David Herbert Lawrence - review of The Rainbow

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David Herbert Lawrence was born on September 11, 1885 at Eastwood in Nottinghamshire, the son of a coalminer and a woman who had been a teacher. He spends much of his childhood ill and confined to his bed, on one occasion due to contracting tuberculosis. His parents would argue constantly and Lawrence tended to side with his mother, to whom he grew very close. Living in near poverty his mother was determined that he should not become a miner like his father. Instead she encouraged him academically and Lawrence was persuaded to work hard at Nottingham High School until the age of fifteen when he had to seek employment in a surgical goods factory. This period of his life and his friendship with Jessie Chambers is reflected in Sons and Lovers, a novel published in 1913 and its character Miriam. Saving the necessary £20 fee, Lawrence attained a scholarship to University College, Nottingham where he worked to get a teacher's certificate from 1906 onward. His first novel was The White Peacock that was published in 1911, followed by The Trespasser in 1912. Sons and Lovers was the third novel that he wrote in 1913, The Rainbow in 1915. And the he managed to release Women In Love which is a sequel to The Rainbow.

Ursula Brangwen 

In The Rainbow, Anna and Will’s eldest daughter, Ursula, witnesses drastic lifestyle changes resulting from the transformation of the English countryside. She is frequently confused in most aspects of her life, and displays contradictory characteristics of both the rural and the urban mentality. Ursula eventually becomes skeptical of societal expectations because they are in flux or are being challenged by new ideas. She becomes completely mired in the social upheaval created by the demise of older, agrarian world and the emergence of industrialized society. As a result, Ursula experiences difficulties in constructing her identity and in determining a specific direction for her life.

Ursula’s spoken expressions also reflect intellectual advancement when compared to the verbal abilities of previous Brangwens. Ursula’s struggle to find words which clarify and define her thoughts and emotions shows a new level of consciousness. She expresses a scholastic curiosity that, within the context of her relatives' history, signifies an apogee of exploration.

 "She wanted to learn Latin and Greek and French and mathematics. She trembled like a postulant when she wrote a Greek letter for the first time"  

However, despite these traits which suggest a novel, conscious, intellectual form of being, Ursula still exhibits many characteristics that are inherited from her ancestors. Like Tom Brangwen, she is inclined to indulge in daydream and fantasy, and she maintains exalted ideas of the world outside of the community.

 "Even as a girl of twelve she was glad to burst the narrow boundary of Cossethay, where only limited people lived. Outside, was all vastness, and a throng of real, proud people whom she would love"

         Ursula, similar to Tom, imagines majestic scenes of urbanization and culture, which act as a stimulus for future exploration. In addition, Ursula, similar to Anna, has impractical expectations of how she should be received in the world. She also espouses deluded ideas of her own sense of magnitude, while failing to perceive the methodology and structure of an urban society that creates substantial gaps and differences between individuals.

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"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 ...

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