In her 2015 novel The Wolf Border Sarah Hall depicts the phenomena of rewilding, a process in conservation biology whereby extirpated species are reintroduced to their original landscapes in an effort to decrease human intervention in nature’s processes. Set against the backdrop of an alternate Scottish independence referendum, Hall explores the idea of reintroducing the wolf into the English countryside through her protagonist Rachel Caine’s own return to England. By manipulating the reader’s sense of stability and then interrogating the nature of the interactions between humans and animals through the parallels and differences between Rachel and the wolves’ trajectories, Hall demystifies the concept of rewilding and explores its practical workings.
Before delving into the heart of the novel’s events, Hall eases the reader into the concept of rewilding by destabilising the reader’s sense of normality. Through her use of settings, the narrative style, and the alternate reality context of the novel, Hall constructs an uncanny world which gets us open minded to the novelty of rewilding, subsequently bridging the gap between the reader and the concept. The world of The Wolf Border is recognisably English through the vivid descriptions of the Cumbrian countryside, the use of the country house, and the prominent pub culture but alien in its reimagined political backdrop and the remote Native American Reservation setting that dominates the novel’s first two sections. Hall uses place names such as Cumbria and Idaho which help the reader find familiarity in the narrative but then disrupts this familiarity through details such as mentions of “tribal council” meetings in Lapwai and the introduction of Rachel’s mother as ‘Binny’ in Rachel’s memory, indicating their unconventional relationship.1 The inclusion of these details at the beginning of the novel signals to the reader the unorthodoxy of what is to follow.
Similarly, Thomas Pennington’s Annerdale estate is surrounded by “Moorland, peat, ferns, water” and a tree “so old and obese with bark that its lower branches are sagging almost to the ground” yet has “exceptionally green and manicured” lawns leading up to the lake and “expensively replaced windows” (pp. 9; 23). The incongruity of the natural world with indicators of intense management presents the novel’s setting as a magnified version of our own world, furthered by Thomas’ almost comical extravagance in the face of tense social and political divisions as Rachel observes that unlike most others in the economic climate, “Thomas Pennington has not suffered hard times, death duties or insurmountable taxes, it would seem” (p. 9). By juxtaposing Thomas’ grandiosity with the austere descriptions of the Cumbrian landscape and recollection of the “rancid vegetable smell of the paper mill downriver from the Reservation”, Hall highlights Rachel’s world as one in which peculiarities are a regular part of life (p. 9). Through the motif of displacement, demonstrated by the continual alternation between the familiar and the foreign, Hall positions the reader in a liminal space which allows her to normalise the unusual, facilitating the reader’s acceptance of the notion of potential wolf reintroduction into the English ‘wilderness’.
In addition to normalising the idea of rewilding, Hall uses politics to interrogate the nature of the phenomena, ultimately portraying it as anthropocentric. By exploring the rewilding project through the human characters’ personal lives, she draws attention to the paradox of rewilding as a venture undertaken to limit human interference in natural processes but heavily reliant on human management. Hall demonstrates this through the use of personal politics as a driving force in the project’s direction. Rachel’s resentment of the upper class is evident from the outset when she characterises the project as a “rich man’s whimsy” and dismisses Thomas Pennington, commissioner of the project and the Earl of Annerdale, as one of many “wealthy eccentrics who love grand schemes”(pp. 3; 56). That her initial refusal to lead the project – despite knowing its significance for the wolves themselves, the surrounding ecosystem, and local farmers – is precisely because of her own discomfort with gratifying the designs of the wealthy (she “feels peculiar being so close to a man of such power”) illustrates the way in which seemingly selfless undertakings are informed by the personal biases of those involved (p. 32). Thus in Rachel’s initial refusal, Hall demonstrates that environmental conservation efforts such as rewilding are not exempt from being subordinated to the politics and self-interest of those leading them. This is furthered by Rachel’s outlier status as a zoologist with ten years specialism in wolves, substantiated by the undergraduate degree from Aberystwyth, the “postgraduate work at Oxford” and the honorary fellowship (p. 26). As the party with senior expertise and therefore a superior understanding of the project’s implications, her rejection of the project due to hostility towards the notion of aristocracy particularly represents rewilding and by extension, human relationships to the non-human world, as highly politicised.
In addition, as the novel is set in the midst of an alternate Scottish independence referendum and the dominant setting becomes Cumbria, the border between England and Scotland, national politics is inescapable. The plot is often interrupted by political speculation and commentary and Thomas is noticeably absent from the project on business trips implied by his ‘friendship’ with Prime Minister Sebastian Mellor to be of a political nature. For example, after Rachel’s team have become friendly, a pub gathering following a day’s work is concluded by a discussion on the progression of the Scottish independence vote, and in the novel’s final moments where negotiations about the wolfpack’s future in Scotland are made between Rachel’s group and the Scottish government, the bureaucratisation of the whole project is encapsulated by the line “It ends, as conflicts and dreams do, in a government committee room” (p. 418). The pervasiveness of politics within the narrative implicitly reminds us that all things are informed by and at the mercy of human whims.
The magnitude of human power is embodied most aggressively in Thomas Pennington, whose motives for the project are presented as extremely dubious from the beginning through his many allusive statements such as “Sometimes a country just needs to be presented with the fact of an animal, not the myth” (p. 35). At the climax of the novel, following the confirmation of the wolves’ safe passage to Scotland, Thomas’ agreement with his daughter Sylvia that his late wife (whose memory is recalled throughout the novel) would have been happy with the outcome of the project and his elation at this turn of events heavily implies the centrality of his wife’s memory in the entirety of the project, suggesting therefore that while the ecosystem and the wolves themselves may have benefitted from the project, it was not necessarily endeavoured for solely or even primarily for that purpose. Through small-scale class conflict and the presence of wider politics, Hall highlights that initiatives like rewilding cannot be divorced from their human origins and are therefore capable of reflecting the anthropocentrism born out of that reality.
Hall also uses Rachel’s gradual shift from identifying primarily with non-human animals at the beginning of the novel to her embrace of life alongside other humans by the end of the novel to problematise the nature of amity between humans and animals, and to present the rewilding that takes place in the novel as oppressive. Through the primacy of her memory of playing with a wild wolf at Setterah Keep and her voluntary detachment from conventional human life, Rachel is more closely positioned alongside wolves than humans but as she becomes more immersed in human culture this likeness is dismantled. Rachel begins ‘wild’ in that she rejects social norms: her line of work privileges interactions with the non-human over the human, she is anti-commitment, favouring flings over long term romantic relationships, and most notably, she lacks the ‘normal’ maternalism expected of a woman in her late thirties. Additionally, her behaviour in the first section of the novel is characterised by an animalism most evident in an instance where after picking up a pregnancy test from an all-night pharmacy, she “does not even wait to get home before opening the packet and doing the test, but squats at the side of the road like a destitute”, demonstrating the pre-eminence of her baser nature over her socialised self (p. 72). As the project progresses, however, her life takes on a more traditionally human quality, with her final embrace of motherhood – something she is initially resistant to, unemotionally referring to the effects of a prospective abortion as “a day or two’s inconvenience” – seemingly the confirmation of this humanity (p. 86). She can therefore be seen to experience a rewilding of her own in that she returns to her ‘natural habitat’ as a social animal.
But while Rachel is free to choose a partner for herself, rekindle fractured relationships with her brother and her sister-in-law, and assert her authority over her subordinates, the wolves’ moves in the enclosure are managed and monitored with a device. For example, in contrast to the spontaneity of Rachel’s sex life, demonstrated by the accidental nature of her pregnancy, Ra and Merle’s breeding is preconceived of and coordinated by the project’s management team so albeit natural, Merle’s pregnancy is completely engineered. By depicting Rachel’s freedom to govern her own life and the lives of the wolves as project manager, Hall brings to the fore the inauthenticity of the rewilding that takes place in the novel as Rachel’s untethering from wolves in exchange for fulfilling human relationships and motherhood emphasises Ra and Merle’s solitude and confinement to the enclosure, highlighting their forced dependence on humans for the sake of the project.
The fact that Rachel’s embrace of her new domestic life is dependent on the stifling of Ra and Merle’s autonomy further demonstrates the falsity of the novel’s version of rewilding. Rachel’s ability to live a life where work isn’t her only focus is only possible because the wolves still exist within the enclosure, evidenced by the distress she experiences upon hearing the news of their escape and the power this has to upend her life by bringing her back into the outdoors, an emblem of her prior ‘wildness’. Rachel’s reversion to her prior animalism, shown by the faster pacing of the novel’s final episode and her frenzied speech in it in contrast to the leisurely pace of the home life chapters, frames her response as not just a negative reaction to unwelcome news but as a crisis of identity, illuminating the entanglement of the wolves’ enclosure with Rachel’s sense of self. At the climax of the race to retrieve the wolves, Rachel tracks down one of the cubs shot by a local farmer during its escape. As Rachel, alone with the wolf in nature, is powerless to exert control over the situation through any human means, the cub’s death becomes the most honest representation of rewilding in the novel, with Rachel’s acceptance of the crows clamouring for the carcass signalling her surrender to nature. While the cub dies as a result of the injury, the fact that it is the only moment where any of the five wolves get to experience the closest thing to wilderness rather than being trapped in a human simulation of it subverts the sadness of the moment into one of restoration.
On the morning of the negotiation meeting Rachel feels “a sense of powerlessness, of it all being over” (pp. 415-16). That the moment where actual rewilding is fully realised (as the outcome of the wolves’ escape is their successful passage to Scotland where they will live freely in an area unfrequented by humans) is the moment Rachel experiences the most loss suggests that for Rachel, the wolves’ survival within the enclosure, carefully managed by humans was preferable to eventual reintroduction. This also heavily implies that like Thomas, the project was tied to the sustenance of something in herself she wasn’t yet ready to give up; through their release Rachel is forced to relinquish control over the wolves’ lives that she otherwise would not have done. By presenting Rachel’s ability to thrive as a social being as linked to her knowledge of the wolves’ subjugation, Hall both undermines the stability of Rachel’s newfound identity and highlights the problematic elements of human relationships with non-human animals. By giving prominence at the end of the novel to the sense that the project has not at all been about the wolves but about the humans behind the project, Hall also echoes the suggestion previously introduced through Thomas’ dubious motives that at the heart of the novel’s rewilding isn’t concern with the ecological benefits of species reintroduction but the satisfaction of the political, social and sentimental interests of the project leaders.
Central to The Wolf Border is the protagonist’s journey into motherhood and a more social way of being, at the cost of her lifelong attachment to wolves. By focalising the novel’s rewilding through major events in Rachel’s personal life – her mother’s death, her reconciliation with her brother Lawrence and his addiction and marital problems, and the genesis of her blended family with Charlie, Alexander and Chloe – Hall erodes the novelty of rewilding and makes it more plausible, aided by the unconventionality of Rachel’s life. Through the differences in Rachel and the wolves’ experiences throughout the span of the novel, Hall also highlights the practical limitations of the project’s claim to rewilding to posit the moment that the pack is freed as the closest to true rewilding the novel gets. Because of the novel’s self-consciousness about the inauthenticity of rewilding in a vast enclosure, as it makes clear from the beginning that what could be achieved could only ever be an imitation of the natural, what Hall does illustrate about the nature of rewilding is therefore an underscoring of what she, through her protagonist’s admission, has already acknowledged to be apparent.
Bibliography
Hall, Sarah, The Wolf Border (London: Faber & Faber, 2016)
- Sarah Hall, The Wolf Border (London: Faber & Faber, 2016) p. 4. Subsequent references to be indicated in text. ↩︎
