Will to Power and Ursula’s Agency in D.H Lawrence’sThe Rainbow: A Nietzschean Reading

Abstract

D.H Lawrence’s novel The Rainbow (1915) was initially, especially during the time of the First World War, condemned as the work of obscenity and pornography. However, it retained its artistic significance as the modernist literature flourished. Many feminist critics mistakenly perceived the novel as Lawrence’s advocacy of man-centered view of sexuality. The representation of womanhood as seeking sexual pleasure and fulfillment through idealized motherhood only attracted the attention of some critics. In response to this narrowly-sized interpretation of the novel, the present research tries to look at the novel from the perspective of Lawrence’s employment of unconventional portrait of women, primarily Ursula, as an agent, an independent being and a freedom seeker. While exploring such modern agency of woman by their own struggle for individual identity, it makes a modest attempt to discover the philosophical influence of Nietzsche’s ‘Will to Power’ in Lawrence’s characterization for liberating his major heroine. Through the reading of novel from Nietzsche’s philosophy of ‘Will to Power’ as its theoretical tool, the research concludes that The Rainbow is Lawrence’s innovative effort to empower his female character, Ursula, with strong agency to form her new being beyond social boundary. It is portrayed through her unstoppable struggle and an overwhelming internal will for complete independence and individual identity.