Hannah English Notes

Ana Baleveicau
LTC Huckabee
English 1123/Freshman Comp II
August 4,2013

The Horse Dealers Daughter is a short story written by D.H. Lawrence. He was born on September 11, 1885 in Eastwood, England. Lawrence grew up in a small town and with a lower class family. He was known as a child who did not fit with the other boys and was frail and weak throughout his childhood because of illness. He strongly disliked the town he lived in and felt neglected by his father because he was not athletic in any sport. The setting in The Horse Dealers Daughter takes place in the 1920’s in an English town, where the main character Mabel feels cheerless and gloomy because her father and brothers neglected her. This theme and setting reflects Lawrence childhood life because he to felt out of place with his father and the town he lived in. He creates a dispirited setting, which resembles the life he lived as a child in a mining town. As an author and novelist he was known to write short stories and novels about emotional health issues and create spontaneous moments, while using literary devices such as irony and symbolism. For example, in this story it implies how unhappy Mabel feels because of her mother’s death and how her father changed into an unsuccessful man. This statement within the story implies the families declined, “the kitchen was full of servants, but of late things had declined. The old man had married a second time, to retrieve his fortunes. Now he was dead and everything was gone to the dogs, there was nothing but debt and threatening” (Lawrence 7). This makes Mabel feel depressed of the fact her family is in debt because of her father and now she can not save the one thing she loves, which is the house her and her mother shared so many memories in. This simple loss of the house and the failure she feels drives her emotionally insane. On page ten it says, “He stood motionless as the small black figure walked slowly and deliberately towards the center of the pond, very slowly, gradually moving deeper into the motionless water, and still moving forward as the water got up to her breast. Then he could see her no more in the dusk of the dead afternoon”. This indicates Mabel is trying to drown herself because she is emotionally unstable and is tired of not feeling loved by her family and she accepts the fact she failed her mother. Before Lawrence wrote this story he felt the same way as Mabel, his mother died in 1910 and he explains in many novels of the devastation he felt when she died from cancer. He incorporated his feelings within this short story with the relationship between Mabel and her mother and throughout the story it describes how much Mabel cared for her mother just as Lawrence did his. Lawrence also was known for writing depressed stories with spontaneous moments. For instance, on page fourteen it expresses a moment where love overcomes the character Dr. Fergusson. It says,” He looked down at the tangled wet hair, the wild, bare, animal shoulders. He was amazed, bewildered, and afraid. He had never thought of loving her. He had never wanted to love her”. This moment is a build in the story of all the feelings Dr. Fergusson felt with her. He does not want to love her because he is wealthy and falling in love or marrying a lower class sets off bad reputation especially in the 1920’s. If he has poor reputation it would create horrible business as a doctor. Lawrence was also known to put irony within each of his stories. In this one, a great example would be