Dissecting ‘The Rocking-Horse Winner’ by D.H. Lawrence
“There must be more money!”
First published in 1926, this tale of money and materialism has been affecting readers for almost a hundred years now. The power in the tale, in my view, is that it has money at the centre of a dysfunctional family (and a young boy trying to step up to fix things for Mum). And who hasn’t felt the sting of wanting to do something and not being able to, purely because of money?
As always (and this goes for all the tales we cover), there’s always time to read the tale first and join us for the dissection below. There’s nothing but spoilers ahead.
Join us
Here at Short Story Club, we read the very best short stories from the past, and the ones from the present that deserve more kudos. I’ll provide links to all stories for free, and then we get together to analyse what made them so effective (from a reader and writer point of view).
A cantor through the tale
One of the things I like to do when analysing a tale is to go through it as if I were reading it for the first time again, judging my reaction to certain parts. What made me stop and think? What hit me right in the chest? How was this done?
In the first paragraph, we are told that the ‘woman’ is down on her luck. She married poorly, and the love turned to dust. She is a cold mother, who doesn’t know how to act around her children.
They looked at her coldly, as if they were finding fault with her.
This is all before we are told that the reason she feels unlucky is because of money. She doesn’t have the money behind her to keep up with her lavish lifestyle, yet she refuses to let it go.
They lived in a pleasant house, with a garden, and they had discreet servants, and felt themselves superior to anyone in the neighbourhood.
My immediate reaction when reading this is here we have a woman in a situation where she thinks that nothing is her fault. Her luck has run out, and it’s everyone else’s fault. She is always stressing about the grinding sense of the shortage of money.
We are introduced to Paul, the young lad and main character of the story (although we bounce around different viewpoints from time to time). He has all sorts of questions about what luck is, why isn’t Dad lucky? etc.
“I started it for mother. She said she had no luck, because father is unlucky, so I thought if I was lucky, it might stop whispering.”
And so, we are thrust into the main action of the story. The very house itself seems to whisper to Paul that there must be something done about this lack of money/luck. And the heart of the story is in his want simply to make his mother happy again, bring luck back to the family.
He starts betting the horses and somehow is able to pick a winner most of the time. By the time the uncle gets in on it, they have quite the pot of money.
But this money doesn’t fix the problems. It is quickly consumed by the mother and so there must be more money. More and more. And the house goes frantic with it. We really feel the pressure being laid at Paul’s feet here as he steps up to be the man of the house (the father is very absent in this tale).
And so, he feels more and more pressured, and he rides his mystical rocking-horse until he is in a fever and dies. All while desperately seeking an end to their money woes.
The eyes have it
The child had never been to a race-meeting before, and his eyes were blue fire.
Paul’s eyes are mentioned constantly throughout the story. Why all this focus on the eyes?
For me, the effect of this is the direct connection with ‘seeing’ things he shouldn’t be able to see when he rides his horse with no name. As we read all these descriptions, we’re drawn back to the fact that the characters all react to those blue eyes. They startle. It’s a nice touch (perhaps slightly overcooked imo) and serves a purpose of making him seem more than a typical boy. He has a mystical ability and gives the adults pause.
The boy watched him with big blue eyes, that had an uncanny cold fire in them, and he said never a word.
For all this seeing, though, he doesn’t see his mum and his family situation for what it is. How could he, he’s only a little boy, and when he dies, we feel it all the more because of how hard he tried to step up.
The house
Now, this isn’t a horror tale (least not a purebred one, that is), but what keeps this story on the most-impactful-horror-stories-ever-written lists is the house and the speculative nature of the horse.
The house whispering at them, particularly young Paul to set him into motion, is what makes this tale a riveting read, imo. The way the house whispers that there must be more money! And then, later in the tale when Paul brings plenty of money in, instead of being sated, the house goes into frantic overdrive.
And this echoes the pressure we put on ourselves. We need money to get by. If we’re lucky enough, we earn it. But then life comes along with its big shiny things, which require more money. So, there needs to be more money. And then, you might find yourself in a situation where you can’t afford to earn less money than you currently do or everything you’ve built will be ruined. An income must be sustained.
“There must be more money! Oh-h-h! There must be more money! Oh, now, now-w! now-w-w — there must be more money! — more than ever! More than ever!”
That’s what makes this tale powerful for me. The house literally demands more like a mad chorus of frogs. If this family lived within its means, it would be healthier, happier, less focused on material things. A message we (I) could do with reminding from time to time.
Gambling and materialism
Of course, this story is also heavily about the draw of gambling, believing yourself lucky and blessed, and then losing yourself and what’s important in the process.
Paul is not so much focused on materialism himself, only wanting his mum to be happy and see that he is lucky (where his dad isn’t). He’s stepping up into a role he never asked for. But it’s her focus on the house and the lifestyle she dreams of that keeps him going. But, even when he hands her five grand, she doesn’t seem happy. She only pays off debts and goes about dreaming of more.
And is the voice of the house the voice of the mother shining through with its desperation? Perhaps.
What did you make of this tale? As always, there are no right or wrong answers, and you don’t have to blether on as much as I have!
The house really scare me!! I think the emphasis on the boy's eyes reveals a lot about his true nature. Because the color blue is associated with cold, like his mother treated him, and with sadness over a lack of money or luck. It's also associated with confidence, like the boy knowing the winning horse, and with the mystical. And of course the money is never enough when exist the wish of having more. The most sad part is appear to me that nobody really loved the boy.
Well done. As always. Myself, being occasionally inclined toward the macabre peeking out through seemingly ordinary situations, I wondered if the mother's insatiable lust for prestige and status based entirely on money, had actually been made incarnate in the house; if the house itself, though inanimate, had become impregnated by the spiritual essence of greed, concentrated over the years, into a single essence which 'haunted' the house itself. Just as lust in whatever form it takes, can never be satisfied, always urging, then demanding, the person so obsessed, to go farther and farther into a never ending spiral - so did the spiritual presence never find satisfaction even though it happily took the sacrifice of a heartbroken child.
I realize, of course, that I seem to have omitted the special portion of the tale dealing with the boy's uncanny and perhaps supernatural insight into the racing world. I think - although I do not have any inkling that the author intended it - that the rocking horse had little to do with things, it was only a mechanism through which the boy entered a trance state, a state in which his psychic gift ( if it was a gift indeed ) was able to manifest, in the way that some mystics used chanted words or phrases to quiet the rational, active part of the mind and allow whatever input they seek from whatever source, to more freely enter their consciousness. Anyway- that is just my musing. Overall, a very interesting, if depressing. story.