Lawrence’s “The Rocking Horse Winner” 

“His eyes blazed at her for one strange and senseless second, as he ceased urging his wooden horse. Then he fell with a crash to the ground, and she, all her tormented motherhood upon her, rushed to gather him up” (Lawrence 15). 

This quote from “The Rocking Horse Winner” is important because it demonstrates Hester’s sudden realization of her motherly care for Paul, for the very first time leading towards Paul’s death. Throughout Paul’s childhood, he experiences a sense of negligence from his mother, as Hester solely cares about the social image she’s trying to maintain as a wealthy family instead of her actual family. Paul’s desperation for her mother’s attention causes him to participate in adult-like activities (such as gambling), as he gradually shifts into an adult-like mindset following “his eyes blaze[ing]” (Lawrence 15) with greed and anguish; eventually ruining, as Freud would like to call, the development of his “sexual instinct” (Freud 2228), which is evident by his “infantile fixation” (Freud 2231) on his wooden horse and the use of the motif, luck, to continue riding his horse. In hindsight, Lawrence depicted this moment to be tragic and melancholic, illustrating the pale and dark aesthetic through the following portrait. As Paul proceeds to die on his mother’s hands yelling “‘Malabar! It’s Malabar’”(Lawrence 15), one can discern that Paul’s worth is nothing more than monetary value.   

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