One of the more amusing things about the man who loved islands is the intensity with which he hates the half-a-dozen sheep who share his tiny third island:
"What he disliked most was when one of the lumps of sheep opened its mouth and baa-ed its hoarse, raucous baa. He watched it, and it looked to him hideous and gross. He came to dislike the sheep very much. [...] They were accustomed to him now, and stood and stared at him with yellow or colourless eyes, in an insolence that was almost cold ridicule. There was a suggestion of cold indecency about them. He disliked them very much. And when they jumped with staccato jumps off the rocks, and their hoofs made the dry, sharp hit, and the fleece flopped on their square backs, he found them repulsive, degrading."
And so the man who loved islands decides they have to go. But the "hustle and horror of getting the sheep caught and tied [...] made him loathe with profound repulsion the whole of animal creation." Even several days after the flock were disposed of, he was still nerve-wracked and would sometimes start with repulsion, "thinking he heard the munching of sheep". What evil deity, he wondered, created these foul-smelling, woolly beasts; "an uncleanness on the fresh earth".
"What he disliked most was when one of the lumps of sheep opened its mouth and baa-ed its hoarse, raucous baa. He watched it, and it looked to him hideous and gross. He came to dislike the sheep very much. [...] They were accustomed to him now, and stood and stared at him with yellow or colourless eyes, in an insolence that was almost cold ridicule. There was a suggestion of cold indecency about them. He disliked them very much. And when they jumped with staccato jumps off the rocks, and their hoofs made the dry, sharp hit, and the fleece flopped on their square backs, he found them repulsive, degrading."
And so the man who loved islands decides they have to go. But the "hustle and horror of getting the sheep caught and tied [...] made him loathe with profound repulsion the whole of animal creation." Even several days after the flock were disposed of, he was still nerve-wracked and would sometimes start with repulsion, "thinking he heard the munching of sheep". What evil deity, he wondered, created these foul-smelling, woolly beasts; "an uncleanness on the fresh earth".
Now, of course, it's true that the man who loved islands is a character in a story and not to be confused with either the narrator or the author - whom, for convenience's sake, let us agree is D. H. Lawrence. Just because Cathcart suffers from ovinophobia, it doesn't mean that Our Bert was himself full of fear and loathing for sheep. However, even a cursory examination of Lawrence's non-fiction reveals that he did, in fact, have an extremely negative view of them.
In his 1917 essay 'The Reality of Peace', for example, Lawrence argues that sheep are a form of life that knows nothing of transcendent being. They are born, they live, and they grow fat like large green cabbages, but they never blossom. Their only reason for being is to provide food for more vital organisms - and thank God, writes Lawrence, "for the tigers and the butchers that will free us from the abominable tyranny of these greedy, negative sheep".
Ultimately, he says, it's not the great beasts of prey we have to fear, but "the masses of rank sheep" and other herd animals that are nibbling the earth into desert. Obviously, Lawrence is writing metaphorically here - it's actually sheep-like modern humanity he's attacking - but I'm not sure this really matters; the fact remains that it's the hideous myrmidons of sheep to which he compares mankind in all its obscene nullity.
In his 1917 essay 'The Reality of Peace', for example, Lawrence argues that sheep are a form of life that knows nothing of transcendent being. They are born, they live, and they grow fat like large green cabbages, but they never blossom. Their only reason for being is to provide food for more vital organisms - and thank God, writes Lawrence, "for the tigers and the butchers that will free us from the abominable tyranny of these greedy, negative sheep".
Ultimately, he says, it's not the great beasts of prey we have to fear, but "the masses of rank sheep" and other herd animals that are nibbling the earth into desert. Obviously, Lawrence is writing metaphorically here - it's actually sheep-like modern humanity he's attacking - but I'm not sure this really matters; the fact remains that it's the hideous myrmidons of sheep to which he compares mankind in all its obscene nullity.
Notes
D. H. Lawrence, 'The Man Who Loved Islands', The Woman Who Rode Away and Other Stories, ed. Dieter Mehl and Christa Jansohn, (Cambridge University Press, 1995), pp. 168, 169.
D. H. Lawrence, 'The Reality of Peace', Reflections on the Death of a Porcupine and Other Essays, ed. Michael Herbert, (Cambridge University Press, 1988), pp. 42, 43.
Arguably, Lawrence is at his most Nietzschean in this essay and the fact that Christians are collectively referred to as a flock - and Jesus often described as the Lamb of God - is undoubtedly a factor in his ovinophobia.
