was not an easy read, It took me quite some time to go through the first sections, I did enjoy more the last part, basically the part about Ursula, I cannot explain it myself but I feel and have always felt, DH Lawrence's novels to be enormously tedious, I have read them out of a sense of duty to Literature with a capital L and have always been pleased when the ride was over, It is not that I am unsympathetic to the man or his ideas, Quite the contrary. I met someone once who said that they intensely disliked what Lawrence was trying to say but admired Larence's novels as great literature, With me it is exactly the opposite, I strongly approve of what he is saying but am half bored half repelled by the way he is trying to say it, I find the Leavis "discovery" of DH Lawrence contrived, I think it is the earnestness and gravitas of the novels which I find wearying and uninspiring, I am simply uninterested beyond words in his generations and families and his grave pronuncments about their feelings and fates, but why, when I find, say, Thomas Mann's "Buddenbrooks", comparable as the history of a family, with "The Rainbow" enthralling One answer may lie in the inherent purtianism of Lawrence's view of the world, yes puritanism, the smell of church, the ponderous finger wagging. Nevertheless, I award these two in sadness and envy rather than disagreement with those who award four or five, I cried because of how much I did not want to read this book, Read it for class! I'm such a happy English major, haha! Wow, I loved this! Beautifully written, it follows three generations of the Brangwen family, and their lives and loves. It also shows the changes in society, attitudes and freedoms, A wonderful read. Set in the rural Midlands of England, The Rainbowrevolves around three generations of the Brangwens, a strong, vigorous family, deeply involved with the land, When Tom Brangwen marries a Polish widow, Lydia Lensky, and adopts her daughter Anna as his own, he is unprepared for the conflict and passion that erupts between them, All are seeking individual fulfilment, but it is Ursula, Anna's spirited daughter, who, in search for selfknowledge, rejects the conventional role of womanhood, sitelinkThe Rainbow follows three generations of the Brangwen family, Starting inand ending before the First World War, the setting is Nottinghamshire, located in the east Midlands of England, The family members are farmers and craftsmen and one, Ursula, will become a teacher, The backdrop is the change in social norms that occurred at the turn of theth century,
What stands out, what makes this book different from others First and foremost, the writing, Emotions, and even more, sensations, come to the fore, The touch of a hand is felt, both the pressure and the movement, Life itself, pulses in the writing, Sexual relations are drawn sensually, not graphically in terms of body parts, You not only know but also feel what the words imply, There is a vibrancy to the language that is exceptional, one of a kind,
The women are strong, It is their relationships with men and other women that takes centerstage, As does feminism, not so much in topic, but in how female characters behave, What they do, the choices they make and what they feel exhibit both strength and independence, In each generation, the reader comes closest to another female Brangwenfirst Lydia, then her eldest daughter Anna and finally Ursula, who is Annas eldest daughter, The book is first and foremost about women, Lydia, Anna and Ursula, you come to know very well, One reads the book for the character portrayal of these three women,
I would not say one reads the story for plot, except that it is through the wellconstructed plot that the characters come alive,
Religion is returned to over and over again, although not in a preachy or didactic manner, Religion is drawn as a search process, as a means by which understanding and acceptance of life may be achieved, For a nonbeliever, one can equally well equate religious beliefs with a search for moral guidelines, D. H. Lawrence was a passionately religious man,
D. H. Lawrences writing is passionate too,
Maureen OBrien narrates the audiobook extremely well, There is not a doubt in my mind that the narration performance deserves a whopping five, She uses different voices for different characters, Absolutely all are perfect. None are overdone. The elderly and the young, men and women, all sound exactly as they should sound, OBrien expertly switches from one intonation to another sentence by sentence,
I believe it is very important in a book such as this, where the language verges on prose poetry, that the audioThe Rainbow's narration is well done, The beauty of the prose would be destroyed otherwise, I wondered at times if my appreciation of the book was partially due to OBriens wonderful narration,
sitelinkWomen in Love is the sequel to sitelinkThe Rainbow, D. H. Lawrence originally planned them as one book, Due to banning, they were not published as one,
sitelinkSons and Loversstar sitelinkLady Chatterley's Loverstar sitelinkLove Among the Haystacksstars sitelinkThe Rainbowstars sitelinkThe Virgin and the Gipsystars sitelinkThe Ladybirdstars
sitelinkWomen in Love TBR sitelinkThe Lost Girl: Cambridge Lawrence Edition TBR The fecund fecundity of Lawrence's fecund verbosity is enough to drive anyone to distraction. Paragraphs upon paragraphs describing a sunrise or was it a sunset I forget apparently is the moment two protagonists make love in a field, You need the notes to tell you that, So much for the man who wrote the infamous 'Lady Chatterly',
Almost as tedious a read as George Eliot, The most inflated Lawrence, plump with more histrionic overreactions in peoples bowels and embittered scowls than most novelists crowbar into their entire canons, and deepdives into psyches that range from captivating to tedious. The chapter exploring Ursula Brangwens teaching in a deprived school is on a par with Orwells A Clergymans Daughter for beltsandbraces horrorrealism and the horns of her dilemma as a superintelligent protofeminist in a world that hasnt invented the term protofeminist is the more interesting part of the novel and the usual focus in TV adaptations. The lure in Lawrence comes in the novels passionate autopsies of its personnel, expressed with styleless repetitions and overlong longueurs, always with a manic vigour and desperate search for human understanding.
sitelinkD. H. Lawrence RANKED Wow! What can I say about D, H. Lawrence I finished this book on the train from Montreal to New York and I think it left a greater impression upon me than my entire trip, The first chapter is tremendous, The next couple of hundred pages was difficult for me to reada testiment to the impossibility of ever really connecting with someone you love, Lawrence is an amazing writer, despite the reputation, It was an interesting experience reading this after Women in Love and knowing what was in store for Ursula, knowing her relationships in this book would end, Difficult but a great experience, My actual review is sitelinkhere, Its a brief, emotional response, rather than a traditional review,
What follows below is just a collection of quotes, grouped loosely by theme, plus a very few comments about the change of tone at the end not spoilers, as the events Ive alluded to are made plain in the books Introduction.
Ascrossed into, I was reading Stoner for the first and second time, Ascrossed into, I was reading Lawrence for the first time in so long it might have been the first time, Utterly different, but equally, achingly, wonderful styles of writing,
I had thought I liked disliked florid prose as in sitelinkThe King of Elflands Daughter, preferring the sparse beauty of books like sitelinkStoner and sitelinkPlainsong. Im so glad the hypnotic yet arousing words of Lawrence widened my horizons,
It's surprising to note that Kate Chopin was writing of flames and flowers in Lawrencian ways when Lawrence was onlyyears old! For example, sitelinkThe Storm,
Spoiler tags are for easy scrolling, not because of actual spoilers,