The Rainbow— The Adventure into the Unknown

Echoing Levinas’s argument that one must think care-fully beyond the appropriative grasp of knowledge even in our most intimate relations, Lawrence asserts that the unknowable is the partner in the love relationship, and that love conceived as knowledge is restrictive: “When I have a finished mental concept of a beloved, or a friend, then the love and the friendship is dead. It falls to the level of an acquaintance”(FU 72).²² In other words, for Lawrence, any knowledge that imposes finality is by implication a leading to death, especially in a love relationship.

This theme is explored most thoroughly in The Rainbow, which can be seen as a family history wherein Lawrence provides three primary texts on marriage and love

that overlap, resemble, and differ from one another in subtle ways. In the first text, both Tom and Lydia feel the awareness of the mystery of the other as a condition of their mutual attraction. Tom’swooing ofLydiaexhibitsacuriousmixtureof passivity and self-possession. In their various casual encounters—in the churchyard after a service, in the kitchen of his ancestral farm-house, in a horse-trap on the Ilkeson road—hesubmits“to thatwhich washappening to him,letting go hiswill, suffering the loss of himself, dormant always on the brink of ecstasy, like a creature’s evolving to anew birth”(R 38). And when he comes to a decision at last, it seems more a ritual of obedience than a deliberate choice. Tom’spassivity at his proposal to Lydia is a condition of his self-assurance: it implies a refusal to allow the mental will to dictate to the deeper demands of his nature. This turns out to be a difficult and painful experience because it requires from both of them something much closer to inability than ability to actively exert oneself. Even at his wedding night, Tom was still overwhelmed by Lydia’s unknownness: “Behind her, there was so much unknown to him. When he approached her, he came to such a terrible painful unknown”(R 58).

Put another way, Tom is responding to the unique and intense experience of the coincidence of “intimacy”and “foreignness,”of a union made pleasing to the point of pain by a knowledge of the difference that makes it possible:

They were such strangers, they must forever be such strangers . . . . Such intimacy of embrace, and such utter foreignness of contact! It was unbearable. He could not bear to be near her, and know the utter

foreignness between them, know how entirely they were strangers to each other. (R 61)

In effect, Tom at first resents their differences as he realizes that he cannot bring her, the unknown, into a personal relationship with himself: “When they went to bed, he knew that he had nothing to do with her. She was back in her childhood, he was a

peasant, a serf, a servant . . . . And gradually he grew into a raging fury against her”

(R 62). The decisive change comes with his sudden acceptance of her “otherness,”

with his recognition that the unknown cannot be conquered by being subdued to the known:“She was beyond him, the unattainable. But he let go his hold on himself, he relinquished himself . . . . He began to approach her, to draw near”(R 94).

Curiously, the moment he lets go of a self that is accustomed to seeking its own expansion through her and is denied satisfaction, Tom overcomes his fear and sense of lack and consequently “finds himself in her”(R 94).

The symbol of the arch, which pervades the novel in natural and artificial forms, suggests the balance between union and detachment that Lawrence sees as necessary in a true marriage and love. The marriage of Tom and Lydia reaches Lawrence’s ideal— they discover and affirm each other’s independent being, then each goes their own way again, separately, yet firmly bound together. In their marriage, they have moved to a Levinasian understanding of otherness—like Adam and Eve, they hand in hand, took their solitary way. In itscombination ofthe“solitary”and the“hand in hand,”their relationship indicates the new-found recognition of singularity. Their differences are part of what binds them. InDerrida’sterms,they havelearned to

“respect...theotheraswhatitis”(VM 138). Like the relationship between Paul and Clara, they are both lovers and strangers. Yet unlike theirs, wherein the inhumanness takes its toll, both Tom and Lydia are transfigured creatively in their relationship: “She was the doorway to him, he to her. At last they had thrown open the doors, each to the other, and had stood in the doorways facing each other, whilst the light flooded out from behind on to each of their faces, it was the transfiguration, theglorification,theadmission”(R 91). Therefore, in spite of her being a

“stranger,”ofherbelonging “to somewhereelse,”Lydiatransformstheunreality of Tom’slifeinto “something realand natural”(R 32). By the same token, Lydia, with Tome’s help, begins to find herself: “She was very glad she had come to her own self.

She was grateful to Brangwen”(R 258). And the search is never ending because they are aware that to know someone else fully is impossible and that the obliteration of otherness would be undesirable and destructive. The reader is told that remaining foreigners to each other (as well as to themselves) is what makes it possible for Tom and Lydiato experiencethe“wonderofthetransfiguration”not just occasionally but

“perpetually”:

Their coming together now, after two years of married life, was much more wonderful to them than it had been before. It was the entry into another circle of existence, it was the baptism to another life, it was the complete confirmation. Their feet trod strange ground of knowledge, their footsteps were lit-up with discovery. Wherever they walked, it was well, the world re-echoed round them in discovery. They went gladly and forgetful. Everything was lost, and everything was found. (R 90) Unlike the effortless impersonal love that Paul desires, the love between Tom and Lydia contains “bonds and constraints and labours, and stillwascompleteliberty”(R 91). It is the “wonder”inherent in their love relationship that maintains the

“autonomy” ofeach ofthetwo lovers and keeps“aspaceoffreedom and attraction between them,apossibility ofseparation and alliance”(ESD 13).

If the distance between Tom and Lydia makes possible a fertile space arched over by trust and love, that between Will and Anna also remains unbridged, and yet what it results in is sterility, aridity, and even destructiveness. Lawrence describes the beginning of Will and Anna’s relationship in aesthetic terms, in a similar way he deals with that of Walter and Gertrude or Tom and Lydia. It is Will, the man, who appears as a “stranger”in Anna’s world. Willintroduces“adark enriching influence shehad notknown before”into Anna’slife(R 110). Asafactorin Anna’slife, Will represents a pagan force which has drawn her to him at their initial encounter: “In him the bounds of her experience were transgressed: he was the hole in the wall, beyond

which the sunshine blazed on an outside world”(R 114). Yet as Will continually leads her into experiences which put her in danger of losing her self-control, Anna turns to regard the pagan force as threatening her religion of self-containment. She then endeavors to resist the movement towards the other— her greater individuality, wary intelligence, and more developed self-consciousness all make it harder for her to give or risk herself as Tom had done. In a summary of the ethical imperative that he believes underlie Lawrence’sfictionalrepresentationsofloveand sex,Norman Mailer writes: “Lawrence’spointisthatpeoplecan win atloveonly when they areready to lose everything they bring to it of ego, position, or identity . . . . They have to

deliverthemselvesoverto theunknown”(185). Contrary to this, Anna is content and happy with her limited horizons: “She was a door and a threshold, she herself”(R 195). Avoidancebecomesso much apartofAnna’snaturethatherinnerresponse eventually contracts and she becomes hardened in her being, like the kernel of a nut.

Moreover, in order to defend herself, Anna tries hard to diminish Will’s power. Her weapon is mockery. She reduces the power of the cathedral by elaborating on its most“realistic”elements, and forces Will to admit the human dimension of his

“Absolute,”leaving him with only love for a “symbol.” In such a way, Anna attacks Willby making him ashamed of“theecstasy into which hecould throw himselfwith thesesymbols”(R 151).

As I have mentioned earlier, while Anna is too assertive in self-confirmation, Will is too fragile to preserve himself. Will’s exclusive preoccupation with Anna makes her mad: “He seemed a dark, almost evil thing, pursuing her, hanging on to her, burdening her. She would give anything to have him removed”(R 152). What Anna resents is the smothering totality of his unmanly dependence on her, and she fights for the right to be left alone when she wishes, to have an existence apart from him. Yet Will is insatiably compelled to her, and when he is not with her he is annulled—he feels “uncreated”(R 152). Like Tom and Lydia, they always “walked

on, hand in hand, along opposite horizons . . . hand in hand across the intervening space, two separate people”(R 178). Yet Will is “afraid”to be alone in his

separateness, for he is “ridden by the awful sense of his own limitation”(R 179). On the other hand, Will persistently ties to destroy Anna’s self-sufficiency, which has made worse his sense of insecurity and frailty. As a result, he endeavors to impose his will on Anna and Anna becomes aware that he seems “to expect her to be part of himself, the extension of his will”(R 170). In a kind of vicious circle, Anna is moved, in a blind effort to save herself, to an exaggerated assertion of defiance. By asserting her right to singleness, Anna is also defying Will’s “kingship.” Though it was Will that she originally turned in the hope of enlarging her experience, years later she has to admit that he stands for nothing beyond her, and now she knows “if she were taken away, he would collapse as a house from which the central pillar is

removed”(R 186). In this Eden after the Fall, love is sustained by profound hostility and endless conflict. The mode of their love relationship is anticipated in the scene of sheaves-gathering quoted earlier, wherein they were “never to meet”(R 122), except in sensuality.

The marriage of Anna and Will is thus a deadlock since neither wife nor husband has the generosity and wisdom to acknowledge and accept the unbreakable difference and uniqueness of the other. In fact, their conflict is anticipated in two blunt assertions in the early days of their marriage:“Hewanted to imposehimselfon her”and “Shewanted to preserveherself”(R 135). Both are absorbed in the

struggle of proving the impossibility of partner’s aspiration to mastery. They are like the lion and unicorn for whom the eternal opposition and strife is absolute: “The crown is upon the perfect balance of the fight, it is not the fruit of either victory.

The crown is not the prize of either combatant. It is the raison d’etreof both. It is absolutewithin thefight”(P 373). The eternally suspended position of the lion and the unicorn gives a hint to Levnias’s suggestion that what “is absolutely other . . . not

only resists possession, it contests it”(TI 38). Indeed, nothing original can be

created when the lion and unicorn no longer fight, being subsumed by one another; for Lawrence it is only from the constant fight between the two parties that harmony and peace arise. Yet consider the relation between Tom and Lydia— what they have in common is just as significant as what distinguishes them, and what the sense of

“foreignness”leads to is not an utter separation but a creative transfiguration of both parties. An intimate relationship built on “eternal fight without any chance of uniting together”is certainly not a desirable or fertile one.

In the third generation, Ursula, like her mother Anna who turned to Will in the hope of enlarging her experience, is attracted to the young Skrebensky by the sense he gives her of “thevast world, a sense of distances”(R 293). She is attracted to the confident role he plays in the larger world. In love, Ursula seeks one of the “sons of God,”a man who, as proud as herself, will not submit to a humiliating compromise with society. Nonetheless, Skrebensky finally proves to be all too knowable and finished.²³ If, unlike Will, he does not deny the outside world, he nonetheless accepts his place in it with unadventurous complacency. When being asked what he will do as a soldier once there is no fighting, his answer—“I would do what

everybody else does”—makes Ursula feels he is “nothing”to her (R 311). His outer clarity—as a soldier, colonialist, and servant of the state—obscures the fact that there is in him fundamental emptiness. ForUrsual,passion must“come from the Infinite”

(R 385). She awaits the other who is totally other, who will emerge out of the charged metaphors of God, the Infinite, Eternity. On that ground, Skrebensky is not for her adequate “as a lover”since his more constricted self can produce no reciprocal enlargement. She realizes sadly that he arouses no fruitful fecundity in her: “He seemed added up, finished. She knew him all round, not on any side did he lead into the unknown”(R 473). Ursula is looking for an expansive direction, and she finds thatonly “something impersonal”can takehersomewhere:“Love-love-love—what

does it mean—whatdoesitamountto? So much personalgratification. Itdoesn’t lead anywhere”(R 527).

On the other hand, Ursula’s enormous desire for the enlargement of her

experience and caused the nullity of Skrebensky. In a scene about Fred Brangwen’s wedding, Ursula and Skrebensky are dancing on the grass. The narrator thus

describes Ursula’s aspiration for her own “maximum self”:

She wanted the moon to fill in to her, she wanted more, more communion with the moon, consummation. But Skrebensky put his arm round her and led her away . . . . She was not there. Patiently she sat, under the cloak, with Skrebensky holding her hand. But her naked self was away there beating upon the moonlight. (R 318-9)

Recognizing that Skrebensky is inadequate as an unknown lover, Ursula looks to the moon for “consummation.” In so doing, Ursula expresses a self-love that encloses her and makes her sense interference from the man who accompanies her.

Consequently, as Skrebensky keeps trying persistently to pull her down into the darkness, Ursula is angered into paroxysms of destruction: “So she held him there, the victim, consumed, annihilated. She had triumphed: he was not any more”(R 322).

It is at least clear that this experience, like the hawk-like marital battles of Ursula’s parentsand also likeAnna’snaked dancing, brings neither peace nor wholeness in the sense thatTom’smomentsoftranscendencedid. Instead itispowerfully

self-assertive and destructive of a lesser lover. In her willful pursuit for an unknown lover, Ursula becomes neurotically self-absorbed. The implication would then be that Ursula, like the civilization she learns mainly to reject, seems to have made the mostegoisticalassertion of“being”.

The relationship between Ursula and Skrebensky turns out to be a failed one.

The union of lovers or husband and wife should not be a sign of the triumph of the individual will, nor a finished life or a conclusive plot. Rather, it is a reminder of

limitation and insufficiency of the self, of the uncertainty of the future, based on the awareness of the parties’own vulnerability and interdependence. It is like a great blank page to be written on. After her encounter with the horses, Ursula endures, but her arrogance and egoism are destroyed. She is then in intimate contact with the unknown realm: “It was the unknown, the unexplored, the undiscovered upon whose shore she had landed, alone, after crossing the void, the darkness”(R 494).

At the end of the novel, she awaits a man who shares her connection to the beyond:

“The man should come from the Infinite and she should hail him”(R 494). The man Ursula hails turns out to be Rupert Birkin in Women in Love.