RELATIONS OF DOMINANCE AND EQUALITY IN D. H. LAWRENCE

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masculine identification.
She will be re-'polarized'.
With Jill gone, March will be female.
The most important signalling in
the dream seems to be the involvement of the fox's skin with
Banford's head.
As the fox stands for Henry and the skin is
directly involved in 'helping'
to make Banford more
'comfortable' in her coffin, and March places it under Banford's
head, this certainly anticipates Henry's participation in the
killing of the girl.
It is Henry/the fox who finishes cutting
the tree which kills Banford.
The following day the girls go to see the dead fox. March
fondles the dead body of the animal as if she were caressing a
male body, sensing it deeply and feeling terribly excited:
She passed her hand softly down it. And his
wonderful blackglinted brush was full and
frictional, wonderful. She passed her hand
down this also, and quivered. Time after time
she took the full fur of that thick tail between
her fingers, and passed her hands slowly
downwards. Wonderful, sharp, thick splendour
of a tail. And he was dead! She pursed her
lips, and her eyes went black and vacant. Then
she took the head in her hand (p.124).
It is as if she were having her first sexual intercourse with
a male.
Furthermore, the way Henry looks at her and describes
his feelings towards her leads to this idea of sexual
intercourse: "He watched her, he could make nothing of her.
Partly she was so shy, so virgin, and partly she was so grim,
matter-of-fact, shrewish.
What she said seemed to him so
different from the look of her big, queer, dark eyes" (p.125 -
My underlining).
This sense of intercourse as being the first
one with a male is brought out by the words "shy", "virgin" and
also by March's sensations after touching the dead fox:
'My word, what a strong smell he's got! Pooo!
It'll take some washing off one's hands. I don't
know why I was so silly as to handle him.' And