Family and Intimacy Theme Analysis

When Paul dies, Uncle Oscar implies to Hester that she is actually better off now—she has eighty thousand pounds and no longer has to deal with a son who was unfit to manage in the world. Oscar clearly does not care deeply for Paul, even though Paul is his nephew and helped him win thousands of pounds. Hester initially seems not to care for her children either and feels cold whenever they are around her. When Paul falls ill, however, she is overcome with “tormented motherhood.” While she previously felt stony-hearted toward her children because she was not attached to them, she now feels as through her heart has vanished altogether and become a stone. Instead of feeling coldness, she now feels loss and despair. Paul and Hester are not close during Paul’s lifetime, although they may have been growing closer—but then Paul dies, and Lawrence doesn’t even show us Hester’s reaction. Instead we just see Oscar’s callous weighing of Paul’s death in terms of its monetary value.

While Hester’s emotions could certainly be interpreted as the feelings of love that a mother should naturally have for her son, some critics have interpreted “The Rocking Horse Winner” in a more sexual, psychoanalytical way. These writers see Paul’s riding motion and the frenzied state he falls into while riding as metaphors for intercourse or masturbation. Since Paul rides the rocking-horse to please his mother in particular, some think that this story has Freudian undertones. Psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud believed in the existence of an Oedipal complex, or that young boys are first sexually attracted to their own mothers. According to Freud, healthy children grow out of this desire, but those with neuroses do not. Thus, while “The Rocking Horse Winner” can be read as a story about the pitfalls of luck and greed, it can also be interpreted as a portrait of sexual neurosis, and how Paul’s frustrated Oedipal desires ultimately lead to his death.