One of the important themes of the novel is the dissolution of a rural community spread over three generations. When the story of the novel begins about 1840, we meet Tom Brangwen as a representative of the rural community of England with its life rooted in the soil. But some changes that have already taken place are suggested through the construction of the canal, the coming of the railways and the roar of the engines that can be heard from time to time. The second generation lives in a different environment. Will works as a draughtsman in a lace factory. His interests are other than agriculture—church architecture, wood-carving, clay-modeling. When he shifts to the mining town of Beldover, the agricultural community is totally left behind. By the time Ursula grows up and joins college, the environment and its values have changed all the more. Industrialization has given a fatal jolt to the rural way of life. Life in general, its values and its institutions have been commercialized. The mining town of Wiggiston where Ursula’s uncle Tom becomes the manager of a colliery is described as ‘an inferno of the modern mechanistic spirit’. The Nottingham College is a temple converted to the most vulgar, petty commerce. Attitude to sex has also changed. Ursula, the modern emancipated woman adopts the teaching profession and makes no scruples of indulging in pre-marital sex. All these changes have been depicted so convincingly that F. R. Leavis regards The Rainbow as an important social document.