Rainbow, The

Rainbow, The, a novel by D. H. Lawrence, published 1915.

It opens as a family chronicle relating the history of the long-established Brangwen family of March Farm, on the Derbyshire–Nottinghamshire border. Tom Brangwen marries the vicar's housekeeper, a Polish widow who already has a daughter, Anna, by her first marriage. Anna marries Will Brangwen, Tom's nephew, a craftsman and draughtsman at a lace factory; they produce a large family, of which the two oldest are Ursula and Gudrun of Women in Love. Ursula becomes the ‘child of her father's heart’, and the interest of the novel gradually shifts to her developing consciousness. When she is about eight her grandfather is drowned and Ursula grows close to her grandmother Lydia at the March, intrigued by her Polish heritage; she meets Anton, son of a Polish émigré friend of Lydia's and they fall in love, but he, a subaltern, departs for the Boer war. She then matriculates, and resolves to earn her living as a teacher. Will Brangwen is appointed Art and Handwork Instructor for the County of Nottingham, and the whole family move to Beldover. Ursula embarks on a three-year BA course. Anton returns, and they become engaged, and plan to go out to India together, but Ursula breaks away, and Anton abruptly marries his colonel's daughter. The novel ends with Ursula emerging from a spell of illness and suffering (and an implied miscarriage) to contemplate a rainbow arching symbolically over the ugly industrial landscape.