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A review by hadeanstars
The Lost Girl by D.H. Lawrence
4.0
A novel of profound contrasts, which takes some effort to fully appreciate. The first brush strokes on the canvas of the novel paint a dreary scene of English working class tyranny, and this is of course a Lawrence staple. How does one individuate? It is an age old challenge for the unorthodox, like Lawrence himself. He never solved it in his life, so we cannot expect solutions here, but what we do find is a highly competent rendition of the problem; one that we all should recognise.
The protagonist, Alvina Houghton is a well-to-do 'lady' living in the below station environs of a working class Midlands town. Her father James indulges his endless and primarily fruitless schemes for summitting the entrepreneurial edifice and giving his daughter the means to substantiate her genteel expectations. More or less, he fails, but he never stops trying. In each iteration the family are reduced until Alvina is forced to contend with her greatest fear:
Alvina is in many ways The Lost Girl. Too good to work, and with no adequate suitors, at least none who excite her. Here we meet that other staple of Lawrencian philosophy: sex. Alvina could of course setlle, and marry a cold, almost fishlike, Cambridge academic. Or go to the other extreme and marry a wealthy tradesman, but she doesn't want to settle. A disappointing spinsterhood beckons.
And she is trapped between these poles, unable to demean herself to live among the common herd, and yet failing to truly live.
The parallels with his Later novel, Lady Chatterley are evident. This is a better work (in truth Chatterley is bitter and angry and not much else), but here DHL is wrestling with the problem that always consumed him. His class self-loathing. His desire to break the composure of the aristocratic woman. His repressed sexual ambivalence. This last is expressed through the character of Ciccio an Italian actor so lovingly rendered, so exotic, so desirable that we wonder why Lawrence never describes his women with such delicacy. Inevitably, Alvina is fascinated, who would not be? She is the moth to the flame.
This juxtaposition is the beautiful glint of Lawrence's genius, and we have had to get through a whole novel to see it. The man was at another level, but he let his bitterness destroy him. You can see it here, in its infancy. The beauty and freedom - and actually hope - of his early work, The Rainbow, Women in Love, the homage to himself that is Sons and Lovers, it has started here to curdle. But the brilliance still shines out all the same.
The protagonist, Alvina Houghton is a well-to-do 'lady' living in the below station environs of a working class Midlands town. Her father James indulges his endless and primarily fruitless schemes for summitting the entrepreneurial edifice and giving his daughter the means to substantiate her genteel expectations. More or less, he fails, but he never stops trying. In each iteration the family are reduced until Alvina is forced to contend with her greatest fear:
She rebelled with all her backbone against the word job. Even the substitutes, employment or work, were detestable, unbearable. Emphatically, she did not want to work for a wage. It was too humiliating. Could anything be more infra dig than the performing of a set of special actions day in day out, for a life-time, in order to receive some shillings every seventh day. Shameful! A condition of shame. The most vulgar, sordid and humiliating of all forms of slavery: so mechanical. Far better be a slave outright, in contact with all the whims and impulses of a human being, than serve some mechanical routine of modern work.
Alvina is in many ways The Lost Girl. Too good to work, and with no adequate suitors, at least none who excite her. Here we meet that other staple of Lawrencian philosophy: sex. Alvina could of course setlle, and marry a cold, almost fishlike, Cambridge academic. Or go to the other extreme and marry a wealthy tradesman, but she doesn't want to settle. A disappointing spinsterhood beckons.
Men can suck the heady juice of exalted self-importance from the bitter weed of failure—failures are usually the most conceited of men: even as was James Houghton. But to a woman, failure is another matter. For her it means failure to live, failure to establish her own life on the face of the earth. And this is humiliating, the ultimate humiliation.
And she is trapped between these poles, unable to demean herself to live among the common herd, and yet failing to truly live.
The parallels with his Later novel, Lady Chatterley are evident. This is a better work (in truth Chatterley is bitter and angry and not much else), but here DHL is wrestling with the problem that always consumed him. His class self-loathing. His desire to break the composure of the aristocratic woman. His repressed sexual ambivalence. This last is expressed through the character of Ciccio an Italian actor so lovingly rendered, so exotic, so desirable that we wonder why Lawrence never describes his women with such delicacy. Inevitably, Alvina is fascinated, who would not be? She is the moth to the flame.