The Rainbow

Reading was interrupted when my Nook failed as I was trying to finish this 1915 D.H. Lawrence novel. I ended up reading the last few chapters on the Kindle application on my smartphone. Ah, the joys of e-reading!

I was familiar with Lawrence, having read, and in some cases studied, Sons and Lovers, Women in Love (the sequel to The Rainbow), selected poems, a few short stories, and Studies in Classic American Literature, possibly the most idiosyncratic commentary on American literature ever written. I had also seen the 1969 Ken Russell film of Women in Love, but not the 1989 film of The Rainbow, also directed by Russell.

My undergraduate Modern Fiction professor had engrained in me the habit of reading Lawrence through a Freudian lens, while my graduate professor emphasized the “sense of the numinous” in Lawrence. That counterpoint sums up the experience of grappling with the almost whiplash-like contradictions in Lawrence’s work. As you will see in this blog post, I have added a socio-political lens as well.

On the one hand, the human experience in Lawrence boils down to the biological urge for pleasure and dominance played out in endless power struggles with family, lovers, society at large, and even oneself. On the other, it is nature and natural expression that offers the only hope of redemption in an overly-“civilized," mechanized modern society.

The Rainbow tells the story of three generations of Brangwens: Tom, who marries a Polish widow with a young daughter; Will, Tom’s nephew, who marries Anna, Tom’s step-daughter; and Ursula, eldest daughter of Will and Anna, who pursues a teaching career and has both a female and a male lover. Each character struggles with sexual desire and the urge to dominate in all relationships, whether sexual or not. All the relationships are fraught with conflict, both expressed and repressed. In addition, the characters seek some kind of fulfillment in a society that is bound by tradition, artificiality, alienation, and industrial dehumanization.

In each generation Lawrence dramatizes the relentless Freudian conflicts that, according to Freud, characterize the human condition. Yet, whereas in Freud, these conflicts are never resolved, except in momentary flashes of pleasure or triumph, Lawrence seems to hold out hope of “salvation” in nature, as symbolized, for example, by the rainbow that appears to Ursula in the final scene.

Or, is Ursula simply deluding herself that any kind of redemption is possible? Such are the whiplash contradictions between nature as power struggle and nature as spiritual reservoir.

The first chapter of the novel is a paean to the natural world in rural England, scarred by coal mining to feed the industrial factories and populated by those like the Brangwens who are trapped in the conflict between nature and society, closest to the redemptive power that nature seems to offer, yet yearning for the ego advancement that society can provide.

What is most remarkable to me in The Rainbow is the language that Lawrence creates to represent the teeming energy of the Freudian Id and the awakening of consciousness in his characters. No one before Lawrence had written in such concrete terms of sexual desire, aggression, the will to power, the urge to submit, the longing for unity and transcendence, and the ever incomplete process of growing awareness.

And as that language captures the conflicted tumult of human psychology, it is sometimes difficult to tell when it is the characters’ and when it is Lawrence’s psychology.

Case in point: Ursula’s affair with Winifred is introduced in affirmative terms in a chapter entitled “Shame.” The waning of Ursula’s passion for Winifred is comparable to the ebb and flow of her feelings for Anton, but she looks back on her relationship with Winifred as a death-dealing “side show,” as if it were a freakish affair, unlike the one with Anton. Her feelings of revulsion for Winifred are associated with her growing maturity. Is this Ursula’s homophobia or Lawrence’s or both?

Later, when Anton returns from Africa, telling Ursula about “the strange darkness, the strange, blood fear” and “the blacks,” who “worship…the darkness,” is that Anton’s racism or Lawrence’s or both?

The Rainbow is an iconoclastic novel, challenging Victorian conventions, easy sentimentalism, and British cultural traditions, especially with respect to sex, courtship, marriage, domestic life, women’s roles, and religion. While it boldly depicts a lesbian relationship, it fails to challenge the prevailing homophobic attitudes of its day. And while it seems itself at times to “worship” nature, darkness and all, it also seems to reinforce popular Western imperialistic and ethnocentric views of nature-worshipping “blacks” on the Dark Continent.

These contradictions are perhaps the most difficult for a contemporary, progressive, pro-gay rights, anti-racist reader to grapple with, while a conservative reader, like those in Lawrence’s time who prosecuted it for obscenity and banned it, will be most offended by its open treatment of human sexuality and its Freudian view of human relationships.

Frankenstein III

One way to read Mary Shelley's Frankenstein is as a cautionary tale ("this is what could happen if you don't watch out"). If families and other social institutions do not provide the proper care and nurture, cultivation, education, support, humane treatment, and love, democracy as a form of government that empowers "common people" will lead us to ruin. Another way to read the novel, however, holds out little hope for any form of government and projects a dark, tragic vision of human destiny.

Victor Frankenstein is raised with every advantage: loving parents, money, eduction, etc.; yet, despite the qualms of his own conscience, he cannot resist the temptation to pursue his "experiment" of creating human life in the laboratory. His curiosity and boundless desire for knowledge get the better of his good judgement, and the result is the "monster" he cannot control.

To what extent does Frankenstein's "monster" anticipate the Freudian Id of pent up desire, power-seeking, aggression, hostility, fear, anger, and self-gratifying psychic energy? Could the novel be read as a kind of Freudian allegory in which Dr. Frankenstein represents the Ego; his
"monster," the Id; and characters such as his father; his friend, Cherval; and his saintly fiance, Elizabeth; represent the Superego? Is the Freudian theory of a selfish, destructive Id driving the human psyche a modern version of Original Sin?

To what extent does the novel reinforce the Darwinian view that humans evolved from animals and that our brute, animal limbic system is always lurking beneath the surface of our "civilized" facade? The biological construction of a "reptilian brain stem" returns us to the symbolism of the Fall and Original Sin.

While Freud allows for "civilization" keeping us in check, insofar as it succeeds, we are doomed to a psychic life of constant inner conflict and frustration. Similarly, while evolution holds out hope for human progress, we never fully transcend our animal nature. What does this portend for any form of government? Democracy runs the risk of anarchistic chaos and mob violence; authoritarian rule puts the whole nation at the mercy of the power-hungry egos and potentially
destructive neuroses of a few leaders, possibly only one ruthless dictator.

Does the novel present a vision of human tragedy that is unreedemable? Or is the act of writing and publishing the novel an expression of hope that, with proper warning, we can save ourselves?

Oh, and what about that theme of globalization mentioned in the first blog post? What's that about? See the next and final Frankenstein blog post.