Explication

Helen Humphreys' "The Lost Garden" has some of the most detailed, realistic and emotionally troubled but beautifully created characters of any novel I have ever read. Gwen Davis, the main character, is especially fascinating because the story is told through her eyes. As a reader, one can take notice of every thought that runs through her mind, every emotion she feels. Gwen is a character that experiences many "obstacles to love", one of Georges Polti's thirty-six dramatic situations. Because of certain events in her life, previous to the life she leads in the gardens of the estate, Gwen never acquired any sort of confidence within herself, no love for herself. She "is clearly a lonely woman, never having experienced love of any sort" and because of this, she "longs for human contact: emotional and physical"(Sawka). Having had no true experiences with love growing up, even with her own mother, it is no wonder she feels she will never find love.

One very significant obstacle to love Gwen encounters is her lack of confidence. She often feels sad, lonely and as if a dead flower possesses more beauty than herself. This yields way to having no chance at love. Her mother seems most responsible for her insecurities because she would ask Gwen, "Why are you such an idiot?" (Humphreys 44) or say to her, "At least you have beautiful hair" (Humphreys 28). Some people may be able to brush off comments like those of Gwen's mother, but Gwen could not. At one point in the novel, Helen Humphreys makes Gwen's insecurities so obvious when Gwen asks her friend Jane about how she looks and almost starts to cry because she feels so unattractive (58). So hearing negative comment after negative comment has taken a toll on Gwen's life. Aside from the verbal harassment, rarely did her mother display any sort of physical affection towards Gwen. She tells us the only time her mother touched her was when her mother "rubbed [her] chest with liniment...when she spanked [her]...[and] when she slapped [her] hand away from the cakes at tea" (Humphreys 28). So it is no wonder why Ms. Davis has difficulty finding love when she was never given any as a child. She was never given an opportunity to experience love or build confidence and as a result, she can not exactly just go out and find love for herself.

Gwen finds a considerable amount of "comfort in the weight of her massive volume of Ellen Willmott's Genus Rosa, which she sets on top of her chest and imagines is the weight of a lover"(Sawka). Her two friends, Jane and Captain Raley are the two people who help Gwen find love. Jane helps Gwen find love within her, and both Raley and Jane share love with Gwen. Gwen develops a close friendship with Jane, a younger women who works for Gwen in the garden, but also, she seems to develop a different sort of relationship with a Captain Raley. Helen Humphreys leads her readers to think Gwen and Raley fall for each other by adding in small clues every once in a while. Gwen once imagined the weight of The Genus Rosa was Raley lying on top of her. Also, while in a quite room alone with Raley, Gwen says, "I gently push a lock of hair away from [his eyes], the way my mother once brushed the rain from my forehead. And he lets me" (Humphreys 93). This action of Gwen's is surprising because Helen Humphreys introduced her as the most shy, insecure women so even the slightest bit of human contact she has, even as small as her action of pushing a man's hair to the side of his face, is a breakthrough: something so unexpected yet lovely. Even more exciting, is when Gwen says "I touch his lips, gently, so gently, and then I kiss him. I kiss him and he lets me. Then he kisses me back. We push against each other..." (Humphreys 195). At this point, it seems as though one can not deny their love for each other. Soon after, however, Humphreys reveals to us that Raley was in love with his friend Peter who recently passed. This becomes one of the most shocking events in the novel because just when Gwen seems to discover true love, she finds out it isn't exactly what she thought it was. Though Gwen never seemed to have the best of luck with love, her relationship with Raley still taught Gwen to love. They still loved each other. So in the end, she still overcame many obstacles to love. She opened herself to her friend Jane, and to a man: Captain Raley.

Without a doubt, Helen Humphreys has successfully used Georges Polti's "obstacles to love" in her novel "The Lost Garden" in order to make for a more interesting main character. One feels more compelled to read on to discover the outcome of Gwen's confusing, insecure, and at first, loveless life. Watching Gwen break down those "obstacles to love" is one of the greatest aspect of Humphreys novel.