The Rainbow

  
The Rainbow
by D.H. Lawrence
read: 2013
Modern Library #48, Guardian 1000 Novels

The Rainbow is a story that spans generations, and while I sometimes like that formula (as in Wuthering Heights and The Cairo Trilogy), here I had trouble pin-pointing a common thread uniting the generations of Brangwens. It was a tough read

One thing I did like was a running theme through the novel, particularly the first half, that the written word is limited in the emotional depth and resonance it posses. One example: "It bored her to write a letter to him. After all, writing words on paper had nothing do do with him or her." Later heroine Ursula, in describing her favorite and least favorite courses: "Most tedious was the close study of English literature. Why should one remember the things one read?" The characters judge written language as dull, shallow, and static. Contrast this with Lawrence's own prose:

So the Brangwens came and went without fear of necessity, working hard because of the life that was in them, not for want of the money. Neither were they thriftless. They were aware of the last halfpenny, and instinct made them not waste the peeling of their apple, for it would help to feed the cattle. But heaven and earth was teeming around them, and how should this cease? They felt the rush of the sap in spring, they knew the wave which cannot halt, but every year throws forward the seed to begetting, and, falling back, leaves the young-born on the earth. They knew the intercourse between heaven and earth, sunshine drawn into the breast and bowels, the rain sucked up in the daytime, nakedness that comes under the wind in autumn, showing the birds' nests no longer worth hiding. Their life and interrelations were such; feeling the pulse and body of the soil, that opened to their furrow for the grain, and became smooth and supple after their ploughing, and clung to their feet with a weight that pulled like desire, lying hard and unresponsive when the crops were to be shorn away. The young corn waved and was silken, and the lustre slid along the limbs of the men who saw it. They took the udder of the cows, the cows yielded milk and pulse against the hands of the men, the pulse of the blood of the teats of the cows beat into the pulse of the hands of the men. They mounted their horses, and held life between the grip of their knees, they harnessed their horses at the wagon, and, with hand on the bridle-rings, drew the heaving of the horses after their will.

This is one of the very first paragraphs in the novel. It's rich with sensual imagery, words like seed, intercourse, nakedness, supple, desire. Lawrence's characters decry the limits of the English language even while Lawrence himself is trying to transcend those limits.