Skip to main content

Human into Animal: Post-anthropomorphic Transformations in Sarah Hall’s “Mrs Fox”

  • Chapter
  • First Online:
Borders and Border Crossings in the Contemporary British Short Story

Abstract

Sarah Hall’s “Mrs Fox” (in Madame Zero, 2017) reflects the short story’s potential to explore epistemological borders and to engage in ecocritical discourses. In recounting the transformation of a young woman into a vixen through the perspective of her husband, the story addresses pitfalls and opportunities offered by an interpretation of the human–animal border as dynamic and permeable. Situating itself within a literary tradition of human–animal transformations, the story addresses the gender politics underlying earlier representations of metamorphoses while simultaneously highlighting the necessity of rethinking our relationship with the non-human world to meet the environmental and ethical challenges of the twenty-first century.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD 99.00
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD 129.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info
Hardcover Book
USD 129.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Works Cited

  • Achilles, Jochen, and Ina Bergmann. 2015. “‘Betwixt and Between’: Boundary Crossings in American, Canadian and British Short Fiction.” In Liminality and the Short Story: Boundary Crossings in American, Canadian, and British Writing, edited by Jochen Achilles and Ina Bergmann, 3–32. New York: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Askers, D. B. D. 1983. “Vixens and Values: The Modern Metamorphoses of Garnett and Vercors.” Canadian Review of Comparative Literature 10 (2): 182–191.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bergmann, Ina. 2017. “Nature, Liminality, and the Short Story: An Analytical Triad.” ISLE: Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment 24 (3): 477–481.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Bowers, Maggie Ann. 2004. Magical Realism. Abindgon: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Clanchy, Kate. 2017. “Madame Zero by Sarah Hall Review—Exceptional Short Stories.” Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/jul/07/madame-zero-sarah-hall-review.

  • Colebrook, Claire. 2002. Gilles Deleuze. London: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Daston, Lorraine, and Gregg Mitman. 2005. “The How and Why of Thinking with Animals.” In Thinking with Animals: New Perspectives on Anthropomorphism, edited by Lorraine Daston and Gregg Mitman, 1–14. New York: Columbia University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • D’haen, Theo L. 1995. “Magic Realism and Postmodernism: Decentering Privileged Centers.” In Magical Realism: Theory, History, Community, edited by Lois Parkinson Zamora and Wendy B. Faris, 191–208. Durham: Duke University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Farley, Paul, and Michael Symmons Roberts. 2012. Edgelands: Journeys into England’s True Wilderness. London: Vintage.

    Google Scholar 

  • Foucault, Michel. 1986. “Of Other Spaces.” Diacritics 16 (1): 22–27.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Garnett, David. 1967. Lady Into Fox. London: Chatto & Windus.

    Google Scholar 

  • Görling, Reinhold, and Johan Schimanski. 2017. “Sovereignty.” In Border Aesthetics: Concepts and Intersections, edited by Johan Schimanski and Stephen F. Wolfe, 111–128. New York: Berghahn.

    Google Scholar 

  • Grądz, Krystian Marcin. 2018. “Animal Language and Human Discourse.” In Animals and Their People: Connecting East and West in Cultural Animal Studies, edited by Anna Barcz and Dorota Łagodzka, 253–266. Leiden: Brill.

    Google Scholar 

  • Gymnich, Marion, and Alexandre Segão Costa. 2006. “Of Humans, Pigs, Fish, and Apes: The Literary Motif of Human–Animal Metamorphosis and Its Multiple Functions in Contemporary Fiction.” L’Esprit Créateur 46 (2): 68–88.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hall, Sarah. 2017. Madame Zero. London: Faber.

    Google Scholar 

  • Irigaray, Luce. 2011. “How Can We Meet the Other?” In Otherness: A Multilateral Perspective, edited by Susan Yi Sencindiver, Maria Beville, and Marie Lauritzen, 107–120. Frankfurt: Peter Lang.

    Google Scholar 

  • Johnson, Daisy. 2019. “Deconstructing Old Stories to Tell Them in New Ways.” Literary Hub, January 25. https://lithub.com/deconstructing-old-stories-to-tell-them-in-new-ways.

  • Jones, Lucy. 2016. Foxes Unearthed: A Story of Love and Loathing in Modern Britain. London: Elliott and Thompson.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kristeva, Julia. 1982. Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection. New York: Columbia University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Marx, Leo. 2000. “The Machine in the Garden.” In The Green Studies Reader, edited by Laurence Coupe, 104–108. London: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • May, Shaun. 2014. “Abject Metamorphosis and Mirthless Laughter: On Human-to-Animal Transitions and the ‘Disease of Being Finite’.” Performance Research 19 (1): 72–80.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Morton, Timothy. 2009. Ecology Without Nature. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Nimmo, Richie. 2016. “From over the Horizon: Animal Alterity and Liminal Intimacy Beyond the Anthropomorphic Embrace.” Otherness: Essays and Studies 5 (2): 13–45.

    Google Scholar 

  • Plumwood, Val. 1993. Feminism and the Mastery of Nature. London: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Rosello, Mireille, and Stephen F. Wolfe. 2017. “Introduction.” In Border Aesthetics: Concepts and Intersections, edited by Johan Schimanski and Stephen F. Wolfe, 1–24. New York: Berghahn.

    Google Scholar 

  • Saki. 1989. “Esmé.” In The Complete Works of Saki, 101–105. London: The Bodley Head.

    Google Scholar 

  • Schimanski, Johan, and Stephen F. Wolfe. 2007. “Entry Points: An Introduction.” In Border Poetics De-Limited, edited by Johan Schimanski and Stephen F. Wolfe, 9–26. Hannover: Wehrhahn.

    Google Scholar 

  • Serpell, James A. 2005. “People in Disguise: Anthropomorphism and the Human–Pet Relationship.” In Thinking with Animals: New Perspectives on Anthropomorphism, edited by Lorraine Daston and Gregg Mitman, 121–136. New York: Columbia University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Simão, Lívia Mathias. 2006. “Why ‘Otherness’ in the Research Domain of Semiotic-Cultural Constructivism?” In Otherness in Questions: Labyrinths of the Self, edited by Lívia Mathias Simão and Jaan Valsiner, 11–36. Charlotte: Information Age Publishing.

    Google Scholar 

  • Traub, Courtney. 2016. “Non-anthropocentric Narrative Strategies in Recent Experimental US Fiction.” Literature Compass 13 (9): 515–529.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Zamora, Lois Parkinson, and Wendy B. Faris. 1995. “Introduction: Daiquiry Birds and Flaubertian Parrot(ie)s.” In Magical Realism: Theory, History, Community, edited by Lois Parkinson Zamora and Wendy B. Faris, 1–14. Durham: Duke University Press.

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Julia Ditter .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2019 The Author(s)

About this chapter

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this chapter

Ditter, J. (2019). Human into Animal: Post-anthropomorphic Transformations in Sarah Hall’s “Mrs Fox”. In: Korte, B., Lojo-Rodríguez, L. (eds) Borders and Border Crossings in the Contemporary British Short Story. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-30359-4_11

Download citation

Publish with us

Policies and ethics