rocking horse winner
"The Rocking-Horse Winner" opens with the distant, singsong voice of a fairy tale: "There was a woman who was beautiful, who started with all the advantages, yet she had no luck." So begins an ancient tale. A brave young boy is challenged by his true love. He rides off into a dreamland where he struggles and succeeds at attaining secret knowledge. He brings the secret knowledge back and with it wins treasure houses of gold, giving all to his love. Undercutting this fairy tale, however, is another, which forms a grotesque shadow, a nightmare counter to the wish fulfillment narrative. The "true love" of the brave young boy is his cold-hearted mother. The quest he has embarked on is hopeless, for every success brings a new and greater trial. Like the exhausted and terrified daughter in Rumplestitlskin, this son is perpetually set the task of spinning more gold. In this tale, no magical dwarf comes to the child's aid; the boy finally spins himself out, dropping dead on his journey!, his eyes turned to stone. Like all good fairy tales, this one has several complementary levels of reference: social, familial, psychological. On the social level, the tale reads as a satire on the equation of money, love, luck, and happiness. The target
On a familial level, the tale dramatizes an idea implied as early as Sons and Lovers but overtly stated only in a late autobiographical fragment and these last tales. The idea is that mothers shape their sons into the desirable opposite of their husbands. Whatever they are powerless to prevent or alter in their mates, mothers will seek to prevent or alter in their sons. In "The Rocking-Horse Winner," the woman cannot alter her husband's ineffectuality. She herself tries to be effective in the world of commerce and money, but she fails, partly because of the lack of opportunities available to her. So she turns unconsciously to her son. In this reading, Gdog's death owes less to the specific character of his mother's demands and more to the strength of those demands. He dies -- cannot live, cannot grow and flourish -- partly because he is too good a son, and she is a woman with unbounded desires and no way to work directly toward their gratification. In Sons and Lovers, the youn! If one takes these three levels of reference and seeks out their complementarity, one sees the rich logic of the tale. The money ethic, the devouring of sons by mothers, and the preference for masturbation are parallel in cause and result. All develop and respect only the kind of knowledge that will increase one's capacity to control. For example, like any money-maker, Gdog learns about the horses only to manipulate his e
Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 947
Approximate Pages = 4 (250 words per page double spaced)
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