Customer Reviews

The Rainbow

5 star:		(25)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

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 regard exercises in psychological realism. One can find fault with the way he depicts his characters. For instance, I think he underestimated the role that empathy and sympathy play in human relationships. Also, his characters are so consistently depicted in unflattering ways that one wonders whether Lawrence liked people at all. One reads Whitman, for instance, and is struck by his passionate love of humanity, seemingly motivated by his conviction that no man is an island to find something redeemable even in the dregs of humanity, loving both the escaped and the bounty hunter chasing down the slave in equal amounts. Whitman is unstinting in his love of human beings. Lawrence seemingly loves no one, and seems at times to believe that all men and women truly are islands. But one can disagree with Lawrence's views of humanity while still admiring his attempt to produce psychologically compelling portraits of real people.

Finally, Lawrence helped transform the English novel by bringing a degree of sensuality that had otherwise been missing in fiction. I don't mean just sexuality, though there is that as well, but a complete opening of the imagination to sensual imagery. Lawrence, for instance, writes about the beauties of nature as convincingly as any novelist working in the English language. I find his nature imagery more convincing and honest than those, say, of Wordsworth. Some of his imagery touching the moon or men working in fields or the effects of sunlight are deeply effecting. The novel was banned for a number of words that were deemed too provocative and obscene, as well as for some profoundly sensual scenes. The words strike us as quaint today, especially one word that offended many: "belly." The scene that provoked the most outrage was the one where Anna Brangwen nee Lensky would when pregnant undress and slowly dance ritualistically in her room before the fire.

Despite these remarkable achievements, I find it hard to like Lawrence in general and this book in particular. I give the book five stars because it deserves them, but it is not a book that gives me much joy or delight. Part of this comes from the fact that Lawrence comes across as a bit of a misanthrope. He seems a person more fixated upon discovering what is wrong with someone than in praising what is good. To refer to the familiar distinction, he is a "glass half empty" kind of person. There are moments of bliss in his books, but I rarely experience joy or happiness. In other words, I do not like Lawrence's novels largely because of what I sense to be characteristics of Lawrence's personality that I do not like. His gifts as a writer are immense, and what he did to help transform the English novel should inspire the gratitude of everyone who loves literature. But as a whole he is an author I respect rather than admire, appreciate than love. This remains, however, a novel that any serious student of the English novel should read carefully. It and his successor WOMEN IN LOVE truly represent one of the turning points in the development of the English novel.

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.

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 thinking and feeling human being who struggles for freedom over bondage, or sanctuary from madness.

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."

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.

This is a book that needs to be read relatively quickly to get the full effect. A masterful, overwhelming, huge, almost perfect book. He traces the history of the main character through multiple generations of parents to explain in incredible detail the creation of the protagonist. The use of a long running darkness and light metaphor, echoes Conrad, and gives an erieness to the book, the best example of this is early in chapter 15, and incorporates some of his pro-nature anti-business themes.

His critique of industrialism and mindless consumerism at the expense of nature I found to be enormously topical. The concluding 10 pages, particularly the last 100 or so lines are truly epic and wonderful.

Entrenched in the middle of this long book, I found I stopped noticing lawrence's style. Though I repeat the recomendation of reading the book in large chunks.

The Rainbow by D.H. Lawrence is a fascinating saga of three generations of Brangwen family. I should have read this book before "Women in Love". Although there is no connection between the two. Numerous characters come and fade away making room for our protagonist, Ursula Brangwen. She is the quintessential Lawrence character, also appeared as Paul Morel in "Sons and Lovers" and Gudrin in "Women in Love". They attain everything they desire and yet reject and abandon what they seek to soar even higher. They surely triumph and that is the beauty of all his creations. I guess if all stories end up "lived happily ever after", then nobody would have heard of Shakespeare.

It must have been a shock to the early 20th century readers of the beautiful lesbian liaison of Ursula and her teacher, not to mention numerous premarital sexual romps with Anton Skrebensky. Lawrence exquisite and poetic prose make it exhilrating and yet sensual. I guess he kept all the graphic detail for "Lady Chatterely's Lover".

It is a great book with chock full of unforgetable charectors in the rich tradition of Dickens and Hardy. I

THE RAINBOW is the story of three generations of the Brangwen family. Beginning with the first, D. H. Lawrence shows the intricacies of human relations that frequently have no more going for them than just good looks or sexual passion. It seemed inexplicable to Lawrence that as many relations worked out as they did. His concern was in finding the rationale for the successes, and in THE RAINBOW he suggests that success in a relation is a function of the recognition that all relations begin in conflict, which in turn imply either a resolution which ends in success or a non-resolution which does not. The paradox that is inherent even in the first generation of Brangwens is that most people are by definition unique and therefore independent. It is only when they connect romantically that a fusion may occur--or perhaps not. It is this reaching out for connection, from man to woman, from man to society, that marks the underlying order of THE RAINBOW.

Tom Brangwen is of the first generation. He is decent enough but alone and feels a void that only a woman can fill. He sees a Polish woman named Lydia Lensky to whom he feels an instant attraction. They meet, they talk, and conventionally fall in love. But they are supremely different in nearly all areas, including their ages. She is older by six years and has a daughter from a previous marriage. But they recognize and accept the paradox that individuality must merge with a collective identity. This they do and the relationship is secure. It is here that Lawrence introduces the near mystical "blood" affinity that two people have--or not--in any ongoing relation. Tom and Lydia have it. They have children but the one who comes into focus is Lydia's child from before, Anna. As Anna grows into womanhood, she clearly does not "have" it. Her blood speaks in a whisper and her husband Will does not hear it even after having nine children. The divisions between them are real enough, but they are no more or less real than those that Tom and Lydia were able to solve. Neither Anna nor Will connect. They are simply two spouses who maintain their uniqueness and never merge. They do manage to have children, one of whom is Ursula, who will return as a mature woman in Lawrence's sequel, WOMEN IN LOVE. Ursula is relentless in her wish to connect with someone or something. She tries teaching, but remains unfulfilled. She has an affair with a Polish officer named Anton Skrebensky, and discovers that raw sexual passion is not enough to bridge the gap from where she is to where she wants to be. She even tries a lesbian relation with a schoolmate, Winifred Inger, a factor which undoubtedly led to the public outcry to ban Lawrence's book. That too is unfruitful. Ursula is crushed when she learns that Winifred marries Ursula's uncle. When Skrebensky pops up out of nowhere, they recommence their affair but she is sure that they are never going to connect. By the end of the book, Ursula has an epiphany. She sees a rainbow. In the world of Lawrence, a rainbow is a potent symbol of rebirth. Ursula sees it the same way. To her, the rainbow is a mystical piece of architecture that promises that someday she will connect perhaps in a manner not unlike Judy Garland seeking her Oz. Thus, Lawrence indicates that the rainbow is the visual objective correlative of the magical blood that as he writes in his famous letter will allow Ursula, "To be alive, to be man alive, to be whole man alive: that is the point." Putting aside the sexist pronoun, that is indeed his point.

How unusual to find a male novelist so deeply understanding of the subtle differences in the way the sexes react to each other and society. Each generation of Brangwen came closer to the ultimate reality of freedom and self fulfillment. Of course it was finally Ursula who frees her soul totally and connects to the larger more infinite existence. This book was truly a deep and exultant experience.

Daivd Herbert Lawrence was born on September 11, 1885 in the ugly mining area of Nottingham in the English Midlands. His father Arthur was a hardworking miner who opened the world of natural beauty to the lad. His mother was a woman who focused her attentions on "Bert" so the boy would develop his artistic inclinations. Together this ordinary couple produced a literary genius. Lawrence would change the novel and the way we read novels.
In 1915 he wrote the Rainbow which tells the three generational tale of the Brangwen mining and farming family of Nottinghamshire. The generational stories revolve around:
a. Tom and Lydia Brangwen-He is a strong man who marries the Polish widow Lydia. Together they have several children as they build a world of their own on their farm.The couple has difficult communicating well together except in the marital bed.
b. Will and Anna Brangwen-Anna was the daughter of Lydia and her first husband a Polish physician who died young. While Will and Anna have a brood of children it is Anna who is in the spotlight. She weds her cousin Will. We see them making love; Anna dancing in the nude during a pregnancy and becoming an earth mother loving her man, home and land.
c. Ursula is the oldest daughter of Will and Anna. She is a shy girl who blossoms in the novel. Ursuala becomes a schoolteacher in a grim urban school; falls in love and leaves Anton Skrebensky and returns home to her family and the friendship and love of her sister Ursula. These two girls will be the main characters in "Women in Love" the sequel to "The Rainbow." Ursula develops a lesbian relationship in this novel but is clearly bisexual in orientation. The novel ends with her miscarriage as she is chased by a herd of horses in the rain.
That is the outline of the story. Nothing much happens on the surface; plot is there but is minimal. What Lawrence aimed for in this fiction was the experience of sexual awakening; the female organism and the stormy but essential relationship between the sexes. His language is poetic in beauty and bristles with the life force. His descriptions of nature are detailed and evocative making him the heir to Thomas Hardy.
"The Rainbow" was removed from the bookstore due to the strict and puritanical English censorship during World War I. Lawrence's wife Frieda who was German was under suspicion as a spy and the couple had a terrible time. Today in our sexually liberated culture "The Rainbow" is far from shocking. What we remember is the beauty of the language and the sense of time passing in the genealogical study he gives to one English family.
Lawrence hated modernity, industrialism and the rape of the English countryside due to mining. He is romantic yearning for a simpler time.
This classic novel published in the Cambridge Edition by Penguin paperbacks is well worth your time and money.