The Rainbow

Two chapters in the novel are both titled “The Widening Circle.” What significance does this title bear for the content of these chapters, and how do the events of those chapters illuminate the novel’s major themes?

Will and Ursula both admire cathedrals and religious art or architecture. Choose two instances in the novel in which they encounter and are profoundly affected by these structures and images. Explore the significance of those passages to their character development as a whole. Avoid plot summary.

The novel treats straight relationships and relationships between women with nearly identical care and narrative attention. However, premarital sex and relationships with others of the same sex were widely considered taboo subjects when the novel was published. How does the novel depict the interplay between sexual desire, sexuality as identity, and sex as an activity? How do the characters understand those parts of their lives, and how does their embracement or rejection of those activities, desires, and identities shape their growth as individuals?

The Brangwen protagonists are often presented in parallel circumstances from one generation to the next. For example, Tom bonds with Anna in the same way that Will and Ursula do, but each of these parent-child relationships is unique. Choose one generational parallel in the novel and explore its significance to the characters individually as well as together, and to the meaning of the work as a whole.

Marriage and motherhood are the only roles available to some of the novel’s female characters. With Lydia or Anna in mind, explore how the novel depicts pregnancy, pregnant women, and childbirth and how that depiction aligns with the novel’s thematic concerns. Avoid plot summary.

Gary Adelman writes, “The novel presents the psychic life of lovers in conflict” (17). With this quotation in mind, identify a significant scene of conflict between lovers. Explore how that conflict illuminates their personalities and their roles in the story and further unpacks the novel’s major themes. Avoid plot summary.

As matrimony is a significant feature in the novel, select for comparison two scenes in which one character proposes marriage to another, and conduct a rhetorical analysis of the proposals. Ideally, choose one proposal that is accepted and another that is rejected.

While the novel centers on three main protagonists (Tom, Anna, and Ursula), there does not always seem to be a clear complementary individual or trinity of antagonists with whom they are in opposition, as their main conflicts are internal or between the individual and society. Select a protagonist and explore the antagonistic characters or forces that impede their goals. How does the protagonist navigate the conflict in accordance with the novel’s thematic concerns? Do not summarize the plot.