David Game
Australian National University, Canberra, Australia
'The Lost Girl: A Return to Eastwood with Australia on the Horizon'
In March 1920, Lawrence, writing from Taormina, informed the Scottish author Compton Mackenzie, that he "had about 30,000 words" completed of the novel which became The Lost Girl (Letters, iii. 490). A substantial part of the novel is set in and around Lawrence's heartland, Eastwood, and although Lawrence wrote The Lost Girl while abroad, the novel may be seen as a "return" by Lawrence to Eastwood. For Lawrence, however, this return was fraught. Drawing on his recollections of people and places, Lawrence subjects his English characters to a withering critique, exemplifying his own rejection of post-war England. In keeping with his decision to live abroad, Alvina Houghton in The Lost Girl rejects her confined, middle class existence and also looks abroad for fulfillment, eventually marrying an Italian. Carol Siegel has noted Lawrence's "use of Italy as a site of regeneration" in the novel (LG, xix), however, while Italy is central to this vision, The Lost Girl, in the character of the Australian, Dr Alexander Graham, also reveals Lawrence's developing interest in Australia as regenerative destination, two years before his own journey there in 1922. In this paper I will argue that The Lost Girl provides evidence that Lawrence's decision to travel to Australia was not, as is generally accepted, simply the bi-product of his "desire to land on the Pacific coast" of America (Letters, iv. 127), but the result of an accumulating curiosity and intention to investigate Australia as an alternative, not only to England, but to Europe and America as well.