I.
Although not published until November of 1920, Lawrence completed his sixth novel - The Lost Girl - 100 years ago this month (May 5th).
In letters, he repeatedly describes the work as quite proper and expresses his hope it might actually be a popular success. Perhaps that's why, for me, it's the most boring of all his fictional works and one I hardly ever return to. If only Alvina had been morally lost, then maybe it would hold more interest.
Although not published until November of 1920, Lawrence completed his sixth novel - The Lost Girl - 100 years ago this month (May 5th).
In letters, he repeatedly describes the work as quite proper and expresses his hope it might actually be a popular success. Perhaps that's why, for me, it's the most boring of all his fictional works and one I hardly ever return to. If only Alvina had been morally lost, then maybe it would hold more interest.
Still, her decision to marry an Italian and "move towards reunion with the dark half of humanity" [1], is something we might discuss ...
II.
Exogamy and the idea of interracial relationships always fascinated Lawrence and there are many instances to be found in his work of wealthy white women running off with Mexicans and dark-skinned gypsies, etc.
Thus it is that in The Lost Girl - which Lawrence had at one time thought of calling 'Mixed Marriage' - we are presented with the tale of Alvina Houghton, daughter of a widowed Midlands draper and fleapit theatre owner, who decides to throw in her lot with Ciccio, a travelling performer from southern Italy:
"His skin was delicately tawny, and slightly lustrous. The eyes were set in so dark, that one expected them to be black and flashing. And then one met the yellow pupils, sulpherous and remote. [...] His long, fine nose, his rather long, rounded chin and curling lip seemed refined through ages of forgotten culture." [2]
Fleeing with Ciccio to the Old Country, Alvina abandons her life in Woodhouse and enters a new world of desire ...
III.
Now, of course, contemporary readers in England, many of whom are used to thinking of themselves as European and who regularly fly off for long weekends all over the Continent, will ask what's the big deal about this: is there really any significant difference in terms of culture and ethnicity between an Englishwoman and an Italian?
Probably not.
However, when Lawrence was writing - despite many centuries of mixing and mingling between peoples of different blood and opposing spirit - there remained, in his view, a gulf in existence and in being between two essential European types: "The dark-eyed, swarthy, wine-loving men from sunny lands" and the Germanic peoples, "born of the northern sea, the heavy waters, the white snow, the yellow wintry sun, the perfect beautiful blue of ice" [3].
And, crucially, at the beginning of the 20th-century, it wasn't just Lawrence who thought along these lines, separating ostensibly white Europeans into distinct races. In the United States, for example, Italians, particularly from the south (and especially from Sicily), were still regarded in some quarters as racially suspect; i.e., if not black exactly, then not-quite white either. Italians were sometimes refused entry to schools, cinemas, even churches and were invariably described in the press as wops and regarded as innately inferior.
In the Southern states, they even found themselves subject to shocking violence; in March 1891, for example, when Lawrence would have been six years old, eleven Italian immigrants were lynched in New Orleans, resulting in a serious diplomatic incident that brought the US and Italy to the brink of conflict. As one commentator on this incident notes: "The New Orleans lynching solidified a defamatory view of Italians generally, and Sicilians in particular, as irredeemable criminals who represented a danger to the nation." [4]
I suppose the key point is that racial categories are mostly the product of cultural mythology, rather than biology: whiteness - like blackness - is a political designation rather than a natural fact. And whilst Lawrence fetishistically exploits these categories for an erotic rather than a racist motive, we should still be alert to the dangers of so doing.
Exogamy and the idea of interracial relationships always fascinated Lawrence and there are many instances to be found in his work of wealthy white women running off with Mexicans and dark-skinned gypsies, etc.
Thus it is that in The Lost Girl - which Lawrence had at one time thought of calling 'Mixed Marriage' - we are presented with the tale of Alvina Houghton, daughter of a widowed Midlands draper and fleapit theatre owner, who decides to throw in her lot with Ciccio, a travelling performer from southern Italy:
"His skin was delicately tawny, and slightly lustrous. The eyes were set in so dark, that one expected them to be black and flashing. And then one met the yellow pupils, sulpherous and remote. [...] His long, fine nose, his rather long, rounded chin and curling lip seemed refined through ages of forgotten culture." [2]
Fleeing with Ciccio to the Old Country, Alvina abandons her life in Woodhouse and enters a new world of desire ...
III.
Now, of course, contemporary readers in England, many of whom are used to thinking of themselves as European and who regularly fly off for long weekends all over the Continent, will ask what's the big deal about this: is there really any significant difference in terms of culture and ethnicity between an Englishwoman and an Italian?
Probably not.
However, when Lawrence was writing - despite many centuries of mixing and mingling between peoples of different blood and opposing spirit - there remained, in his view, a gulf in existence and in being between two essential European types: "The dark-eyed, swarthy, wine-loving men from sunny lands" and the Germanic peoples, "born of the northern sea, the heavy waters, the white snow, the yellow wintry sun, the perfect beautiful blue of ice" [3].
And, crucially, at the beginning of the 20th-century, it wasn't just Lawrence who thought along these lines, separating ostensibly white Europeans into distinct races. In the United States, for example, Italians, particularly from the south (and especially from Sicily), were still regarded in some quarters as racially suspect; i.e., if not black exactly, then not-quite white either. Italians were sometimes refused entry to schools, cinemas, even churches and were invariably described in the press as wops and regarded as innately inferior.
In the Southern states, they even found themselves subject to shocking violence; in March 1891, for example, when Lawrence would have been six years old, eleven Italian immigrants were lynched in New Orleans, resulting in a serious diplomatic incident that brought the US and Italy to the brink of conflict. As one commentator on this incident notes: "The New Orleans lynching solidified a defamatory view of Italians generally, and Sicilians in particular, as irredeemable criminals who represented a danger to the nation." [4]
I suppose the key point is that racial categories are mostly the product of cultural mythology, rather than biology: whiteness - like blackness - is a political designation rather than a natural fact. And whilst Lawrence fetishistically exploits these categories for an erotic rather than a racist motive, we should still be alert to the dangers of so doing.
Notes
[1] D. H. Lawrence. The Letters of D. H. Lawrence, Vol. III, ed. James T. Boulton and Andrew Robertson, (Cambridge University Press, 1984), letter number 1985, to Compton MacKenzie [10 May 1920], p. 521.
[2] D. H. Lawrence, The Lost Girl, ed. John Worthen, (Cambridge University Press, 1981), p. 160.
[3] D. H. Lawrence, Movements in European History, ed. Philip Crumpton, (Cambridge University Press, 1989), p. 44.
[4] Brent Staples, 'How Italians Became "White"', The New York Times (12 Oct 2019): click here to read online.
[2] D. H. Lawrence, The Lost Girl, ed. John Worthen, (Cambridge University Press, 1981), p. 160.
[3] D. H. Lawrence, Movements in European History, ed. Philip Crumpton, (Cambridge University Press, 1989), p. 44.
[4] Brent Staples, 'How Italians Became "White"', The New York Times (12 Oct 2019): click here to read online.
