About this title: D. H. Lawrence's THE RAINBOW, declared obscene when it was published in 1915, is the passionately written chronicle of three generations of a Nottingham farming family. Tom Brangwen marries a widow named Lydia Lensky; Lydia's daughter Anna marries her cousin Will, a woodcarver, and has a large family. Their daughter, Ursula, leaves their simple rural world and becomes a schoolteacher--much as Lawrence himself did. She falls in love with Anton Skrebensky and, when he is called away to war, responds to an ardent fellow teacher, a feminist and epitome of the "new woman" named Winifred. The ...
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Note: This is a general synopsis. Each listing is described below.
Edition: This Beautiful Gift
Binding: Trade Paperback
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Date Published: 07/1998
ISBN-13:9780192835246ISBN:0192835246
Description: Very Good. Trade paperback (US). Glued binding. 512 p. read more
Binding: Trade paperback
Publisher: Penguin Books
Date Published: 1983
ISBN-13:9780140006926ISBN:0140006923
Description: Good. No dust jacket as issued. Clean copy and tight binding. Only imperfection is slight yellowing of pages from shelfwear. Trade paperback (US). Glued binding. 496 p. Audience: General/trade. read more
Description: Very good. No dust jacket as issued. Has one spinecrese, ; cover still attractive, ; pages are very clean and tight! Trade paperback (US). Glued binding. Audience: General/trade. ****** Please, No PRIORITY ORDERS as book has some weight ********* read more
Description: Good. No dust jacket as issued. Nice soft cover, read once, slight shelf wear to cover, light creases on spine, light aging. 444 p. read more
Binding: Mass-market paperback
Publisher: Penguin Books
Date Published: 1981
ISBN-13:9780140431551ISBN:0140431551
Description: Fair. No dust jacket as issued. Highlighting/underlining. Nice soft cover, lightly read, shelf wear & bends on cover, light creases on spine, marks on side edge, light aging, stk #2533p8. Glued binding. 576 p. Penguin English Library. Audience: General/trade. read more
Description: Good. 1976 Penquin Books, Some shelf wear, name stamp on inside page, text and binding in good shape. Helps support Christian Homeschooling family. read more
Binding: Mass Market Paperback
Publisher: Bantam Classic & Loveswept, New York, New York, U.S.A.
Date Published: 1991
ISBN-13:9780553213904ISBN:0553213903
Binding: Trade Paperback
Publisher: Viking Press
Date Published: 1965
Description: Acceptable in Not Issued jacket. Solid copy. Minimal highlighting within text. Cover and spine are creased and have shelfwear. Pages tanning from age. read more
"I definitely don't need to read more DH Lawrence any time soon, but I really dug this. At first I was like "How come I never read anything of his before? What's up, my education?" But the more I think about it, I think this is probably not the sort of book that should be read under duress. It was good because I was reading it for nothing but my own pleasure, and free to skim the lush, weirdly sexualized (seriously dude? rhubarb?) visual description. Also the parts where he rambled about religion or the state of education, etc.
The parts of this that were good, were great. I really like the parts about relationships, especially early on. Intense. Also, maybe I'm just being dense, but I didn't find it nearly as sexist as I've been lead to believe."
"Only half-way through so only superficial observations so far:
Women are unexpectedly 3-dimensional. Since I've read feminists have problems with Lawrence, I'm surprised that the women are so fleshed-out and imperfect (human). Male characters may objectify women but Lawrence presents females as emotional/intellectual equals and even superior/more complicated in many instances.
As another review mentioned, he def tells more than shows which is fine, but not my preference.
The psychology of some of the characters can be a little inconsistent. While I find myself thinking "yes, I know that person--this rings true" with other novelists' characters, Lawrence's characters often puzzle me. Sometimes Anna despises her husband for his vague spirituality and unquestioning acceptance of religious dogma, then later hates him for so concretely dragging her out of the dreamy happiness of expecting her first-born. Not that a person can't appreciate the vague in one thing and hate it in another, but there seems to be somewhat of a disconnect that I can't quite put my finger on. Eh, maybe its my own annoyance with human foibles/contradictions.
This would be a great book for a book club--if I ever showed up to the book clubs I always say I'll go to yet never do--I'd suggest it as the next title. So far."
"Breaking down unconscious, sex is a religion ritual, passion to the others and self, anti ego-centric, subterranean self, mixing unconscious with the daily life, Excavation of psyche by contrasting men and women's relationship, widening the circle of life, family chronicle, progress and decay, finding believe in secular society, sex in the head, language of sex in describing earth and sky-farming, dialectical force of industrial revolution on men and women, 1- record of physical passion( pure process of desire- 2- record of the social changes( loss of organic community- 3- sex is the substitute( sexual religion) Men horizontal and satisfied, pillar Women, vertical, tower of church, unsatisfied, culture, start the question and changes, spiral, different and drowsy, looking for spoken word(education), hope in their children chances to expose to wider world, similar to the natural power(lightening -moon), arch,
Anna and will reject outside like survivors of flood, Anna start the friction when she wants to go out, Anna stops but her daughter continues, Will punish her for that, wanted to dominate her, overpowering, his charge going is like a sexual mystery (same language), Ursela starts where her mother Anna stops, her changes happened before marriage, represent the unknown, Christianity-slave morality Rainbow is a bridge between heaven and earth,"
"The Rainbow took me an unexpectedly long time to finish. The absence of plot is less engaging than portrayed by other authors such as Steinbeck. This is not to say that it's not an incredible work. I found the loose thematic ends braiding themselves together in the last chapter, ironically, which is distinguishably queer and disconnected from the rest of the novel. In this braiding I found myself appreciating the novel in its end.
The Rainbow takes you through three generations of the Brangwen family via its female characters. Each generation evolving to become more liberal, risque, and non-conformist than its precedent. It reads very british in its exploration of societal values: education, religion, child-bearing, marriage, sex, relationships, homosexuality etc. etc. etc. Each characters psychological evaluation of Life is explained in somewhat exhaustive detail. One feels they know what is coming before actually reading it. Lawrence is a fan (in this novel) of finding his key description words and drilling them over and over and over to make sure you "get it". This is in no way to undermine the extraordinarily beautiful passages and sentences that light the novel throughout.
I appreciate the novels ending note, that is to embrace shame. It feels as though the characters are constantly unsatisfied with the ails life has dealt them. They strongly disagree with so many of the social discourses that affect them. But in the strange, disconnected ending chapter "The Rainbow" it becomes clear:
"why must one climb the hill? why must one climb? why not stay below? why force one's way up the slope? why force one's way up and up, when one is at the bottom?"
The book embraces destructive, self-shattering, decaying, salty, shame. Enjoy life at the bottom. When one's self is broken in this way, it can then open and turn from the light that is "truth" and "religion" to "other" to the darkness, the strange powers of the moon (Ursula). As aforementioned, the book liberates itself through each woman and only when it reaches Ursula does it allow itself to fully explore these "shameful" themes, only when Ursula's relationship is shattered and she is broken, in other words liberated, can the book end."
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