The Rainbow follows the intergenerational development of the Brangwens—a family of farmers living near Ilkeston in the East Midland region of England—from the 1840s to the early twentieth century. Through the Bragnwen’s, Lawrence traces the broader social, cultural, and technological changes happening in England at the same time.
The novel begins on the Brangwen’s Marsh Farm and first follows Tom Brangwen as he courts and marries a Polish widow named Lydia. The marriage between Tom and Lydia is marked by the feeling that “they were so foreign to each other,” as Tom struggles to make sense of the life that Lydia lived before immigrating to England. Still, he grows close to Anna, the daughter she had from her previous marriage. While much of the start of the novel is dedicated to depicting the anger shared between Tom and Lydia, they proceed to have two of their own children: Tom and Fred.
In the third chapter, the focus of the novel shifts to Anna. She is described as being a fiercely independent and hearty young girl who adores her step-father and feels distant from her mother. As Anna ages, she remains headstrong and solitary until she meets William, the nephew of Tom. Despite Tom’s disapproval, the two begin a courtship and marry in a big ceremony at the Brangwen’s farm.
Although Will and Anna share an idyllic honeymoon in their cottage, their relationship quickly sours and soon they are fighting like Tom and Lydia before them. In this way, Lawrence demonstrates that the ideals of perfect love and actual relationships are two very different things. His commitment to portraying the difficulties of life and love makes The Rainbow a work of realism.
Despite the animosity between them, Will and Anna go on to have a family of nine children (one of whom dies in childbirth). Their eldest, Ursula, becomes the protagonist of the third and final generation depicted in the novel. Like her mother, Ursula is a fiercely independent child. Indeed, through the many similarities shared between the generations of the Brangwen family, Lawrence demonstrates that our personalities are shaped to a large extent by our families and the way in which we are raised.
Yet, Ursula is in some ways quite different from her forebearers. She is a distinctly modern woman, who desires “to take her place in the world” (381). She is the first Brangwen woman to find work outside of the home, she participates in the suffragette movement, and she has a lesbian relationship with one of her teachers. Through Ursula, Lawrence demonstrates both the progress that has been made for women’s rights and the incredible difficulty that women still face in a “tyrannical man-world” (381).
As a young woman, Ursula engages in a relationship with the son of her parents' friends, Anton Skrebensky. Anton is a soldier who, in his fervent support of the state, is a representation of British colonialism. Over several years, Ursula and Anton share a passionate romance filled with scenes so steamy that the novel was deemed a scandal and banned in Britain for a decade. Yet unlike her mother and grandmother, Ursula prioritizes her personal freedom and rejects proposals from both Anton and from another man named Anthony.
As the novel draws to a conclusion, Ursula fears that she is pregnant with Anton’s child. In a state of panic, she writes to Anton, now stationed in India, and finally agrees to marry him. He reveals that he has married another woman, causing Ursula to fall into a state of depression. The novel then ends on an optimistic note as Ursula sees a rainbow forming and is granted a renewed hope in “new growth, rising to the light and the wind and the clean rain of heaven” (459). Many of the themes and characters in The Rainbow are developed further in the sequel to the novel, Women in Love, which was published in 1920.
