Women as Flowers (Simile)
“‘Isn’t it more wonderful than ever?’” she asked him, radiant like a newly-opened flower, with tears of dew” (155).
As critic James Wood writes in an introduction to a recent edition of The Rainbow, “Lawrence cannot progress without simile and metaphor” (xii). His writing is filled with such devices and many of them are repeated. Perhaps most common is Lawrence’s practice of comparing women to flowers. Indeed, just two pages after this quote, Lawrence writes that Anna “was a flower that had been tempted forth to bloom” (157). Through this comparison, Lawrence draws a link between women and the natural world, and thus life more generally. As he is interested in the growth and maturation of his characters, a comparison to plant life sprouting, growing, and blooming is effective for his purpose. Yet in terms that might seem unacceptable to contemporary readers, Lawrence is also suggesting that women exhibit a balance between beauty and fragility, like flowers.
To Become a Stranger (Metaphor)
“He was a stranger to her” (218).
During a rough patch in his marriage to Anna, Will attends a dance in Nottingham. There, he meets a young woman whom he tries to seduce. After he fails in this attempt he returns home and Anna notices a distinct, and attractive, difference in his character. In comparison to his former disposition as a “mute, half-effaced, half-subdued man” he returns home as “a stranger to her” (217-218). Based on this change in his character, the two become intensely passionate with one another.
Of course, Will is not actually a stranger to Anna as they’re married with children by this time. Instead, Lawrence is suggesting that we are capable of having experiences of such particular intensity that they can dramatically alter our characters to the extent that we become like strangers to those around us. Lawrence is ever-hopeful in the possibility in renewal, and thus becoming “a stranger” is not necessarily something to fear.
A Living Corpse (Simile)
“He felt like a corpse that is inhabited with just enough life to make it appear as any other of the spectral, unliving beings which we call people in our dead language” (423).
After returning back to London from their visit to France, Anton feels that Ursula is growing distant from him. He walks around the “dead walls and mechanical traffic” of the city and feels “like a corpse” (423). Comparisons to corpses recur throughout The Rainbow. Lawrence prizes energy and vitality, and thus to be like a corpse is to be in a grave situation. Here, there is almost a hint of the Gothic or supernatural in that the text is filled with corpse-like characters. Yet returning to the constant theme of the novel, living characters are frequently subjected to resurrections and renewals. After Ursula and him finally break up, he becomes “active, cheerful, gay, charming, trivial”—not like a corpse at all (447).
Love and Light (Simile)
“Her heart beating seemed like sunlight upon him” (138).
During Will and Anna’s honeymoon at the cottage, Will feels as though Anna’s heartbeat is “like sunlight upon him.” This is an unusual comparison—the feeling of a beating heart and the warmth and light of the sun. Yet Lawrence often crafts such surprisingly descriptive similes. Here, this simile functions so as to make Anna and Will’s love seem as natural and divine as something like sunlight. It equally suggests that Anna is herself the sun—a source of great power and life. As is the case throughout the book, that which is light is fundamentally good, as opposed to the threat of darkness. Later in the book, this simile will seem somewhat tragic, as Will and Anna’s love is soon eclipsed by hatred and resentment.
Man and Beast (Simile)
"When he came home in this state of tipsy confusion his sister hated and abused him, and he went off his head, like a mad bull with rage" (22).
At the beginning of the novel, Tom grows wayward and begins to drink heavily. During these bouts of drinking, Tom’s sister, Effie, mocks and insults him until he becomes “like a mad bull with rage” (22). A great deal of Lawrence’s similes draw comparisons between humans to plants and animals. In doing this, Lawrence is both suggesting that we are inextricably interconnected with nature, and that the divide between human and “beasts” is not as wide as we might like to think. For Lawrence, this is not a negative thing. Rather, he wants us to pay closer attention to the wildness and wilderness both around—and within—us.
