THE VIRGIN AND THE GIPSY [GYPSY]

Florence: Printed by the Tipografia Giuntina for G. Orioli, 1930. First Edition, one of 810 copies, limited and numbered, printed on Binda handmade paper for Orioli in Florence, Italy. With engraved frontispiece illustration and title-page illustrated with the Phoenix. 8vo, publisher's original white cloth, the upper cover with Phoenix rising in red, lettered in red on a label to the spine panel, with the printed and pictorially decorted dustjacket. 216, [1] pp. A very fine copy of the book, crisp and clean and near pristine, light mellowing and rubbing to the jacket extremities, still a very pleasing and unusually well preserved copy. TRUE FIRST EDITION, FIRST ISSUE. The Virgin and the Gipsy is a short novel written in 1926 and published posthumously in 1930. Today it is often entitled The Virgin and the Gypsy which can lead to confusion because first and early editions had the spelling "Gipsy". 'The story is a romance of blossoming spirit. The character of young Yvette contains the spirit of youthful unrest, curiosity, free-thinking and unprejudiced innocence. Yvette represents the desire for experience and freedom that Lawrence recognized as dominating the imaginations of the younger generation in England. The theme of aspiration for authentic experience is carried by her rebellious attitude and is further developed in her natural attraction to the gipsy man. Her day-to-day experience and the responses of her family are intended to contrast the inexperience and desires of youth with the limitations imposed by the strictures of conventional society.
Social propriety for its own sake, a propriety that imposes inhibitions and crushes the possibilities of genuine free-thinking and loving experience, is one of the main enemies in Lawrence's work. Even Mrs. Fawcett is shocked at the notion Yvette could be attracted by the gipsy despite the fact that she herself is living with a younger man even before her divorce has come through.
The gipsy represents male sexuality as well as individual freedom. The theme of virginity, and its almost unconscious aspiration for experience, is synonymous with the collective desires for the entire society before it has been perverted by an education made of prejudice and inhibitions. The virgin is inexperienced, and is therefore purely free to see the world as it is before others have had time to cause damage. Lawrence portrays Yvette as unrestrained in a positive sense: She visits the gipsies and the unmarried couple without thinking about any social consequences. She has an innate curiosity for an interesting and genuine life. The themes of her purity and innocence equate closely with a being absolutely untainted by prejudices or judgment. At home, the stifling environment created by her Aunt Cissie and the indolent, annoying Mater drive Yvette to search for uncharted social waters. She is not ashamed of her response to nature when she confesses her strong attraction to the gipsy during conversations with her sister Lucille as well as Mrs. Fawcett and Mr. Eastwood.
Another theme is that society is influenced heavily by ignorance, jealousy and fear. Lawrence saw himself as a liberator for people who needed to enjoy and experience life without fear or shame.