The Rainbow

Much criticism has been leveled at D. H. Lawrence, from varying levels of sophistication and experience, but here is a novel to justify his continuing high place among English novelists, now as much as ever. The story line runs chronologically. The events detail three generations of the Brangwan family, and occur mostly around the turn of the twentieth century, in the same coal mining area where Lawrence came of age. The Industrial Revolution was in full sway and had changed the lives of most people, but the Brangwan family had managed to steer away from at least some of it's influences by owning a rich plot of farmland and also by being blessed with some artistic talent. Though the coal and iron mining that fed the Industrial Machine had a positive material advantage when considering the mean and menial conditions of previous centuries, the grime and ugliness, the pollution, and the conditions of hard labor were not always such an improvement and made some wonder what had gone wrong or whether there was a way out. Also at this time, England, in order to secure it's preeminence as a global power, had become exploitive in Africa and India, two places where the character Anton Skrebensky was stationed. Most of the book is about the youth and coming to age of Ursula Brangwan. The book follows the lives of her Grandfather and parents, but that's mostly background, setting the stage for Ursula. What is especially notable is the focus that the author has into the inner lives of his characters: their struggles and what they are faced with, their emotions, desires, yearnings. The actual events have a secondary importance. Hardly anything very dramatic as an action or confluence of events ever occurs. What is of primary importance is the character's (especially Ursula's) own view of themselves and their own emotions in dealing with all the negatives that life could throw at them at that particular time and place. There are long passages in the book about Ursula's relationship with Anton Skrebensky. Much of it is intertwined with descriptions of the forces of Nature or the beauties of Creation - descriptions for which Lawrence had a special affinity; devices that dramatize the character's inner lives. Ursula is usually not so desperate that she cannot afford to want freedom in her life, something that conflicts very much with Anton. Even so, though she is fortunate in some respects, as a young women she still has a limited range of possible choices other than marriage. The most obvious alternative is teaching school. One of the most powerful sections in the book, in my opinion, is her experience teaching in a working class school and the dilemma she faces there: having to sacrifice some of her principles not even to succeed, but just to get by. One of the criticisms of Lawrence concerns his use of exaggeration in language. I don't think that criticism holds up well here. The exaggeration is a kind of device. And, human emotions are strong for any think

The importance of THE RAINBOW in the development of the English novel should not be underestimated. As a reader, I have to confess that this is not one of my favorite books; just as D. H. Lawrence is on the whole a writer I respect more than enjoy. But any serious student of the English novel has to acknowledge the importance of his novels. Even more than in his great classic novel SONS AND LOVERS, Lawrence in his pair of novels THE RAINBOW and WOMEN IN LOVE (originally conceived as a single novel, but split apart upon rewrites) helped rewrite the rules of what was possible in the novel. There are four significant ways in which this novel (and its successor) represents something entirely new. First, Lawrence in THE RAINBOW largely dispenses with plot as the major structural device. Only in a very vague sense does the novel tell a story at all. It records the various attempts by members of three generations of the Brangwen family to achieve selfhood, but we don't get a plot so much as a succession of characters. Virtually none of the storytelling devices that were crucial to most previous novelists were of much use to Lawrence, simply because most of those devices were aids in creative exposition, whereas the narrative in this novel is minimal. Second, abandoning plot, Lawrence attempts to frame a novel around characterization, but having determined to focus on character development, he furthermore refuses to focus on a single character. There is no central protagonist to the novel (though Ursula, who will be the protagonist of WOMEN IN LOVE, comes close), but a collection of characters that as a group command our interest. Again, this is a departure from traditional novelistic practice, where virtually every English or for that matter non-English novel had a central character involved in much or most of the action in the novel. In cinematic or stage terms, Lawrence deploys an ensemble cast, spending perhaps more time on Ursula Brangwen than the others, but nonetheless diffusing the novel's concern to all of them. Third, Lawrence wanted to treat individual characters in a way that had not previously been seen in English fiction. Though many novelists had created marvelously complex characters, even the most complex appeared simplistic compared to Lawrence's. He wanted to develop psychologically complex characters that contained much of the complexity of real people, whose personalities can never been captured precisely in fiction. Lawrence's characters are richly illogical, filled with contrary motives, fluidly change their minds or feelings, and are subject to a host of influences. In other words, they are very much like normal human beings. Lawrence illustrates the ways that people are marvelous blends of contradictory impulses. His characters are not psychologically tidy because that simply isn't the way people are, so that while on one level Lawrence if noted for writing richly symbolic novels, they are also in this re

Spanning the years 1840 to 1905, D.H. Lawrence's "The Rainbow" is the story of three generations of a rural English family, focusing on five main characters. More than just a simple family history, it is about gender conflict and the quest for identity and individualism. The novel begins with the early life of Tom Brangwen, a simple, poorly educated farmer. He marries a well-bred Polish widow named Lydia Lensky, who has a young daughter named Anna. Like any kid with a new parent, Anna is reluctant to adapt to her new environment, but eventually she learns to love Tom like her own father. When she grows up, she falls in love with Tom's nephew Will, and they get married and have very many children, an extraordinary number by today's standards but understandable back then when there was a higher infant mortality rate. Their oldest daughter, Ursula, emerges as the most prominent character, the one with whom the last half of the novel is most concerned. Ursula is nothing like her mother or her grandmother. She resents her parents' provinciality and her mother's complacency of being kept at home to be a baby-making machine and a domestic servant. Falling in love with a young man named Anton Skrebensky, she is unwilling to accept the dullness of being a wife. She rejects the sanctimoniousness and hollowness of religion. She becomes interested in the Women's Movement, such as it existed in the earliest years of the 1900's. She finds a new, exciting experience in a lesbian relationship with her teacher, Miss Inger. She decides to take up a profession, and teaching is one of the very few open to young women of the day. When given charge of a class, she soon learns that she must abandon her meekness and solicitude and become a stern disciplinarian if she wants to succeed as a teacher, and by doing so she manages to earn the respect of the unruly students and the other teachers. So ultimately, "The Rainbow" becomes the story of Ursula's (and woman's) self-liberation. The novel is structurally and thematically enigmatic. It presents conflicts but does not seek to resolve them. Its characters exist as dynamic life forms, interacting with and drawing vivacity from each other, and do not merely serve the purpose of advancing the plot, which has no beginning or end. It challenges conventional Victorian notions of feminine roles and sexual propriety, offering moments of daring sexual innuendo for its time, though necessarily muted by the censors of the day. While this book is not really a feminist tract, it offers unique insight into the issues of social, political, and economic equality of the sexes.

I successively declare each Lawrence novel I encounter to be the best I've read, but in my opinion, "The Rainbow" is especially brilliant in its painstaking and accurate depiction of the universal experience of adolescence...and especially noteworthy in its spot-on description of the evolving feelings and thoughts of adolescent girls. Lawrence's feeling for and understanding of his female characters is astounding, particularly when compared with that of other writers of his time.This work is sometimes criticized because of "repetitiveness" in the writing, but I find the repeated phrases add to, not detract from, the power of the novel. As in Lady Chatterley, he also manages to work in many brilliant and cutting observations of the price of progress in an industrial society, and document in careful, keen-eyed accuracy the varying responses of his characters--and, through them, archetypal human responses--to that society.

Lawrence's fame (or notoriety) rests on his sexual frankness, but what a lot of readers overlook is how well he wrote about parent-child relationships and family dynamics. The beginning of this novel is absolutely brilliant: Tom Brangwen and the Polish widow marry in haste, then find that they still haven't worked out their relationship. Her young daughter is an uneasy third party, and the child's sensitivity to the unease in their household is beautifully described, as well as her stepfather's gentle efforts to befriend her. As Lawrence continues the family history, his usual obsessions surface. But in general, it's a good story: sex is an organic part of his characters' lives rather than the mainspring of the whole plot (as in some of his other novels). And the characters come across as multi-dimensional human beings rather than talking heads (or other organs) for Lawrence's comments on life. A good novel for people who "don't like D.H. Lawrence."