The Horses of 'The Plumed Serpent': Resistance, Cooperation, Victimisation

Brown, Catherine (2025) The Horses of 'The Plumed Serpent': Resistance, Cooperation, Victimisation. Journal of D. H. Lawrence Studies, 7 (2). ISSN 1759-1066 (In Press)

Abstract

This article, one of an invited multi-author series of brief articles on the topic of horses in D. H. Lawrence, uses a focus on horses in the 1923-25 Mexican novel The Plumed Serpent to develop an entirely new perspective on this most controversial of his works. It has been criticised, ever since its publication, as fascistic, misogynist and fantasist. Of late a few critics have, whilst acknowledging these criticisms, commended its anti-racism, anti-colonialism, and environmentalism. This article argues that a focus on the novel’s animals – and on horses in particular (the ways in which they resist, cooperate, and are killed) – indicates the mode in which the novel should be read: one which forbids any aggregate moral calculus or definitive assessment of aesthetic meaning in the novel, but which tracks the nature of lived experience, and which holds the reader open to a realm beyond, and contextualising, all human meaning – the animal other.

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