#19: Reflection on The Rainbow Writing

The Rainbow Prompt Essay:

In DH Lawrence's 1915 novel, The Rainbow, personification, gothic and pastoral imagery, rhetorical questions and repetition in sentence structure all work to portray the life of the woman as held cpative in her world, back from the man, only left wondering why men have the world open freely to them despite their destructive forces.

In the first part of the excerpt Lawrence utilizes personification and pastoral and gothic imagery to show the contrast between the scenery and the speaker's feelings about the situation. "The earth heaved," is an example of the personification used; with such strong diction used and imagery seen in this first sentence it demonstrates how the world plays in favor of men because after the personification Lawrence writes, "and opened it furrow to them (men)" (1-2). So the earth is working for them and it would seem working very hard because the world "heaved" which usually implies the task is hard. This implies that the world is open to men so easily. The scene set in the first passage is of a rural are that is described with phrases like, "the wind blew dry the wet what, and set young ears of corn...So much warmth and generating and pain and death" (2-7). In these lines at first the image is pretty and nice (pastoral imagery) but then "death" and "pain" are mentioned and later "blood" and "beast" (gothic imagery). This stark contrast demonstrates, once again, how the world is helping men, even though it can cause great pain to it. In the context of the setting of this novel, late nineteenth century, women didn't have much freedom or rights but mend id and no one questions that men should have these rights. Then the passage goes on to say, "but women wanted another form of life...something that was not blood-intimacy" (15-16). Once again this dark imagery relating to blood, pain, injury is brought up, but this time it's to demonstrate the contrast between men and women and the lives they want and lead. Women don't want the pain and suffering described previously and for the world to take pain because of them, and it doesn't, because it isn't open freely to them; women don't have the same freedom as men.

Rhetorical questions also further the described contrast between men and women as the speaker questions why men are as they are. For example, "what was it...that raised him above the common men as man is raised above beast?" (55-56). In this question a parallel is drawn between men and beasts. The speaker is asking what about the "vicar" that raised her husband above the other men as beast are above men? With this being a question it makes the thought that men are above beasts seem unsure as the speaker is unsure how the lady's husband is above the other men and the two are paralleled in the question. This furthers the description of the destruction or pain that men can cause in the world because of the question and parallel of men to beast.

Repetition is throughout the passage in the structure of sentences such as the pattern of "dark and dry and small," "money nor power nor position," "sky and harvest and beast and land," (33-34). This repetition in structure emphasizes the bizarre way of men's nature (when the "nor"s are repeated) and the repetition of "and"s emphasizes how much men have opened to them despite what they have done to it. For example, in the line the "sky and harvest..." after that Lawrence writes "she strained her eyes to see what man had done in fighting outwards" (33-34). So man has all of the world open to him yet he damages it in his fight for more, more "knowledge," and access to the world around him.

Lawrence portrays man as destructive in nature because of the freedoms he has been given naturally, while the woman is left to see this and be held back from the world she is not so freely given access to despite her less destructive nature.

Reflection on Essay:

When I was typing this essay up I found many errors, lack of sophistication in writing style, and a plausible but not totally correct interpretation of the work. I looked at the excerpt as more a contrast between the position of women and men in society and how much of the world men have open to them (because of how many more rights they had than women in the time period) in comparison to the limited life that women had. That is the struggle I was portraying that the women was going through but in actuality the struggle was more the rural life she was living in but didn't want. The contrast between women and men relied more on the "outward" versus "inward" positioning than the other diction that I talked about that showed comparison. The woman was looking outward toward the future to the cities and that's what she wanted, not to be stuck in a rural life. But the struggle or "battle" described in the excerpt relied in how the woman was looking outward and wanting to go the city but she didn't know how to attain that goal. I think the key to reaching this understanding was focusing on the "outward" versus "inward" that contrasted the man and woman. Also, I saw the reference to blood and pain often and that is why I thought it had something to do with man's destructive forces but having the background knowledge about DH Lawrence helped a lot in understanding why there was that repetition. Lawrence was known for his Blood Knowledge Philosophy in which he was quoted saying, "My great religion is a belief in the blood, as the flesh being wiser than the intellect." In this he is saying one should follow their instinct or desires and in the excerpt it was the woman's desire to leave her rural life but it was a desire she didn't know how to fulfill. Having this knowledge of DH Lawrence's thought process and beliefs helps tremendously in determining in the meaning of a work. Through this essay I now truly understand the importance of researching the author so we can get this insight. For our presentations last trimester we had to research the author to find out how their background information impacted their writing styles and I knew this step was important but never how important until now.

For this essay when I started reading the excerpt and writing I felt lost and confused and I think this was because of how unfocused on was when I read the excerpt. I annotated the passage but I didn't reread the prompt after it was read aloud and fully realize that I was supposed to be focus mainly on the woman and in the beginning of the essay I feel I focused to much on the man. I think I let the time constraints and the surprise of the essay panic me. I just need to carefully read everything and stay focused for future prompts. I also didn't have much of a short outline of thoughts written down before I started my essay which might have been helpful in developing my thesis and the meaning I connected to each literary device better because I felt like I just came up with the devices and not how they added to the passage and than when I got to fleshing out my thoughts about each literary device I felt I was not fully understanding the effect of the device myself.