The Horses Dealers Daughter Critical Analysis
In Lawrence, D. H “The Horses Dealer’s Daughter” the author implements a common idea through out his story; that idea is that of love at first sight. It is not possible for people to fall in love upon first sight. It is simply illogical. In order to fall in love you must get to know the person, thus your heart does the rest of the work.
Had the story been written differently it would have actually made proper sense.In this short story The horse dealer’s daughter is a young woman named Mabel, who recentley finds out that her family has lost all of their money, seeing as how the Mother and Father are dead; her brothers can leave and start their own lives somewhere else with a lot of options, however Mabel has nowhere to go. She has a few options she can either go to live with a sister, thus becoming a servant. Due to the fact that she had gone many years taking care of the families household, these options are simply not good for her, so she does not accept them.Her mind is in chaos, she decides to go down to the cemetery to trim the grass around her mother’s grave.
In the cemetery she crosses paths with Jack Ferguson who is the towns doctor, but he only stares at her, he feels attracted to her in some way. As time passed, in the story , he meets Mabel again, she is going to a pond and out of no where she is drowining in the pong. The doctor, who acts out of instinct, saves her and takes her to his house. There, he undresses her, puts dry cloths and gives her whisky. When she opened her eyes she said that she loved him.
At this point of the story, Lawrence describes a curiousity that Jack possess over Mabel. He is completely mesmerized by her as she tells him that she loves him. After a kiss, he admits to loving her, however as the story ended Mabel is frightened by Jack’s intonation when he says that he wanted her. She is extremley uncertain whether he loves her or not. Mabel clained to have fallen in love with Jack, yet she had never once talked to the man before that day.
Jack had given her whisky and in all honesty It was the whisky talking, and the fact that he had saved her just sent a thrill to her.She kept saying, “You love me” to Jack, because of the spur of the moment and all of her emotions running wild. Pyschollogically speaking, Mabel had insecurities as to where she was going to go when the government retrives her home and kicks her out. The fact that she had this in her sub-conscious mind clearly presents that she may be just blurting this out of excitement and the adverstities that she has be presented with. As for Jack falling in love with Mabel almost automaticly cannot be explained logically.He hardly knows her and at the end of the story he states “No, I want you, I want you,” was all he anwsered blindly, with that terrible inntonation.
.. ” (401), showing that he become, in a way, cognizant that he might not truly love her, since he does not know her well enough. It is evident how doubtful he becomes right at the end, ultimatley it leads the reader to believe that this little episode was caused out of excitemet, adrenalline, whisky and the spur of the moment. She is horrified by his tone, showing that something beyond her control is making her feel this way, and it’s not her heart that is leading her to this.
She makes it seem, once again, that she is being hit with the thought of being lonely and on the streets, miserably. Another text in the story furthermore proves that Jack realizes that his, so called love, is new, and probably does not mean it, “When she turned her face to him again, a faint delicate flush was glowing and there was again dawning that terrible shining, of joy in her eyes, which really terrified him, and yet which he now wanted to see, because he feared the look of doubt still more. You love me? ” she said rather faltering. “Yes. ” The word cost him a painful effort.
Not because it wasn’t true. But, because it was too newly true, the saying seemed to tear open again his newly-torn heart. And he hardly wanted it to be true, even now. ” (400) The painful effort that is stated, shows that he isn’t ready to love nor does he actually know the meaning of what true love might be. You can’t love someone without not knowing their characther.Looks catch the eye, but personality catches the heart.
The theme in this story is the empty soul of a woman that is filld tenderness, hopeless, and suffering. The fact that this theme exsists in this story demonstrates, yet once again, how the fact that she is suffering, and she is hopeless makes her a great candiate for desperatness, and with desperation comes dellusional thoughts and feeling, which she has and it’s pretty clear on many levels.It was like love at first sight, this common axiom is found frequently in movies and strories alike, but the fact is that love only sees the inside and not the outside of a person. This is why you get to know the person, and you become friends with them, for love without frienship is like a sand castle built upon a beach…
it is destined to fall, and not last, thus contradicting the popular belief that true love lasts forever and a lifetime no matter what may happen. It is because of these ideas that linger in complexity that it refutes the idea of love at first sight.Values teach that you really need to get to know a person before even declaring and throwing the flag that you are in love, moreover they also tend to teach that the realtionships, marriages and love that last longer is due to the fact that at the beginning of things the two people already knew each other. The story could’ve been more logically sound had the author created the characthers to be friend since the beginning, and slowly had them fall in love with each other (Jack and Mabel). Uncertainty and poor word choice should have been avoided, for it leaves serious doubt in readers minds.The idea of falling in love at first sight is a risky one, and one that should not be used in stories.
The greatest love stories would have the characthers date each other, come into each others life very spontenously and unexpectdly. For those are the stories where tradgedy and love form ever so beautifully. The story could’ve gone more ways, even if it was the authors intention to leave us hanging and guessing at what would happen next the other form would’ve been more effective and not so illogical, in a sense.Ultimatley, the story had more potential than the author delivered, so to speak, it would have been wiser to elaborate and modify the characthers’ role and their actions. The story would have made sense had these modification been implemented. It is impossible to fall in love without knowing a person, for looks cannot connect to the human heart, for the heart is blind.
The human condition is another theme that exsits in this story, taking into circumstances that this themes is expressed through out it, the story does not connect to the human condition in terms of love.While it may connect to the rest in terms of various emotions, it is still lacking the main focus and the emphasized aspect overall. Appendix A: Write an essay criticizing the ideas in a story in this book that you dislike or to which you are indifferent. With what statements in the story do you disagree? What actions? What characters? How do your own beliefs and values cause you to dislike the story’s ideas? How might the the story be changed to illustrate ideas with which you would agree?
