The Rainbow (World's Classics) [Paperback]

D. H. Lawrence (Author), Kate Flint (Editor)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 15, 1997 | Series: World's Classics

In The Rainbow (1915) Lawrence challenged the customary limitations of language and convention to carry into the structures of his prose the fascination with boundaries and space that characterize the entire novel. Condemned and suppressed on first publication for its open treatment of sexuality and its "unpatriotic" spirit, the novel chronicles the lives of three generations of the Brangwen family over a period of more than 60 years, setting them against the the emergence of modern England.

Editorial Reviews

Review

“[Lawrence] had that quality of genius which sucks out of ordinary experience essences strange or unknown to men.” —Anaïs Nin --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

Book Description

D. H. Lawrence started 'The Sisters' in 1913, wrote four different versions and claimed to have discarded 'quite a thousand pages' before completing The Rainbow in 1915. Mark Kinkead-Weekes gives the composition history and collates the surviving states of the text to assess the damage done to Lawrence's great novel. --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 544 pages
• Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA (May 15, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0192830805
• ISBN-13: 978-0192830807
• Product Dimensions: 7.2 x 4.6 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.9 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (40 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #6,001,458 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

64 of 69 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars One of the crucial novels of the twentieth century, April 19, 2005

By 

Robert Moore (Chicago, IL USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Rainbow (Penguin Modern Classics) (Paperback)

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.

22 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Lawrence: the man who knew women, October 29, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: The Rainbow: Cambridge Lawrence Edition (Classic, 20th-Century, Penguin) (Mass Market Paperback)

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.

22 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A classic on the struggles of the human spirit., October 26, 2005

By 

K.S.Ziegler (Seattle) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Rainbow (Modern Library Classics) (Paperback)

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.