D.H. Lawrence's 'British Family' - Mother & Son - Research Paper Example

Education and proficiency in specialized arts were the only way to attain a high social position which is reflected in Lawrence’s own life (Spartacus). His father was an illiterate coal miner while his mother was fairly educated. The mother therefore nursed ambitions for her children and left no stone unturned in procuring a better education for them. The emotions and sentiments to which Lawrence must have been exposed during his childhood are therefore reflected in the structure of his short story entitled ‘The Rocking-Horse Winner’.

In this short story, the relationship as depicted by Lawrence between the mother, Hester and her son, Paul shows how social pressures can rob true love from such a sacrosanct biological bond. The mother allows her aspiration for riches and better social status override the true love for her children. Though leading a fair lifestyle, Hester has allowed unhappiness to creep into her household by building up an aura where the requirement of more ‘money’ always haunts the family. . In her pursuit for more money she works as an artist in a studio but despite her best endeavors she fails to attain the level of success she desires although other artists in the business are doing so.

She expresses her frustration during a conversation with Paul in which her obsession with the idea of ‘luck’ gets transferred into the child’s psyche. Paul, therefore starts believing that only good luck was the answer to all his problems and starts looking for it in and around the house and also by asking questions related to luck from his supposedly ‘lucky’ Uncle Oscar Cresswell, and the family gardener, Bassett. Paul gets obsessed with the idea of being lucky and getting rich, which he foresees as the solution to the family’s misfortunes.

He starts believing that once he is rich, he can give money to his mother which would make her happy. Subconsciously, it is true love that he actually desires from his mother, the need for which was always felt by him as well as his siblings. D.H. Lawrence, in this story, has tried to depict a typical British family of that era which had forgotten the true meaning of family life in a bourgeois and vain society. Social standing and money preoccupied the minds of the average citizen as they tried to attain a false sense of superiority by acquiring material wealth.

In this fruitless race, mothers’ forgot to attend to the emotional needs of their children while their husbands’ toiled at work. In Paul’s family, the situation has been portrayed very clearly by the author. The emotional lacuna that exists in Paul’s psyche leads him to a single obsession of getting lucky which he tries to find in an inanimate object, the rocking horse