D.H. Lawrence wrote and published the majority of his literary works—including “The Rocking-Horse Winner”—during the Modernist period in the 1910s and 1920s. Lawrence and his fellow modernist writers used their art to respond to the overwhelming changes brought about by modern industrialism, technological advancement, and political turmoil.
Lawrence's writing style is simple. His prose is free of embellishment, much like the writing of his contemporary, Ernest Hemingway. His sentences are often short and more or less straightforward. Furthermore, he refrains from using inflated, fancy, or overly technical language in his writing:
[Paul] only glared down on [his sister and the nurse] in silence. Nurse gave him up. She could make nothing of him. Anyhow he was growing beyond her.
This simple style can be contrasted with the more grandiose writing of the Victorian era, standing in stark contrast to the more long-winded approach of writers like Charles Dickens, Thomas Hardy, or the Brontë sisters.
By using simple prose, the existential horror and anxieties brought about by the modern era can shine through. Though this particular style of modernist writing may seem "less nuanced" on the surface than the stream-of-consciousness style practiced by Virginia Woolf and James Joyce, the simpler prose merely requires that one read more slowly in order to delve beneath the surface of Lawrence's words to grasp the true nuance of his message.
