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The Rainbow | Introduction

In September 1915, one month after Methuen first published The Rainbow, Scotland Yard confiscated more than one thousand copies of it from the publisher and printer. Later that year the novel was successfully prosecuted for obscenity. Not until 1924 was D. H. Lawrence able to find an American publisher for The Rainbow. Eventually, the work came to be considered one of Lawrence’s finest, due especially to its intricate study of the tensions that often exist between men and women. Covering the pre–World War I period from about 1840 to 1905, the novel explores the relationships between three generations in the Brangwen family, describing in the process the emergence of English society from the Victorian period and its entrance into the modern period. Lawrence shows how characters are determined in part by the time and place in which they live, and he also dramatizes how they struggle to reconcile conflicting feelings and impulses. Lawrence shows how feelings cannot be conveyed adequately by conventional language, and his poetic prose style also illustrates the importance of imagery in conveying meaning to the text.

The Rainbow Summary

Chapter I: How Tom Brangwen Married a Polish Lady
The Rainbow opens with a general description of the Marsh Farm in the English Midlands and of the generations of the Brangwens who have lived there. The men were well satisfied on the land, with which they had an intimate connection, but the women “looked out from the heated blind intercourse of farm-life, to the spoken world beyond.” The women craved a better life, if not for themselves, then for their children.

The narrative shifts to 1840, when a canal is constructed across the Marsh Farm and soon after, a colliery and the Midland Railway appear. During this period, Alfred Brangwen and his family live on the farm and prosper from the development of the nearby town. Alfred’s youngest son Tom becomes the focus of the narrative as he is sent off to school with his mother’s hopes of his becoming a gentleman. Without an aptitude for book learning, however, Tom fails miserably at academics.

When his father dies, seventeen-year-old Tom takes over the running of the farm. After he has sex with a prostitute, he becomes confused about his feelings. The experience increases his desire to be with a woman, but the “nice” girls terrify him and the “loose” ones offend him. He begins to drink heavily to escape his constant dreams of women. One day Tom meets a gentleman who inspires in him a curiosity about the outside world.

When Tom is twenty-eight, he meets Lydia Lensky, a Polish widow who has become a housekeeper for the local vicar, and her four-year-old daughter, Anna. He feels “a curious certainty about her, as if she were destined to him.” He is attracted to her “fineness,” and she, to his directness and confidence. They soon agree to marry.

Chapter II: They Live at the Marsh
The two are nervous about marriage. Each is attracted to the other, but they also feel their foreignness to each other. After they marry, Tom is afraid to give himself to Lydia completely, somehow fearing her power. During their first months together, he vacillates between a fierce desire for her that allows him to give himself up to her and a fear that she might leave him, which fills him with anxiety. He often feels that she intentionally keeps separate from him, which enrages him and prompts his desire to destroy her. Yet eventually they come together, losing themselves in each other.

When Lydia gets pregnant, she withdraws from him again, and Tom spends evenings in the local pub. He also turns to Anna, Lydia’s child, with whom he eventually forms a deep bond. Initially, however, Anna resents Tom’s intrusion into their lives and rejects him. Gradually, as her mother withdraws further into herself, Anna turns to Tom for comfort and companionship. Lydia becomes depressed during her pregnancy, filled with memories of her first husband’s death and the loss of her first two children to diphtheria. Tom comforts the frightened Anna during her mother’s labor. Lydia and Tom forge a stronger bond after the birth of their son.

Chapter III: Childhood of Anna Lensky
Though Tom and Lydia have a son, Anna remains his favorite. Tom and Lydia’s relationship follows the same pattern of coming together and separating. When he cannot reach her, he drinks more heavily and transfers his attentions to Anna, whom he takes weekly to the cattle market. One evening, however, Lydia confronts Tom, complaining of his distance, and after the two discuss what they need from the other, they are able to unite and find entry “into another circle of existence,” a “complete confirmation” into a more satisfying life.

Chapter IV: Girlhood of Anna Brangwen
Prompted by a desire to make her a lady, Tom sends nine-year-old Anna away to school in a nearby town. Anna has a difficult time at school due to her sense of superiority and her need to keep her distance from others. She does, however, form an attachment to her mother’s friend, Baron Skrebensky, a Polish exile who is now vicar of a country church in Yorkshire, who represents to her a romantic world of lords and kings.

When she is sent to a young ladies school in Nottingham, Anna determines to adapt to the habits and style of the girls whom she meets there, but she still finds it difficult to establish any friendships and becomes unsure of her sense of herself. She prefers her life at home, where she and her family are “a law to themselves, separate from the world.”

When Anna is eighteen, she meets her twenty-year-old cousin Will Brangwen, who has taken a job at a nearby town. After an awkward beginning, they are soon drawn to each other and begin a passionate relationship. Tom, who has become jealous of Anna’s attentions to Will, tries to talk them out of marriage, but Anna angrily insists that Tom is not her father and so has no right to deny her, which cuts him deeply. Later, after Tom finally agrees, Anna tries to reestablish a bond with him, but he now feels separate from her. Yet after they marry, Tom enjoys helping the couple set up house.

Chapter V: Wedding at the Marsh
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