"Never from the start did it occur to Ursula that other people might hold a low opinion of her. She thought that whosoever knew her, knew she was enough and accepted her as such. She thought it was a world of people like herself"
Ursula seems to maintain remnants of a belief in a common, agrarian community, although this perception is rapidly becoming inaccurate and outdated. Like Will, Ursula, in her youth, also believes in the power of Christianity to elevate her life beyond the customary, everyday world of Cossethay and Ilkeston. Like her father, Ursula is also hesitant of accepting the concrete, tangible world as absolute, and doubts the finitude of appearances. For this reason, she identifies with Christianity, and it allows her to develop a sense of a spiritual self that, otherwise, could not be derived from the industrial world. However, Ursula realizes the difficulty of reconciling these two incompatible outlooks. Ursula, when compared to past generations of Brangwens, becomes particularly incoherent in her attempt to resolve these crucial questions of her identity. As opposed to her grandfather, she is unable to retreat into a wholly naturalistic, unconscious realm, but she still retains characteristics that are more suitable for this lifestyle. Thus, from Ursula’s perspective, her spirituality is more fragile and is under constant peril of being superseded by the values of urbanization.
It is these qualities of religious passion and escapist daydream which lead her to form a relationship with Anton Skrebensky. It seems as though Ursula is initially drawn to Anton because she sees in him the possibility of entirely circumventing the urban, industrial world: She apparently wants to be connected to someone who is independent, urbane, conscious, and articulate, but that person would also have to not adhere to the mechanisms of industrialized society. These contradictory tensions between urban and rural society influence the initial stages of Ursula and Skrebensky’s relationship. Skrebensky is reminiscent of the foreigner from Matlock that are more self-confident, fixed, and graceful, which Ursula finds appealing.
According to Ursula’s understanding of him, Skrebensky seems to represent an ideal combination of aspects from both the agrarian and urban mind sets. However, just prior to Skrebensky’s departure for the Boer War, Ursula begins to develop a more objective and aware perception of his character. During a walk along the canal, Ursula and Anton debate the principles of warfare and national politics, where Ursula is suspicious of the worth or need of an army.
Later that evening, Ursula gains an astute awareness of Skrebensky’s psychological makeup. Similar to Anna and Will’s momentous sheaving scene, Ursula is transformed and set free by the presence of the moonlight.
“Her naked self was away there beating under the moonlight, dashing the moonlight with her breasts and her knees, in meeting, in communion. She half started, to go in actuality, to fling away her clothing and flee away, away from this dark confusion and chaos of people to the hill and the moon.”
However, unlike Anna and Will’s experience, only Ursula senses vitality and spiritual rejuvenation in the presence of nature; in contrast, Anton fears that acquiescing to its power would result in death. Contrarily, Ursula despises Anton because to her, he represents a sense of nothingness.
"She knew that if she turned, she would die. A strange rage filled her, a rage to tear things asunder"
Although during the introductory period of their relationship, Ursula is engrossed with Skrebensky’s demeanor of urbane decorum, when he is placed in a setting of transcendent nature, Ursula only sees him as mechanized and spiritually unformed. However, while Ursula is momentarily elevated by the presence of the moonlight, her own feelings degenerate to lust, and she destroys the embryonic spiritual self that Anton does contain.
"She was there fierce, corrosive, seething with her destruction, seething like some cruel, corrosive salt around the last substance of his being"
During Anna and Will’s moonlit scene, their emotions are sustaining and vital. For Ursula and Anton, the episode turns base and annihilating. As opposed to her ancestors, Ursula explores beyond Skrebensky’s image of polished cultivation, and to a degree perceives his underlying spiritual void. Ursula’s intimacy with Skrebensky is completely suspended when he leaves for the Boer War.
Ursula, undetered by her experience with Anton, continues to investigate beyond farming life. She leaves for school, where she finds herself drawn to her class-mistress, Winifred Inger. Winifred seems to represent ideals which are similar to what Ursula had previously found in Anton.
"She always wore clean, attractive, well-fitting blouses, and a well-made skirt. Everything about her was so well-ordered, betraying a fine, clear spirit, that it was a pleasure to sit in her class"
Although Ursula and Winifred develop a intimate relationship, Winifred also serves as an intellectual mentor towards the younger girl. However, her relationship with Winifred also fails her; while Ursula is initially attracted to Winifred’s refined habits, and sees her mannerisms as a sign of an exalted soul, Ursula’s further investigation leads her to the realization that she was misled by appearances. Ursula also discerns an emotional and spiritual deadness in her school-mistress. Like Anton, Winifred is sufficiently urbane, but lacks a personal, emotional quintessence or a sense of selfhood. Ursula arranges a meeting between her Uncle Tom and Winifred, and later they marry; both, fundamentally, are governed by the machine of industrialized society. Her rejection of Winifred and her Uncle Tom takes on a greater implication; Ursula is also struggling to renounce these characteristics within herself.
The rejection of the colliery, her Uncle Tom, Winifred, and everything they represent--mechanization, a sacrifice of one’s self to the world of work, and a callous indifference to the mean circumstances of the coal miners. He also reflects Ursula’s dilemma with the urban world. She is not wholly confident of her own identity, but instead can only determine what attributes she does not want to incorporate into her own personality. Hence, it is a struggle to not be assimilated into the safety and structure of industrialized society, but to be defiant also results in loneliness and alienation.
Ursula then begins to view work as a venue to gain autonomy, and she is curious about this typically male-dominated arena. At this stage, Ursula maintains a belief that she can alter a system with her own personality, rather than the institution of education altering her for its own purposes. This longing for a sense of individuality, personal fulfillment, and satisfaction is what motivates her to work. However, Ursula soon realizes how little she is valued within an established system.
"Ursula was rather frightened by Mr. Brunt’s mechanical ignoring of her, and the directness of statement. It was something new to her. She had never been treated like this before, as if she did not count, as if she were addressing a machine"
Out of fear Ursula instead buries aspects of her self, and develops a hardened exterior in response to the belittling circumstances. Although she becomes more jaded by the experience, she also becomes even more determined to create a situation, within the urban world, that allows her to experience personal and creative fulfillment.
Ursula does receive an opportunity to retreat to an agrarian environment. Maggie, another school teacher, invites her to spend the summer intermission at her parents’ farm. During this stay, Ursula expresses a sense of unconscious serenity that characterized the lifestyle of her ancestors.
It is important to note that this is one of the few descriptions of nature in the second half of the novel; after Anna and Will’s degeneration, nature is no longer a ubiquitous aspect of life. Maggie’s brother asks Ursula to marry him, and Ursula must decide whether she would like to retreat to a natural setting, or continue with college. Ursula relinquishes the opportunity in favor of continuing her quest in the urban world, but she still feels regret.
"Her heart flamed with sensation of him, of the fascinating thing he offered her, and with sorrow, and with an inconsolable sense of loneliness. Her soul was an infant crying in the night"
Ursula seems to have evolved to a level of urbanity that makes it impossible for her to retreat into the unconscious, natural understanding of her grandparents. While she is greatly dissatisfied with the urban world, she seems to have no option other than to become cosmopolitan. Her only hope is that during this process, her self-potential can withstand the negative and debasing influences of industrialization.
Ursula is hopeful of attaining self-knowledge, despite having been disappointed with her relationships, school, and work. Ursula does become more advanced, and fulfills the paradigm anticipated by previous generations of Brangwens: she is more verbose, she travels to France, and she studies at the university. However, a part of this process is witnessing the underbelly of urbanization. Ursula's emerging consciousness is partly because she explores beyond her forefathers, and her experiences and disillusionment jolts her out of the remnants of her unconscious existence (in other words, it is not always a willing progression on her part).
Fundamentally, the only aspect she really does learn about herself is that she desires independence from her parents, men, and other constructs of society. Throughout The Rainbow, Ursula seems to represent the possibility of a new role that is unrelated to the agrarian/mechanization dichotomy. Ursula could be considered an example of a "New Woman." Ursula is insecure and hesitant of assuming this new type of personality.
Ursula’s challenge is to become whole in a fragmented, chaotic urban world. Throughout the novel, men and women struggle, to a varying degree, with the challenges that are the outcome of industrialization. However, there are gender differences in how the characters participate in this new urbanity. On the whole, although their motivations change, the women are more outward looking. Tom Brangwen’s mother looks toward the city with the hope of morally uplifting her children; in contrast, Lydia Brangwen was raised in a cosmopolitan setting, but denounces it for an unknown, natural world. Anna Brangwen yearns for the finer habits of the ideal lady; and her daughter, Ursula, believes that immigrating to the city will allow her to acquire knowledge. While, to a certain degree, men are also enchanted with the new ideas offered by urbanization, these dissimilarities in how men and women perceive themselves and the external world greatly affect their relationships. With the exception of Lydia, the women are typically characterized as dissatisfied.
“ It is a tribute to the prodigious optimism and persuasiveness of Lawrence’s vision that the secret she holds seems worth the keeping until the world is fit to receive it”
As a conclusion, Lawrence cannot give the reader a happy ending with Ursula’s character because with a personality so profound and complex there can be no easy solution to her fulfillment in life.
“her individual consciousness reaches out and embraces the real social world, transforming it, binding it around with the rainbow, fertilizing its internal essence”
He portrays life itself in this relationship and the ecstasy, the misery and the conflict inherent in the deep relationships between men and women, but all the rainbow suggests, there is always hope.
WORK CITED.
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Holderness, Graham. D.H. Lawrence: History, Ideology and Fiction. Gill and Macmillan Humanities Press. Dublin, 1982.
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Balbert, Peter. D.H. Lawrence and the Psychology of Rhythm. The Hagne: Mouton, 1974.
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Pritchard. R.E. D.H. Lawrence: Body of Darkness. Hutchinson University Library, London, 1971.
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Ed. Colin Clarke. D.H. Lawrence: The Rainbow and Women in Love. Macmillan Education, London. 1969.
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Mudrick, Marrin. The Originality of The Rainbow. D.H. Lawrence: A Collection of Critical Essays. N.J :Prentice-Hall, 1963.
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D.H. Lawrence. The Rainbow. Wordsworth Classic, 1995.
- Lecture Notes
D.H. Lawrence. Wordsworth Classics. The Rainbow, 1995. pg. 225
D.H. Lawrence. Wordsworth Classics. The Rainbow, 1995. pg. 221
D.H. Lawrence. Wordsworth Classics. The Rainbow, 1995. pg. 220
D.H. Lawrence. Wordsworth Classics. The Rainbow, 1995. pg. 268
D.H. Lawrence. Wordsworth Classics. The Rainbow, 1995. pg. 268
D.H. Lawrence. Wordsworth Classics. The Rainbow, 1995. pg. 270
D.H. Lawrence. Wordsworth Classics. The Rainbow, 1995. pg. 282
D.H. Lawrence. Wordsworth Classics. The Rainbow, 1995. pg. 312
D.H. Lawrence. Wordsworth Classics. The Rainbow, 1995. pg. 351
Mudrick, Martin. “The Originality of The Rainbow”. D.H. Lawrence: A Collection of Critical Essays. N.J : Prentice- Hall, 1963. pg. 49
Holderness, Graham. D.H. Lawrence: History, Ideology and Fiction. Gill and Macmillan Humanities Press, Dublin.1982. pg. 187.