Stefania Michelucci: The Relativity of Death in DHL's The Fox

Stefania Michelucci
The Relativity of Death in DHL’s The Fox

A. An Elusive Fox
The Fox begins with the description of the daily existence of two women, March and
Banford, who try their best to run a farm during the last years of World War I. In spite of
all the problems related to hard manual work (they are not used to it because of their
middle class background and do not seem to like the utter dependence on the whims of
nature) and to the lack of economic resources – fowls do not thrive at Bailey Farm –
they insist in carrying on this project, which also involves a situation of utter social
isolation. The economic difficulties of the two women are described in a detailed,
realistic way, with precise information about their income and expenses, as well as about
the physical conditions of the animals they are in charge of. Their life is further
complicated by the raids of a fox, a plague which from the wild wood breaks into the
farm, exasperating the two girls. The story opens with a careful account of the English
farming life at the beginning of the 20th century; a life which was destined to disappear,
swallowed by the spreading mechanisation and industrialisation; later, however,
following the moment March’s eyes suddenly meet those of the fox, the style becomes
more and more impressionistic, or better it turns into a sort of intimate fauvism (with a
turmoil of hidden emotions). The impact with what she had previously seen as an
enemy, and a possible prey, has a sort of hypnotic effect on the girl, as if the fox, staring
at her eyes, had left on her consciousness an impression she can neither get rid of, nor
explain verbally. It is her first contact with the “otherness” of nature, which on the one
hand frightens her and on the other strongly attracts her; she experiences it as something
voluptuous and exciting (“she could finally abandon herself to the smell of the fox”). It
is a world which, according to the anthropological studies that Lawrence was familiar
with when he wrote the story (Frazer, Harrison, Durkheim),1 does not belong to the
dimension of the visible; the fox represents the unknown, the wild aspect of nature, and
1
The Golden Bough, Ancient Art and Ritual, The Elementary Form of Religious Life.
also hidden sexual desire (what is forbidden, the man, the masculine itself, according to
Doris Lessing). All these aspects are there, of course, but there is also something more,
the discovery of an alternative world, of an unspeakable otherness which March cannot
reveal to the other characters of the story. It could be described as a longing for a pre-
Christian, mythological past when all nature might be felt to be full of magic and human
beings could believe themselves to be part of it. Such magic was experienced by
Lawrence himself during his stay in Cornwall, which he described as his “first move to
Florida”: “It seems as if the truth were still living here, growing like the sea holly.[…] I
do like Cornwall […] One can feel free here […] feel the world as it was in that flicker
of pre-Christian Celtic civilization, when humanity was young.” (Letters II, 491, 492,
495). And young – just a boy – who has still to grow into a man, is the male protagonist
of the story, who suddenly interrupts the isolation of the two women. He himself seems
to have appeared from nowhere, magically, like the fox. He breaks into their house one
evening, penetrating their lives and subtly destroying the balance between them. He
soon conceives the idea – although at first in a hesitant and puzzled way – of settling
down on the farm and marrying March. The look of the soldier has a hypnotic effect on
the latter (“for March he was the fox”), as if the animal were the totem of the young
man, his ancient ego, his hidden, wild, mysterious identity. From her own inescapable
attraction for the fox, March finds an obliged way out – not something she has been
looking for, but something which is violently imposed upon her by the young man –
only after the death of the animal. The episode is very revealing as it happens at night,
when the young soldier is hunting out of anger and frustration (he cannot stay inside or
sleep after hearing the bad things Banford has been saying about him). In the logic of the
tale, as in Vladimir Propp’s Morphology of Folktales (1928), once the first antagonist
(the fox) is destroyed, the subconsciousness of the girl becomes free again. From now on
the fight between Banford and Henry for the territory and for the contended prey
(March) becomes fiercer and fiercer: hate and anger, as well as a blind egoism, permeate
human relationships after the disappearance of the fox. This fighting game ends with
Banford’s death and, as regards March and Henry, with the vague perspective of a future
together in a far away land (Canada), which leaves them uncertain, sadly isolated (there
is hardly any verbal or bodily communication between them), on the wild Cornish coast
at the end of the story.
2. Banford’s death and the War

As mentioned above, Banford’s death has been much discussed by critics. Keith
Sagar condemns Banford’s sacrifice; Mark Spilka goes even further saying that in
The Fox and The Plumed Serpent Lawrence is justifying murder, whereas for Luis
Greiff Banford’s death is inevitable and necessary within the logic of the story. For
David Ellis it is a subtle, half-deliberate homicide, as Henry invites Banford to move
because he is sure she will do just the opposite, whereas Peter Preston underlines that
her death is a mysterious one, like Mrs Hepburn fall in The Captain’s Doll. Henry is
a very unsure, naïve character, he is just a boy, as Lawrence often calls him, although
he experiences the excitement of the huntsman with his conquered prey in front of
Banford’s corpse. He can be viewed as a deliberate killer, who, no matter how, needs
to get rid of all his antagonists. From the very moment Banford opposes him, he sees
her no longer as an human being, but as an object, as it is witnessed by the recurrent
article “the” before her personal name, quite unusual in the English language.
[SLIDE 5] “So, the Banford just stood still and waited; These the Banford still carried
– yellow chrysanthemums! And he disliked the Banford with an acid dislike; The
Banford would have little iron breasts; No one heard the strange little cry which the
Banford gave as the dark end of the bough swooped down.” She is an obstacle which
has to be removed. The inexplicable deaths in the triptych, although ‘falls’ desired by
the male protagonists, even planned in The Fox, are closely linked to a spreading
madness, blindness and consequent loss of human values related to World War I, as
suggested by the prophetic article “With the Guns”. Lawrence is foreseeing the jungle
Europe is becoming in the light of the awareness – influenced by Nietzsche’s
Umwertung of all Western values – that Christianity has failed, that human beings are
now left to themselves, fighting in an arena where everything is possible for the sake
of the individual survival and where the distinction between good and evil has
completely lost its value.
The horror of the war is evoked in the central chapter of Kangaroo: “Awful years
– ’16, ’17, ’18, ’19 – the years when the damage was done. The years when the world
lost its real manhood. […] the spirit of the old London collapsed, the city, in some
way, perished, perished from being the heart of the world, and became a vortex of
broken passions, lusts, hopes, fears and horrors.” 2
In The Fox Banford’s death is the result of Henry’s desire, but it is also the
result of this horror, which nobody, not even the protagonists can account for. Such a
result, certainly not a victory, leaves the survivors in a disorienting vacuum. It is
worth connecting The Fox to “With the Guns,” the short prophetic article which
Lawrence wrote and which appeared on the back page of the Manchester Guardian
on 18th august 1914. In the final scene, after the narrator’s look at the magic beauty of
the natural world, a sort of blind and mad shooting in the darkness takes place. The
scene is deprived of any precise spatial connotation: a long trench on a hill, a little
white church on the top, the surviving symbol of Christianity on which Europe is
founded, so many brothers killing themselves all around. It could be everywhere. In
this anywhere between North and South, young people are crowded as an informal
mass in the cold ground, to shoot or be shot without seeing, hearing, or feeling the
presence of their enemy. They are deprived of their individuality, an informed mass
serving sophisticated arms. The approaching war, Lawrence prophetically underlines,
is destined to become a mass suicide, a totally blind destruction, a Russian roulette, a
mad game, with no emotions nor values shared by the fighting parts. All the ardour,
impetus, related to facing one’s enemy, as suggested ironically by the jolly soldier at
the beginning of the article (“‘When you see 'em let 'em have it.’ ‘Ay, no fear,’
shouted the man [to his sweetheart]”) are but an illusion.
2 D.H. Lawrence, Kangaroo, edited by Bruce Steele, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1994, pp. 213,
216.
..
That is what happens in The Fox, when the young soldier goes out in the night; he is
not going willingly to kill the fox, he is killing the animal because he feels thwarted,
oppressed by the words of the two women. As for Banford, he cannot admit to
himself the desire to murder her. Yet, he has to win the battle in the jungle of
contemporary existence and for the moment there is only the blind elimination of the
obstacle, with no thought of the consequences. It cannot be an intentional murder
because Henry did not know what they were going to do when he arrived at the farm;
he helped March hew the tree and told Banford to move. Being stubborn and
opposing him, she refused, but she could as well have moved away from the scene.
Yet, the tree falls on her because Henry cuts it down in the way he knows is best for
him, to kill her! And she dies.
In the existential watershed brought about by the disaster of World War I
Lawrence is trying to consider and redefine from a multiple, anthropological and
biological perspective the basic values of human existence, that is death, life, the
relationships between human beings and nature, from a private level (the microcosm
of a couple) to a public one (the macrocosm of a new society as in Kangaroo and in
The Plumed Serpent). But in spite of all efforts and attempts, there is, at least in the
final part of The Fox, no hook, no real hope (apart from a far away land to be reached
in the future (“Yes, I may. I can’t tell. I can’t tell what it will be like over there.”) to
achieve the longed for happiness and a satisfying life together.

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Stefania Michelucci

The Relativity of Death in DHL’s The Fox

2. Banford’s death and the War

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