Prompt:
The following passage is from D.H. Lawrence's 1915 novel, The Rainbow, which focuses on the lives of the Brangwen's, a farming family who lived in rural England during the late nineteenth century. Read the passage carefully. Then write an essay in which you analyze how Lawrence employs literary devices to characterize the woman and capture her situation.
Original Passage:
Through the use of personification, hyperbole's and imagery, Lawrence is able to explain to the readers that the woman is eager to gain knowledge for herself, and her family in order to be the "greater person."
Throughout the entire passage, Lawrence uses imagery to describe how the woman believes her family, specifically her husband, is better than everyone else. In lines 47-48, Lawrence states "whereas the vicar, dark and dry and small beside her husband..." When compared to her husband, other men appear to be much weaker. Lawrence later goes on to say, "as Brangwen had power over the cattle the vicar had power over her husband" (Lines 52-54.) No matter how weak the vicar were or how strong the Brangwen men were, the vicar still overpowered them because of the amount of knowledge they have.
In the very last line of the passage, Lawrence uses personification to show the readers how much power the vicar really had and why. "His soul was master of the other man's. And why-why? She decided it was a question of knowledge." (Lines 64-66) The woman thinks knowledge is the reason the vicar will always be stronger than them because her family was not open to knowledge. Lawrence says how other men "...had done in fighting outwards to knowledge..." (lines 34-35) So other men seeked knowledge.
Lawrence also uses a hyperbole to show how hard the Brangwen men worked when it came to farming, "the Brangwen men faced inwards to the teeming life of creation, which poured unresolved into their veins." (27-29) The woman had noticed earlier on in the passage that the other men worked facing "outwards to where men moved dominant and creative, having turned their back on the pulsing heat of creation, and with this behind them, were set out to discover what was beyond, to enlarge their own scope and range and freedom." (Lines 23-27) The other men were much more open to gaining knowledge and new ideas while the Brangwen's men were more focused on just their current livelihood and situation.
The woman wants her family to be greater than everyone else and she realizes that in order to be that, they need to gain knowledge. "She craved to know. She craved to achieve this higher being, if not in herself, then in her children." (Lines 56-57) She realizes that it may be too late for her and her husband to overpower others however, there's still a chance for her children if she opens them up to the world and gets them to do more things than just farming "inwards" and not facing the outside world. Lawrence even states that the woman craves a different lifestyle from the one she currently has, "but the woman wanted another form of life than this, something that was not blood-intimacy." (Lines 15-16) You can also tell she wanted to broaden her horizon when Lawrence describes her view, "her house faced out from the farm-buildings and fields, looked out to the road and the village with church and hall and the world beyond." (Lines 16-19)
Reflection:
After doing some background research on D.H. Lawrence, I found out that Lawrence had a strong belief in individualization: the balance between the humanistic side and animalistic side. In his passage, The Rainbow, Lawrence explores the concept of individualization by using the example of a woman longing for more to what she has in her life. Lawrence compares what the woman wants to what the men in this passage want which are two completely different things. I should have talked more about the two different points-of-views between the man and the woman while also describing the change in the tone the occurred. I should have also included the name of the author and the novel the prompt was talking about in my opening paragraph.
No comments:
Post a Comment