Sex Theme Of The Rocking Horse Winner example essay topic

Lawrence, Freud, and Sex "The Rocking-Horse Winner", written by a great mind, D.H. Lawrence, carries a hidden theme influenced by Sigmund Freud. The theme relates to the sexual philosophy of Freud, and is supported by short story critics Kaplan and Snodgrass. D.H. Lawrence emphasized the sexual theme in this writing. He discovered that other writers had not written much about sex and so he decided to do so. This is shown clearly in "The Rocking-Horse Winner". According to Freud, sex is pleasurable; the desire for sexual pleasure is one of the oldest and most basic urges that all humans feel.

However, humans can't just have sex all the time. If we did, we would never get any work done. So we have to sublimate most of our desires for sexual pleasure, and turn that sexual energy into something else, like writing a paper. Freud also believes in stages of psychosexual development: oral, anal, and phallic. The one that Lawrence places Paul in is the phallic stage. The phallic stage is the "masturbation stage" which ends up to the gateway to adult sexuality.

However, Paul is imprisoned within this stage, and his development therefore never progresses beyond this stage. "The Rocking-Horse Winner" portrays the doomed efforts of a yong boy, Paul, to bring luck to his mother. This luck is based on the lack of and constant feuding over money. Lawrence uses the elements of love and money to show the death-dealing consequences of the substitution of money for love. The major theme of this short story is an "indictment of materialism" and "strong demonstration of the incompatibility of the love of money and the love of human begins". (Kaplan 1972) According to Kaplan, Paul, who should feel secure and stable in his mother's love so he could go and seek outside relationships and "embark on his own sexual course (Kaplan 1972) ", is developmentally challenged in his own personal sexual growth.

In many ways Paul can be compared to Oedipus in that he is trying to take the empty space left by his father; therefore, he is stuck in an "Oedipal" bind with his mother. Paul "regresses from adolescent sexuality into sexual infantilism. (Kaplan 1972) " Lawrence also uses Freud's beliefs in both the title, "The Rocking-Horse Winner" but also more importantly in the text of the story. According to Sigmund Freud, a horse is the symbol of a male's sexual power, but Paul rides a rocking horse, an activity which, "in its frenzy and isolation (Kaplan 1972) ", suggests masturbation rather than the fulfillment of his sexual needs with an outside relationship.

Snodgrass, a Pulitzer Prize-winning American poet, says that "The Rocking-Horse Winner" seems the perfect story by the least meticulous of serious writers. Snodgrass sees the family's problems as faults. The first fault is believed to be with the mother. The story starts: There was a woman who was beautiful, who started with all the advantages, yet she had no luck.

She married for love, and the love turned to dust. She had boney children, yet she felt they had been thrust upon her, and she could not love them... at the center of her heart was a hard little place that could not feel love, not for anybody. (1) Although the mother's problems are really never made clear, one thing known is the verb thrust is "shrewdly" chosen and placed to show the mother's sexual dissatisfaction. Snodgrass believes that with the father's withdrawal, the gap left encourages Paul in a natural Oedipal urge to replace him, and money becomes the medium of that replacement. The money in the story should be taken literally, buy it is also the symbolic substitute for love and affection, and ultimately for sperm.

"We know that money is not, to Paul, a good in itself-it is only a way to win his mother's affection, 'compel her attention,' show her that he is lucky though his father is not. (Snodgrass 207) " Another sign of Freud's presence is the usage of the psychology of color in this short story. Green is used in psychology to represent fertility. Dark green is used to represent masculine, conservative, and implies wealth.

This is shown in "The Rocking-Horse Winner" when Lawrence writes She switched on the light, and saw her son, in his green pyjamas, surging on the rocking-horse. The blaze of light suddenly lit him up, as he urged the wooden horse, and lit her up, as she stood, blonde, in her dress of pale green and crystal, in the doorway. (8) Blue is also used in "The Rocking-Horse Winner". There are descriptions of Paul's eyes as uncanny blue and that it had an "uncanny cold fire in them" (7). In color psychology, Blue is used to show the imagination. Paul's blue eyes showed fire, which portrays a oxymoron of cold fire.

Red is a very important color in psychology. It is used to represent "love, passion, wealth, mental energy, and aggression. (TP OF 1) " Lawrence uses his knowledge in the psychology of colors to represent the moods and settings of "The Rocking-Horse Winner". Lawrence uses the different elements of Freudian psychology to provide the reader with an opportunity for escape, to augment his or hers sense of reality. In all, the story is a great study in the use of symbolism to show "the death-dealing consequences of the substitution of money for love. (Kaplan 1973) " Lawrence's extensive knowledge of Sigmund Freud's psychology allowed him to write "The Rocking-Horse Winner.".