694 Lawrence, D. H.
While her sister Gudrun enjoys a measure of
success at art school, Ursula finally attends univer-
sity for the sake of “pure education, not for mere
professional training.” She thinks of her studies in
religious terms, viewing the professors as “black-
gowned priests of knowledge,” but she soon becomes
disillusioned. In the end, Ursula sees college as a
“sham workshop” in which “the religious virtue of
knowledge [has] become a flunkey to the god of
material success.” Ursula fails to get her degree, but
she embraces the changing times around her, finding
hope for tomorrow symbolized in a rainbow. Her
education, Lawrence suggests, will come through
the experience of living her life, not through school.
Mitchell R. Lewis
Gender in The Rainbow
Lawrence’s novel addresses the subject of gender in
its portrayal of Ursula Brangwen’s attempt to win
her independence in the “man’s world.” She fights
the social constraints against her, resisting the “lim-
ited life of herded domesticity” and insisting on “the
right of women to take equal place with men in the
field of action and work.” In effect, Ursula criticizes
the way in which society defines women. With her
education she hopes to break through society’s bar-
riers to become a financially independent, modern
girl. Her friends help her to learn about the women’s
movement and its effort to reform society, but she
eventually grows discontented with the movement,
believing that allowing women to participate in
society is not sufficient social reform for women
or even for men. Lawrence’s essentially religious
view of gender allows little room for social accom-
modation in any form. Unable to practically discuss
gender and society, Lawrence depicts an apocalyptic
vision of the future in which women and men are
liberated from the present into an unspecified uto-
pian world. It is an image of fulfillment to come for
men and women as men and women.
Lawrence’s reservations about the women’s
movement can be seen in his portrayals of Winifred
Inger and Maggie Schofield. A teacher, Winifred is
proud and free and she is “interested in the Women’s
Movement,” but she is also a “modern girl whose
very independence betrays her to sorrow.” Similarly,
as a teacher, Maggie is “free,” but there is “something
like subjection in Maggie’s very freedom.” She is a
“great suffragette, trusting in the vote,” but she suf-
fers from “a heavy, brooding sadness that was almost
meat to her.” Maggie and Winifred have achieved
a measure of success, breaking into the profes-
sional class, but they remain fundamentally unhappy
because of the inevitable compromises they must
make with society. Winifred even goes so far as to
marry a manager of a colliery, taking a “perverse sat-
isfaction” in serving “the machine” of industrialism.
In contrast, Ursula does not compromise with
society, having a “strange, passionate knowledge of
religion and living far transcending the limits of the
automatic system that contained the vote.” For her
“the liberty of woman meant something real and
deep,” but the present form of society does not allow
for it, even if women were fully emancipated. The
implication is that Lawrence wants radical social
reform, not social accommodation for women. The
scope of that reform is suggested by the novel’s per-
sistent use of apocalyptic imagery derived from the
biblical story of Noah. Images of flooding, arks, and
rainbows abound in The Rainbow. In fact, the novel
concludes with Ursula’s apocalyptic vision of a “new
creation” in which the rainbow becomes a symbol
of a desire for fulfillment and freedom that is hard
to define in material terms. It involves the complete
destruction of the old world and a transformation of
personal relationships and the body.
As this imagery suggests, Lawrence’s view of
men and women is essentially religious in nature.
Going beyond personality and society, Lawrence
delves into the unconscious desires of his charac-
ters, portraying them as caught up in a religious
ritual beyond time and space. This use of ritual is
especially noticeable when Anna and Will Bran-
gwen stack sheaves of corn at night, the scene and
formal language suggesting a fertility ritual. The
two arched sheaves leaning together also recall the
religious rainbow imagery, which Lawrence uses to
describe the proper relationship between men and
women. Lawrence’s religious view of gender can
also be seen in Tom Brangwen’s assertion that “an
angel is the soul of man and woman in one: they
rise united at the Judgement Day, as one angel.” It is