Short Story Review D H Lawrence Goose Fair

SHORT STORY REVIEWS D H LAWRENCE GOOSE FAIR 1914 in The Prussian Officer & Other Stories.

A rather incomplete Lawrence short story that leaves many questions unanswered.

The annual Goose Fair comes to a Midlands Mill town, with carnivals, celebrations and goose sales. A gangly and not particularly pretty young lady struggles to lead her herd of geese to market for sale.

Meanwhile, as darkness falls, another girl, Lois, is concerned. The young man she admires most, Will, prefers to go off on his own than come into her house and be with her for the evening. She thinks he is going off to the Fair without her, but he claims that he is going to guard the factory her father works at, as he is afraid people coming from the fair might set fire to it. 

Lois goes to bed, but her mother wakes her up with news that the mill is on fire. In fact it is a neighbouring mill, and not their father’s mill, though for a time the family worry that the flames might spread.  Lois thinks her boyfriend might have started the fire, but when he returns with a black eye, he tells her that he made a pass at the goose-herding girl described at the opening of the story and that she punched him in the face for his efforts.

The source of the fire is never explained. Lawrence writes through the father’ s point of view of how such buildings are badly built fire traps, though we never learn why the mill next to his caught fire, or who, if anyone was directly responsible.  There are hints of ‘fires of passion’ about the story, but nothing refined or fully worked out. One of the great author’s most disappointing short works.

Link to the text of Goose Fair http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks03/0301501h.html#C07

Arthur Chappell