The primary female character who is actually able to separate herself from the life of the Marsh is Ursula. She is quite an interesting character who symbolizes a wild freedom that is manifested in terms of sexual preference, religious preferences, as well as in an embrace of virtually most other things that typify the modern world that the Brangwen's farm stands in opposition to. What is most significant about Ursula, however, is that she is eventually able to motivate the rest of her family to move beyond Marsh Farm and into the urban environment of Beldover, which symbolizes a transitioning of the Brangwen's from traditional life and its values to those of the modern world. The following quotation demonstrates Ursula's departure from traditional Brangwen life. "Suddenly she saw her mother in a just and true light. Her mother was simple and radically true. She had taken the life that was given. She had not, in her arrogant conceit, insisted on creating life to fit...
Her mother was right, profoundly right, and she herself had been false, trashy, conceited" (Lawrence). In this quotation, in which Ursula believes she is pregnant, she compares herself to her mother. The fact that Ursula had not merely accepted a life that was "given" to her, on the Marsh Farm, is underscored by this comparison. Furthermore, it is significant to note that Ursula's break from this life eventually influenced the rest of her family to move to Beldover as well.
In the end, Lawrence uses the images and conceptions of farming and gardening in Rainbow to show how they represent the central conflict of the novel: the tendency of the male Brangwen's to pursue a traditional life of farming on the Marsh vs. The tendency of the female family members to embrace modern life and all of its traditional views. The fact that the women, primarily illustrated by the characterization of Ursula, win demonstrates the larger triumph of modernity over tradition.
