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Satire
Definition of Setting
Setting is where and when a story or scene takes place. The where can be a real place like the city of New York, or it can be an imagined... read full definition
Setting is where and when a story or scene takes place. The where can be a real place like the city of New York, or... read full definition
Setting is where and when a story or scene takes place. The where can be a real place like the... read full definition
Chapter 12: Shame
Explanation and Analysis:
The novel is primarily set in the East Midlands of England, particularly in the fictional village of Cossethay, during a roughly 65-year period of time, from the mid-19th century to the early 20th century. Lawrence depicts this period as a one of rapid social change across England, as modern ideas regarding gender, sexuality, and religion spread from the cities to more rural parts of the nation. When Ursula Brangwen attends school, for example, she meets Winifred Inger, a young woman who embraces the changes of modernity:
Winifred had had a scientific education. She had known many clever people. She wanted to bring Ursula to her own position of thought. They took religion and rid it of its dogmas, its falsehoods. Winifred humanised it all. Gradually it dawned upon Ursula that all the religion she knew was but a particular clothing to a human aspiration. The aspiration was the real thing,—the clothing was a matter almost of national taste or need. The Greeks had a naked Apollo, the Christians a white-robed Christ, the Buddhists a royal prince, the Egyptians their Osiris. Religions were local and religion was universal.
Winifred, who works as a teacher to support herself, embodies the new, modern ideas that sweep across England at the beginning of the 20th century. She is a young and independent woman who received, Lawrence writes, "a scientific education." As a result, she is skeptical of religion and pushes Ursula to question her own religious beliefs. Through her conversations with Winifred, Ursula begins to believe that different cultures dress up the universal need for faith in "particular clothing," and that Christianity is just one "local" manifestation of this need. In The Rainbow, then, Lawrence examines a historical moment in which traditional beliefs regarding religion as well as the proper role of women in society faced new challenges.
Related Themes:
