Family is less of what one is born into and more what one chooses. Most times, a person will choose their biological family as their emotional family as they provide sufficient support to the person. However, should this support not be sufficient, a person will seek out love from other sources: their friends, strangers, extended family. A child will find people that reinforce them, but the hole left from being unable to have the support of their original family will leave a mark, and they will find other means to get that love and support. In the short story The Rocking Horse Winner, D.H. Lawrence presents the idea that Paul’s search for luck is based on his confusion between luck and love, and that this confusion is what eventually leads to
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Hester once loved her husband, lost that love, and now is unable to love her children, and she must reconcile that somehow in her mind. Paul and the other children know that their mother is incapable of love, they “read it in each others eyes” (Lawrence 408). Due to this, when Hester tells her son that the reason they are poor is due to the fact that his “father has no luck” (Lawrence 409), she cements the idea in his young mind that luck is the factor that intertwines love and money. So Paul, on his rocking horse, begins his search for luck. Horses, in western literature, are a representation of not only death, but luck, and they ironically lead him on his quest for luck but also bring him to death. He bets on horse races, using his strange, perhaps supernatural knowledge of which horse will win, to ensure that he will win enough money to stop the house whispering. Paul constantly hears the family’s struggle to maintain their false social status as a whispering throughout the house, “there must be more money” (Lawrence 415), it says, but even when he gifts his mother five thousand pounds for her birthday the whispering only gets worse, now “trill[ing] and scream[ing] in a sort of ecstasy” (Lawrence 415) that now the money is needed “more than ever! More than ever!” (Lawrence 415). This incessant whispering drives Paul mad, and only fuels his growing gambling addiction. Everything comes to a head when, after being unable to predict the winner of the Grand National Derby, he reverts back to the rocking horse. He finds the winner there, but the force of it wounds him somehow, and he collapses into a coma. This penultimate moment of his search for luck, and the eventual realization that he was right, and has finally brought true wealth to the house brings Hester’s “tortured motherhood flooding upon her” (Lawrence 417), and she finally loves him. Paul achieves his
Hester once loved her husband, lost that love, and now is unable to love her children, and she must reconcile that somehow in her mind. Paul and the other children know that their mother is incapable of love, they “read it in each others eyes” (Lawrence 408). Due to this, when Hester tells her son that the reason they are poor is due to the fact that his “father has no luck” (Lawrence 409), she cements the idea in his young mind that luck is the factor that intertwines love and money. So Paul, on his rocking horse, begins his search for luck. Horses, in western literature, are a representation of not only death, but luck, and they ironically lead him on his quest for luck but also bring him to death. He bets on horse races, using his strange, perhaps supernatural knowledge of which horse will win, to ensure that he will win enough money to stop the house whispering. Paul constantly hears the family’s struggle to maintain their false social status as a whispering throughout the house, “there must be more money” (Lawrence 415), it says, but even when he gifts his mother five thousand pounds for her birthday the whispering only gets worse, now “trill[ing] and scream[ing] in a sort of ecstasy” (Lawrence 415) that now the money is needed “more than ever! More than ever!” (Lawrence 415). This incessant whispering drives Paul mad, and only fuels his growing gambling addiction. Everything comes to a head when, after being unable to predict the winner of the Grand National Derby, he reverts back to the rocking horse. He finds the winner there, but the force of it wounds him somehow, and he collapses into a coma. This penultimate moment of his search for luck, and the eventual realization that he was right, and has finally brought true wealth to the house brings Hester’s “tortured motherhood flooding upon her” (Lawrence 417), and she finally loves him. Paul achieves his