D. H. Lawrence’s The Rocking Horse Winner is a commentary on the premium that people put on material things thinking that these will bring happiness at the expense of fulfilling human relationships. The story has mystical and surreal tones, but at the core of it is a critique on how parents destroy their children and families by giving more attention to the material needs of the family than on fulfilling the nurture and love that members of the family desperately need to survive.
The Rocking Horse Winner is a short story that can be interpreted in various levels. The main elements that of interest are Paul’s love for his mother, the greed prevalent in the house that keeps on whispering for more money, and the mystical nature by which Paul finds luck by riding his rocking horse. In his essay, The Intersection of “Natural” and “Supernatural”, Weldon Thornton puts forward that Paul transforms his profound love into luck by forcing himself to make it come into being (1993).Thornton traces the natural and the supernatural forces of the story, mainly Paul’s understanding of love and luck, and how he tries to achieve it. Koban, on the other hand, brings to attention the reason for the dissatisfaction in the family – the love between husband and wife that should have been the unifying force of the family has degenerated and has turned into something ugly, greed (1978). But the realism ends there – the rest of the story goes on with “an altogether unbelievable air” that gives the story an eerie unreality.
Koban also argues that Paul’s death can also be seen as Hester’s death as well – that her maternal instincts which she was fighting have turned to stone with her son’s death, and she left to live a dead life because her son (and the source of love, and irrationality to her) has gone. A still more interesting aspect has been raised by Snodgrass. Snodgrass goes beyond examining the relationship between Paul and his mother and focuses on the names of the horses that Lawrence uses in the story. He points out that these are the names of British colonies, and draws the parallelism between the family’s behavior in the story and that of society.Snodgrass posits that like any colonial power, the British have gambled upon peoples which they have no vital contact with, buying these stocks and living off other people’s hard work. What Snodgrass is imparting though, is that by doing so, these people are left with their physical energies without an outlet as they felt no need to work if they could live in leisure, turning these energies into dissatisfactions and pseudo-needs which are met with buying more luxuries which in turn only increases the dissatisfactions (Snodgrass, 1958).
However, Snodgrass concludes that the process destroyed Spain, and in the same has destroyed Paul. An important difference is that Spain was destroyed by greed, and Paul was destroyed by his desire to win his mother’s love. Indeed, the story centers on Paul’s desire to win his mother’s love. The story starts with the mother’s dissatisfaction – readers are given a hint that she used to have a heart that feels instead of the heart that could not feel for anyone, not even her children.
The story begins with “There was a woman who was beautiful, who started with all the advantages, yet she had no luck.She married for love, and the love turned to dust. ” And then it continues to say that she has beautiful children but she felt that they were thrust to her that she could not love them. But she tried to fulfill her maternal role by pretending to love them, by doting on them.
It convinced outsiders, but she and her children knew that there was no love. It seems that the mother felt that she could not love her children because they were not borne out of love – we were given that love has turned to dust, and perhaps she only had children to fulfill the expectations of society out of a wife.Not having love to give, she then tries to make it up by being gentle and overly anxious about them, although the story suggests that both parents never had nor made time for their children and instead gave them toys. Because they could not give them the emotional nurturing that they need, the parents shower them with material things instead, thus Lawrence goes into details about the different beautiful toys the children have: the expensive and splendid toys that filled the nursery… the smart doll’s house… the big rocking horse… the big doll smirking on her new pram, the foolish puppy that took the place of the teddy-bear.The story mentions that the parents have expensive tastes, and although the children could all hear the house whispering the need for more money, it was only Paul who felt that he needed to do something to make the house stop whispering.
It is not far-fetched to say that Paul wanted to make money not only to stop the house whispering, but for the parents to spend time with the children. The parents were always anxious and preoccupied with making money that they have no time and energy to love and spend on their children that perhaps if Paul can bring money to the house it will stop and then the parents will be more real to them.And to have money, one has to have luck. Therefore, in Paul’s mind, for his mother to love him he needs to be lucky, and to prove that he is lucky he needs to win money. The concept of luck and winning money is important – the mother sets that luck is intrinsic, that it is something within a person, that it is not something that can be earned.
Thus, Paul uses his luck to win money and not work hard for it. However, interestingly, maternal love is expected to be unconditional – that a child does not need to earn his mother’s love.In this case then, as Paul equates having luck with earning his mother’s love, in the same way he works hard to be lucky. He rides his horse ferociously, commanding it to take him where luck is. In his pursuit of luck, Paul is actually working hard to earn his mother’s love. We see this in Paul’s actions.
When he wins the races, he feels that he is lucky and therefore worthy of his mother’s love. He arranges to give money to his mother, but not to let her know that it comes from him or that he is lucky.If Paul so desperately want his mother’s love, why would he conceal the fact that he is lucky if he felt that this is what can make him worthy of his mother’s love? Because Paul wanted to prove that his mother loves him not because of the money that he can bring nor the luck that he has, but for who he is. Perhaps he was hoping that by silencing the house the mother’s maternal instincts will surface and without worrying about money will finally be able to focus on loving him and his siblings. But Paul was disappointed.
His mother not only needed money, but wanted it. She could not have enough money, and Paul felt that there was nothing he could do to satisfy her but give her all that he can. It is then that Paul rides his horse but fails – he was unsure and so he loses at the races. In he same way, his faith about his mother’s love was faltering.
Perhaps even with money she still won’t love him. Paul exerts all his efforts into riding his horse – he grows pale and thin, and at his final attempt to divine the lucky answer to win his mother’s love, he collapses.An important point here is that the winning horse was revealed to Paul only when his mother opened the door to his bedroom – this can be interpreted that the mother, truly concerned and gripped out of love for her son, checked on his son, and Paul, having seen the first real show of love from his mother, felt that he has finally reached luck – that place where his mother loves him. However, at the end, Paul’s pursuit of his mother’s love came at a price – his life. And worse, it was given a numerical value – eighty thousand pounds.
