Money For Love: A Marxist Analysis Money has the power to defeat all other meaningful values a human being may hold. In D.H. Lawrence’s “The Rocking Horse Winner,” a family lives by capitalist means and the substitution of money for love leads to an ultimate despondency in which swells into a tragedy. The idea of luck and money consumes the minds of Paul and his mother, creating a constant tension lingering in the household and eliminating the possibility of achieving absolute love and happiness. Hester is a beautiful mother who lived an early privileged life, but she has no luck. Hester’s struggle for luck and wealth takes away from her ability to love yet the most important people in her life: her husband and children. “She married for love, and the love turned to dust. She had bonny children, yet she felt they had been thrust upon her, and she could not love them” (Lawrence 1). Her heart is hard and bitter due to the life she used to envision for herself. This vision she obtains is the main obstacle holding her from being able to love. Her husband and even her children feel that her love for them is forced. Even though Hester believes she is hiding her bitterness, and is trying to act as a loving mother, the damage done to the family is greater than she realizes. Whenever the family obtained money, Hester would proceed to put it to waste in order to fulfill her materialistic desires, and "although they lived in style they felt always an anxiety in the house. There was never enough money" (Lawrence 1). The entire family hears the house whisper “There must be more money! There must be more money!” which serves as a metaphor for the unspoken messages that fill their home and of which shape their family. Hester believes that she does not love her children, but does not realize that she is struggling to resist the oppression of capitalist patriarchy. Her love is proven to be existent when she sees her son collapse and “all her tormented motherhood flood[ed] upon her,” yet she suppresses her feelings, thus disallowing for her to realize this love (Lawrence 6). Hester’s children hear the whispering everyday, and Paul is greatly affected by this. Paul approaches his mother about the whispering in the house, and she begins to elaborate the difference between being born lucky and being born rich, explaining that their family is not rich because none of them were born lucky. Paul takes this talk to heart, becomes angered by his mother’s disbelief in him; so he decides he must prove his luck to her. He is desperate for his mother’s love and feels this is the only way to gain it. He becomes so enthralled with this goal of luck, to the point of obsession, that he "[goes] off by himself, vaguely, in a childish way seeking for the clue to ‘luck’...he would sit on his big rocking-horse, charging madly into space," losing all sense of reality (Lawrence 3). Paul suddenly transforms from a child into a mad man. His obsession eventually leads him to his death after a severe seizure, and only then does his mother begin to feel love for her son. The irony lies within the situation of Paul’s persistency in obtaining luck, and once finally obtaining it, kills him. Paul’s final words were “I am lucky!” which signifies his belief in finally gaining his mother’s love. He believes that all of the luck and money from the horse races will bring happiness to his mom at once, yet he fails to realize that his mother will never be satisfied due to the deceptive world she locks herself in. It is inevitable that Hester will continue with her money craving even after her son is gone. This strongly exemplifies how overpowering money can truly be. Materialistic views on life can consume one entirely and have the ability and likeliness of resulting in ultimate disaster. Paul, just a child, lost his life in the midst of a battle for luck and lucre.
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