A young woman deals in her own personal way with the trials of adolescence and young adulthood in early 1900s England.

Ken Russell's loose adaptation of the last part of D.H. Lawrence's "The Rainbow" sees impulsive young Ursula coming of age in pastoral England around the time of the Boer War. While experiencing disillusionment in her first career attempt (teaching), she has an affair with a young Army officer, who wants to marry her. Unable to accept a future of domesticity, she continues in a search for her destiny.—Anonymous