The Rainbow Study Guide

D. H. Lawrence was born to a working-class family in a small mining town in Nottinghamshire. His father, Arthur John Lawrence, was a coal miner, while his mother, Lydia Beardsall, was a former schoolteacher who sought upward social mobility for her children. As a sickly child, Lawrence formed a close bond with his mother, which was later explored in his first significant novel, Sons and Lovers. He attended Nottingham High School on a scholarship, later becoming a teacher, but poor health led him to focus entirely on writing by his mid-20s. His early works, such as The White Peacock and Sons and Lovers, received critical attention for their emotional intensity and psychological depth. However, Lawrence soon ran into trouble with censors due to his candid treatment of sexuality and his rejection of Victorian moral values. After marrying Frieda Weekley, a German aristocrat, Lawrence lived much of his life in self-imposed exile, traveling across Europe, America, and the South Pacific. His later works, like The Rainbow and Lady Chatterley’s Lover, continued to explore themes of love, sexuality, and personal freedom, but they also faced censorship, particularly in England. Despite his controversial reputation, Lawrence is now regarded as one of the most significant English novelists of the 20th century. He died of tuberculosis at the age of 44 in Vence, France.

The Rainbow was published during a time of significant social and cultural change in Europe, just as World War I began to reshape the political and social landscape. The war marked the beginning of the decline of traditional class structures, and women began taking on new roles in society, particularly in the workforce. This historical shift mirrors the inner conflicts of Lawrence’s characters, especially Ursula Brangwen, who strives to break free from the conventional roles assigned to women in rural England. Lawrence’s depiction of sexuality and independence in The Rainbow reflects the growing feminist movement, which was gaining traction in England and other parts of Europe during the early 20th century. The industrial revolution’s impact on rural communities, another theme in Lawrence’s work, was significant in this period as well, as it introduced modernity into traditional ways of life. The mechanization of labor and the rise of urbanization, both of which are reflected in The Rainbow, created a cultural divide that Lawrence explored in depth. Additionally, the moral anxieties of the time—fueled by the war and changing social norms—led to the novel’s censorship, as its explicit depiction of sexuality was seen as a threat to the established order.

The Rainbow is most obviously connected to its sequel, Women in Love, which follows Ursula Brangwen and her sister Gudrun as they seek emotional and physical fulfillment in their relationships with men. Together, these novels form a portrait of human longing and the conflict between personal desires and societal expectations. Lawrence’s fascination with the psyche, love, and power dynamics within relationships links him to other modernist writers like James Joyce and Virginia Woolf. Sons and Lovers, one of Lawrence’s earlier works, deals with similar themes of sexual awakening and familial ties, though it focuses more heavily on the mother-son relationship. Lawrence’s novels often depict the tension between individual desires and societal constraints, similar to the themes seen in other modernist works like E.M. Forster’s Howards End or Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway. His exploration of sensuality and psychological realism also links him to writers such as Thomas Hardy, whose works, like Tess of the d’Urbervilles, similarly challenged Victorian moral codes.