Reading transformations: from David Garnett’s Lady into Fox (1922) to Sarah Hall’s “Mrs Fox” (2013)

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article compares the short story “Mrs Fox” by Sarah Hall (3013) with David Garnett’s novel Lady into Fox (1922). Albeit different in some regards, these stories both center a human-animal transformation, and thus take part in a world-wide tradition that has existed since ancient times. How, then, is this motif rendered meaningful in modern times? This question is addressed in a discussion of the possibilities for different interpretations of these magical-realist stories. On the metaphorical level, the stories seem to be about gendered relations and woman’s situation in patriarchal society. This is the most common way to understand them in previous research. It also makes sense, however, to read them on the metonymical level, at which they tell the story about the relationship between the human and the non-human world, human and non-man animals. Finally, it appears to be productive to embrace the enigma at their core, the transformation, as a real event according to a different ontology. Indeed, it seems to be the liminality at its core that gives the human-animal transformation its ability to remain meaningful in times and places that are widely different, and in fictional genres far apart.