In D. H. Lawrence's "The Rocking-Horse Winner," we have two different views of the world. Paul's magical world allows him to rock on his horse and he is clairvoyant in being able to pick the winners at the race track. This is for him a gift and he does not attach any specific value to the money that has been won. He would do it without making the money, as this is just an ability that he has that can't be explained. It is how he expresses himself as a child.
His mother's world is very different from Paul's. She is materialistic and unloving. Her idea of luck is much more clearly defined in terms of money: "'Is luck money, mother?' he asked rather timidly. 'No, Paulo. Not quite. It's what causes you to have money'" (Lawrence 149). For the mother, everything leads to money and she measures all her luck and success by it.
Her character is set up immediately by Lawrence with a skill toward detail: "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. She had bonny children, yet she felt they had been thrust upon her, and she could not love them" (Lawrence 147).
As character development, this would have been enough to have shown the woman's attitude toward her offspring. But Lawrence makes an interesting addition that cuts like a knife. It shows definitely that the world of Paul and the world of his mother do not really meet. "Everybody else said of her: 'She is such a good mother She adores her children.' Only she herself, and her children themselves, knew it was not so. They read it in each other's eyes" (Lawrence 147).
This image of the eyes shows that there is a drastic difference between mother and children that even the children can sense at a young age. She is bitter because the father is so unlucky: he is not able to make lots and lots of money. Establishing early on that the mother's values have been corrupted by material...