The Rocking-Horse Winner

The big picture of "The Rocking-Horse Winner" is that, from the standpoint of realism its events lack resemblance to the possible world. That is, no one has ever sat on a rocking horse and caught brain fever that predicted the results of horse races. Nor has the long arm of coincidence ever caught a winning streak of the kind described in "The Rocking-Horse Winner," even if the story's internal probabilities come down to earth by way of Bassett's seasoned handicapping skills. On the other hand, countless children have been so psychologically abused by self- or money-obsessed parents that they have gone beyond the limits of fantasy in order to be loved.

In "The Rocking-Horse Winner," the element of fantasy operates in Paul's real life more or less in the manner of dream logic and becomes the logical foundation of the story. For that reason the story as a whole is symbolic and logical only in its own terms. However, it also touches on the world of ordinary logic and psychology. The dream world becomes manifest as the family's experience, but even as the dream comes true, it operates as an exaggerated illustration of profoundly flawed parental

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r displaces them with it. The Freudian view of personality and of social humankind has conflict as the basic situation of personality, with love in opposition to civilization and women in opposition to men in a dynamic way. The conflict might be resolved (or almost resolved) to the degree eros fosters sensual and/or "aim-inhibited" love, which involves the creation of families on one hand and society on the other. Still, the conflict situation is foundational: [I]n the course of development the relation of love to civilization loses its unambiguity. On the one hand love comes into opposition to the interests of civilization; on the other, civilization threatens love with substantial restrictions. . . . [W]omen soon come into opposition to civilization and display their retarding and restraining influence--those very women who, in the beginning, laid the foundations of civilization by the claims of their love (50). Such a tension is at work in "The Rocking-Horse Winner," though Lawrence works out the conflict differently than Freud's discussion suggests. In "The Rocking-Horse Winner," the interests of civilization are figured as vulgar preoccupation with money that has threatened and restricted eros. Further, far from retarding
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Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 1645
Approximate Pages = 7 (250 words per page)

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