論文

A Study of The Fox : D. H. Lawrence’s Idea of Duality
YAMADA Akiko
要旨

英語題名を和訳すると「『狐』研究――D. H. ロレンスの二元論について」になる。D. H. ロレンスはエッセイ「王冠」において，光を象徴するユニコー
ンと闇を象徴するライオンが王冠を支えることによって，王冠は存在する
ことができると述べて，光と闇という相異なる性質の存在が物事の存在にとって必要であると主張している。この二元論の思想は，彼の代表作の一つである『恋する女たち』においては，「生命の銀色の川」と「崩壊の黒い川」という対立する川で表現されていて，人間は「生命の銀色の川」しか考えていないが，今，「崩壊の黒い川」を考えることが何よりも必要なのだと，主人公の一人バーキンを代弁者として述べている。
ロレンスのこの二元論の思想は，『恋する女たち』出版の時期とほぼ同時期に執筆されていた『狐』においても唱道されていると筆者は考える。
狐が擬人化された若いヘンリーと古いキリスト教機械文明の世界を代表するバンフォードは対立する存在であり，1918年という第一次世界大戦末期
を時代背景とする『狐』は，退廃した当時のイングランドを復活させるためには，狐という「闇」の存在が台頭する必要があることをロレンスは書いている。光が強くなりすぎている現代機械文明は，人間の本来的生命が危険に晒されているのであり，ロレンスは闇という混沌が入り込んで，現代を破壊・再生することの必要性を説いている。
これまでの『狐』論では，狐が象徴する闇の世界についてパン神との関連で考察したものがないが，筆者はロレンスが他の小説やエッセイで言及しているパン神との関連において，これまでこの中編小説において詳細に論じられてこなかった彼の二元論を論じている。
キーワード：the fox（きつね），the city world（都市世界），darkness（闇），The God Pan（パン神），star equilibrium（星の均衡）― 11 ―

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言語と文化 No. 36

Introduction
In his essay ‘The Crown,’ Lawrence advocates that we live, “standing upon one side of theshield, or on the other side,” and comparing one to the lion or darkness and the other to theunicorn or light, he says as follows:
And there is no rest, no cessation from the conﬂict. For we are two opposites which
exist by virtue of our inter-opposition. Remove the opposition and there is collapse, asudden crumbling into universal nothingness. (RDP 256)
The crown can be exist by being supported by the two animals, the lion and unicorn.
Lawrence thinks the lion represents darkness and the unicorn light. Darkness and light standagainst each other. These two opposites make our life and world. This is his idea of duality.
In Women in Love, he also gives this idea but using other images.
“The other river, the black river. We always consider the silver river of life, rollingon and quickening all the world to a brightness, on and on to heaven, ﬂowing into abright eternal sea, a heaven of angels thronging.――But the other is our real
reality―― ”“But what other? I don’t see any other,” said Ursula.
“It is your reality, nevertheless,” he said; “the dark river of dissolution.――You see
it rolls in us just the other rolls――the black river of corruption. And our ﬂowers areof this――our sea-born Aphrodite, all our white phosphorescent ﬂowers of sensuous
perfection, all our reality nowadays.” (WL 172)
Lawrence thinks that “the silver river of life” and “the dark river of dissolution” need to be
kept in balance in our world. He says that the modern world thinks it needs only the silver
river of life. In reality it needs the chaotic dark river of corruption as well. Lawrence lived
the world of World War Ⅰ and therefore knew the decadence and despair of that time. The
Fox was begun in December 1918 just after World War Ⅰ and published in 1921, and it
reﬂects the inﬂuence of the war and in it Lawrence tries to describe both sides of life, thelight and the darkness. He emphatically tells of the necessity to recognize a change of thesense of values for living. The fox which appears in The Fox is a symbol of vitality and it is― 12 ―

A Study of The Fox

an affirmative animal in the story, though it is usually thought to be the sly, wicked andcunning animal as seen in Aesop’s Fables.
In my paper I want to point out that Lawrence tells that we need to change of our senseof values, and accept his idea of duality, using the fox symbol which embodies the God Pan
as seen in St. Mawr. Koya Shimizu discusses the dualistic idea of this novella, saying thefox is a symbol of chaos trespassing in our ordinary life(1) It is very stimulating paper. He
points out mainly, however, the duality of the “tail part”(2) of the story. There appear two
antagonists in The Fox, Henry Grenfel and Jill Banford. Henry is the messenger of the fox
and Banford is his enemy standing for modern civilized Christian England. Claude Sinzellewrites that “Banford must be annihilated because she stands for the evil forces of civilisation(Sinzelle 161).” And Kingsley Widmer says that “the moralistic woman is the objective andrejecting side of the self and must be violently negated to allow vital completion (Widmer 61).”
I agree with their understanding of The Fox. In our days the modern mechanized world
wants only light and Lawrence thinks it lacks the balance, which is a dangerous situation forhuman beings. He wants the fox’s spirit which stands for the darkness. But Shimizu doesn’tmention how the symbol of the God Pan is related to the fox, or about Lawrence’s idea of
duality expressed throughout the novella. Janice H. Harris points out that there are twocamps of critics.
In general, those who find the tale successful emphasize its mystic or fairy taleelements. Some see Henry as embodying the ruthlessness of life; Banford stands aseither devouring mother, or the exclusively feminine side of March, or the deathlinessof modern England. March is seen as a Sleeping Beauty or Persephone ﬁgure. A few
critics in this camp argue that Lawrence intends the ambivalence one finds at the
tale’s end. Those critics who ﬁnds ﬂaws in the work tend to see the mystic elements
clashing with the tale’s realistic, psychological complexities. Some elaborate on
Gregor’s qualms about the characterizations, others analyze switches in narrative
tone, particularly in the conclusion, or study Lawrence’s conﬂicting attitude towards
the mythic content.(Harris 163)
I join those in the ﬁrst camp.

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Ⅰ

言語と文化 No. 36

The Wood vs Bailey Farm

Banford and March are living all by themselves. They are near thirty years old and both
unmarried. They make a living by farming in a farmhouse during the last stages of World
WarⅠ. The time of the story is set in 1918. The homestead called Bailey Farm is located“just one ﬁeld removed from the edge of the wood (FCL 9),” and the fox perpetually steals
hens as described “since the war the fox was a demon. He carried off the hens (FCL 9).”Since their homestead is situated near the wood which stretches “hollow and dim to theround hills of the White Horse (FCL 9)(3),” the fox is connected with the ancient prehistoricage. Lawrence depicts the fox as pagan because “he slid along in deep grass, he was difﬁcult
as a serpent to see (FCL 9).” The girls are not successful farmers, “they seemed to be losing
ground, somehow, losing hope as the months went by (FCL 9).” Though the farmstead lies
far from the city, Lawrence depicts it as still belonging to the world of civilization. The fox
belongs to wild nature, that is, the wood. Moynahan writes about the wood as follows.
The wood, as in Lawrence’s ﬁrst and last novels, is a symbol of a nature uncorrupted
by man’s civilizing tendencies. It stands also for the life of the instincts, a mode ofbeing shared by human and nonhuman creatures alike. Out of the wood comes thefox to steal chickens, but also to cast his spell over Nellie March. Henry Grenfel
assumes the fox’s qualities as the story moves along, but even without the symbolic
connection he is a hunter, a man with a gun rather than a man with a hoe. (Moynahan
200)
Here we can see the two opposite kinds of world. The fox is the symbol of vital erotic life,
which tries to rescue March whose young life is oppressed by the Christian idealist Banford.
The word “bailey” of Bailey Farm has the meaning “the external wall enclosing the outer
court, and forming the ﬁrst line of defence, of a feudal castle; and in a wider sense, any of
the circuits of walls or defences which surrounded the keep (OED 887).” Bailey Farm which
Banford bought, thus, means a kind of civilized world. Their life is described as semilesbian which Lawrence hates. The fox who steals the hens is a dog-fox.
The fox really exasperated them both. As soon as they had let the fowls out, in theearly summer mornings, they had to take their guns and keep guard: and then again,― 14 ―

A Study of The Fox

as soon as evening began to mellow, they must go once more. And he was so sly. He
slid along in the deep grass, he was difﬁcult as a serpent to see.(FCL 9)

Foxes are usually thought of as sly, cunning and detestable by people but in this story he isan affirmative symbol of vital and wild life which the modern people of the mechanizedworld are losing. He tempts March into the unconscious world, that is, an erotic one. One
evening March is standing and looking at the trees on the wood edge which are a darkish,brownish green in the light of the end of August. Her consciousness is held back and she
doesn’t see the scenes clearly, and all of sudden, she encounters the fox’s eyes.
She lowered her eyes, and suddenly saw the fox. He was looking up at her. His
chin was pressed down, and his eyes were looking up. They met her eyes. And heknew her. She was spell-bound. She knew he knew her. So he looked into her eyes,
and her soul failed her. He knew her, he was not daunted. (FCL10)
As described in the above scene, the fox and March share a wildness, which Lawrence
thinks necessary for March to be rescued from the dry civilized world. The word “knew”
connotes a sexual meaning as described in The Old Testament (The Holy Bible 1). Both thefox and March have a mysterious interchange of understanding. He seems to notice her
suppressed sexual desire unconsciously. A doe in Lawrence’s poem “A Doe at Evening,” thenarrator and the doe “knew” each other (CP 222). In this case, also, he shares the wild
animal’s wildness. And as the thing in wild nature the fox “was gone, softly, soft as the wind
(FCL 10),” like the doe in the poem. After this incident March is possessed by the fox andalways went along the wood edge seeking him and “a great moon rose above the pine trees(FCL 11).” The moon also has a mysterious power on human beings. It invites them to thecosmos.
The fox is ruddy, “yellow and bright, like corn (FCL 20)” and in March’s dream he has
a hot brush burning on ﬁre. Thus the fox has the same character as St. Mawr, the stallion in
St. Mawr. As described “was sure to come over the old spell of the fox (FCL 12),” the fox
is mysterious. St. Mawr is expressed as “looming like some god out of darkness (SM31),”and “his great body glowed red with power (SM 31),” having “the full dark, passionate
blaze of power and of different life (SM 31).” He has “that mysterious ﬁre (SM 30).” Lou,

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the heroine of St. Mawr thinks she sees the God Pan in St. Mawr. Mr. Cartwright says that
Pan is the hidden mystery and that Pan is All, “what you see when you see in full,” and “youmay see with your third eye, which is darkness (SM 65).” Lawrence tells us that in themodern mechanized world we depend on mind exclusively and forget animalness which isrelated with the cosmos and we need to remember our animalness which is darkness. In ‘Panin America,’ Lawrence says that the Great God Pan lived in the woods. He is deeply
connected with trees.
Lurking among the leafy recesses, he was almost modern demon than god. To befeared, not loved or approached. A man who should see Pan by daylight fell dead, as
if blasted by lighting.
Yet you might dimly see him in the night, a dark body within the darkness. (Ph 22)
Strange, those pine-trees! In some lights all their needles glistened like polishedsteel, all subtly glittering with a whitish glitter among darkness, like real needles.
Then again, at evening, the trunks would glare up orange red, and the tufts would be
dark, alert tufts like a wolf’s tail touching the air. (SM 144)
In the above quotation, the God Pan is associated with darkness, woods and a dangerous
demon. The trees where the God Pan hides are pine trees. The fox in The Fox also lives in
the woods, and is sly and dangerous, as he is “creeping on his belly through the gate,” and“on his belly like a snake (FCL 39),” so he is described as “a demon (FCL 9),” acting atnight, and so associated with the God Pan. The stallion in St. Mawr also has the nature of asnake. Both animals are described as the embodiment of the God Pan. Later the young
soldier Henry appears as the personification of the fox, helping March escape from
Banford’s oppression, and when he kills the animal fox, he feels pity, his thinking being asfollows:
And suddenly, it seemed to him England was little and tight, he felt the landscape
was constricted even in the dark, and that there were too many dogs in the night,
making a noise like a fence of sound, like the network of English hedges netting in
the view. He felt the fox didn’t have a chance. For it must be the fox that had started
all this hullabaloo. (FCL 39)
In the old days cities were enclosed by walls which separated cities from wild nature,― 16 ―

A Study of The Fox

especially the woods. In the above quotation, the dogs’ barking makes walls described as “anoise like a fence of sound.” Bailey Farm is, thus, expressed as a kind of city. The words“loudly-barking,” “thick-voiced,” and “tight” express modern people’s joyless life. They arefull of mind and will. Lawrence has pity for the fox. In the United Kingdom there was the
sport of the fox hunting. It was the sport of the upper and middle classes. In this sport a red
fox was chased. Considering the emphasis of the “redness” of the fox of the story, the dogs’
barking at Bailey Farm is the sound of the fox hunting. Lawrence is criticizing the cruelnessof the upper and middle classes. In St. Mawr, when Lou is on the ship for America she
thinks to herself, “Never again to see the mud and rain, and of snow of a northern winter,nor to feel the idealistic, Christianised tension of the now irreligious north (SM 128).” This“tension” is what the European Christian world has, and Lawrence criticizes it. Lou “wanted
relief from the nervous tension and irritation of her life, she wanted escape from the friction
which is the whole stimulus in modern social life (SM 137).” This thought of Lou’s is thesame thing as that of Henry’s in The Fox. Henry is Cornish and therefore he has arelationship with the Celts towards whom Lawrence aspired. The Celts lived in an
unconscious and tensionless world like animals did, he thought. Henry wants to go to
Canada because leaving England, “there would be no more of this awful straining (FCL70).” As I have written, thus, the woods and cities have been shown as being opposed toeach other in The Fox.
Another feature of the fox is that he has a strong smell, and this smell also functions asa similarity with the God Pan in St. Mawr. In the American part of the story, Lou buys aranch whose name is “Las Chivas,” which means “she-goat,” and so it has some connection
with the God Pan. Before Lou and Mrs Witt, Lou’s mother, arrived there, many goats wereraised there and they emitted strong smell which people didn’t like as shown “the corral had
a long, cosy, shut-in goat-shed all down one side, and into this crowded the ﬁve-hundred,their acrid goat-smell rising like hot acid over the snow (SM 142).” After March met the
fox’s eyes under her feet, “as if she could smell him (FCL 12),” or “she could at last lapse
into the odour of the fox (FCL 18).” The fox’s smell is suggested to be strong, described as“what a strong smell he’s got! (FCL 42)” by March after Henry killed the fox. Henry alsoemits odour which Banford dislikes. In St. Mawr, Lou’s mother Mrs Witt is depicted andcriticized as “a pure psychologist, a ﬁendish psychologist (St. Mawr 45).” Lawrence here
expresses two kinds of smells, one is thought as good, and the other negative. Mrs Witt iscriticized because she belongs to the world of bad smell.

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Always this same morbid interest in other people and their doings, their privacies,
their dirty linen……. Always this subtle criticism and appraisal of other people, thisanalysis of other people’s motives. If anatomy pre-supposes a corpse, thenpsychology pre-supposes a world of corpses. Personalities, which means personal
criticism and analysis, pre-supposes a whole world-laboratory of human psyches
waiting to be vivisected. If you cut a thing up, of course it will smell. Hence, nothingraises such an infernal stink, at last, as human psychology. (SM 44)
In St.Mawr the goats at Las Chivas ranch emit a strong smell, but Lawrence thinks of themas good. He, thus, expresses his idea of duality using smell, too.
As I have discussed with regard to the pine woods, ﬁre, darkness, dangerousness andits smell, the fox has a deep relationship with the God Pan.

Ⅱ

Henry vs Banford(1) Henry as the fox
As in March’s spirit the fox has become “a settled effect (FCL 12),” and it has become “astate permanently established (FCL 12).” Whenever March goes towards the wood, sheseeks the fox unconsciously. She is more and more attracted to the wood outside the city
world, which means Bailey Farm. Banford cries out to March and tries to brings her backinto the house whenever March stands near the edge of the wood to look for the fox.
Banford belongs to the city world of mind, and March unconsciously wants to escapeBanford’s control after she encounters the fox. Banford and March have had a semi-lesbian
relationship but though they sleep together in the same bed, it doesn’t mean that they havesexual relationship. Now the fox has wakened March’s erotic desire, and she wants a man.
Then a new stage develops. A young soldier named Henry visits their home and they
allow him to stay with them. His grandfather lived at the farmstead before the two girls
bought it. Henry joined the army in Canada and returned to England at the end of the World
WarⅠ. The story is set in the 1914―18 War and the main action is in 1918. He has returned
to his former home on holiday. And he looks like a fox very much. Henry’s “fresh ruddy
skin (FCL 14),” “glistening look (FCL 14),” and his pose “thrusting his head forward (FCL14)” are like that of the fox. Lawrence emphasizes the resemblance of Henry to the fox on― 18 ―

A Study of The Fox

purpose. And he thinks March as a rabbit and himself as a hunter. Henry thinks how tocapture her. Lawrence doesn’t criticize him as a sly man, but accepts him. Here is
Lawrence’s philosophy on how to catch a woman. In Women in Love Birkin tells Ursula
about a tomcat teasing a she-cat. Lawrence tells it to show the way to get a woman into aman’s life, though Ursula thinks the tomcat is just bullying a she-cat. Henry looks like this
tomcat. “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 (FCL 21).”
Before March meets Henry, her being was divided into two planes, conscious andunconscious, and therefore “she primed up her mouth tighter and tighter, puckering it as if it
was sewed, in her effort to keep her will upmost. Yet her large eyes dilated and glowed inspite of her, she lost herself (FCL 15).” But now she had met Henry, “she need not any more
be divided in herself, trying to keep up two planes of consciousness (FCL 18),” because “hewas identiﬁed with the fox (FCL 18).” From this description, it is clear that the fox is theobject of March’s sexual desire.
He is young under twenty, fresh, ruddy and glistening like a young fox. March feels
him to be like the fox which she was seeking for. “The boy was to her the fox, and she could
not see him otherwise (FCL 14).” The youth sent “a faint but distinct odour into the room
(FCL 18),” and March could smell it and relieved. Her divided consciousness becomes
uniﬁed. That night she dreamed the fox was singing. In the dream the fox brushes her mouthwith his hot burning tail, and she awakes with the pain of it. March is a virgin, so her pain
means her virgin is lost to the fox. This foretells that Henry, a real man, will take her away.

(2) Henry’s proposal to March
The marriage plans of March and Henry gets them into a difﬁcult situation, because Banford
doesn’t want to lose her beloved one. After Henry’s proposal to March, “in a sort of semidream she seemed to be hearing the fox singing round the house in the wind, singing wildly
and sweetly and like a madness (FCL 29).” Here March is listening to Henry’s voice. Whenhe kisses her, his kiss is burning hot as when she felt the fox tail brush her mouth in the
dream.
When March confesses that she thought he was the fox, Henry says “perhaps you think
I’ve come to steal your chickens or something (FCL 32).” This is also what Banford thinks
when Henry tells her he wants to get married to March. At ﬁrst Banford treated him as if hewere her younger brother, and the narrator depicts her to be a kind woman. But after― 19 ―

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Banford becomes opposed to their marriage, she is described as if she were a wicked witch.
In this point some scholars read this story as a kind of Sleeping Beauty story. March is asleeping beauty and Banford a witch and Henry a prince. I don’t agree with this reading on
the whole. Because Henry belongs to the lower working class, and is not a noble prince atall. And after their marriage they could not live a happy life forever. Banford tries topersuade March not to marry to him.
And that’s what he wants: to come and be master here. Yes, imagine it! That’s what
we’ve got the place together for, is it, to be bossed and bullied by a hateful red-facedboy, a beastly laborer. Oh we did make a mistake when we let him stop. (FCL 37)
Henry eavesdrops their talk. He is likened to a fox and described as “deep,” “selﬁsh,” “sly,”“taunting,” having “the dark eyes of the fox (FCL 21).” These features give a negative
image, but I assert that to get his game he must be strong and cunning as a fox, and this iswhat Lawrence wants to show. Banford belongs to the lower-middle class which lies above
and higher than Henry’s laborer class. Lawrence is critical of the conceit of the middle class.
After Henry proposed to March, she is transformed into a more womanly being. She
wears a soft dress, which surprises him because she usually wore a land-girl’s uniform.
And to his amazement March was dressed in a dress of dull, green silk crape. His
mouth came open in surprise. If she had suddenly grown a moustache he could nothave been more surprised.
“Why,” he said, “do you wear a dress, then?” (FCL 48)
Henry thought March would have soft breasts, white and unseen different from those of
Banford’s little iron breasts. In this point, the women are depicted as belonging to separate
worlds.
As March is wavering because of Banford’s opposition to their marriage, Henry takes
her hand and lets her feel his heart beating. “And then she felt the deep, heavy, powerfulstroke of his heart, terrible, like something from beyond. It was like something from beyond,something awful from outside, signaling to her (FCL 52).” This “signaling outside” isassociated with the dark God who exists “outside the gate (K 285)” in Kangaroo. The dark
God is terrible, and ordinary people can’t imagine it, but Henry is considered to be a kind of― 20 ―

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spokesman of the dark God.

(3) The Death of Banford
Banford got angry with Henry when she learned that he had proposed to March. Banford
belongs to the old Christian society of England and she despises him because he belongs to
the lower class. The following is Banford’s comment.
Yes, imagine it! That’s what we’ve got the place together for, is it to be bossed andbullied by a hateful red-faced boy, a beastly laborer. Oh we did make a mistake when
we let him stop. We ought never to have lowered ourselves. And I’ve had such a ﬁght
with all the people here, not to be pulled down to their level.
(FCL 37)
As seen in the above quotation, Banford thinks Henry is a dirty laborer and she should not
be pulled down to his level. After Henry eavesdropped on Banford he goes out to near thewoods. “The air was still, the stars bright, the pine-trees seemed to bristle audibly in the sky(FCL 38).” As at the ranch in St. Mawr, the pine-trees appear fresh and wild here outside thefarmstead of Bailey Farm. This night Henry shoots the fox. And on the same night Marchdreams of the death of Banford. Her coffin is the rough wood-box in which the bits ofchopped wood are kept. March ﬁnds the fox skin to line the box with.
And in her dream-despair all she could ﬁnd that would do was a fox skin. She knewthat it wasn’t right, that this was not what she could have. But it was all she couldﬁnd. And so she folded the brush of the fox, and laid her darling Jill’s head on this,and she brought round the skin of the fox and laid it on the top of the body, so that it
seemed to make a whole ruddy, ﬁery coverlet, and she cried and cried and woke to
ﬁnd the tears streaming down her face. (FCL 41)
March’s dream of the death of Banford suggests her subconscious desire because Banford
had tried to hinder her marriage. And the fox skin to cover Banford’s body hints at Henry’striumph over her.
Before Henry returns to the army after the holiday is over, he and March make themarriage registration in spite of Banford’s opposition. But while he is away from them,― 21 ―

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Banford’s inﬂuence on March becomes stronger and she writes to Henry telling him of theimpossibility of her marriage with him. Henry naturally gets angry and he returns to them.
There is a dry Scotch-fir-tree near the farmstead and March is trying to cut it downbecause the tree is about to fall, and it may fall on their farmstead. Seeing March cutting it,
he tries to cut it down for her. Banford and her parents are looking on at the scene. Henry
desires that the tree would hit Banford and kill her as it fell. The tree falls on her as hewished and kills her. Granofsky says that “the tree felling is part of Lawrence’s attack on
traditional concepts of class hierarchy (Granofsky 57),” and I think it is an interesting
comment. Henry desired it but it is not a murder. Before he fells it, he tells Banford to moveaway to a safe place because the place where she is standing seems dangerous. But Banford
refused his advice. He seems to know she will rejects his advice, so he gave her his advice
on purpose. In this scene the wills of both persons battle against each other. He is cunning asa fox at this point. But Lawrence depicts it as if Banford seems to accept her fate. He desiresthat the old, tense, Christian society of England will disappear. Banford is its symbol.
Widmer argues as follows:
As we have already noted, Lawrence’s symbolic mode consists of “the projection ofyour own fate” into the living object. One of its traditional forms is the huntsman-inspirit notion, which we usually consider part of primitive animism, a subordinationof the factual world (but without denying its factualness) to subjectivity. It is an
essential part of Lawrence’s non-Christian, nonrationalist, nonethical religious view:the transcending of morality and reason so that one may will the destiny of desire
depends on “how you feel” in the “supreme wish” of love-and-death. (Widmer 6263)
Henry as a messenger of the fox, which is the spirit of the God Pan, wins against the tense
English society of which Banford is a spokesman. Her parents appear in this scene towitness the accident and readers understand Henry is innocent because Banford’s parents
don’t accuse him of being the murderer of their daughter. Lawrence writes of Henry’s
murder of Banford, but in reality, it is not a murder, but an accident. He often compares her
to birds. He is expected Banford to be the prey of Henry, the fox, the hunter.

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Ⅲ

The Marriage Life of Henry and March

Though March struggled for her own power, “she felt for a minute that she was lost―lost―
lost (FCL 25).” The word “lost” means March loses her will power, and this is necessary forher to be reborn. In The Lost Girl Alvina got married to Ciccio, an Italian young man who
belonged to a lower class than her. And he is also younger than Alvina. When two persons
make love to each other, Alvina feels a pain and felt she was being killed by him. There is ascene where Alvina’s old consciousness is destroyed by a new one. This scene is conﬁrmed
by Lawrence. In my paper on The Lost Girl, I wrote that the word “lost” had ﬁve meanings(SLN 229). One of these meanings concerns Alvina’s fall from her middle class to Ciccio’s
labor class. In The Fox also March comes down to Henry’s lower class from Banford’s
middle class. And besides this meaning the word “lost” has the meaning of “mad” as well asin The Lost Girl, as Banford cries that the marriage of Henry and March is a mad idea.
March also feels pain when Henry proposes to her. She says “Oh I can’t,” and she is “asif in pain, like one who dies (FCL 26).” But Henry ﬁnally wins March’s consent to marryhim, though she is older than he. It is a very important point that the man is much younger
than the woman. Her oldness is a symbol of old English Christian world. It needs a fresh
wind, and the fox is depicted as that wind. Henry thinks to himself, “What is age? What isage to me? And what is age to you! Age is nothing (FCL 25).” His youngness is emphasizedwhen he is described as having a “ruddy, roundish face,” “fresh ruddy skin (FCL 14),” and“he was such a boy. (FCL 16)” His laugh is “a sharp yap of laughter (FCL 18).” Andespecially he has a very clear eyesight. But there is an obstacle, that is, Banford. Lawrence
contrasts her oldness to Henry’s youngness. Banford’s eyesight is weak and she looks old
with “wide, tired, slightly reddened eyes (FCL 34)” under glasses, and with her worn faceframed by faded brown and grey hair. She says “I feel quite sick with the smell of his clothes(FCL 37).” The dead fox also gives off a strong smell. The battle between Henry and
Banford is evident, “the two antagonists looked at one another (FCL 43).” We see here twokinds of redness, Henry’s redness and Banford’s reddened eyes which are depicted as
showing two opposite worlds.
We understand now why March was not happy when she lived with Banford alone at
Bailey Farm. March played the part of a man then. Though she felt responsible for theirhappiness, she failed to attain it.

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言語と文化 No. 36

Poor March, in her goodwill and responsibility, she had strained herself till it
seemed to her that the whole of life and everything was only a horrible abyss ofnothingness. The more you reach after the fatal ﬂower of happiness, which trembles
so blue and lovely in a crevice just beyond our grasp, the more fearfully you becomeaware of the ghastly and awful gulf of the precipice below you, into which you will
inevitably plunge, as into the bottomless pit, if you reach any further. (FCL 69)

As shown above, the happiness which March wanted was never reached and she was
unhappy. But now she was married to Henry, she did not want happiness to be his
responsibility. They got married at Christmas and left Bailey Farm and now they live inCornwall. From this situation Henry’s intention of marrying March was not to get Bailey
Farm. He is not a thief.
A new conﬂict between him and March began. He wants the kind of man’s superiority
over a woman as described in Women in Love and The Lost Girl. He wanted to take away
March’s consciousness but “she would keep awake. She would know. She would consider
and judge and decide. She would have the reins of her own life between her hands. She
would be an independent woman to the last (F 70).” The woman’s pose described here is
one that Lawrence criticizes in many of his works. He advocates his idea of the starequilibrium which is his original idea of duality in the relationships between man andwoman. In Women in Love, Birkin loves Ursula but she has a strong will which torments
him, so he tells her to throw away her will. “Love is a process of subservience with you--and with everybody, I hate it (WL 153).” “The world is only held together by the mystic
conjunction, the ultimate unison between people―a bond. And the immediate bond is
between man and woman……One must be committed. One must commit oneself to a
conjunction with the other―for ever. But it is not selﬂess―it is a maintaining of the self inmystic balance and integrity―like a star balanced with another star (WL 152).” Lawrence
uses the word “star equilibrium,” but it is difficult to understand what this idea is to thereaders. I think Lawrence was suffering from women’s strong self assertion and he wanted
them to throw it away. This is reﬂected in Henry’s attitude towards March, as The Fox was
written almost at the same time as Women in Love. The Fox was published in 1922 andWomen in Love in 1920. Lawrence thinks that the opposing things are always fighting
against each other to exist like the unicorn and the lion. So Henry and March will fight― 24 ―

A Study of The Fox

against each other from now on. The novella is open-ended as Lawrence’s many otherwritings are. This is not the fault of the work, I think.

Conclusion
It is very important to notice that the setting of The Fox is in the 1914−1918 War and themain action is in 1918 (FCL 238). There are two versions of the story. One was written on
10 December 1918 and published in Hutchinson’s Story Magazine on 8 October 1920. In theﬁrst edition the story ends with the marriage of Henry and March, but in the second edition
the afterlife of their marriage is added. Lawrence ﬁnishes the ‘long tail to “The Fox” ’ on 16
November 1921 (FCL xii) and the second edition (‘The Fox’ I − IV) was published in Dial,
May―August 1922 (FCL xiii). There are arguments for or against the tail part. I agree withthe author’s adding of the tail part. Lawrence himself tells in a letter to Earl Brewster on 16
November 1921, that the fox ‘careers with a strange and ﬁery brush’ (FCL xxv). Lawrence’s
description of the fox is very interesting.
In the latter part of the 19th century women’s liberation movements got more and more
vehement, as women wanted the vote. This movement had a strong relation with thedecrease of the number of men who had gone to foreign countries to fight in the wars.
Women had responsibility for sustaining society in many ﬁelds. They got partial suffrage in
1918. Lawrence had ambivalent feelings towards the suffrage movement. The idea of starequilibrium is his original women’s liberation idea. In the tail part of The Fox, therefore,
Henry expresses his sincere attitude towards March, that of not oppressing his wife, like
Birkin in Women in Love. By adding the tail part The Fox became a more signiﬁcant andinteresting work.
Lawrence writes to Catherine Carswell that he himself is like a fox in a letter on 5
February 1917 just before the year he began to write The Fox.
I feel myself awfully like a fox that is cornered by a pack of hounds and boors who
don’t perhaps know he’s there, but are closing in unconsciously. It seems to me to bea crucial situation now: whether we are nabbed by the old vile world, and destroyed,or whether we manage, with the help of the unseen, to make good our escape. (Letters
III 86)― 25 ―

愛知大学

言語と文化 No. 36

As shown above, Lawrence suffered from “the old vile world,” and in the story The Fox, hedepicted the battle between the old world, Banford’s world and the new fresh world, Henry’s
world, using the symbol of the fox. This fox is another expression of the God Pan which is
written in his many works as the vital power against the Christian world. Lawrence’s idea of
duality is, thus, handled in The Fox, as the dark world’s victory over the white world. And
as the story is open ending, the new battle between man and woman is not over, and this iswhat catches the imagination of Lawrence’s readers.
Notes
(1)

(2)

(3)

Shimizu, Koya. See “『Kitsune』――Kozo toshiteno Shinpansha” Ed. Tomiyama Takao andTateishi Hiromichi. D. H. Lawrence Kitsune to Tekisuto. Tokyo: Kokusho Kankou Kai, 1994.
pp.65−86.
“Lawrence told Earl Brewster that he ‘put a long tail to “The Fox”, which was a bobbed shortstory. Now he careers with a strange and fiery brush.’ ” The tail was added in 1921. See“Introduction of The Fox, The Captain’s Doll, The Ladybird, ” p. xxv.
See “Explanatory notes,” p. 238.

Works Cited
Granofsky, Ronald. D. H. Lawrence and Survival: Darwinism in the Fiction of the Transitional
Period. McGill-Queen’s University press: Montreal & Kingston London Ithaca, 2003.
Harris, Janice Hubbard. The Short Fiction of D. H. Lawrence. New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers
University Press, 1984.
The Holy Bible: Containing The Old and New Testaments. Revised Standard Version. New York &Glasgow: Collins’ Clear Type Press: London, 1971.
Lawrence, D.H. The Complete Poems. Ed. Vivian de Sola Pinto and Warren Roberts. Penguin Books,
1964 (First Edition), This Edition is 1993.
＿＿＿＿＿＿. The Fox, The Captains Doll, The Ladybird. 1923. Ed. Dieter Mmehl. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2002.
＿＿＿＿＿＿. Kangaroo. 1923. Ed. Bruce Steele. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994.
＿＿＿＿＿＿. The Letters of D. H. Lawrence Ⅲ . 1916—21. Ed. James T. Boulton & Andrew
Robertson. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984.
＿＿＿＿＿＿. The Lost Girl. 1920. Ed. John Worthen. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1981.
＿＿＿＿＿＿. Phoenix: The Posthumous Papers of D. H. Lawrence. 1936. Ed. Edward D.
McDonald. Heinemann: London. 1967.
＿＿＿＿＿＿. Reflections on the Death of the Porcupine and Other Essays. 1915. Ed. Michael
Herbert. 1988. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988.

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A Study of The Fox＿＿＿＿＿＿. St. Mawr. 1925. Ed. Brian Finney. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983.
＿＿＿＿＿＿. Women in Love. 1920. Ed. David Farmer, John Worthen and Lindeth Vasey.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,1987.
Moynahan, Julian. The Deed of Life: The Novels and Tales of D. H. Lawrence.
Princeton University press, 1963.
Oxford English Dictionary : Second Edition. Volume Ⅰ . A−Bazouk. Prepared by J. A.
Simpson & E. S. C. Weiner. Clarendon Press. Oxford, 1989.
Sinzelle, Claude. “Skinning the Fox: a Masochist’s Delight” in D. H. Lawrence in the Modern World.
Ed. Peter Preston and Peter Hoare. Macmillan Press. 1989.
Widmer, Kingsley. The Art of Perversity: D. H. Lawrence’s Shorter Fictions. Seattle: University ofWashington Press, 1962.

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