Identity and the Struggle for Selfhood in D. H. Lawrence’s: The Fox

D. H. Lawrence’s The Fox (۱۹۲۲) is a psychologically charged novella which stages an intense confrontation between competing models of identity: feminine autonomy, masculine authority, instinctual selfhood, and social belonging. It set in post-World War I England, the narrative centers on March and Banford, two women who attempt to sustain an independent agrarian life, and Henry Grenfel, a returning soldier whose arrival destabilizes their fragile equilibrium. This essay argues that identity in The Fox is constructed as a dynamic and contested process shaped by gender polarity, instinct, power, and repression. Drawing on psychoanalytic, feminist, and Lawrencean philosophical criticism. Hence, the essay examines how identity operates symbolically (through the fox and the tree), psychologically (through repression and desire), and socially (through gender roles and postwar anxieties). Ultimately, the novella reveals identity not as a fixed essence but as a force-field of instinct and domination, leaving readers with a deeply ambiguous resolution. Many critics have explored gender conflict and sexuality in Lawrence’s The Fox; relatively little attention has been paid to the construction of identity as a relational and psychological process. Regarding, this research aims to focus on this issue.

کلیدواژه ها:

Struggle ، Selfhood ، D. H. Lawrence’s