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The Lost Girl

by D. H. LAWRENCE (1885 - 1930)

Chapter III - THE MATERNITY NURSE

"There is no mistake about it, Alvina was a lost girl. She was cut off from everything she belonged to." In this most under-valued of his novels, Lawrence once again presents us with a young woman hemmed in by her middle-class upbringing and (like Ursula Brangwen in The Rainbow) longing for escape. Alvina Houghton's plight, however, is given a rather comic and even picaresque treatment. Losing first her mother, a perpetual invalid, and later her cross-dressing father, a woefully ineffectual small-scale entrepreneur, Alvina feels doomed to merge with the tribe of eternal spinsters who surround her in the dreary mining community of Woodhouse. Into this drab environment enter the Natcha-Kee-Tawara: a polyglot, poly-amorous troupe of travelling players united, on- and off-stage, in a fantasy of Native American nomadism. Enter Ciccio, the surly dark-eyed horseman. The Italian's potent and threatening physicality overwhelms Alvina and soon will propel her into - what? Perdition, or the paradoxical freedom of a girl who 'like(s) being lost'? (Summary by Martin Geeson)

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Listen next episodes of The Lost Girl:
Chapter IV - TWO WOMEN DIE , Chapter IX (Part 1) - ALVINA BECOMES ALLAYE , Chapter IX (Part 2) - ALVINA BECOMES ALLAYE , Chapter V (Part 1) - THE BEAU , Chapter V (Part 2) - THE BEAU , Chapter VI (Part 1) - HOUGHTON'S LAST ENDEAVOUR , Chapter VI (Part 2) - HOUGHTON'S LAST ENDEAVOUR , Chapter VII (Part 1) - NATCHA-KEE-TAWARA , Chapter VII (Part 2) - NATCHA-KEE-TAWARA , Chapter VIII (Part 1) - CICCIO , Chapter VIII (Part 2) - CICCIO , Chapter X - (Part 1) - THE FALL OF MANCHESTER HOUSE , Chapter X - (Part 2) - THE FALL OF MANCHESTER HOUSE , Chapter XI (Part 1) - HONOURABLE ENGAGEMENT , Chapter XI (Part 2) - HONOURABLE ENGAGEMENT , Chapter XII - ALLAYE ALSO IS ENGAGED , Chapter XIII - THE WEDDED WIFE , Chapter XIV - THE JOURNEY ACROSS , Chapter XV - THE PLACE CALLED CALIFANO , Chapter XVI - SUSPENSE