The Rainbow 693old world. The industrialism imagery thus serves as
a contrast to the rainbow imagery. The old world
to be swept away and replaced by a “new creation”
takes the form of industrialism. In fact, it can be
said that the system against which all of Lawrence’s
characters are fighting, whether they know it or not,
is industrialism. It is linked to the education system,
as well as to the personal frustrations of Lawrence’s
characters. It is a system opposed to individual ful-
fillment, and Lawrence attempts to counter it with a
religious sense of the instincts of humanity.
Mitchell R. Lewis
education in The Rainbow
The prologue to The Rainbow introduces the subject
of education, stressing differences of gender and
class. The Brangwen men are satisfied with farm
life and the rhythms of nature, but Mrs. Brangwen
desires more for herself and particularly for her off-
spring. She notices that the local vicar’s children take
precedence over her own because of “education and
experience.” It is “this higher form of being” that she
wants for her children, who face a life of anonymous
toil among the working classes of the English Mid-
lands. In spite of this noble aspiration, later linked
to the suffragette movement, the Brangwen family’s
educational experiences tend to be negative ones.
In fact, Lawrence suggests that instinct, intuition,
and experience are more important than formal
education.
In grammar school, for instance, Tom Brangwen
is “more refined in instinct” than his peers, but “he
could not learn deliberately.” Tom does emotionally
respond to literature when read to by his teacher, but
he is ashamed and angered by his inability to read
books, regarding them as hateful “enemies.” Rage
and humiliation are also the results of his experi-
ences with composition and mathematics, in spite
of his “instinct” for the latter. Tom is even “bullied”
by his Latin master, resulting in a “horrid scene”
in which Tom “laid open the master’s head with
a slate.” The grammar school labels Tom a “hope-
less duffer at learning,” but clearly it fails to take
into consideration Tom’s sensitive nature and class
background.
Like Tom, Anna Brangwen also resists her
formal education. She is “intelligent enough” and
proud, but when she is at a young ladies’ school,
she feels that “she ought to be slinking in disgrace.”
Anna questions her schoolmistresses, who act like
“representatives of some mystic Right,” and she does
not see “why a woman should bully and insult her
because she [does] not know thirty lines of ‘As You
Like It.’ ” As a result, her teachers almost make her
believe in “her own intrinsic inferiority.” As in Tom’s
case, Anna is singled out and humiliated for being
different.
Lawrence touches briefly on how Will Bran-
gwen enjoys teaching woodwork in night school,
but his most extensive treatment of education
comes in the case of Ursula Brangwen, the prin-
cipal character of the last half of the novel. As a
child, she imagines herself “on the hill of learning,
looking down on the smoke and confusion and the
manufacturing, engrossed activity of the town.” In
this regard Ursula clearly embodies the aspiration
of Mrs. Brangwen, but her “instinctive” intelligence
and her “bitter contempt of all teachers and school-
mistresses” combine the family traits of Tom and
Anna, respectively. Seeking her independence like
many suffragettes of the time, Ursula becomes a
teacher at a working-class elementary school. She
strives to be personal with her students, but she
finds that they are rebellious and that she herself
is simply a tool of a disciplinary institution, its
focus on authority and regimentation resembling a
“prison.” Ursula reluctantly subordinates herself to
her institutionalized role, becoming “nothing but
Standard Five teacher.”
The unruliness of her students and the goading
of her authoritarian headmaster, Mr. Harby, prompt
Ursula to seize control of her class by making an
example of Vernon Williams, a student whom
she viciously canes. The scene recalls the episode
between Tom and his Latin master, the novel
once again portraying the combative relationship
between teacher and student. Lawrence suggests
that the educational system coerces students and
teachers alike into obedience, creating resentment,
frustration, and anger all around. A professional
woman educated out of the working class, Ursula
finds herself in “the ignominious position of an
upper servant hated by the master above and the
class beneath.”