The Rainbow-D.H. Lawrence

[Voivod30]

This is yet another novel that I acquired a while ago and have yet to open. I've heard very mixed opinions and am completely ignorant as to whether this is a romance novel with lewd bits or something else. I'm sure people on this forum probably know this but apparently when it came out the tome at hand was banned in England and released in the U.S. only in a highly abridged version. I'm pretty sure I have the full text (514 pages) and nothing really offends me (and definitely a book that was written 95 years in a more puritan era) but I will say that Lolita though wonderfully written made me uncomfortable due to the fact that the "victim" was a child. I realize that the Rainbow and Lolita probably aren't similar what so ever, I make the comparrison only because it caught me off guard that a novel written so long ago would make me uncomfortable due to the sexual content.

[OrphanPip]

This is yet another novel that I acquired a while ago and have yet to open. I've heard very mixed opinions and am completely ignorant as to whether this is a romance novel with lewd bits or something else. I'm sure people on this forum probably know this but apparently when it came out the tome at hand was banned in England and released in the U.S. only in a highly abridged version. I'm pretty sure I have the full text (514 pages) and nothing really offends me (and definitely a book that was written 95 years in a more puritan era) but I will say that Lolita though wonderfully written made me uncomfortable due to the fact that the "victim" was a child. I realize that the Rainbow and Lolita probably aren't similar what so ever, I make the comparrison only because it caught me off guard that a novel written so long ago would make me uncomfortable due to the sexual content.

You would be surprised by some of the stuff written around the Restoration. Also, there was always some more explicit literature circulating that never got wide readership because of its less than legal status. Like, Teleny, which was a piece of Victorian erotica that contains a scene where a man is sodomized by a wine bottle which subsequently breaks and causes the man to bleed to death. People really haven't gotten more obscene over the years, they've just been allowed to express it more openly.

[Virgil]

Read it. It's a great novel. It's not a romance, and I've never heard of an expurgated edition. That's the full text. But if you're looking for steamy scenes, you won't really find much.

[Dark Muse]

It has been a while since I have read this one, but it is one of my favorite Lawrence novels and from what I recall, it is farily tame for a Lawrence book, he can have some very sexually charged prose, but this one I think is realtively mild. It does deal with relationships, but I would not call it a romance. One of the things I enjoy about Lawrence is the very raw way he deals with human emotions within relationships.

[Janine]

It's also has been ages since I read this novel, but being a big Lawrence fan, I would recommend it and I agree with Dark Muse in her two ending statements. I think maybe people were more uncomfortable in the novel with the scenes between the two women; I would imagine the homo-erotic references could have upset some, who otherwise would not have expected it in that time and era; although, we aren't talking about the 1800's here, but the early part of the last century...but I guess people were still pretty uptight about that sort of thing.

[Dark Muse]

It's also has been ages since I read this novel, but being a big Lawrence fan, I would recommend it and I agree with Dark Muse in her two ending statements. I think maybe people were more uncomfortable in the novel with the scenes between the two women; I would imagine the homo-erotic references could have upset some, who otherwise would not have expected it in that time and era; although, we aren't talking about the 1800's here, but the early part of the last century...but I guess people were still pretty uptight about that sort of thing.

I was quite surprsied about those scenes simply becasue of the time when the novel was written, though I did not find it the least bit upsetting, I just would not have thought that such a thing would have been published at that period of time.

[Voivod30]

I'm pretty much not pro or con with their being "lewd bits" as long as the book is interesting I'm happy. The statements about it being controversial and the fact that it was at one time out right banned in England and was only release in the U.S. in an abriged form were stated on the back cover.

[kelby_lake]

I'm pretty much not pro or con with their being "lewd bits" as long as the book is interesting I'm happy. The statements about it being controversial and the fact that it was at one time out right banned in England and was only release in the U.S. in an abriged form were stated on the back cover.

I wouldn't really say there were any 'lewd' bits. There are sex scenes and of course, the two women together. I think there's also some stuff about the moon being erotic and the men's 'urges' for their lovers and Ursula's overt lust for Anton and his muscular body. Although you can't really point to a passage and say: "That should be banned", sex and sexuality are ever-present in the novel so it's always in the mind. Also, his descriptions of nature in the novel tend to be sexualised: "She saw the tiny knob-end of the rhubarb thrusting upwards upon the thick red stem, thrusting itself like a knob of flame through the soft soil."

Lady Chatterley's Lover contained certain words and passages that censorious people could underline and say: "That is objectionable".

[Seasider]

No undercurrent of misogyny which I can detect in Lawrence's other novels and short stories.

[kelby_lake]

No undercurrent of misogyny which I can detect in Lawrence's other novels and short stories.

There is one dodgy line though about a woman's role needing to be submissive- and I suppose it winds the male characters up. Depending on how you look at it, the novel is either empowering women or misogynistically criticising them.