The Lost Girl di D. H. Lawrence: ritratto imperfetto di ragazza inglese come fuggitiva ribelle

Although not among Lawrence's most successful novels, The Lost Girl is important because it highlights the writer's attitude towards his mother country and especially towards the sociocultural context of England in the early decades of the twentieth century. My article analyses the development of the protagonist's personality, also defining the autobiographical elements that Lawrence includes in outlining the portrait of the heroine, Alvina Houghton. What clearly emerges is the limitation of her plan to escape from England, given that she simply aspires to a primitivism associated with the full realization of herself as a woman both in body and soul. From the viewpoint of the plot. the journey to the South, for Alvina means the discovery of a world that is different from the one she had imagined. Hence her condition as a girl lost in a reality that she cannot understand. As a result of her insecure psychological condition, her primitive husband, Ciccio Marasca, becomes a sort of absolute master of her life.