The Rocking Horse Winner

“They lived in a pleasant house, with a garden, and they had discreet servants, and felt themselves superior to anyone in the neighbourhood. Although they lived in style, they felt always an anxiety in the house. There was never enough money.”

The illusion of grandeur drives this pretentious family. No matter how much they have, it will never be enough. The house projects the mother’s mental and emotional state that molds the attitude of the inhabitants.

“And so the house came to be haunted by the unspoken phrase: There must be more money! There must be more money! The children could hear it all the time though nobody said it aloud.”

The reader knows the story’s characters as much by the unsaid as by the said. The mother’s narcissistic self-deception, for the fear it inspires, prevents the known from being articulated. Truth must not be spoken, for that would make it real.

“‘Filthy lucre does mean money,’ said the mother. But it’s lucre, not luck.’ ‘Oh!’ said the boy. ‘Then what is luck, mother?’ ‘It’s what causes you to have money. If you’re lucky you have money. That’s why it’s better to be born lucky than rich. If you’re rich, you may lose your money. But if you’re lucky, you will always get more money.”

The son internalizes the mother’s words. He craves her attention, and the words motivate him. He must prove to her that he can deliver the luck she lacks and seeks. This becomes his quest as the courageous knight on his noble steed, ironically only a frail child on a toy rocking horse.

“The child looked at her to see if she meant it. But he saw, by the lines of her mouth, that she was only trying to hide something from him. ‘Well, anyhow,’ he said stoutly, ‘I’m a lucky person.’ ‘Why?’ said his mother, with a sudden laugh. He stared at her. He didn’t even know why he had said it. ‘God told me,’ he asserted, brazening it out. ‘I hope He did, dear!’, she said, again with a laugh, but rather bitter.”

With her dismissive and bitter laugh, the cold, hard mother mocks the child and his intentions. God plays no role in her life. Absorbed by her own needs, she doesn’t care a whit about the needs of her child and does not hear him, shutting him out and making him more desperate for acknowledgment. At the end of the story, she says he never told her about his luck. He certainly did.

“‘Daffodil! I doubt it, sonny. What about Mirza?’ ‘I only know the winner,’ said the boy. ‘That’s Daffodil.’”

Uncle Oscar and his sister share a callous attitude. He initially dismisses Paul’s knowing as a joke, talking down to him and calling him “sonny.” Yet like Paul’s mother, consumed by greed, he explores the possibility the strange child may be on to something. He cultivates his nephew’s good graces by taking him to the races. He gives him a fiver, and Paul bets on Daffodil. It pays him 4 to 1.

“‘But when are you sure’? smiled Uncle Oscar. ‘It’s Master Paul, sir,’ said Basset in a secret, religious voice. ‘It’s as if he had it from heaven. Like Daffodil, now for the Lincoln. That was sure as eggs.’”

Oscar cannot believe his nephew, so he queries Bassett, who has a track record. Oscar even got him his job. His reference to Paul as “Master” and to Oscar as “sir” conveys the class deference, which makes him seem trustworthy, but Bassett’s faith also compels his credibility. Unlike the mother and Oscar, Bassett is a believer, not a skeptic.

“But he became a partner. And when the Leger was coming on Paul was ‘sure’ about Lively Spark, which was quite an inconsiderable horse. The boy insisted on putting a thousand on the horse, Bassett went for five hundred, and Oscar Cresswell two hundred. Lively Spark came in first, and the betting had been ten to one against him. Paul had made ten thousand.”

Uncle Oscar takes Bassett’s advice and accepts the partnership with him and Paul, but, still skeptical, he bets less than the other two. This shows his calculating nature, and he quickly learns that when Paul is “sure,” he is very, very sure. At this point in the story, “sure” has the “religious” mystique Bassett senses; it resembles supernatural revelation, whether divine or demonic. As Paul becomes more and more obsessed and frantic for the Derby, surety assumes a more carnal connotation of imminent sexual release.

“‘Of course,’ said the boy, ‘I started it for mother. She said she had no luck, because father is unlucky, so I thought if I was lucky, it might stop whispering.’”

When Paul says he wants to stop the whispering in the house, Uncle Oscar only briefly questions the idea of this whispering, seeming to take Paul at his word without demanding a rational explanation. Instead of believing in the literal whispers, it’s more likely that Uncle Oscar attributes Paul’s words to the boy’s youth and assumes the child is imagining things based on emotions. By this point, Uncle Oscar knows to “play along” with Paul, because playing along pays off.

“She so wanted to be first in something, and she did not succeed, even in making sketches for drapery advertisements.”

The mother is successfully employed and has an aptitude for drawing, especially when it involves the finery she craves. She does not, however, make as much money as another, younger woman, so she evaluates her success as a failure—as usual, not enough, never enough. Her negativity colors her world dark and bleak. This irrationally ceaseless dissatisfaction, which occurs just before the birthday gift, predicts that Paul’s gift will also not be enough.

“And yet the voices in the house, behind the sprays of mimosa and almond-blossom, and from under the piles of iridescent cushions, simply trilled and screamed in a sort of ecstasy: ‘There must be more money! Oh-h-h; there must be more money. Oh, now, now-w! Now-w-w-there must be more money!—more than ever! More than ever!”

The intensity of the whispers frightens Paul because two races go by when he has not “known” and has lost money. He becomes “wild-eyed,” and as he grows more and more overwrought, even the cold and selfish mother takes note and attempts to intervene, thinking removal from the house and from Bassett will solve the problem.

“‘Why, you curious child, what makes you care about this house so much, suddenly? I never knew you loved it.’ He gazed at her without speaking. He had a secret within a secret, something he had not divulged, even to Bassett or to his Uncle Oscar.”

Paul relocated the “secret within a secret,” the toy rocking horse, to his bedroom when he graduated from the nursery. Neither Bassett nor Uncle Oscar knows Paul rides the horse to “know” the winner, to be “sure.” Nevertheless, the whispering house knows the secret, knows everything. Personified, the house becomes a character, a motivator for Paul’s choices and actions.

“The Derby was drawing near, and the boy grew more and more tense. He hardly heard what was spoken to him, he was very frail, and his eyes were really uncanny. His mother had sudden strange seizures of uneasiness about him. Sometimes, for half an hour, she would feel a sudden anxiety about him that was almost anguish. She wanted to rush to him at once, and know he was safe.”

The descriptions of the mother’s response to Paul reflect the narrator’s ironic perception of her. Her “seizures of uneasiness,” rather than maternal, are “sudden” and “strange.” Her “sudden anxiety,” “almost anxiety,” might last “half an hour.” The adjectives “sudden” and “almost,” chosen to describe “anxiety,” convey the limited emotions of this cold and hard woman. The brevity of her anxiety, “half an hour,” ironically expresses her usual emotional detachment from her child and failure to invest in his well-being.

“She stood with arrested muscles, outside his door, listening. There was a strange, heavy, and yet not loud noise. Her heart stood still. It was soundless noise, yet rushing and powerful. Something huge, in violent, hushed motion. What was it? What in God’s name was it? She ought to know. She felt that she knew the noise. She knew what it was.”

She hears Paul masturbating by riding his horse, the sound of misplaced sexual intercourse. The husband and wife in “The Rocking Horse Winner” live in the same house, but they are no longer sexually intimate, the noise a distant memory. The narrator plays with the word “know,” alluding obliquely to sexual release. She “ought to know,” “she knew.” At the peak of climax, Paul “knows”; and when he crashes on the ground, a “tormented motherhood” floods upon her, the mother—who is, ironically, the source of the son’s torment.