The Rocking Horse Winner
Written by D. H. Lawrence
Narrated by Cathy Dobson
3.5/5
()
About this audiobook
D. H. Lawrence
David Herbert Lawrence was born on 11th September 1881 in Eastwood, a small mining village in Nottinghamshire, in the English Midlands. Despite ill health as a child and a comparatively disadvantageous position in society, he became a teacher in 1908, and took up a post in a school in Croydon, south of London. His first novel, The White Peacock, was published in 1911, and from then until his death he wrote feverishly, producing poetry, novels, essays, plays travel books and short stories, while travelling around the world, settling for periods in Italy, New Mexico and Mexico. He married Frieda Weekley in 1914 and died of tuberculosis in 1930.
Related to The Rocking Horse Winner
Related audiobooks
Wuthering Heights Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Castle of Otranto Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Silas Marner Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Legend of Sleepy Hollow Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Lifted Veil Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Odour of Chrysanthemums Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Maggie: A Girl of the Streets Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Mortal Immortal Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Scarlet Letter Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Woman in White Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Emma: A Fragment of a Story Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsHowards End Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Roger Malvin's Burial Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Turn of the Screw Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Pit and the Pendulum Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Heart of Darkness Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Masque of the Red Death Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Happy Prince and Other Stories Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Horse Dealer's Daughter Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Tess of the D'Urbervilles Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Pygmalion Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Open Window Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Invisible Man Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Curious Case of Benjamin Button Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Bernice Bobs Her Hair Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The House of the Seven Gables Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Madame Bovary Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Portrait of a Lady Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Birth-Mark Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5
Classics For You
The Great Gatsby Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Pride and Prejudice: Classic Tales Edition Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Yellow Wallpaper Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5To Kill a Mockingbird Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Gone With The Wind Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Silmarillion Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Iliad: A New Translation by Caroline Alexander Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Name of the Rose Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Master and Margarita Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Complete Sherlock Holmes Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Tree Grows in Brooklyn Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Legend of Sleepy Hollow: Classic Tales Edition Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Atlas Shrugged Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Perks of Being a Wallflower Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Frankenstein Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Fountainhead Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Sense and Sensibility Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Crucible Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/520,000 Leagues Under the Sea: Classic Tales Edition Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Series of Unfortunate Events #1 Multi-Voice, A: The Bad Beginning Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Tale of Two Cities Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Flowers in the Attic: 40th Anniversary Edition Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Around the World in 80 Days: Classic Tales Edition Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Thousand Ships: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5War & Peace - Volume I Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Oz Reimagined: New Tales from the Emerald City and Beyond Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Farewell to Arms Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Schindler's List Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Picture of Dorian Gray: Classic Tales Edition Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Reviews for The Rocking Horse Winner
54 ratings5 reviews
- Rating: 1 out of 5 stars1/5This was required reading for school , it makes no sense
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5I found this to be a brilliant story, though I would never have imagined that it had been written by D.H. Lawrence. It is about a young boy called Paul with a rocking-horse who lives in a family where there is never enough money. The house is haunted by the unspoken phrase: ”There must be more money” The mother says the father has no luck, luck being what causes you to have money. But Paul feels he is a lucky person: God has told him. While Paul’s two sisters play with their dolls, he would sit on his big rocking-horse, “charging madly into space”. The horse “careered” wildly, and the boy’s eyes have a strange glare in them. He commands the horse silently “Take me to where there is luck!” Paul talks about horse-races with Bassett, the young gardener. Paul sometimes puts money on a horse. He has an uncle, Uncle Oscar, who is also interested in racing and asks Paul for a tip. Paul recommends Daffodil, an obscure horse. He only knows the winner of the races. He puts 300 pounds on Daffodil. He partners with Bassett, who keeps his money for him. Uncle Oscar takes Paul to the Lincoln races where Daffodil is competing. Daffodil wins. Bassett tells Uncle Oscar that Paul and he always win when Paul is sure about the winner. It’s like Paul had it from heaven. Paul is making the money for his mother, since the house is always short of money and his mother is always getting writs. Paul’s eyes have “an uncanny cold fire” in them. Uncle Oscar isn’t permitted to tell Paul’s mother about Paul’s betting. Paul gives five thousand pounds to his uncle who deposits it with the family lawyer; he tells Paul’s mother that a relative has given him five thousand pounds, which is to be paid out a thousand pounds at a time on the mother’s birthday, for the next five years. She receives the lawyer’s letter about the money but does not seem pleased, and says nothing about it. It turns out that the mother goes to the lawyer and asks for the full five thousand to be paid out, because she is in debt. A curious thing happens: the voices in the house saying “there must be more money” suddenly go mad. There are new furnishings; Paul has a tutor and is going to Eton. The mother turns out to be a spendthrift, and things get worse. Paul studies at his Latin and Greek, but he does not know the winner of the Grand National or the Lincoln, and he becomes “wild-eyed and strange” as if “something were going to explode in him”. Paul’s eyes blaze “with a sort of madness”. He has “a secret within a secret”. His secret is his rocking-horse, which he now has in his own bedroom. The Derby is “drawing near” and Paul is growing more and more tense . He is frail, his eyes are “really uncanny” and he hardly hears what is spoken to him His mother has spells of anxiety about him, and sometimes wants to rush to him at once. Two nights before the Derby, she is at a big party in town when she has a terribly strong feeling of anxiety about Paul and has to leave the dance and phone the nursery-governess, who says he is right as rain. When she and her husband get home, she goes up to Paul’s room. She sees her son “madly singing” on his rocking-horse. He screams in a powerful, strange voice: “It’s Malabar”. Then he falls with a crash to the ground, unconscious. He has brain-fever. He keeps saying, “Bassett, I know. It’s Malabar”. Oscar tells her Malabar is one of the horses running for the Derby. Oscar and Bassett put lots of money on Malabar, at fourteen to one. Paul is still unconscious and his eyes are like blue stones. His mother “turned actually into a stone”. (She is a cold woman.) Bassett comes and tells Master Paul that Malabar came in first, and Paul has made seventy thousand pounds. Paul become conscious and tells his mother “If I can ride my horse and get there then I’m absolutely sure. He says “I m lucky. But Paul dies in the night. So the boy, Paul, rides his rocking-horse furiously and learns the names of the the winners in the various races. This makes him lucky and he earns lots of money. His obsession leads to a kind of madness. We get lots of clues about this madness from the beginning of the story. Paul succeeds in his aim, to get lots of money for his mother. And there is no death. I found this to be a superb story.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5D. H. Lawrence’s short story The Rocking Horse Winner is, on the surface, a dark ghost story: a boy hears his house whispering the names of the winners in upcoming horse races whilst he furiously rides his rocking horse, his subsequent bets thereby amassing a small fortune to satisfy his mother’s need for money. But just beneath the surface, this is in fact an even darker tale of a boy with an intense Oedipus complex, seeking his mother’s love and affection, with his rocking horse rides an obvious metaphor for self-gratification. This is a hauntingly effective story on both levels.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5I must have been around 12 when I read this story and I remember it blowing my mind. I have not read it since, and while knowing practically nothing about psychology then, even though as an adult I went into social work, it is a great story with some psy elements and a certain 'creepiness ' about it. Time to re-discover it after over 40 years.
A - Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5“The Rocking Horse Winner” is a story about a middle-aged woman with no “luck” who has a habit of spending more than her husband is willing to make. She worries constantly about money, so much so that her son, Paul, begins to get involved with horse betting with the gardener, Bassett. He tells his Uncle Oscar about it and gives his mother 5000 pounds to spend. Disappointed when she demands more money, he tries harder to pull in a large income to support her. At the end, it is revealed that Paul rocks on his rocking horse until he reaches a clairvoyant state that allows him to see the name of the winning horse. Shortly after learning this fact, his mother watches him die.