The Rainbow

The Rainbow follows the lives of three generations of the Brangwens, a middle-class family living in rural England in the early 1900s. Beginning with Tom Brangwen, the patriarch, the novel traces the sexual passions and marriages of three members of the family as they struggle to find meaning beyond their mere animal existence. Tom marries a polish woman, and inherits a stepdaughter named Anna, with whom he becomes close. Anna in turn marries a distant Brangwen cousin named Will, and those two have a hot-cold relationship whose temperature depends on whether or not Anna is pregnant. When she is, she can barely stand Will, doing her best to push him away. When she isn’t, her baser passions dominate and she can’t get enough of her husband. Anna and Will’s eldest child is a daughter named Ursula, and Lawrence chooses to focus the entire second half of the novel on her. He chronicles her childhood, and her young adulthood, which includes failed romances with a soldier and a female teacher.