ABSTRACT
St. Mawr is not usually read for its engagement with Australia, and criticism has overlooked the significance of the nationality of its Australian characters, Rico and the Manby sisters. The novella concludes what I termed in my Introduction Lawrence’s “Australian period,” which is delineated by the four novels and a novella published between 1920 and 1925, all of which contain Australian characters. The period begins with his first Australian character, Dr Alexander Graham, in The Lost Girl (1920), continues with Francis Dekker in Aaron’s Rod (1922), through the Australian characters in the fully Australian novels Kangaroo (1923) and The Boy in the Bush (1924), and ends with Rico and the Manbys in the novella St. Mawr, published in 1925. The Australian period also includes the poem “Kangaroo.” If we include the posthumously published Mr Noon, with its passing reference to Australia, we may say that all the long fiction Lawrence wrote in this period, to varying extents, engages with Australia. In The Lost Girl and Aaron’s Rod, Lawrence depicts positive Australian characters. In Kangaroo and The Boy in the Bush, Lawrence, disillusioned with his experience of Australia, finds little to celebrate in the Australian character. In St. Mawr, Lawrence continues this trajectory, depicting expatriate Australians with an obsessive attachment to the material trappings of modernity. Rico and the Manby sisters pursue a “fast” and superficially “English” existence in the English countryside, and are an alien presence in a landscape and a society that is already feeling the pressures of modernity from within. The novella associates Australianness with modern and degenerative social attitudes and practices.
