“Ah,That Was Beauty:”Animality In D.H.Lawrence’s St.Mawr

As a brilliant poet,novelist,essayist,thinker and literary critic who has an earnest concern for all living things in nature,it is no small wonder that D.H.Lawrence was extraordinarily apt in animal depiction.The majority of critical examinations of Lawrence’s life philosophy invariably focus on his animals,especially the symbolism of animal images.The depiction of animals in an anthropocentric tone,however,falls short of Lawrence’s humanitarian sensibility.It is animality,rather than real animals,that Lawrence mostly engages with in that it helps shape Lawrence’s sense of “Beauty,” his model of a poetic,idealized existence with nature.In his St.Mawr,a borderline story that casts the horse as one of the protagonists,Lawrence examines how the notion of animality,in its balance and reconstruction with humanity,helps form the “organic unity.” To Lawrence,the sense of beauty is an experience to be felt,which is hidden in the organic unity of nature.By analyzing the titular St.Mawr as a horse,a character and representative of the “Animal,” this thesis illustrates three dimensions of animality in St.Mawr.The first dimension of animality lies in Lawrence’s highlighting of St.Mawr’s holiness as a representation of savageness,describing the horse as a savage corporeally,instead of a domesticated one,in an echo of Western biologic tradition which can be traced back to Darwin and Freud.The second dimension of animality,that is,a bodily materiality,based on post-humanists’ destructive views of animality,accords with Lawrence’s subversiveness in gender and racial issues.The implication brought by the controversial ending of St.Mawr imbues a new dimension with animality: the primitive.From London to Texas and finally to a deserted ranch in New Mexico,the protagonists have been pursuing for the wild spirit contained in nature that connects every living creatures.The spirit in the land is then transmuted into a vision of authenticity in life,echoing with Lawrence’s calling for the “future primitive:” to live with rather than exploit or conquer the untrammeled nature.