SOURCE: A review of The Rainbow, in Critical Quarterly, Vol. 20, No. 3, Autumn, 1978, pp. 49-64.

In the following essay, Draper surveys The Rainbow, touching on elements of theme, character, style, and plot.

The pursuit of self-fulfilment might be said to be the purpose or theme of all Lawrence's work; but the book in which this is most prominently the end, even more than Women in Love, is The Rainbow. Or to be more precise, the third section of The Rainbow, the one which concerns the development into a distinctively modern consciousness of Ursula Brangwen, schoolteacher, university student and mistress.

Tom and Lydia, and Ursula's parents, Will and Anna, are also engaged in the struggle towards fulfilment, and like Ursula are involved in tormenting and bafflingly obscure experiences which seem to wrench their very being apart. The 'old stable ego' (in a famous letter of 5 June 1914 Lawrence wrote, 'you mustn't...