Criticism > Short Story Criticism > The Rocking-Horse Winner, D. H. Lawrence - John B. Humma (essay date 1978)

The Rocking-Horse Winner, D. H. Lawrence - John B. Humma (essay date 1978)

John B. Humma (essay date 1978)

SOURCE: "Pan and The Rocking-Horse Winner'," in Essays in Literature, Vol. 5, No. 1, 1978, pp. 53-60.

Sexual allusions in "The Rocking-Horse Winner":

Luck is . . . the equivalent of sexual potency, lucre of sperm. While such readings have been propounded before, no one has yet pointed out the clearly orgasmic effect that Paul's first gift of lucre has on his mother. Their house—an appropriately Freudian symbol—is throughout the voice of his mother's sublimated sexual craving: "There must he more money! There must be more money! " wails her alter ego. The voice of the house, then, is hers; and when Paul, as the result of his luck-potency, gives his mother five thousand pounds of the lucre, that voice "simply trilled and screamed in a sort of ecstasy: There must be more money! Oh-h-h; there must be more money. Oh, now, noww! Now-w-w—there must...

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