I
STARTED reading short stories and novels by D H Lawrence in 1989. At the time I
was living in Wangaratta. I was browsing books at a newsagent on the main
street. I didn’t know many people in the town. I had a lot of time on my hands.
I’d read the odd short story during my university days. Probably about six or
seven. The Rocking Horse Winner and You Touched Me, among others. Two of his
best stories. So there I was in Wangaratta, with plenty of time on my hands and
wanting to get back into reading, looking for a good cause to devote my
energies to. Perhaps I had even read Sons & Lovers by then. And here it
was, a paperback version of the Keith Sagar illustrated biography. I was
hooked. His story was powerful, and led me in the following months to devour
The Trespasser, Lady Chatterley, The Rainbow, Women In Love, etc, etc. but this
wasn’t enough. Soon I found myself buying the hardback CUP editions of his
letters, all eight volumes of them. Well, as they say, the rest is history-
many first editions of books by him and about him, mostly courtesy of Michael
Logie in Adelaide, and eventually visiting houses he once inhabited, in
countries like England and Italy.
This
past two years I have been wandering around, doing my job, carrying a tacky
Penguin embossed aluminium water bottle of The Lost Girl (1920). It has occurred
to me, on and off, that this is one of the few novels that has slipped my grasp.
I had never read it. If people asked me about, I, the so-called ‘Lawrence
expert’ would go totally blank. So I thought I had better do something about.
This
past week I have had a couple of days where I found some rare space, some real
solitude. I found a copy besides my first edition in the Niddrie library. One of
those green ‘Phoenix’ copies. I found myself at the zoo the other day. The kids
went off with some other kids and some adults, and I had a 3-4 hour stint alone
next door to the carousel. I saw kid, after kid, after kid line up and go off
on their $3.95 ride. But most of the time I was engrossed on this bench seat
next to the carousel, reading The Lost Girl. By the time I was re-united with
everybody, I was just over half way through. And, as everyone knows, the second
half of any book is easier and quicker to devour than the first half.
I
finished The Lost Girl that night, or the next day, I’m not sure. Reading, to
me, and especially reading D H Lawrence, is a great adventure. The next port of
call was the CUP volume of letters- Vol III, I think, marking the period
leading up to and around 1920. Here, Lawrence was living in Taormina, Sicily,
and quickly writing his novel (the novel was initially started, then abandoned,
back in 1913 when Lawrence was still in England). So here were all the
interesting references to his friends in his letters about the novel he was
currently working on in Taormina. Initially it was called The Insurrection of
Miss Houghton (!), then I think Mixed Marriage, and finally The Lost Girl (his publisher
was apparently concerned that libraries would be scared away from this title-
this was not long after the controversy of The Rainbow, you see).
So
evidently Lawrence had great fun writing The Lost Girl, and thought it would be
a success. The next thing to read was Vol II of the III part CUP biographies. Vol
II covers the period around the 1920’s, and here was a great discussion about
Lawrence’s intentions and his life at this time. As is typical with Lawrence, the so-called ‘scandalous’
sections raised the most questions. Alvina Houghton is the daughter of a middle
class businessman, owner of Manchester House drapery firm, and later joins a
travelling theatre group as they play to audiences around England. Here she
meets the working class Italian man with green eyes called Ciccio. Twice Alvina
and Ciccio make love in the story- Alvina is a virgin until she meets Ciccio,
well into her thirties. It is fairly dominant love-making, weighted on the male
side, and according to the Lawrence scholar, Mark Kinkead-Weekes, there might
be some anal sex in it as well (although I could not really pick that up in reading
the sections he alludes to). So as it turns out, there are three variants in
the Secker (English) first edition. The second variant, which is the one I
have, has tipped in pages based on Lawrence’s apparently controversial intent. The
first variant contained the altered text that was used to satisfy the
prudishness of the libraries. The third variant (I think) contains Lawrence’s
original intentions, not tipped in. all this is in the Lawrence bibliography I
own, so I could pore over this with the second variant in my other hand.
Then
there was the internet. The Australian scholar, Sandra Jobson-Darroch, has
written an article claiming that Lawrence based his heroine, Alvina Houghton,
on Katherine Mansfield. Another researcher, someone who completed her doctorate
on this link, colludes with Jobson-Darroch, and says, yes, there are strong
links suggesting that although Lawrence may have begun to use Notts woman
Flossie Cullen as his model for Alvina Houghton, she became Katherine Mansfield
when he took the novel up again just before 1920. It is interesting reading all
this, yet I don’t get the sense at all, from reading The Lost girl, that there
is more than just a passing reference to Katherine Mansfield in his novel (I
certainly agree, however, she was the model for Gudrun in Women In Love).
All
this is very interesting to me. I weigh up what these writers have written and
I dismiss their ideas, but I can see how exciting it must be for them, to think
they are on to something new, something the CUP biographers never seemed to
think about. But I find their conclusions very non-conclusive, and I think it’s
good to have an independent, critical mind as well ( I remember being at
university, and the lecturer, Tony French, told me not to heed the ideas by the
Cambridge scholar in his introduction to Hardy’s poems. The thought of
rejecting the ideas of a Cambridge scholar in my Penguin copy of Hardy’s poems
back then seemed to be almost sacrilegious).
What
is more interesting than all of this, anyway, is the fact that Lawrence created
another interesting and modern heroine in his Alvina Houghton, who paved a path
for herself that is courageously completely at odds with her upbringing and
those genteel influential folk around her (in this regard Lawrence’s own wife,
Frieda, is a much more likely model for Alvina, although Katherine Mansfield
forged a completely independent path for herself as well!). Bravo to another of Lawrence’s heroines. Look closely,
though, and you will see he is criticized by some well-meaning modern critics
who detest Lawrence’s sexual politics and find fault with all of his heroines,
and feel somehow that they are too male reliant and are victims of Lawrence’s
so-called misogynistic world view.
Having
read The Lost Girl I can, now, with greater confidence, saunter around the
corridors and fields of my workplace, dangling my Lost Girl water bottle in my
right hand, competently answering questions about the identity of this mysterious
‘lost girl’, and discuss the irony of the title- Alvina Houghton, a woman who
discovers what she truly desires, and forges a courageous path to achieve it.
2 comments:
This review makes me want to read The Lost Girl. Do you think I would like it?
Hi you might need to be patient for the first half women in love might be the better option either way it will make you think about men and women!
Post a Comment