The Horse-Dealer’s Daughter Summary & Analysis

Here the story makes explicit Joe’s identification with the horses: they are “almost like his own body to him.” Like them, he is full of vitality, physical prowess, and stupidity. The comparison between Joe marrying and getting a job with the idea of a horse “go[ing] into harness” implies that humans are often forced to channel their own animalistic instincts into restrictive social institutions like marriage.

Here the story continues to compare human characters to animals, not only the stupid Joe but the self-controlled Fred Henry. By insisting that the brothers are animals, the story emphasizes their primal survival instinct in the face of disaster. In contrast to the vivacious and talkative brothers, Mabel remains stubbornly silent, almost corpselike. Her brothers’ repeated attempts to bully her into staying with Lucy or getting a job suggest that, unlike them, Mabel does not have definite plans for the future.

Here the story emphasizes that Joe has somewhere to go, whereas Mabel does not. In addition, the story insists on Joe’s animal nature by once again comparing him to a horse.

This passage illustrates how few options Mabel seems to have as a formerly upper-class but now impoverished woman: either she can live as a dependent in someone else’s household, or she can become homeless. Her brothers’ demands on her and their lack of compassion suggest that, as men, they do not fully understand her plight.

This passage suggests an odd relationship in the story between professionalism and the physical body. Joe implies that doctors shouldn’t get sick, as if professional-class people should conquer and control their bodies in a way that working-class people don’t—especially for people whose job it is to help others stay healthy. Joe’s proud declaration that he has “never been patient to no flaming doctor,” meanwhile, suggests there is something shameful about illness, as if having a body that undergoes ordinary physical experiences like sickness would be somehow humiliating.

This brief interaction, in which Fergusson watches Mabel but doesn’t speak to her, hints that he finds her interesting but for some reason won’t openly express that interest.

This passage again emphasizes that the brothers have plans and places to go: Malcolm is taking a train somewhere, while Joe is taking a carriage. By contrast, their sister Mabel seems to have no plans and nowhere to go.

Clearly, the family’s economic ruin has put constraints on the brothers’ behavior. Fred Henry and the others have “orders” to vacate their own house. Yet Fred Henry, like Joe and Malcolm, has somewhere to go: Northampton, in Fred Henry’s case. Mabel, a woman without a husband, is the only sibling without plans or prospects.

Fergusson’s close observation of Mabel reveals his interest in her, as does her ability to unsettle him. Yet the formal way he addresses her—"Miss Pervin”—reminds the reader that as an unmarried man and an unmarried woman of this time, Fergusson and Mabel have social constraints placed on their behavior toward one another. Meanwhile, Fred Henry’s exasperation with Mabel and the fact that he calls her a “bitch” show both his worry and his sexist contempt for her.   

Yet again, the story hammers home that men have greater freedom in the face of economic ruin than women do. After fighting with his sister about her uncertain future, Fred Henry can simply turn around and make plans to go out with his friend—probably to a pub, as the name “the Moon and Stars” suggests. By contrast, no one has any idea what Mabel will do or what will happen to her.

Here the story associates the successful trade in horses—which symbolize the primal instinct to survive and fulfill basic needs—with having “no education,” a detail implying that working-class jobs breed vitality whereas professional-class jobs suppress vitality. Notably, Joseph Pervin married the second time for economic security, just like his oldest son Joe is planning to do; this pattern suggests that in the world of the story, marriage is not about sex or romance but about money and stability.

This passage reveals the extent of Mabel’s problems. Just as the story has repeatedly compared Mabel’s brothers to animals, so her brothers have repeatedly compared her to an animal—she, too, has an animalistic instinct to survive and fulfill her desires. Yet unlike her brothers, who have outlets for their vitality in work, travel, and friends, Mabel has no friends and only two occupations: church and housekeeping. Moreover, the family’s sudden economic ruin has taken away the money that reconciled her to her “brutal and coarse” environment; soon it will take away her occupation of housekeeping as well.

Mabel, who lacks good opportunities to thrive and support herself, resolves to indulge her pride and to stop “demean[ing] herself” with poverty. The story does not specify, at this point, how Mabel will escape poverty; ominously, however, Mabel associates her escape with growing closer to her dead mother.

That Mabel feels invisible in the churchyard, despite her actual visibility, suggests that the churchyard exists in a world separate from the rest of the town—the “world of death.” The enjoyment that Mabel finds in occupying the graveyard and the sensual care that she lavishes on her mother’s gravestone show how, in the absence of outlets such as employment, friendship, or love, she is redirecting her life instinct toward death.

Fergusson’s perception that Mabel exists in “another world” underscores her attraction to and participation in the “world of death” that she associates with her beloved mother. That Fergusson and Mabel immediately look away from one another after their eyes meet hints both at their attraction to one another and their embarrassment (even shame) at their own sexual desires. Yet Fergusson’s resurgence of “life” after seeing Mabel, the object of his attraction, illustrates how sexuality in the story is a life-affirming force.

Like Mabel, Fergusson is socially isolated—the Pervins, who are the only people he sees socially, are about to vacate their home—but unlike Mabel, Fergusson has another outlet: the house calls he makes for his patients. The fact that Fergusson finds his medical work fatiguing suggests that intellectual labor is not a source of vitality—at least not in the same way that his working-class patients find vitality in physical labor.

Notably, in Ferguson’s perception, Mabel’s suicide attempt is not a “voluntary activity.” It’s not something that she chooses freely in her right mind but rather something she is compelled to do. This language of compulsion implies that Mabel’s suicide attempt is instinctive—a perversion of her life instinct into a death instinct due to a lack of other outlets.

By describing the pond as cold and nasty-smelling, the story implicitly compares it to a corpse—which is appropriate, since Mabel tries to use it to end her life.

In contrast with the medial busywork that Fergusson has been performing, rescuing Mabel requires great physical exertion—which makes sense, since the story associates physical labor with vitality. By exerting himself in this way, then, Fergusson ends up saving Mabel’s life, thus cementing the relationship between physical labor and life itself. Furthermore, Fergusson now touches Mabel, cleans her, and carries her, and his actions suggest a new intimacy between them.

Despite tending to Mabel’s body intimately, Fergusson strips and bundles Mabel in a decisive and professional way, which suggests that he feels like he’s performing his role as a doctor while saving her life. And yet, when he takes a drink of whiskey before giving some to Mabel, he betrays that the experience in the pond has shaken him.

Echoing the earlier moment in the story when Fergusson called Mabel “Miss Pervin,” Mabel now calls Fergusson by his title and last name: “Dr. Fergusson.” This detail illustrates that Mabel, unaware of what she has done or how Fergusson has saved her, still places Fergusson at a social distance. Her amnesia about her suicide attempt emphasizes that a powerful death instinct—rather than a rational calculation—was what compelled her to wade into the pond. Fergusson, meanwhile, subconsciously feels “life” returning to him when they look at each other, which hints at his sexual attraction to Mabel and the link between sexuality and a sense of human vitality (that is, a desire to live and thrive).    

Fergusson seems to have rescued Mabel not only from drowning but from the temporary insanity that her death instinct brought on. This fact implies that even one outlet—a single gesture of care from and connection with another living human—is enough to revive Mabel’s will to survive. The passage contrasts Fergusson’s preoccupation with getting dry clothes, a sign of social discomfort with the unusual situation, and “another desire” that the story does not name. Fergusson’s feeling that Mabel is somehow keeping him in the room suggests that what the story calls “another desire” is in fact his sexual desire for her. That this sexual desire stops Fergusson shivering despite the deathly pond water in his clothes once again highlights the connections the story makes between sex, warmth, and vitality.

Although the story has previously implied that Mabel walked into the pond because she felt an irrational pull toward death, she now denies that her suicide attempt was foolish. The story thus seems to suggest that even if Mabel was acting instinctively when she tried to kill herself, she correctly identified reasons for despair in her life as an impoverished woman that Fergusson, as a man with more opportunities to support himself, doesn’t understand. Fergusson, meanwhile, is still struggling between his social instinct to change clothes and his sexual instinct (“the life of his body”) that wants to express his attraction to Mabel.

Fergusson had legitimate medical reasons for taking Mabel’s clothes off: he needed to get her warm after she nearly drowned in a very cold pond. His terror when Mabel notices her own nakedness reveals that, despite his legitimate reasons, he is also aware and ashamed of a sexual element at play in his interactions with Mabel. That Mabel stares at Fergusson with “lips parted” hints at her arousal; by asking Fergusson if he loves her, she makes the sexual element in their interactions explicit. Fergusson’s soul “melt[ing]” continues the story’s association of sexuality with warmth and life, in contrast to the deathly cold of the pond.

Mabel has completely changed in her behavior. In the beginning of the story, she was passive, silent, sullen, and obsessed with death. Now that she believes Fergusson loves her, she is active, talkative, “triumphant,” and “animal.” Mabel’s dramatic behavioral change highlights the importance in the story of having outlets for natural, animal instincts—once Mabel has even one potential outlet to fulfill her desires, she becomes a completely different person. At this point, Fergusson has not experienced a similar transformation: he still identifies with his socially constrained, professional role as a doctor, though his inability to resist Mabel’s advances hints at an inner conflict between his professional identity and his sexual attraction.  

The “light” in Mabel’s face again associates sexuality with life and warmth, ultimately contrasting the pond’s deathly cold. Fergusson’s “powerless” feeling when confronted with Mabel suggests that he experiences an irrational, instinctive sexual response. He enjoys touching Mabel’s shoulder and finds her expression “beautiful.” But because Fergusson resists loving Mabel, finding the idea “horrible,” the reader suspects that he’s ashamed of his own sexuality.

Because the story associates sex with life, Mabel gets a “look of death” on her face when she stops believing Fergusson loves and wants her. Suddenly, she no longer has an outlet for her sexual feelings, and her entire demeanor starts to deteriorate as a result. Still, the “hot tears” that she cries when Fergusson gives into his attraction to her represent the heat of life and sexuality that still burns inside her.    

Because Fergusson smells the deathly pond’s nasty odor just as Mabel pulls away from him, the reader connects death with the lovers’ separation. A “fathom” is a unit for measuring water’s depth, so the description of Mabel’s fearful expression as “unfathomable” implicitly compares her to deep water—that is, to the pond that almost killed them both. At this point, Fergusson is still afraid and ashamed of his and Mabel’s sexuality: her shining face frightens him and he “hardly want[s] it to be true” that he loves her. All the same, though, he now prefers Mabel to the figurative death of sexual repression.

Bizarrely, Fergusson believes that doctors shouldn’t feel love or lust. This passage connects to an earlier moment in the story when Joe mocked Fergusson for getting sick, apparently making the assumption that doctors shouldn’t get sick. Both moments illustrate the characters’ belief that professional-class people should somehow repress or escape their bodies. This belief partly explains Fergusson’s repressive shame about his own sexuality: he thinks that, as a doctor, he should control his body and not the other way around.

Up to this point, Fergusson has been ashamed of the sexual attraction between himself and Mabel, while Mabel has taken it as a source of vitality and triumph. Now the tables turn: while Fergusson wants to express his love, Mabel assumes a “dark look of shame” and, like Fergusson earlier, begins obsessing over getting them dry clothes. That Fergusson kisses Mabel “briefly” and angrily here foreshadows the trouble shame will cause the lovers.

The story has repeatedly hinted throughout Fergusson and Mabel’s interactions that he has always been attracted to her. However, he insists to himself that she was “nothing to him” until he declared his love for her and began thinking of her as a woman rather than a patient. This passage thus reveals Fergusson’s insistence on thinking of himself not as a human animal but as a doctor who remains untouched by his working-class patients’ sicknesses and lusts: it has become “his nature” to think of himself in this detached way. This ingrained habit further explains Fergusson’s shame at suddenly giving way to sexual desire.

Because Mabel tosses the clothes down to Fergusson rather than bringing them down herself, the reader suspects she is still ashamed and is hiding from him. Yet she also changes into a nice dress, which leads the reader to believe she is trying to impress him. Mabel is caught between wanting to hide from Fergusson and wanting him to look at her—between her shame at her own sexuality and her vital sexual desire. When Fergusson asks how he looks in his new clothes, the reader suspects that he is similarly self-conscious about his appearance in front of Mabel. That the characters are “shy” with each other shows how each feels desire and shame simultaneously.

Mabel’s hair smells nasty because it smells of pond water. The pond, which symbolizes death, makes another appearance here because Mabel fears that Fergusson “can’t want to love” her and thus that she will lose her outlet for her sexuality and vitality. Because Mabel repeatedly uses the word “horrible” to describe herself—the same word that Fergusson used earlier to describe her sexual overtures, when he was rejecting her out of shame—the reader suspects Mabel’s own sexual shame is the source of her fear and self-loathing here. In this context, Fergusson’s offer to marry her makes a kind of sense: marriage is the socially sanctioned outlet for human sexuality in the story and thus the social institution best suited to banish Mabel’s shame. Yet, at the very end of the story, Mabel remains frightened both of sexuality and of losing access to sexual expression, which suggests that marriage is inadequate to control human sexuality or banish sexual shame.