The Rainbow by DH Lawrence

Again, it's been some time since I read this ... It was part of the course at uni.

Here is the opening paragraph.

"The Brangwens had lived for generations on the Marsh Farm, in the meadows where the Erewash twisted sluggishly through alder trees, separating Derbyshire from Nottinghamshire. Two miles away, a church- tower stood on a hill, the houses of the little country town climbing assiduously up to it. Whenever one of the Brangwens in the fields lifted his head from his work, he saw the church-tower at Ilkeston in the empty sky. So that as he turned again to the horizontal land, he was aware of something standing above him and beyond him in the distance."

Our lecturer began. "Many would say that the church tower is a phallic symbol, that it represents sex, and power ... I say that it represents that there was a church in the village."

Well, it got a laugh out of we first year students, who were used to having obscure symbolism pointed out to us in the literary texts that we studied, and having had English teachers who had seemed more than usually preoccupied with sex. In fact, my choice of personal essay in my Higher had been based on the fact that my English teacher seemed preoccupied with sex, and funnily enough that was about another, more well known, Lawrence novel.

It's interesting re-reading that paragraph now ... I used to live near there. But would never have expected that at the time I studied it!