SOURCE: Stewart, Jack F. “Totem and Symbol in The Fox and St. Mawr.” Studies in the Humanities 16, no. 2 (December 1989): 84-98.

In the following essay, Stewart discusses the fox in “The Fox” and the stallion in “St. Mawr” as totemic images.

Reading D. H. Lawrence's “The Fox” (1923) and “St. Mawr” (1925), one is first struck by vivid animal presences and then by the paradox that these presences are mediated by language.¹ As images, the fox and the stallion are overcharged with a surplus of power that seems to challenge a socially constituted consciousness. The unconditioned life-force in these male animals is transmitted to human female receivers, who are thus initiated into blood-consciousness or visions of dark gods, and whose sensitive awareness makes them transmitters, in turn, of the writer's vision to the reader.

In “The Fox,” two young women are living together and running a farm at the end of...