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Foreshadowing
Chapter 1: How Brangwen Married a Polish Lady
Explanation and Analysis:
The Rainbow is both a family saga that follows multiple generations of the Brangwen family, and a bildungsroman—or "coming of age" novel—following individual members of the family. In the first chapters of the novel, Tom Brangwen serves as the protagonist, his perspective shaping the narrative. The final chapters of the novel focus on Ursula Brangwen, Tom's granddaughter, as she learns to navigate the professional world as well as historical change. Throughout these changes of perspective, however, the novel sticks to the Brangwen family, exploring their complex relationships and establishing parallels between figures in different generations. The novel's status as a family saga is foregrounded in the opening lines:
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. [...] 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. There was a look in the eyes of the Brangwens as if they were expecting something unknown, about which they were eager.
