They were a curious family, a law to themselves, separate from the world, isolated, a small republic set in invisible bounds.

The Rainbow  by D. H. Lawrence
First published in 1915

Spoiler Alert: Plot Summary
The Rainbow is a multigenerational story about the Brangwen family, who live in the English countryside in the early 1900s. We start of with Tom Brangwen, the youngest of his clan, who marries Lydia, a Polish immigrant who has come to live in their small town with her daughter, Anna, after her husband dies. Tom and Lydia have two sons, Fred and Tom, and Anna marries her cousin, Will Brangwen, and they proceed to have a whole mess of children - Ursula, Gudrun, Theresa, Catherine, Billy, and Cassandra. Mostly we follow the love affairs of the various generations, which are full of existential ups and downs (and are generally a bit too roller-coaster-y for my taste), and occasionally something else happens. Ursula has a brief but passionate love affair with her school teacher, Winifred, and then several other dalliances with men, but ends up sort of happily alone at the end of the novel.
Spoiler Over: Continue Here

Well, dear blobbists, I did not like this book. As you will see from my comments, I found the family name to be challenging (Brangwen) and honestly, very little happened over the course of the book, which I have a hard time with. I'm not a "plot or bust" kind of reader, but I would love for Something to take place over the course of your 459 pages. 

I've taken a brief dive into the history of this work, and it seems that it was banned in Britain (and many copies were burned) because of its 'frank treatment of sexual desire' for about a decade (1915-1926) after an 'obscenity' trial. It's interesting, because it seems that he was much maligned for his more overt, sexual writing, and I have to admit that that's the only part I really liked! I honestly finished the book and thought, man, this guy should have written romance novels, or maybe even erotica. Maybe the world just wasn't ready for him! In any case, I could very much take or leave hte rest of the novel. But here are the rest of my thoughts: 

Brangwen (mouthful, Too many Brangwens)
This name was such a mouthful to work through in my head each time. I kept wanting the G not to be there, or for it to be Braggen or Brannon or something, but it just felt clumsy in my brain, which made the fact that we were spending Multiple Generations with the Brangwens rather frustrating. Also, Anna marries her cousin, Will, and while they're technically not blood related, because Anna was Lydia's daughter from a previous marriage, it's still a Leeetle too close for comfort. Her dad makes a joke as they're signing the wedding certificate that there are "too many Brangwens" on the paper, and I was like, is that #incesthumor? #notmytaste 

Don't judge a book by its ERRONEOUS cover
My copy of this book has a ridiculous cover, a painting of a baby with a blanket with white and rainbow stripes. I would like to create a formal complaints board for book covers that have ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to do with the actual content of the book, or the meaning of the title. Seriously - the rainbow is an actual rainbow here, folks. It's getting at a bigger metaphor, but it would be SO easy to just put a painting of a Rainbow in the sky. There must be hundreds of those. Thousands, even. Am I the only one that is bothered by things like this? Feel free to join my board if it bothers you, too. 

Woman as pseudo-protagonist
I thought it was interesting that while there were several male characters who sort of seemed like the main character, most of the people we followed closely were women. This felt kind of revolutionary for a male writer from the early 1900s. On the whole, it felt like he wrote women well, but I couldn't really understand why we was writing from their perspective. 

Man as father
I think it's fascinating how when we're growing up, we use one item or one person to represent a whole world of items. This line of Anna's, on Tom Brangwen: 

The only man she knew was her father; and, as he was something large, looming, a kind of Godhead, he embraced all manhood for her, and other men were just incidental.

Reminded me of how my sister said that she was so confused the first time she met a mom who was petite, and short, and generally a small person. She was so used to our mom, who's 5'11, that she couldn't process the idea of a mom that didn't fit that image. I like the idea that we all go around making up images and definitions of concepts and ideas, and life slowly deconstructs and reconstructs them as we age. 

Organ playing
Ursula goes to the church with her father, Will, while he practices the organ, and it reminded me of going to church and listening while my mom practiced the organ. At one point, she also plays a little too vigorously and leaves a mess, so they aren't allowed to come back for a while, which I found quite amusing. 

Referents and Reverberations

On drinking
This scene of Tom Brangwen (the first Tom Brangwen, of several) drinking:

He was by nature temperate. Being sensitive and emotional, his nausea prevented him from drinking too much. But, in futile anger, with the greatest of determination and apparent good-humour, he began to drink in order to get drunk. 

 He had an idea that everybody in the room was a man after his own heart, that everything was glorious, everything was perfect. When somebody in alarm told him his coat pocket was on fire, he could only beam from a red, blissful face and say "Iss-all-ri-ight - iss-a'-ri-ight - its' a' right - let it be, let it be-" and he laughed with pleasure, and was rather indignant that the others should think it unnatural for his coat pocket to burn: -it was the happiest and most natural thing in the world - what?

Reminded me of one of my favorite scenes from David Copperfield, when Davy first gets drunk:

Somebody was leaning out of my bedroom window, refreshing his forehead against the cool stone of the parapet, and feeling the air upon his face. It was myself. I was addressing myself as 'Copperfield,' and saying, 'Why did you try to smoke? You might have known you couldn't do it.' Now, somebody was unsteadily contemplating his features in the looking-glass. That was I too. I was very pale in the looking-glass; my eyes had a vacant appearance; and my hair - only my hair, nothing else - looked drunk.

On growing up
This line: 

How did one grow old - how could one become confident? 

Reminded me of one of my favorite Virginia Woolf lines, from To the Lighthouse:

What was it then? What did it mean? Could things thrust their hands up and grip one; could the blade cut; the fist grasp? Was there no safety? No learning by heart the ways of the world? No guide, no shelter, but all was miracle, and leaping from the pinnacle of a tower into the air? Could it be, even for elderly people, that this was life? -startling, unexpected, unknown?

On Sundays
This line about Sundays, which I absolutely loved: 

It came to be, gradually, that after church on Sundays the house was really something of a sanctuary, with peace breathing like a strange bird alighted in the rooms. Indoors, only reading and tale-telling and quiet pursuits, such as drawing, were allowed. Out of doors, all playing was to be carried on unobtrusively. 

Reminded me of this line from Swann's Way, when the young boy narrator's aunt scolds him for reading during the week - What! still amusing yourself with a book? It isn't Sunday, you know!"

On tumultuous love
Many lines, but in particular this one, reminded me of the wildly up-and-down love in The Beautiful and Damned: 

Unless she would come to him, he must remain as a nothingness. It was a hard experience. But, after her repeated obliviousness to him, after he had seen so often that he did not exist for her, after he had raged and tried to escape, and said he was good enough by himself, he was a man, and could stand alone, he must, in the starry multiplicity of the night humble himself, and admit and know that without her he was nothing. He was nothing. But with her, he would be real. If she were now walking across the frosty grass near the sheep-shelter, through the fretful bleating of the ewes and the lambs, she would bring him completeness and perfection.

On early love
This depiction of Will and Anna Brangwen in the early days:

This then was marriage! The old things didn't matter any more. One got up at four o'clock, and had  broth at tea-time and made toffee in the middle of the night. One didn't put on one's clothes or one did put on one's clothes. He still was not quite sure it was not criminal.

Reminded me of this moment from The Master and Margarita:

During the Maytime storms, when streams of water gushed noisily past the blurred windows, threatening to flood their last refuge, the lovers would light the stove and bake potatoes. The potatoes steamed, and their charred skins blackened their fingers. There was laughter in the basement, and in the garden the trees would shed broken twigs and white clusters of flowers after the rain.

And these, from Their Eyes Were Watching God:

It was so crazy digging worms by lamp light and setting out for Lake Sabelia after midnight that she felt like a child breaking rules. That’s what made Janie like it. They caught two or three and got home just before day. Then she had to smuggle Tea Cake out by the back gate and that made it seem like some great secret she was keeping from the town."

“Ah’ll clean ’em, you fry ’em and let’s eat,” he said with the assurance of not being refused. They went out into the kitchen and fixed up the hot fish and corn muffins and ate. Then Tea Cake went to the piano without so much as asking and began playing blues and singing, and throwing grins over his shoulder. The sounds lulled Janie to soft slumber and she woke up with Tea Cake combing her hair and scratching the dandruff from her scalp. It made her more comfortable and drowsy.

Lines I Liked

• Waves of delirious darkness ran through her soul. 

• If she could but get away to the clean free moonlight.

• In the morning the sun shone, she got up strong and dancing. 

Words that were new to me:
farouche - sullen or shy in company


oriflamme - a scarlet banner or knight's standard; (literary) - a principle or ideal that serves as a rallying point in a struggle

recusant - a person who refuses to submit to an authority or to comply with a regulation

stook - a group of sheaves of grain stood on end in a field

wattle - a material for making fences, walls, etc., consisting of rods or stakes interlaced with twigs or branches

Well, I'm off to enjoy the rest of this sanctuary Sunday, with 'peace breathing like a strange bird alighted in the rooms'. Wishing you that same peace and sense of sanctuary, and the ardent hope that tomorrow morning, the sun will shine and you will get up strong and dancing. I'm off to read Purple Dentures, or something of that sort.