SOURCE: “The Animals in Fiction,” in D. H. Lawrence's Bestiary: A Study of His Use of Animal Trope and Symbol, Mouton, 1971, pp. 108-88.

In the following essay, Inniss surveys animals in the fiction of D. H. Lawrence.

A. Pure Passionate Experience

If we examine Lawrence's major fiction for its use of the animal rhetoric and symbolism we have been describing, the following things become apparent: even before Lawrence began, in 1912, to issue statements of doctrine from Italy, we can find in his fiction some hints of the future bestiary. Secondly, the degree to which Lawrence uses animals as emblems and analogues of human states and qualities seems to bear little relationship to the aesthetic value of the work; though more important in some books than others, the rhetoric and symbolism are prominent both in major triumphs and in partial failures. Finally, while the animal rhetoric and philosophical myth-making...