The Rainbow by D. H. Lawrence (novels for beginners .txt) 📕
Description
The Rainbow is an epic tale spanning three generations of Brangwens, a family of farmers living in Nottinghamshire around the time of the Industrial Revolution. The tale begins with Tom Brangwen, the very epitome of a rural English farmer leading the old way of life. We follow him as a youth easing in to the rhythm of rural existence. He soon falls in love with Lydia, a Polish immigrant he had hired as a housekeeper, and despite their vast cultural differences, the two marry. Their relationship is, in a word, satisfactory: the two face a language and culture barrier that prevents their minds from ever truly meeting, but they learn to be more or less content with their place in society and in raising their children.
Lydia’s child by her first marriage, Anna, becomes the focus of the next part of the novel. She was born in England, and has a fiery and demanding temperament. She falls in love with Will, a nephew of Tom, and the two begin a rocky and difficult marriage. Will, a craftsman and not a farmer, is self-absorbed, and wants nothing more than for them to live their lives only for each other. But Anna wants to strike out in the world and become a part of society. The two must reconcile their clashing personalities and desires as they raise their many children.
The oldest of their children, Ursula, becomes the focus of the last third—and perhaps most famous—part of the novel. Ursula is a deeply sensual being born in to the Victorian era, a time restrained in morality but exploding in energy and possibility, now worlds away from her grandfather Tom Brangwen’s quiet, traditional farming life. She leads a life unimaginable to her rural ancestors: indulging in travel abroad, waiting for marriage and pursuing her physical desires, and even taking on a career—a concept both new and frightening to her family, who are just a generation removed from the era when a woman’s life was led at home. Her unhappiness with the contradiction in this new unbridled way of living and the strict social mores of the era becomes the main theme of this last part of the book.
The entire novel takes a frank approach to sexuality and physical desire, with sex portrayed unashamedly as a natural, powerful, pleasurable, and desirable force in relationships. In fact Ursula’s story is the most famous part of the novel not just because of her unrestrained physicality and lust, but because she also experiments with a candidly-realized homosexual affair with one of her teachers. This unheard-of treatment of deeply taboo topics was poorly received by Lawrence’s Edwardian contemporaries, and the book quickly became the subject of an obscenity trial that resulted in over 1,000 copies being burned and the book being banned in the U.K. for eleven years.
Though its charged portrayal of sexuality is what the book is remembered for, sexuality is only one of the themes Lawrence treats. The novel stands solidly on its rich description of both rural and city life, its wide-angled view of change over generations, and its exploration of hope for the human spirit in societies that heave not gently but quickly and violently into new eras.
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- Author: D. H. Lawrence
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“Will it be so terrible?” she said, quivering, rather beautiful, but with a slight touch of condescension, because she would not betray her own trepidation.
“Terrible?” said the man, turning to his potatoes again. “I dunno about terrible.”
“I do feel frightened,” said Ursula. “The children seem so—”
“What?” said Miss Harby, entering at that moment.
“Why,” said Ursula, “Mr. Brunt says I ought to tackle my class,” and she laughed uneasily.
“Oh, you have to keep order if you want to teach,” said Miss Harby, hard, superior, trite.
Ursula did not answer. She felt non valid before them.
“If you want to be let to live, you have,” said Mr. Brunt.
“Well, if you can’t keep order, what good are you?” said Miss Harby.
“An’ you’ve got to do it by yourself,”—his voice rose like the bitter cry of the prophets. “You’ll get no help from anybody.”
“Oh, indeed!” said Miss Harby. “Some people can’t be helped.” And she departed.
The air of hostility and disintegration, of wills working in antagonistic subordination, was hideous. Mr. Brunt, subordinate, afraid, acid with shame, frightened her. Ursula wanted to run. She only wanted to clear out, not to understand.
Then Miss Schofield came in, and with her another, more restful note. Ursula at once turned for confirmation to the newcomer. Maggie remained personal within all this unclean system of authority.
“Is the big Anderson here?” she asked of Mr. Brunt. And they spoke of some affair about two scholars, coldly, officially.
Miss Schofield took her brown dish, and Ursula followed with her own. The cloth was laid in the pleasant Standard Three room, there was a jar with two or three monthly roses on the table.
“It is so nice in here, you have made it different,” said Ursula gaily. But she was afraid. The atmosphere of the school was upon her.
“The big room,” said Miss Schofield, “ha, it’s misery to be in it!”
She too spoke with bitterness. She too lived in the ignominious position of an upper servant hated by the master above and the class beneath. She was, she knew, liable to attack from either side at any minute, or from both at once, for the authorities would listen to the complaints of parents, and both would turn round on the mongrel authority, the teacher.
So there was a hard, bitter withholding in Maggie Schofield even as she poured out her savoury mess of big golden beans and brown gravy.
“It is vegetarian hotpot,” said Miss Schofield. “Would you like to try it?”
“I should love to,” said Ursula.
Her own dinner seemed coarse and ugly beside this savoury, clean dish.
“I’ve never eaten vegetarian things,” she said, “But I should think they can be good.”
“I’m not really a vegetarian,” said Maggie, “I don’t like to bring meat to school.”
“No,” said Ursula, “I don’t think I do either.”
And again her soul rang an answer to a new refinement, a new liberty. If all vegetarian things were as nice as this, she would be glad to escape the slight uncleanness of meat.
“How good!” she cried.
“Yes,” said Miss Schofield, and she proceeded to tell her the receipt. The two girls passed on to talk about themselves. Ursula told all about the High School, and about her matriculation, bragging a little. She felt so poor here, in this ugly place. Miss Schofield listened with brooding, handsome face, rather gloomy.
“Couldn’t you have got to some better place than this?” she asked at length.
“I didn’t know what it was like,” said Ursula, doubtfully.
“Ah!” said Miss Schofield, and she turned aside her head with a bitter motion.
“Is it as horrid as it seems?” asked Ursula, frowning lightly, in fear.
“It is,” said Miss Schofield, bitterly. “Ha!—it is hateful!”
Ursula’s heart sank, seeing even Miss Schofield in the deadly bondage.
“It is Mr. Harby,” said Maggie Schofield, breaking forth.
“I don’t think I could live again in the big room—Mr. Brunt’s voice and Mr. Harby—ah—”
She turned aside her head with a deep hurt. Some things she could not bear.
“Is Mr. Harby really horrid?” asked Ursula, venturing into her own dread.
“He!—why, he’s just a bully,” said Miss Schofield, raising her shamed dark eyes, that flamed with tortured contempt. “He’s not bad as long as you keep in with him, and refer to him, and do everything in his way—but—it’s all so mean! It’s just a question of fighting on both sides—and those great louts—”
She spoke with difficulty and with increased bitterness. She had evidently suffered. Her soul was raw with ignominy. Ursula suffered in response.
“But why is it so horrid?” she asked, helplessly.
“You can’t do anything,” said Miss Schofield. “He’s against you on one side and he sets the children against you on the other. The children are simply awful. You’ve got to make them do everything. Everything, everything has got to come out of you. Whatever they learn, you’ve got to force it into them—and that’s how it is.”
Ursula felt her heart fail inside her. Why must she grasp all this, why must she force learning on fifty-five reluctant children, having all the time an ugly, rude jealousy behind her, ready to throw her to the mercy of the herd of children, who would like to rend her as a weaker representative of authority. A great dread of her task possessed her. She saw Mr. Brunt, Miss Harby, Miss Schofield, all the schoolteachers, drudging unwillingly at the graceless task of compelling many children into one disciplined, mechanical set, reducing the whole set to an automatic state of obedience and attention, and then of commanding their acceptance of various pieces of knowledge. The first great task was to reduce sixty children to one state of mind, or being. This state must be produced automatically, through the will of the teacher, and the will of the whole school authority, imposed upon the will of the children. The point was that the headmaster and the teachers should have one will in authority, which should bring the will of the children
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