SOURCE: "The Rainbow: Fiddle-Bow and Sand," in Essays in Criticism, Vol. XI, No. 4, October, 1961, pp. 418-34.

In the following essay, Goldberg explores the thematic, stylistic, and symbolic factors that limit the overall success of The Rainbow as a work of art.

… don't look for the development of the novel to follow the lines of certain characters: the characters fall into the form of some other rhythmic form, as when one draws a fiddle-bow across a fine tray delicately sanded, the sand takes lines unknown.

Lawrence to Edward Garnett, 5 June, 1914.

Although Lawrence himself warned us never to trust the artist but to trust the tale, or that 'there may be didactic bits, but they aren't the novel', with his own work it isn't quite so easy to distinguish. The common tactic, of course, is to try to split him into two Lawrences: such a good novelist, before he became...