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The psychic tendency in “Mallare,” described from a psychoanalytic point of view, closely resembles that in “Susan Glaspeel,” “The Verge,” and D. H. Lawrence's “Aaron's Rod” it is of a piece with Clare Boothe's mermaid dream. Biologically, it is an insistence on self-impregnation. It is a rationalization of the interlacing and conflicting impulses that meet at that momentous break between the stage of narcissism
and the following stages of homosexual and heterosexual acceptance.
The plot of “Mallare” is briefly: Mallare became an artist and sculptor to express his dissatisfaction with life. But after a time his dissatisfaction turned into supreme contempt. It was no longer the details of everyday existence that were unsatisfactory; it was existence itself. Life became too stupid to deride. So Mallare destroyed all his pictures and turned his back on the sort of life that all sane men lead. His argument, consciously or unconsciously, was, “I feel in myself a vague consciousness which transcends all space and time. Perhaps it is only that which is real. Perhaps the life of a sane man is a nightmare that I, a god, floating in space, have been dreaming.” Therefore Mallare ceases to pay attention to anything outside himself and sinks inward, hoping to find his way back to his godhead. He decides, for a reason not stated, that he can do this only through a woman.
He acquires a gypsy girl, Rita, of whom he attempts to obtain complete possession through his mind alone. But Rita, who longs for his caresses, tempts him with her body, and Mallare flees from her; he comprehends that she would betray him to his own physical senses, which produce satiation after a mere physical possession. In the street a beggar approaches him. In his agitation he mistakes the beggar for Rita, who, he thinks, has followed him, and he kills the beggar and goes home believing he has put an end to the temptation that was dragging him back to sanity.
When he finds Rita at his home he supposes that she