The Horse Dealer's Daughter '

The Horse Dealer's Daughter is a story of a young woman who is deeply troubled in the beginning of the story. She cares and loves no one, except her mother who died when she was fourteen. She feels alone and her brothers do nothing to help that, since they exude an aura of her worthlessness, and the love she once felt for her father was replaced with "hardness" when he remarried. She was depressed and suicidal at the beginning of this story. Her only solace would come when she went to her mother's grave site to decorate it. Her misery is indicative of the suicide she tries to commit by drowning herself after the decoration of the grave. It was at the pond, when Fergusson (a new young doctor) saved her. He had been watching her from afar
through the duration of the story until she went to drown herself. Instinct is what drove him to save her, but it wasn't until later on that he admitted (after much mental anguish) that he indeed did love her and wanted to marry her. It wasn't until after she questioned/told him about his love for him to actually admit it. This story can be interpreted as a fairy tale because it is about a damsel in distress who get's literally saved by the hero of the story. Although, generally it is this way in many fairy tales, I did not interpret this story to be like a fairy tale. Throughout the story, Mabel is a stoic, "pit-bull" expressionist whose only pride is based on the amount of money that her family has accumulated. This story is the decline of a family from master's position to apparent servitude. She had nothing to live for because she/her family had no more wealth. However, by playing the damsel in distress and awakening a sensual feeling within Dr. Fergusson, she managed to snag herself a husband. Could the drowning itself have been a ploy to pull Dr. Fergusson into her life? This interpretation can remain open to someone who would prefer to analyze this story in a Marxist or Darwanistic viewpoint. After all, there are many master/servant themes going on within the story, and it also depicts a dog eat dog world as well.