42 pages • 1 hour read
D. H. LawrenceThe Rainbow
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1915A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 10-12Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 10 Summary: “The Widening Circle”
Ursula, Gudrun, Theresa, and Catherine begin feuding with the sons of the neighboring Phillips family after one of the boys pulls Theresa’s hair. The Brangwen girls physically fight the Phillips boys one day. Anna is more upset with the boys for being ungentlemanly than she is with the girls for being unladylike. Even the vicar calls the boys cowards for beating up girls. Sometime after the brawl, the Brangwen girls and Phillips boys become each other’s “sweethearts,” much to Anna’s dissatisfaction. When they all “break up,” the Phillips boys mock Ursula, calling her “Urtler” and “Ugly-Mug.”
Ursula and Gudrun attend the Grammar School in Nottingham, and Ursula is relieved to be away from the Phillips boys’ teasing. However, she soon grows tired of her sister’s presence and craves solitary time to read. Ursula leaves fairy tales behind for “the Idylls of the King and romantic love-stories” (247). She contends with her spirituality and privately questions church doctrine. Ursula sneaks into the church’s office to be alone, but her younger siblings find her hiding place and make a mess of the room. When Will finds out, he scolds the children in a rage and slaps Ursula across the face with a dusting cloth. At Christmastime, Ursula is dissatisfied with the holiday’s short-lived happiness and returns to questioning religious teachings.
Chapter 11 Summary: “First Love”
Ursula experiences a period of doubt regarding her religious upbringing. On more than one occasion, she is frustrated by the apparent impracticality of the lessons she learns in church. When her sister Theresa slaps her, Ursula literally turns the other cheek, and Theresa slaps that side of her face, too. Ursula feels degraded and resolves to abandon her faith. In the springtime, however, Ursula’s faith renews when she holds a baby lamb, and “she felt Jesus in the countryside” (266). Around the same time, her uncle Tom and Baron Skrebensky’s son Anton visit. Anton is an army engineer, and Ursula’s attraction to him is instantaneous. As they spend more time together, Ursula begins to care more about her clothes and her outward beauty. One day, Anton takes Ursula to Derby for the afternoon. He buys her a copy of Wuthering Heights, and they attend a fair. On their way back to Marsh Farm, Anton removes one of Ursula’s gloves so he can hold her hand. Anton walks her home from the marsh, and when he kisses her, Ursula experiences intense sexual arousal.
Despite her friends’ disapproval, Ursula continues her relationship with Anton. They keep their intimacies a secret, but her parents come to dislike his constant presence in and around their home. Anton purchases a motor car shortly before his return to the army, and he takes pride in Ursula’s enjoyment of their fast drives and the wind in her hair. When he leaves, Ursula retreats within herself. In the fall, Ursula’s uncle Fred marries Laura, a “handsome, clever girl,” and they hold their wedding at Marsh Farm. Anton attends the wedding, on leave from the army, and after the ceremony he and Ursula walk along the canal together. Ursula befriends a coal barge captain and his wife and gifts their infant daughter her necklace after they decide to name the child Ursula. She feels Anton watching her and believes he disapproves of her. They return to the wedding and share several dances. Afterward, Ursula walks to the cornfield, and she and Anton embrace and kiss, with a passion that feels both restorative and destructive.
The following morning, Ursula attends church with Anton, and they both find themselves unmoved by the sermon but realize that their lack of belief in God doesn’t trouble them. Anton soon receives word he is to be deployed in the Boer War. They exchange letters and small gifts, but Ursula feels her passion for him dwindling. After he leaves, Ursula becomes depressed and irritable.
Chapter 12 Summary: “Shame”
Ursula prepares for her matriculation exams at school, and although she does well in most subjects, she struggles with English literature. Ursula feels occasional moments of intense intellectual stimulation, namely when she studies grammar and algebra. Ursula feels she has no self and becomes afraid her peers dislike her. Ursula admires her teacher, Miss Winifred Inger, for her orderly and refined presence in the classroom. Her admiration transforms into infatuation and bliss as the two women interact more frequently.
During the summer term, Winifred takes the class to a pool for swimming lessons. She challenges Ursula to a race, which Winifred wins, and in her moment of victory, Winifred catches Ursula “round the waist, in the water, and held her for a moment against herself” (314). A few days after, Winifred invites Ursula to join her at a private bungalow for tea that weekend. As they prepare tea, Winifred tells Ursula about a friend of hers who died in childbirth. It begins raining, and Winifred invites Ursula to undress and go outside in the rain with her. Winifred leads Ursula by the hand in the dark and kisses her. The rain picks up as Winifred carries Ursula to a pond. When the rain becomes colder, Ursula runs inside to dress and return home.
Ursula and Winifred begin an intimate relationship, and Winifred teaches Ursula about religion and philosophy. Ursula realizes that “all the religion she knew was but a particular clothing to a human aspiration,” and Winifred “humanized it all” (317). Ursula spends most of her time at Winifred’s house, and Winifred introduces Ursula to her circle of friends. As the school year draws to a close, Winifred invites Ursula to join her in London, but Ursula does not accept the invitation. She feels her love for Winifred fading, but she invites Winifred to join her on a visit to her uncle Tom’s house in Wiggiston. Winifred accepts, not knowing Ursula intends to set her up with Tom. Winifred and Tom are attracted to each other, and Tom proposes marriage. Ursula encourages Winifred to accept, and they wed.
Chapters 10-12 Analysis
The novel’s representation of three protagonists across three generations of Brangwens is significant because it continues the allusions to Christian religious tradition. Lawrence read Katherine Jenner’s book Christian Symbolism prior to writing The Rainbow and adapted traditional Christian imagery into the work. In the Christian tradition, the number three represents completion. For example, three magi visit Jesus when he is born, and Jesus is resurrected on the third day after his death by crucifixion. Furthermore, the Holy Trinity represents God as threefold: the Father, the Son (Jesus), and the Holy Spirit. In congruence with this allusion, Ursula’s becoming the novel’s third protagonist signifies the completion of the “Brangwensaga” trinity. Ursula also embodies the most prominent traits of her parents, namely her mother’s fierce independent streak and her father’s religious sensibility. However, Ursula is not satisfied with her life, as she loathes living “amidst storms of babies” and resents Anna’s acceptance of domesticity (246). Ursula seeks her freedom, and she nearly finds it with Anton.
Anton is depicted as a suitable match for several reasons, but the most significant is that he is not a Brangwen. Ursula will not make the same lateral move as Anna did—she is determined to actually get out. Despite their courtship’s initial success and the happiness that the new relationship brings her, the world Anton and Ursula live in now is substantially different from the one her parents and grandparents knew. Anton buys a motor car, and Ursula enjoys their long drives. Marsh Farm and the surrounding area have become distinctly modernized, and the novelty thrills Ursula. The excitement fades quickly when the stakes of industrialization and modernity become clear: Anton is on leave from the army when they meet, and he is soon deployed to fight in the Boer War. He readily commits himself to the great causes of the time—nationalism and imperialism—and repeats colonialist rhetoric with ease.
The Brangwens differ from Anton in that the family has a long history of pursuing individualistic goals, whereas Anton is willing to sacrifice his individuality in order to serve his country as one of many. He believes the individual does not matter, because the “Whole” matters the most. Anton’s belief signals a real-world cultural shift that values the collective over modernity’s self-reliance. However, Anton’s resignation of his individual self to a larger system is significant in Ursula’s decision to end their relationship. She wants to be more than what she came from, and she wants to be her own person. Anton readily surrenders his personhood to the army, and Ursula’s love for him fades. This rejection relates to the theme Gender Roles in Domestic Life, as Ursula rejects traditional roles and seeks autonomy.
Ursula’s relationship with her teacher, Winifred, is short-lived but deeply passionate. Ursula admires Winifred and sees her as a role model for what an independent woman might look like, and she embraces intimacy with her with the same ease and pleasure as she did in her relationship with Anton. Although “Shame” was considered highly scandalous at the time of the novel’s publication, the chapter does not depict the relationship as something Ursula or Winifred is ashamed of. Their age difference and the power imbalance between student and teacher may be concerning to a 21st-century reader, especially as Winifred initiates every act of physical intimacy and actively pursues Ursula. That Ursula chooses to leave the relationship when she feels it has run its course reflects her growing sense of agency; she arranges for her teacher to enter a traditional marriage despite her own resistance to domesticity.
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