his concerns about finding lodging in the village. March
appears flexible toBanford's suggestion thathe remain with them at the farm,
and she accepts the prospect of his residence only by reducing him again to
the totem of the fox as she recalls the sensual and "forging" aspects of her
dream: "March felt the same sly, taunting,knowing spark leap out of his eyes
as he turned his head aside, and fall into her soul, as it had fallen from the
dark eyes of the fox. She pursed hermouth as if in pain, as if asleep too" (21).
Banford remains acquiescent to this temporary arrangement only by ignoring,
through displacement, the sexual threathe presents to her relationship with
March. She continues to diminish hismanhood by pretending thathis presence
is inconsequential, that the innocence of his youthmakes him tolerably gender
neutral: "It's no bother ifyou like to stay. It's like having my own brother here
for a few
days.
He's
a
boy
like you
are....No,
of course
you're
no
trouble.
I
tell you, it's a pleasure to have somebody in thehouse besides ourselves" (22).
Henry now concentrates his attention onMarch, feeling sexually drawn to her
but in the subtleways thathis timiditycannot acknowledge as erotic: "Her dark
eyes
made
something
rise
in his
soul,
with
a curious
elate-excitement,
when
he looked into them, an excitement he was afraid to let be seen, itwas so keen
and secret" (23). It is at thispoint thathe realizes how much he loves the farm,
and then (sequence is crucial here) he thinks of marrying her as an available
practical strategy,of tracking her down in the relentlessmanner thata capable
hunter employs instinct and skill to capture his prey. Henry understandably
relies on the language of the huntsman to organize the energy of his love-life,
but what remains more significant is his relative lack of conscious awareness
of
any
sexual
dimension
in his
connection
to March.
He
emanates
a calm
virginity in his temperament and demeanor even as he functions as a practiced
killer with a gun. Such paradoxical qualities of inexperience and power inform
the logic and metaphor he uses to justify his initialmotivation formarriage.
"And itwas as a young hunter thathe would bring down March as his quarry,
tomake her his wife" (24).
When Henry asks March tomarry him, she responds negatively at first,
with precisely the "tomfoolery" phrase he predicted when he contemplated her
likely denial of his proposal. When she continues to object to the awkward
and precipitous nature of his offer,he touchesMarch for the first time, "with
his mouth and chin" on her neck, and she is described as "killed" (26). This
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220
/ BALBERT
moment is crucial for initiatinga new movement toward recognition in her that
will develop slowly through a series of meetings between March and Henry.
What is killed amounts to her unbroken identification of him as the fox, her
reliance on a reverse anthropomorphism that has served to camouflage her
awareness of the normative sexual presence he can provide in her life. The
choric "calling" by Banford then intervenes again, and they both carry logs
into the house in obedience to her insistent voice. The unspoken tensions
mount while the three characters read quietly, and March begins to lapse-out
as she hears the fox singing in thehouse. Unconsciously aware of the attention
Henry
to her,
directs
she
represses
her
consciousness
of Henry-as-man
by
entering furtherinto the instinctualdrowse and blurting aloud the identification
of Henry-as-fox. March utters the exact words of identity-"'There he isV she
cried involuntarily, as if terribly startled" (31), in a virtual dream-state during
which she has condensed the salient facts of her dream of the corn-foxwith the
visual identification of Henry-as-fox, a process exacerbated by the previous
touch fromhim thatresembles the touch in thedream. March's dual experience
of what Freud denotes as displacement (Henry-as-fox) and condensation (the
dream reduced to verbal utterance) is discussed inThe Interpretation ofDreams
in terms thatalso suggests how the vividness of her "picture" of Henry "under
the edge of the lamplight" (30) becomes the immediate stimulus ofMarch's
abrupt exclamation. Finally March can use her dream-thought to state out
loud, concretely, the association thatbedevils her {Interpretation 375).
During his second meeting with March, Henry insists that she grant him
an answer to his marriage proposal. Again, he kisses her neck and cheek,
and again "Banford's voice was heard calling" (33). Then Henry, as if he
begins to sense the power of Banford to interferewith his plans, enacts the
movements
and
drama
in March's
dream
with
eerie
correspondence:
"He
kissed her on themouth with a quick brushing kiss" (33). The forgingprocess
continues as she gives her "yes" to the proposal while the kiss-in the fashion
of Lawrence's phoenix metaphor-"seemed
to burn through her every fiber"
(33). Henry recognizes March's wavering under Banford's influence. With
his manhood thus assaulted, he takes the long gun, his one reliable instrument
of self-definition, and he stalks out to kill the fox. His intention here is not
only to kill the animal: in the act of killing the fox, he realizes that he can
obliterate March's persistent identification of him as the fox. This important
first recognition by Henry of what needs to be done (the second will be the
killing of Banford) is followed by credible evidence of his own increasing
maturity. Lawrence asserts Henry's growth in telltale phrases of alienation and
discontent that sound suspiciously similar to thewriter's own perspective in
thebitter days during and shortlyafter thewar. The passage also recapitulates
some of the images and tone of thedream-letter toLady Asquith:
As
he
stood
neighboring
under
cottage,
the oaks
up
of the wood-edge
he heard the dogs from the
the hill, yelling
and startlingly, and the
suddenly
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D.H.LAWRENCE
/ 221
the answer.
And
dogs from the farms around barking
suddenly
was
was
to him England
little and tight, he felt the landscape
constricted even in the dark, and that there were too many dogs in the night,
a noise
like a fence of sound, like the network of English
making
hedges
wakened
it seemed
nettingin theview. (39)
Henry's talent as a hunter should not be underestimated, for he has
predicted everymove of the fox, an anticipatory precision in him that is part of
the iroay of his actual resemblance to the fox with respect to both his vulpine
features and in his slymanner of perception. When he shoots the fox he holds
it lengthwise by its long brush as he shows the appendage to his fianc?e. It
is this scene of trophy-display (except for a briefmoment laterwhen Henry
leaves by train) that concludes March's Henry-as-fox correspondence. The
fox is dead and so is the imposition by March of a false identity forHenry.
Recall Frazer's emphasis on the symbolism of holding up the fox's tail as the
community's signature of victory over the animal and the forces it represents,
for in thatprimal gesture "the greater would be the fertilityof the land" (762).
March and Henry move closer to the consummation of theirvery human and
fertile passion, and the clearest signal ofMarch's progress resides in another
graphic dream.
In thismorbid second dream, March does not encounter the fox, but she
does deal with the death of Banford, who is pictured in her coffin because
comprehends, with a heavy dose of guilt, that the end of the fox
also signifies the end of her relationship toBanford. The
identification
Henry
of
the
leads to a relevant interpretationinwhich Freud's
dream-work
sequence
of
the
unconscious
enhance the evidence of Lawrencian doctrine.
metaphors
March places a fox skin over the body of Banford and the brush of the fox
directly under her head. (See Kinkead-Weekes 689.) "And the coffinwas the
rough wood-box inwhich the bits of chopped wood were kept in the kitchen,
by the fire" (40); on the symbology of placing a cover on Banford that is
surrounded by the remnants of shatteredwood, thereare Freud's assertions that
indreams an overcoat, of any kind, "can very often be interpretedwith
certainty
March
as a
genital
organ,
and, moreover
as a man's"
and
that "wood
seems,
from
its
imagistic connections, to stand in general for female material" {Interpretation
391; see also New Introductory Lectures 23-24). The solemn interment of
Banford inMarch's dream, amid remnants of wood and the coverlet as male
organ,
becomes
a displaced
gesture
of antagonism
that March's
conscious
self
cannot face; that is, the apparent solicitude of honoring a corpse (in thegesture
of covering it), scarcely conceals the latentmeaning of March's
repressed
anger about her womanly liaison with Banford, a relationship now in pieces
and overwhelmed by the dominant presence of male genitalia, embodied
behind Banford by the brush and above her by the covering skin. Unlike the
firstdream, when "she only remembered it as a distantmemory" (20), March
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222
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is upset when she awakens after her sense of anger and loss experienced in
the coffin-dream. Her more intense reactions following this second dream
make sense in the context of Freud's view thatwhen a dreamer imagines the
death of a beloved "and is at the same time painfully affected.. .themeaning of
such dreams as the content indicates, is a wish that theperson in question may
die" {Interpretation 282). Even Lawrence finds agreement with Freud on the
urgency of dreams that reveal "something [that] threatens us from theworld
of death," for he also acknowledges that "a dream may become so vivid that
it arouses the actual soul. And when a dream is so intense that it arouses the
soul-then we must attend to it" {Fantasia 194). March will now attend to her
aroused soul by feeling the fox's body in an intense interlude of Lawrencian
communion.
With Henry-as-fox virtually dead toMarch, and with Banford's influence
on her temporarily diminished, March can now touch the fox's brush and feel
not Henry but the profound "otherness" of another creature: "White and soft
as snow his belly: white and soft as snow. She passed her hand softlydown it.
And his wonderful black-glinted brush was full and frictional,wonderful. She
passed her hand down this also, and quivered" (41).9 The dramatic extent of
her wonder in this scene seems to justifyHenry's rumination that "partly she
was so shy and virgin" (41-42), and such virginitymay suggest-despite the
nearly unanimous assumption by critics of the presence of active lesbianism
the limitsof her relationship with Banford. (See also Lessing, Kinkead-Weekes
691, and Harris 167.) March's sensual excitement over the lingering "soft" but
"frictional"
touch
indicates
her
awareness
that "the
fox was
a strange
beast
to
her, incomprehensible, out of her range" (41) but also conveys the possibility
of her sexual awakening and the impulse for a passionate connection to
Henry. But Banford undercuts his stature by revealing his lack of sufficient
preparation for the forthcomingmarriage. Watching her trudgeup the hill with
an obsequious March toowilling to carry theheavier groceries, Henry begins to
understand the extent towhich she remains a problem for the implementation
of his wedding plans. But later he overhears March, for the first time, respond
to Banford's
effectively
cynicism
and
feels
"again
irresistibly
drawn
to her,...
a secret thread between him and her" (47). His rumination remains one of
themost interestingpassages of psychosexual revelation in all of Lawrence's
fiction:
He
He
He
hoped
hoped
he could
he could
hoped he might
under her tunic. His
touch her soft, creamy cheek, her strange frightened face.
look in to her dilated, frightened dark eyes, quite near.
even put his hand on her bosom and feel her soft breasts
as he thought of that. He
heart beat deep and powerful
sure of her soft woman's
breasts under her tunic....It seems
to him...that
so much
softer, tenderer, more
they were
lovely and lovable,
shut up in that tunic, than were Banford's
breasts, under her soft blouse and
wanted
to make
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D.H.LAWRENCE
chiffon dresses.
The Banford
would
For all her frailty and fretfulness,
have
little iron breasts
she could
have
/ 223
he said to himself.
tiny iron breasts.
(47-48)
The superb mimicry of the refracted narration, with its repetitive simplicity
and
elemental
captures
language,
the exact
texture
of Henry's
uninformed
contemplation of sexual proximity.Yes, there is intimate interest inMarch here,
ismore
but the tone of desire
of an adolescent's
masturbatory
view
of a woman's
body, almost childlike in itspre-phallic and prurient curiosity,with voyeurism
and melodramatic fantasy replacing mature lust and passionate attraction.The
rating systemHenry uses to compare the bodily assets ofMarch and Banford
bespeaks his general unfamiliarity with women's breasts, and the adjectives
employed in the comparison might easily apply to the various delectability of
food in two competing restaurants.Yet Henry conveys accurate insight about
the potential excitement of unleashing March's repressed heterosexuality and
about the inherentdanger posed by Banford. When a confidentHenry enters
the room, he senses thatMarch is aligned again with him after her angry
disagreement with Banford.
In the alternating symmetries and repetition-with-variation of thisnovella,
Henry must perceive March's otherness in theway that she earlier experienced
this element of transcendence in the fox: "She was another human being" (49),
and with thatessential knowledge, so entrenched inLawrence's doctrine of the
"unknown"
and Freud's
notion
of mature
love,
comes
the awesome
realization
to this boy-man that soon he must make love toMarch and take charge of the
direction of theirmarriage. The recognition comes with a heavy price: "and
strangely, suddenly he felt a man, no longer a youth. He felt a man, with
all a man's grave weight of responsibility. A curious quietness and gravity
came over his soul. He felt a man, quiet, with a littleof the heaviness ofmale
destiny upon him. She was soft and accessible in her dress. The thought
went home in him like an everlasting responsibility" (49). The prospect of
her accessibility, and of the phallic testing to come, frightens him with its
importance and inevitability. But Henry at least feels buoyed by his recognition
that he has reached the edge of manhood. When Banford again asks March
to do her bidding, Henry confidently asks March to deny the favor. He makes
the request toMarch with "so much tenderness and proud authority" (51)-in
effect,with that elusive combination of sensitivity and strength that confirms
his developing maturity. As Banford begins to cry, a concerned March wishes
to intervene, for she has just "thought of Banford in thewood-box for a coffin"
(49). Henry patiently explains toMarch that it is appropriate to let Banford
cry.When he picks up a rug (recall the coverlet in the second dream) and asks
March towrap herself in it,thepsychoanalytical implications ofMarch's dream
have
encompassed
Lawrence's
artistic
intuition:
a man
has
offered
March
the
man's symbol of the overcoat, and "she obeyed" (54). Now in the third scene
in the cycle, March can feel the otherness not of the fox, not of
Henry-as-fox,
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but of Henry. She recognizes the intrinsic ability in him to help remove her
from the choric call of Banford thatrings throughout thenovella. She can now
respond to thatdifferent sound from the transcendent unknown: "And then she
felt the deep, heavy, powerful stroke of his heart, terrible, like something from
beyond. Itwas like something from beyond, something awful from outside,
signaling to her. And the signal paralyzed her. It beat upon her very soul, and
made her helpless. She forgot Jill [Banford]" (52).
Henry's "saving" presence in her lifemust end for a while when he joins
his regiment.March senses her immediate susceptibility to thewill of Banford,
and as the trainmoves slowly away Henry seems tometamorphose (inMarch's
eyes and on thepage) into thefigure of the fox: "Only his face was fixed in her
mind: the full, ruddy,unchanging cheeks, and the straight snout of a nose, and
the two eyes staring above" (57). This relapse inMarch's perspective is later
confirmed in the rejection lettershe sends him. In it she reveals an inability to
understand the galvanizing nature of his otherness-not realizing the very terms
of her complaint amount towords of praise in Lawrence's visionary lexicon,
which so privileges theunknowability of the soul: "You are an absolute stranger
tome, and it seems tome you will always be one" (57). The rejection ofHenry
initiates in him the next step in his recognition of Banford's danger: he now
knows thatnot only is she the problem, it is clear that shemust be eliminated.
Unlike themore indecisive and over-deliberate youth sketched earlier in the
work, he goes straight tohis officer and impressively wins approval for a leave.
The freneticbicycle trip thathe completes is a major undertaking in the rustic
countryside, covering sixtymiles in four hours. He is aided in the effortby
an adrenalin-rush of anger stimulated byMarch's demeaning letterand by his
awareness thatBanford must not prevail.
In Fantasia of the Unconscious Lawrence devotes several pages to a
metaphor that describes the human body as a bicycle, "and our individual
and incomprehensible self as the rider thereof (97). It is therider's essential
responsibility to listen to thedriving force of his soul and move in thedirection
of "his truedynamic psychic activity,"which is "true to the individual himself,
to his own peculiar soul-nature" (98). Henry stays true to his soul from the
moment he sits on thebicycle, and all through the strenuous tripand theepisode
of Banford's death. Justbefore Henry chops down the tree,Lawrence describes
him as "perfectly still," for "in his heart he had decided her death. A terrible
force seemed in him, and a power thatwas just his" (64-65). Both this eerie
stillness and Henry's emotional resolve are justified by Lawrence inFantasia
as he writes of the pregnant pause in the soul before the "whole self
speaks,"
a moment when the soul "collects itself into pure silence and isolation...the
mind suspends itsknowledge and waits. The psyche becomes strangely still"
(155). As Henry chops down the treewith all the power, precision, and will
thatmandates its felling, he reaches his most impressive stature in the novella,
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D.H.LAWRENCE
/ 225
as "his form seemed to flash up enormously tall and fearful" (65). At this
point he embodies all his potential attributes of strengthand imagination; "the
world seemed to stand still" (65) as he emerges from youth intomanhood.
He becomes for Lawrence, if only in this one scene, the graphic illustration
of his doctrine that "only at his maximum does an individual surpass all his
derivative elements and become purely himself {Fantasia 76).
It is an effective and justified hatred thatHenry brings to the killing of
Banford, and in Lawrence's prescriptive psychology, he is broadly acting on
the just dictates of his soul: "The only rule is do what you really impulsively
wish to do. But always act on your own responsibility, sincerely. And have
the courage of your own strong emotion" {Fantasia 92). Amid the impulsive
furyof his act also exists thepoised shrewdness evident when he asks Banford
tomove away from the area of the tree's possible fall. He knows she will not
listen to him, and his futile request protects him from any alleged malicious
motive or act of negligence. Henry's killing of Banford embodies a more
abrupt, brutal, and equally efficient stalking of prey than his tracking of the
fox over the several minutes he requires to implement his single-minded
shooting of the animal. Part of what makes Banford's death so shocking is
that itreflectshow successfully Henry has compressed all his instinctual power
and hunter's knowledge into a murderous objective that is carried through in
a matter of seconds, a span of time sufficientfor him to attain the "maximum
self described inFantasia.
In the stark reality of the novella, Henry already
has primed himself for thekill during the controlled passion of his bicycle trip,
and itonly remains for him to encounter the fortuitousbut strangely inevitable
circumstances of the nearly fallen tree. There is a further irony in the scene
that confirms Lawrence's enthusiastic reading of Frazer, who outlines the
ancient belief in the animate lifeof trees; such a credo is similar to the vitalism
displayed by Lawrence inhis entire chapter about the souls of trees inFantasia
of the Unconscious, a work Lawrence proudly calls his "tree book" (86).
Frazer
writes:
"Trees
are endowed
with
shades
or souls,
and whoever
fells one
of themmust die on the spot, or at least live an invalid for the rest of his days"
(129). Frazer also quotes another scholar who uncovers the old belief that a
tree may
give
a "kind
of shriek..
.or groan..
.that may
be heard
a mile
off
when
it is felled (130). In Lawrence's fictionalized appropriation of these taboos, it
is the human embodiment of anti-life energy that is killed on the spot rather
than the destroyer of the tree; the shriek emerges not from the tree-which was
dead before itwas felled-but fromBanford's beloved March, who "gave a wild
shriek thatwent far,fardown the afternoon" (65), as shewitnesses a death that
resolves her own doubts about commitment with terrifyingfinality.
Not all her doubts, to be sure. Henry wins and marries her, but "he had
not yet got her" (66). As the novella's coda insists, instead ofMarch
accepting
the principles in Fantasia of the Unconscious that
"waiting and following"
the lead of herman "is inevitable, that itmust be so" (199), she has elected to
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226
strive forwhat Lawrence in The Fox regards (with unqualified sexism) as the
willful dead-end for any relationship: an attempt by thewoman to energetically
seek "happiness for herself and thewhole world" (69). Lawrence's narration,
reproducing the perspective of March, claims that a fatigued March "would
never strain for love and happiness any more" and that "she would leave her
destiny to theboy-But then theboy" (69). The reiterative and dismissive noun
of "boy" is the same termBanford used to diminish his stature. Itmakes
understandable sense thatMarch cannot fully yield to him, that she cannot
"give herself without defenses and become submerged in him," forMarch
commits
Lawrence's
version
the unpardonable
of
sin,
is not man
and Henry
enough to combat it: "She wanted to see, to know, to understand' (69). As
so
asserts
Lawrence
with
essentially
characteristic
he wants
chauvinism,
the
wife to follow the husband, who is described as "the pioneer who goes on
ahead, beyond her" {Fantasia 199). March compromises the simplicity of
such a prioritywith her own more equitable desire "to be alone: with him at
her side" (69). After her intense entanglement with Banford, she is tempted
to let her own convictions lapse with Henry and thus yield to his notions of
precedence ("there was such rest in the boy," 70), but in the end he remains
forhermore boy thanman. March correctly senses thathe lacks the force and
maturity thatmight make her accede to theLawrencian concept of marriage:
"she would have the reins of her own life between her own hands. She would
be an independent woman to the last" (70).
As
now
and March
Henry
Lawrence's
through
at this impasse,
arrive
doctrine
rather
the narration-clearly
than Henry's
adds that "she would not sleep: no never" (70).
stalemate
them
by moving
across
the ocean:
refracted
conviction-regretfully
Henry hopes to solve their
"He
waits
to go west.
He
was
aching almost in torment to leave England, to go west, to takeMarch away"
(70). Henry momentarily resembles the pioneering male inFantasia of the
Unconscious who "wants to break away through the old world into the new"
(198). He also sounds a lot like the angry Lawrence of 1921, who carries a
similar
antagonism
his
about
own
country:
"I do
so want
to get
out-out
of
England-really out of Europe....I feel caged somehow-" {LettersHI 312-13)
March may follow him west, but not with confidence in their relocation or
pride in her husband's ability to control their fate. Henry has not established
what
Lawrence
requires
as
the basic
requirement
"Make her know she's got to believe
you
stand
for.
But
before
you
can
do
for the man
in any marriage:
in you again, and in the deep purpose
that, you've
got
to stand
for some
deep
purpose" {Fantasia 198). This work concludes so tentatively because its
ending directly reflects both the lack of purposeful direction inHenry, and the
lingering regrets and guilt feltbyMarch over thedeath of Banford. Recall that
Lawrence revised the 1918 storyof "The Fox" into the novella just days after
finishing revisions ofFantasia of theUnconscious, with itsfinal pages focusing
on the extreme importance of themale's "deep purpose." A lingering question
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D.H.LAWRENCE
remains: why would Lawrence write a substantial fiction that concludes with
such discomforting stasis, with such an unefficacious assertion by Henry of
doctrines so central to Lawrence's vision? Any consideration of that issue
requires some investigation of Lawrence's life and marriage during the years
between 1917 and 1921.
In October of 1917 the Lawrences suffered a brutal indignity when
British authorities, who suspected them of espionage, searched their cottage
in Cornwall; the next day, on the flimsiest of circumstantial evidence, they
were expelled from the region. In themonths before this unsettling eviction,
an already preoccupied Frieda experienced bouts of anger, depression, and
jealousy during interludes of loneliness while Lawrence spent extensive time
working in the fields with his close friend,William Henry Hocking, and often
visiting with a young American, Esther Andrews. Biographers have speculated
about a possible affair during thesemonths between Frieda and Cecil Gray, a
music
critic
and
composer
as well
as
a devout
admirer
of Lawrence's
wife;
such a liaison seems likely in lightof the vulnerability of Frieda's position in
1917, the ease of opportunity for such intimacy given Lawrence's frequent
absence,
and
the evidence
of numerous
disagreements
between
Lawrence
and
Gray after the alleged intimacy. (See Kinkead-Weekes 404-05 and Meyers
206-07.) Frieda was temperamentally unguarded with Lawrence about her
extra-marital conquests (e.g., a proud confession about Hobson in 1912), and
perhaps Lawrence's later affairwith Rosalind Baynes in the summer of 1920
reflects, in part, a declaration by him of the freedom to respond in-kind to his
knowledge of Frieda's infidelity.
When theArmistice was signed in 1918, Frieda's concerns about the
welfare of her children,mother, and Germany were exacerbated by the public
celebrations over her home country's defeat and by the strained relations with
Lawrence during the previous eighteen months. To Lawrence's considerable
displeasure, Frieda did not accompany him in lateNovember on another trip
toLondon, preferring to remain at theHermitage. By December 10,Lawrence
returned toMountain Cottage alone, where he finished the first version of
The Fox\ a later draft of this short tale (compressed even further)would be
in 1920. (See also Ruderman
published in Huchinson's Story Magazine
"Tracking
Lawrence's
Fox")
Mark
Kinkead-Weekes
persuasively
argues
that
this 1918 short version of the The Fox was directly influenced by Lawrence's
disputes with and separation from Frieda (484). Kinkead-Weekes
regards
this first version of The Fox, composed by Lawrence amid considerable
personal
and marital
turmoil,
as
"far
less
aggressive"
than
the
later
novella
(484), for neither Banford nor the fox is killed, and Banford even helps to
facilitate the planning for thewedding ofMarch and Henry. But Lawrence's
capable biographer ignores the most important sense in which this tale is
more aggressive than the longer 1921 work. In 1918 a
betrayed and angrily
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228
motivated Lawrence feltno doubt thathis character,Henry, can prevail. Itwas
as ifLawrence's accumulated discontent with Frieda, combined with his own
changing vision about male-female relations, is crystallized in a shortfictional
work that in its very brevity still contains all the assertive and unequivocal
language about Henry's demeanor and decisiveness that are lacking in the
more ambitious novella threeyears later. The strengthand confidence evident
in the voice of Henry and the narrator stand out in theirunambiguous authority
in this 1918 version: "March felt the same knowing, domineering spark leap
out of his eyes..." (43); "He knew he could make her obey his will" (45);
"Without knowing, she obeyed him" (47); "But she did what he wanted" (47);
"Both women were at his mercy" (47); "The women were at his mercy" (47).
Kinkead-Weekes
remains
correct,
however,
about
the
important
direction
of the tale, in which Lawrence stresses the need of "powerful malehood to
make its counterpart fully female....'The Fox' privately rebukes, in imagined
assertion of maleness and its value, thewoman who breaks orbit" (484-485).
The Henry Grenfel of the novella lacks the confidence in his "maleness" that
Lawrence had assigned to him in 1918.
Three years later,when the Lawrences returned to Italy and Fontana
Vecchia in the fall of 1921, he was greeted with a litany of bad news. There
were changes demanded by publishers for references inWomen In Love because
ofHeseltine's continued threatof legal action, rejection notices on Lawrence's
manuscript of Aaron's Rod, excerpts fromSea and Sardinia published without
his knowledge or permission, and disappointing reviews of Psychoanalysis
and theUnconscious. By mid-October Lawrence's understandably embattled
mood was informinghis work in termsof his writing's doctrinal emphasis and
narrative tone. He finished revising Fantasia of the Unconscious, adding a
petulant Foreword that is often witty but pervasively belittling of his readers,
and inwhich the typingof the gender roles ofmale-leader and female-follower
becomes even more emphatic in revision. After he finished themajor changes
toThe Fox during thenext fewweeks (byNovember 5th), he favorably received
the invitation fromMabel Dodge to go west and visit Taos, New Mexico. By
November 16th he finished revising the short tale into the novella, but that
productive fewweeks may have been affected by Lawrence's discovery of still
another
of Frieda's
affairs.
This most recent speculation (dating to 1990) on Frieda's sex life involves
rumors
about
intimacy
between
her and
a young
man
of twenty-four,
Peppino
D'Allura, which relevant evidence and circumstance suggestmight have taken
place between October 21 and December 15-corresponding precisely to the
period of Lawrence's creation of the tentatively-concluding novella of The Fox
immediately after the ideologically unequivocal revisions of Fantasia of the
Unconscious.
(See Kinkead-Weekes 653-64.) Might not the uncertainty and
at
the
end
of the novella reflectLawrence's fictionalized expression
fatigue
of persistent failure-now bitterly corroborated by Frieda's latest betrayal-to
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D.H.LAWRENCE
/ 229
convince his wife of her need to support him loyally and without any threat
to the "passionate purpose" of his work? Might itnot also reflecthis growing
intimations, spurred by his chronic chest congestion and near-fatal flu in 1919,
of his own inability to satisfyFrieda inbed? There exists compelling evidence
thatLawrence's
total impotence dates from an illness inMexico
in 1925,
but might not a weakened Lawrence have faced periodic intimations of this
problem in earlier years?10 And finally,might not the anger and frustration
of his relationship with Frieda in the fall of 1921 inform the portrait of Henry
Grenfel's fearful contemplation of sex with robustMarch?
Or perhaps the intimations are even more dramatic. The tepid passions at
the end of The Fox might also reveal, in the inevitable manner of theFreudian
unconscious, and in the context of his increasing attention after the war to
themes of male leadership and Blutbruderschaft, over-fond recollections of
his friendship with William Henry Hocking enacted not far from the setting
of The Fox.
It is interesting thatwhen Henry is first aware of the sexual
configuration ofMarch's body, its appeal to him is phrased in an unfeminine
metaphor that recalls expressions of admiration by Lawrence of the youthful
demeanor and physicality ofHocking: "her figure, like a graceful young man's,
piqued him" (23).n
Speculation has persisted for years over whether any
sexual episode actually occurred between Lawrence and Hocking, and I tend to
agree with Kinkead-Weekes's judicious and fair-minded discussion that such
a consummated connection was unlikely. But few critics
dispute the strong
homosexual elements in Lawrence's inclinations, and such an affinity in him
returns this essay towhere itbegan: to a concept of dream interpretation that
must take precedence over Lawrence's asserted disbelief in such a probing
process. In a letter to Katherine Mansfield in 1919 (between the first and
second versions of The Fox), Lawrence writes:
said you were cross with me,
that I repulsed
you. I'm sure I didn't.
of getting Jack and you and F. and me
in a square seems
Jack. But you I am sure of-I was ever since Cornwall,
save
great-especially
Frieda
The
complication
for Jack-and
if you must go his way, and if he will never
really come our
But things will resolve
themselves.
I dreamed
such a vivid dream
way-well!
of you last night. I dreamed you came to Cromford,
and stayed there....
It was
looked at the stars and they were
night, and very starry. We
different. All
were different, and I, who was
looking for
he is rising now, was very puzzled
you, because
by these
Then
thick, close brilliant new constellations.
suddenly we saw one planet,
so beautiful,
a large, fearful,
strong star, that we were both pierced by it,
for a second. Then I said, "That's Jupiter"-but
I felt that itwasn't
possessed
Jupiter-at least not the everyday Jupiter.
the constellations
to show
Orion,
Ask
on one's
Jung or Freud
soul.
I wish
itwas
about
it?Never!
spring for us all.
It was
{Letters HI
a star that blazed
343)
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for a second
230
/ BALBERT
disapproval of psychoanalytic methodology once again remains
unconvincing in light of the accessible clues in the dream.What must emerge
from the dream is the announcement of his frustrating failure to convince
Lawrence's
Katherine and JackMurry of the viability of the close male friendship that
Lawrence depicts inWomen in Love and several other fictions, a theme he
will develop more fully in the leadership novels of the 1920s. That "beautiful,
large,
fearful,
strong
star"
that "pierces"
and
"possesses"
both Katherine
and
Lawrence sounds very much like the coded expression of a sexual fantasy
about themale thirdpartymentioned elsewhere in the letter. Later still, "Ask
Jung or Freud about? Never!" There is no reason to ask them anything, but
not for the reason Lawrence asserts. Like thepalimpsestic textureof The Fox,
the evidence of influence,doctrine, and desire remains inscribed nomatter how
many
erasures,
revisions,
his life and art.
or
protestations
Lawrence
makes
on
the rich
text of
TRINITY UNIVERSITY
NOTES
1 For an excellent
summary of various perspectives on this novella by a wide range of
the most persuasive and
critics, see the balanced discussion by Harris 163, 284-85. Among
176-77, Moynahan
196-209, and
admiring discussions of The Fox are Leavis 256-65, Hough
Ruderman, D. H. Lawrence 48-70. For the critical opinion that variously regards the work as
or unconvincing,
see Gregor
incoherent, mean-spirited,
163-70, Ford 101-02,
10-21, Harris
186-98, Rossi 265-78,
Draper
and Millett 265 provide what
In addition,
against women.
and Allen
109 as specifically
Davis 565-71, and Wolkenfeld
345-52.
Simpson 70-73, Davis,
I feel to be reductive readings of thework as an unqualified attack
while Harris properly acknowledges Gurko 178-82, Moynahan,
in The Fox, the approaches of
emphasizing mythic dimensions
these critics do not deal with the pervasive influence of Frazer on thework, or with the totemic
patterns of primitive belief that inform much of Lawrence's
organization of the story. There
exists no psychoanalytical
treatment of the work except for a short essay by Bergler, and his
criticism is exclusively concerned with establishing (too simply, inmy view) a formulaic reading
of what he regards as a prototypical lesbian relationship between March and Banford.
2
Among the critics who consider the important ambivalence of the ending, see Brayfield
'The Fox' and Verga's
'The She Wolf"
53
41-51, Fulmer 75-82, and Ruderman, "Lawrence's
65.
3 For an
intelligent and focused discussion of the "nightmarish" aspects of these years
for Lawrence, see Delany 265-380 and Squires and Talbot 173-249. But themost sustained and
brilliant achievement
in integrating Lawrence's
life and work is unquestionably
by Kinkead
in the relevant section (346-673) of his comprehensive volume of biography. Although
Weekes
I take occasional
issue in this essay with some of his conclusions, my admiration for his brilliant
and thoroughly professional scholarship is unqualified; I trust it is evident inmy own analysis
of The Fox how much I have benefited by themany rich areas for investigation that his research
stimulated me to undertake.
4 For a more extensive consideration of Lawrence's
views on the instinctual imperative
and on his notions of "otherness" and "the unknown," see Balbert, "Lady Chatterley's Lover to
The Deer Park" and "Pan and theAppleyness
of Landscape."
See also Letters II470.
5
Impressive exceptions here are Vickery, "Myth and Ritual" 79-82 and Ruderman, D. H.
Lawrence 52. See also Vickery's Literary Impact (322).
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D.H.LAWRENCE
/ 231
6 On this issue of Lawrence's
frequent use of blackness leading to transcendence, and its
relation to his style and ideology, see Balbert, "Scorched Ego," "Ten Men," and D. H. Lawrence
193-98.
(chapters two and five). See also Lawrence's
"Morality and theNovel"
7 Freud and Lawrence are in
surprising agreement about the totemic and erotic terror that
is often embodied in dreams of wild animals. Lawrence discusses a nightmare about horses in
and concludes The Rainbow with a vignette of Ursula's dream-like experience with the
Fantasia,
horses. He describes a male's relevant dream as evidence that "the great sensual male activity
is the greatest menace"
dream
(Fantasia 9) for the dreamer, and it is reasonable to see March's
of the fox as a female variant of that pattern.
8 See Daleski's
use of the flame metaphor. I discuss
still unsurpassed study of Lawrence's
theLawrencian concept of "forging" in chapter one ofD. H. Lawrence.
In relation toLawrence's
graphic imagery of the elongated brush and its position near the anus, I am not unaware of the
fascination both with anal eroticism, especially in The Rainbow
ample evidence of Lawrence's
and Women in Love, and with the resonant symbology of the "signifying" buttocks, memorably
the prominent brush of an
employed in his essay, "Adolph," a short work that also emphasizes
animal. But against the conceivable argument that I have psychoanalyzed March's
dream as if
she were a real person rather than a fictional character, I call attention to the significant extent
to which Lawrence's
characteristically prophetic and "intrusive" art militates against such a
danger; that is, Lawrence's
visionary beliefs often graphically intrude on the
individuality of his characters, permitting excellent critics of his work (such as Kinkead-Weekes,
Ruderman, and Vickery) the galvanizing liberty of the kind of dream analysis I undertake in this
essay. Since an orthodox psychoanalytical
approach to images inMarch's dreams sheds at least
as much light on the obsessions of the novelist as on the fictional character, such interpretive
methodological
"doubling" remains a welcome byproduct of any well-integrated, psychobiographical
on Lawrence's
life and art.
9 This
passage offers striking resemblance in its tone, phrasing, and meaning
and intimate awareness of Connie Chatterley of the "otherness" of Mellors
and of
beauty of his phallus.
10 This issue of Lawrence's
sexual difficulties is examined more fully inBalbert,
speculation
to the awed
the frictive
"Scorched
399-401, Kinkead-Weekes
577, Meyers
204-07, 331-32, and Spilka 70-95. There is a
compelling fact in Henry's recent history that contributes to his palpable immaturity, and it is
involvement in the war. He mentions that he just
engrained in a pathetic aspect of England's
came "from Salonika really" (15), and as noted in the admirably meticulous
"Explanatory Notes"
apparatus of the novella, this Greek port "was the scene of a rather futile Allied expedition in
1915. Between
October
1916 and the end of the war, 600,000 men, 200,000 of them British,"
were interned at Salonika by a Bulgarian army that, other than
enforcing this internment, had
no other significant participation in the war (239). Henry also mentions that he "hadn't heard
for three or four years" anything about his grandfather, a period of time that corresponds to
the internment at Salonika (14). Thus the young man's role in the war was static, limited, and
conspicuously
lacking in combat or travel experience, and thus provided little opportunity to
develop any confidence in the masculine
authority that is often the byproduct of the varied
challenges accumulated as a solider. It is as if time has stood still for him at a critical point in
his post-adolescent maturation, and it is then that he encounters March and Banford.
11 For more detailed
accounts, speculative as well as factual, of Lawrence's
relationship
with William
see Kinkead-Weekes
379-81, Meyers
213-14, and Delany
Henry Hocking,
309-15.
Ego,"
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Studies