Human and animal subjectivity converge in a historically unprecedented way within modernism, as evolutionary theory, imperialism, antirationalism, and psychoanalysis all grapple with the place of the human in relation to the animal. Focusing specifically on the work of Joseph Conrad, D. H. Lawrence, H. G. Wells, and Djuna Barnes, Carrie Rohman investigates animality as a fundamental locus for issues of identity construction and complication during the modern period. Drawing on the thought of Jacques Derrida and Georges Bataille, Rohman outlines the complex philosophical and ethical stakes involved in theorizing the animal in humanism, including the difficulty in determining an ontological place for the animal, the question of animal consciousness and language, and the paradoxical status of the human as both a primate body and a "human" mind abstracting itself from the physical and material world. Modernist texts reflect humanism's reckoning with animality: The Island of Dr. Moreau embodies a Darwinian nightmare of the evolutionary continuum, The Croquet Player thematizes the dialectic between evolutionary theory and psychoanalysis, Women in Love, St. Mawr, and Nightwood refuse to project animality onto others and invert the traditional humanist position by valuing animal consciousness. Rohman's study is a novel treatment of modern representations of the animal and their vital link to modernism's most compelling intellectual and philosophical issues.