Education In "The Rainbow"
The education system in D. H. Lawrence’s novel "The Rainbow" is suffering from many of the same symptoms as the diseased modern society and its infectious industrial machines. The world of the machine is sick and rotting, and the factories of education are only making things worse. Lawrence uses the microcosm of St. Philips School, deep in the modern city of Cossethey, as a reflection of the larger problems with a society devoted to power and efficiency, yet it is without a doubt that Lawrence also takes the opportunity to display his issues with the school system itself. Education, from conception, to the foundation it stands on, to the structure that give it form, to the people who operate it, is just as soulless and horrible as the city, and the society, that surrounds it. Lawrence chooses the school as the battleground for his character Ursula Brangwen’s struggle for freedom, individuality and economic independence from her family, and to show how humanity has actually ended up surrendering their cherished freedom and individuality to the machine. The product, the commodity, of this particular mechanism, strengthens Lawrence’s statement: children.
To Lawrence, education has bullied its way in to replaced religion. Before Ursula even applies for the teaching position, her father, William, begins to unknowingly accept education as a substitute for his lost spirituality. Having lost all connection with the “real outer world” he begins to search for ways of “individual expression and individual form,” only now with knowledge and skill (Lawrence 330). This cleverness and expertise with real things has taken the place of his divine inspiration: his religion, his vision. Through his visionless search he comes into contact with state education. He is indifferent to his nation and its wars, yet he reads papers in education; he watches the politics of education. Knowledge, and the further gathering of knowledge, has become the...