Lost Girl

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By Listen TheBook Posted on May 31, 2023

In Category - Literary Fiction

Authors: D. H. Lawrence In Year : 1921

Book Language: English

Audiobook: Lost Girl

Chapter I - THE DECLINE OF MANCHESTER HOUSE
Chapter II - THE RISE OF ALVINA HOUGHTON
Chapter III - THE MATERNITY NURSE
Chapter IV - TWO WOMEN DIE
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 IX (Part 1) - ALVINA BECOMES ALLAYE
Chapter IX (Part 2) - ALVINA BECOMES ALLAYE
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

"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)