Animals appear as symbols of both the danger of male aggression and enforced female meekness in The Foundling. Sister Rosemary tells the girls a story about Deirdre, who was killed by a bull after she jumped down from a tree. The danger of bulls, Sister Rosemary warns, is that “They don’t kill to survive like lions or tigers, no. They kill… for sport” (54). The lesson that Sister Rosemary wants to impart is “‘to never wander into a field of cows unless you know where the bull is keeping himself” (54). The bull represents masculinity as well as power.

Dr. Vogel repeats a similar lesson when she describes the ways men prey on girls who have a “moral weakness”: “A lion will study a group of antelope, or gazelle […] He’ll single out an antelope that’s weak or slow. That’s the one he’ll attack” (78). She makes the case that the work they are doing at Nettleton is humane because rather than giving the girls to the lions—ironically, the exact action Dr. Vogel takes—Nettleton protects girls from predatory men.

While Mary is waiting to see Lillian at the barn, she observes the cows: “Once they’d passed through the gate, for some reason, the cows remained in line and marched single-file along a narrow path they’d worn in the last stretch of field before the barn” (123).