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Disconteentment In D. H. Lawrence's The Rocking Horse

Decent Essays

Everyone wants to know one questions: What is the source of happiness? Authors often use themes of discontentment to contrast the need for contentment. D. H. Lawrence, in his short story “The Rocking Horse Winner”, shows that the financial discontentment of the mother drives her son to pursue a path to gain fortune, but leads to his madness and eventual demise. Similarly, Guy de Maupassant in his short story, “The Necklace”, introduces Mathilde, who despises her social and economic standing to the detriment of both herself and her husband. Finally, in the short story “The Monkey’s Paw, W.W. Jacobs shows how a relatively happy family can be ruined when they wish for more. These authors are trying to illuminate to the reader that discontentment leads to misery. In the Rocking horse, the mother, who “started with all the advantages," is dissatisfied with her finances and desires her social standing above all. The fact that she “started” implies that she no longer has the advantages. Because of her want for more money, she cannot focus on the family that she has and grows distant from them as illustrated when it is said that “Everybody else said of her that she’s such a good mother. She adores her children. Only she herself and her children themselves knew it was not so.” Her son, Paul, wants to help her and becomes fanatical about finding the winner of the races to earn money. His mother finds him “madly surging on the rocking horse… and his eyes blazed at her for one

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