Assignment 11

D. H. Lawrence (1885-1930)

Much of the complexity of Lawence’s unusual stories results from Lawrence's subtle handling of what have become the hallmarks of much modern fiction: a firm handling of structure, an effective manipulation of point of view, a rich interplay of the realistic and the symbolic, and an authentic portrayal of the vicissitudes of human experience. It is Lawrence’s masterful technical control that wins our assent to the fantastic premise on which “The Rocking-Horse Winner” is built.The theme of money or materialism versus love and life is typical in many of Lawrence’s novels and stories, as is the perception that the lust for money is insatiable, that even too much is not enough. Family tensions, deftly handled, are also common in his works. These themes appear in this oft-anthologized story.

“The Rocking-Horse Winner” (pp. 1016-27)

The story opens with a distant, sing-song voice of a fairy tale, and like a fairy tale, the story has easily identifiable characters (a loveless, materialistic, but gentle mother; a son desperate for his mother’s love); implausible, non-realistic details (a whispering house, the magic of the rocking horse); even the words “once upon a time” seem implied in the story’s first sentence. As in a fairy tale or fable a moral is clear: the love of money can annihilate other loves, even the ones we might consider incorruptible, like a mother for her child. In this fairy tale-like story, greed destroys family life, parent-children relationships, and even life itself.

The story begins with a chilling portrait: a family presided over by a mother whose confused rage and resentment have turned her household into a silent, loveless area. Despite outward appearance–“the style was always kept up”–the house is dominated and finally destroyed by “the grinding sense of the shortage of money.” Paul, desperate for his mother’s love, takes to his rocking horse and rides it until he gets “there,” the place where he learns the name of next week’s horse-race winner. He begins to win money, eventually enough to have five thousand pounds anonymously placed in his mother’s account.

When the mother learns that she has been given the money, “her face hardened.” When she arranges to receive the five thousand pounds in a lump sum rather than over a five-year period, which leads to a “blossoming of the luxury Paul’s mother had been used to,” far from being stilled, the voices inside the house grow more clamorous. His mother is in the grip of a sickness (perhaps it might even be termed “evil”) that is every bit as mysterious as the clairvoyance Paul achieves by furiously riding his rocking horse. Paul’s losing streak seems to be triggered by his growing awareness that no amount of money can slake his mother’s thirst

At the outset of the story, Paul’s mother has explained to her son the meaning of “luck” and its connection to money. Surely Paul’s ability to pick winners should satisfy his mother and cause her to declare her son a winner. Surely, the windfall five thousand pounds represent “luck” for his mother. But somewhere below conscious thought, Paul knows that he can never win what he needs from her. In his innocence Paul fails to realize that greed can never be fully satiated. Riding the rocking horse is a suitable symbol for his predicament. No matter how urgently and energetically he rides, no matter how much he wins, he will never move forward or progress in alleviating his mother’s intense desire for money. He will always remain in the same place, never reaching his destination, which is his rightful place in his mother’s heart. He tell his Uncle Oscar that he does not want his mother to know of his clairvoyance because, he explains, “She’d stop me.” Finally, she does stop him. Paul dies because he can never satisfy his mother’s needs, never win her approval or her love because she has none to give.

The story ends as chillingly as it began. Uncle Oscar, whose interest in his nephew has been confined to the boy’s ability to make him money, excitedly reminds his sister that her dead son has left behind a considerable sum of money and consoles her with the thought that Paul is better off dead. Oscar seems to care about his nephew, but he seems incapable of love. His last words lack heartfelt grief or sympathy. Like an accountant, he adds assets and subtracts liabilities’ he refers to Paul almost flippantly as “poor devil.”