The Rocking-Horse Winner

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"The Rocking-Horse Winner" is a short story by D. H. Lawrence. It was first published in July 1926 and subsequently appeared in the first volume of Lawrence's collected short stories.

[edit] Summary

The story describes a young middle-class Englishwoman who "had no luck". Married, with a young family, outwardly successful, she is haunted by inward failings. The family's social position and lifestyle exceed their income. Financial worries, though unspoken, permeate the household. The children, her son Paul and two younger sisters, hear a persistent whisper: "there must be more money!" When Paul asks why they are the "poor members of the family" his mother tells him that it is because his father is unlucky and that she must be unlucky too, to have married an unlucky husband.

To be lucky becomes Paul's only motivation in his small life. Though he has nearly outgrown his rocking-horse, he begins to ride it wildly, demanding that it take him "to where there is luck!" Paul's uncle, Oscar Cresswell, while visiting one day asks Paul the name of his horse. He reluctantly answers that the horse has no name, or rather that "he has different names. He was called Sansovino last week." The uncle is aware that Sansovino was the winner of the Ascot the previous week. He asks Paul's mother how Paul knows the name of a racehorse and she tells him that Bassett, the gardener, Cresswell's former batman, talks with him about racing.

Questioning Bassett and then Paul, Cresswell learns that they have been betting on horse races and that Paul has won three hundred pounds, starting with a ten shilling stake. Paul believes that he and Bassett are lucky and, since his uncle gave Paul the original ten shillings, he must be lucky too. Bassett confirms Paul's story and attributes their success to Paul's ability to "know" the winners of upcoming races. At first incredulous, Cresswell puts Paul's ability to the test. Paul picks the winners of several more races, some of them long shots, and Paul has accumulated a considerable sum (as have Bassett, and now Cresswell).

Paul confides to his uncle that he does this hoping to "stop the whispering". They arrange to give his mother a gift of five thousand pounds, but the gift only results in more lavish spending and increased whispering. Disappointed, Paul tries harder than ever to be lucky, and we learn that his secret is to ride his rocking-horse until he "knows". As the Derby (presumably the Epsom Derby) approaches, Paul is determined to learn the winner. To the household, Paul appears to be going crazy. His mother, worried, wants to take him to the sea-shore for a vacation, but he persuades her not to leave until after the Derby. Two days before the race, she hears him late at night and enters his room as he falls from the horse and screams "in a powerful, strange voice. 'It's Malabar!'"

Paul falls unconscious and remains ill through the day of the Derby. Informed by Cresswell, Bassett has placed Paul's bet on Malabar, at fourteen to one. When he is informed by Bassett that he now has eighty thousand pounds, Paul says to his mother:

"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!"

"No, you never did," said his mother.

But the boy died in the night.

[edit] Dramatizations

The story has been dramatized on film four times: in 1950, 1983, 1997, and 2002.

[edit] Standard edition

The Woman who Rode Away and Other Stories (1928) edited by Dieter Mehl and Christa Jansohn, Cambridge University Press, 1995,pp 230-243, ISBN 0-521-22270-2