Red to Violet (Rainbow, the - D.H. Lawrence)

Member Name: Celandine

Product:	Rainbow, the - D.H. Lawrence
Date:	11/08/01 (495 review reads)
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When you mention DH Lawrence, 'Lady Chatterly's Lover' and all that floral imagery tend to spring to mind. It's a shame, really, because 'The Rainbow' is, I think, a much better book. It was banned too, within six weeks of its publication in 1915, thus neatly saving reviewers from having to worry about how to review such a complex, and complicated book without writing a sixteen page essay, which is what I'm fretting about now.

It was 'filthy' apparently. But it isn't, at all, not in the slightest - the most explicit word I could see being 'womb'. It is sexual though, but then that's Lawrence for you, and without all his waffly mysticism, and over-blown heavy imagery, you wouldn't get the passages of glorious prose, or the gutsy look at relationships he offers. You've got to take the rough with the smooth, in 'The Rainbow', and the 'good bits' make it worth it, because when it works well, his writing is superb, individual, and engrossing.

Unfortunately, the start of it isn't one of the 'good bits'. You get used to the way Lawrence writes after a while, but he starts full-on with larded adjectives. It's gorgeous, honestly, but it's also off-putting if you're not used to him. Here's a bit that gives you an idea. He's describing the generations of people working the land on a certain farm:

"The women were different. On them too was the drowse of blood-intimacy, calves sucking and hens running together in droves, and young geese palpitating in the hand while the food was pushed down their throttle" (The Rainbow: Penguin Books)

There's a very Lawrence word: "Blood Intimacy". All this bit at the start, the rhythm of the words, and the words he chooses, show men and women working the land contendedly and obliviously. Then they start to look outward, for something different. As this is happening we see the ca
nal, and then a railway being built, and mines cropping up. One of Laurence's good points is that he describes landscapes, and social situations he knows. He was a Nottinghamshire miner's son, and this is a roughly disguised portrayal of the land in which he grew up.

So the scene is set, and we meet 'Tom Brangwen', the first of our characters, and the man whose relationships are explored in the first third of the book. We are looking at a story spanning three generations here, and each generation's relationships with their wives, lovers, children, the land around them, and with society. I said it was a vast book.

Oh, and it could have been more vast, for 'Women in Love' is effectively a sequel to 'The Rainbow'. They were originally written as one book, and I'm extremely glad they were split up into two. It spares me further panic to how I'm going to keep this at a reasonable length, and also we're spared from meeting any scarcely veiled portraits of Lawrence himself (he's in 'Women in Love', you see, and I find him quite annoying enough in that). Male authors - take heed. Portray yourselves carefully when you are writing with a character that is very like you, otherwise you may fall on your bottoms, and create a very irritating character.

Back to the book, though. Tom meets Lydia Lensky, a widowed Pole with a young daughter. He is drawn by her aura of 'difference', courts her, and marries her. We see their each of their quests for 'dominance' within the relationship, and we see how Tom and Anna (her daughter) grow close. Compressing Lawrence into a plot, like that, doesn't do him any justice at all. His use of language, and small incidents that take on greater significance, turn things that seem prosaic into beautiful events. The sexual nature of Tom and Lydia's relationship is explored through language, tiny looks and glances being endowed with more power
than just describing them can justify. Here's a passage which describes Tom taking the young Anna out to the barn on the night Lydia is giving birth to their baby. Anna is distraught, and wants her mother completely. Tom takes her out to quieten her:

"Holding the child on one arm, he set about preparing the food for the cows, filling a pan with chopped hay and brewers grains and a little meal. The child, all wonder, watched what he did. A new being was created for her in the new conditions. Sometimes, a little spasm, eddying from the bygone storm of sobbing, shook her small body. Her eyes were wide and wondering, pathetic. She was silent, quite still"

This is where Lawrence works, and, like I said, sometimes he doesn't. Sometimes he's over-the-top, or launches into poetical mysticism that doesn't quite hang together. But the words can be not only beautuful, but uplifting as well. Here's another quote, and I'll try to make this my last. It's where Lydia and Tom resolve their differences, and put aside their struggles for power, achieving this through, ermm, 'union':

"Anna's soul was put at peace between them. She looked from one to the other, and she saw them established to her safety, and she was free......She was no longer called upon to uphold with her childish might the span of the arch. Her father and her mother now met to the span of the heavens, and she, the child, was free to play in the space beneath, between".

I think that's utterly lovely. Imagery that works, and a sense of personal with it. It's almost biblical, the use of language and symbol, and this is something that runs through the book. I won't dwell on it too much here, though, since it's not really fully explored until 'Women in Love' anyway, and, because of this, the philosophical bits in 'The Rainbow' are left unresolved at the end. But before the end, the middle, whic
h deals with Anna's growing up, her meeting with her future husband, Will Brangwen.

So we see Anna married, and the fights, battles, and misunderstandings of their relationship. Will is religious, seeking mystical experience, at times, and Anna finds fulfilment through motherhood, her first child being Ursula. I'm rushing through this, but it's the difference, and the striving of individuals to attaing their potential which 'carries' the book, rather than flying plates and rows, and this is more explored in Ursula than any other character.

We end with Ursula, you see. Ursula is educated, a school-teacher, and we've watched her grow up, her relationships with people, her first love affair (with a mistress at school), and her first proper 'lover'. The book ends when that affair ends. Ursula cannot find fulfilment with the man, and she breaks free of him. She is looking for something else, something different. She finds it in "Women in Love", but that's a different story.

But I'm making it sound as if you need to read both books together, and you don't. The ending of "The Rainbow" may not be particularly fulfilling, but the language in it, when it works, really is. Lawrence at his best can soothe you and move you, and uplift you, and baffle you, all at the same time. At his worst, he sounds silly. So, sometimes it doesn't seem to 'work', and sometimes it 'works' better than you would imagine. It's always interesting, though, and he describes people in their context in an unique and wonderful way. If you're looking at dynamic plot, or carefully constructed witty balancing of words, then you won't find it here.

Lawrence isn't 'clever-clever', nor is he always lyrical. He's a big vast mixture of words, and imagery, charged sexuality, social awareness and people. I think he's brave. He spoke of things that no-one else did
at the time because he believed them to be important, and he had the guts to challenge his own, deeply held, religious beliefs, when he held them dear. He was a conscientious objector, too. To condemn the man, and the book, as 'dirty', or, the modern equivalent, to look for the 'rude bits' does him a great disservice. He's worth more than that, even during his more purple passages of prose. Oh, and you won't find any, anyway. I said. It's all in the ryhthm of the language, and the relationships he describes. Unless you think 'womb' is dirty, of course.

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