The Analysis Of The Short Story “The Rocking-Horse Winner” By D. H. Lawrence

The short story “The Rocking-Horse Winner” by D. H. Lawrence depicts a dysfunctional family whose thirst for money and the desire to uphold their social position eventually results in the death of the firstborn child. In How To Read Literature Like a Professor: A Lively and Entertaining Guide to Reading Between the Lines by Thomas C. Foster, the concept of literary and metaphorical vampirism was detailed by the author. The mother, Hester in the short story is, by the vampire concept detailed by Foster, perfectly embodies a literary vampire, that is, a creature who lives off the livelihood of someone else until the prey dies.

Hester, in the short story, is portrayed as being unable to love, that “she herself knew that at the [center] of her heart was a hard little place that could not feel love, no, not for anybody” (Lawrence). The concept of vampirism, articulated by Foster, emphasizes “selfishness” and “exploitation” (13). Being unable to love undoubtedly fulfills the selfishness a character needs to have to become a vampire.

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Exploitation comes into play later in the story, and therefore this essay, but it is very clearly present, as will be explained soon.

In “The Rocking-Horse Winner”, the protagonist Paul has a mother, whose name is Hester. The mother is portrayed as money hungry yet neither she nor her husband makes enough money to upkeep their extravagant lifestyle. The author explicitly outlines this, that “although [the family] lived in style, they felt always an anxiety in the house. There was never enough money” and that “the mother had a small income, and the father had a small income, but not nearly enough for the social position which they had to keep up” (Lawrence).

One day, Hester talked to her son Paul about why they were so poor. Hester believes that money, something her family scarcely possesses, seems to not come from hard work, but from luck. “It's what causes you to have money. If you're lucky you have money” (Lawrence). This lazy attitude towards money has set Paul on a track ultimately to his death, as will be explained in the next paragraph.

Foster, in his book, talks about how the lack of motherly love and the lack of money goes hand in hand, or at least Paul thinks so. “connects the lack of his mother’s love with the lack of money, then discovers that he can pick the winners of upcoming horse races if he rides his rocking horse to the point of exhaustion” (Foster 76). Lawrence has made Paul, according to Foster, a subject of the Oedipal complex, which, according to Foster, is when a male child is sexually attracted to his mother. Because, in his head, Paul has connected the lack of love from his mother (which is stated by Lawrence in the beginning) to her lack of money, he then starts betting on horses to please his mother, literally helping to sustain her expensive lifestyle.

This, according to Foster, is the first step to literary vampirism, whereby a character who seeks to maintain her livelihood at the expense of others (in this case, Hester) presents herself as alluring and charms the prey (Paul) into giving his livelihood over to the character, making her a vampire (Foster 13-16). Hester clearly is an example of this, fulfilling the exploitation that is needed, according to Foster, for the character to be considered vampiric (Foster 13).A vampire in literature often will eventually kill its prey, whether directly or indirectly, as shown by Foster in multiple literary examples, such as Dracula literally killing his prey or Winterbourne indirectly killing his prey, Daisy Miller, in Daisy Miller by Henry James (Foster 13-14).

In “The Rocking-Horse Winner”, Paul finds out that after having rocked on his rocking horse to a point of exhausting clairvoyance, can predict the horse that will win, therefore betting on it and making a large profit. All this money he then gives to his mother to win her affection. This habit of frequently bringing himself to this point of exhaustion, at the end of the story, results in his death. After getting his gardener to bet on his behalf on a horse named Malabar, Paul was told that he had won eighty thousand pounds. “‘I never told you, mother, that if I can ride my horse, and get there, then I'm absolutely sure - oh, absolutely! Mother, did I ever tell you? I am lucky!’” (Lawrence). Even though he was about to die, Paul still tried to convince his mother that he was lucky, therefore he was able to provide for her lifestyle and deserves her love. This has made Hester a vampire because she has been able to win over the affection of her son, successfully exploited him, and ultimately killed him.

“The Rocking-Horse Winner” paints a highly unpleasant picture of a mother-son relationship that is far from ideal or healthy, whereby the mother exploits her son and his unrequited sexual attraction for her to upkeep an extravagant lifestyle. Hester, by the criteria laid out by Foster, undoubtedly qualifies as a literary vampire, a character thrives on the suffering of a prey, ultimately ending the life of the prey from their relentless exploitation. At the end of his chapter on vampires on page 16, Foster asserts that “My guess is that as long as people act toward their fellows in exploitative and selfish ways, the vampire will be with us”. Authors, at least, seems to be prolonging this archetype, but the social cynics can, with no doubt, find some real-life examples too.

Works Cited:

1. Foster, Thomas C. How to Read Literature like a Professor: a Lively and Entertaining Guide to Reading between the Lines.
2. Harper Perennial, 2017.Lawrence, David H. The Rocking Horse Winner. Hearst Communications, 1987.