Boy Meets Girl Gets Twisted: D.H. Lawrence's "The Horse Dealer's Daughter"
Often times, people need a traumatic experience in their lives in to jolt their existences out from the mundane occurrences of everyday life. In his story, "The Horse Dealer's Daughter," D.H. Lawrence seems to be illustrating such an incidence. Lawrence takes the clichéd "boy meets girl story" in a different direction, and it is a direction that does not end quite as rosy as its clichéd paradigm might suggest. Through his use of symbolic setting, Lawrence seems to be demonstrating the life, death, rebirth of Mabel.
Mabel draws most of her vitality from her house and from her mother. While her father's business was flourishing, Mabel was proud. Lawrence says, "So long as there was money, the girl felt herself established, and brutally proud, reserved,". However, since her mother has died, and now that her family is left heavily debt, she has lost everything. While the house used to be bustling with servants and the stables full of horses, both are now empty. With that in mind, Mabel has lost her will to live. With the loss of the house approaching quickly, Mabel has become a shell of her former self, just as the horse dealing business has become. Even though her three brothers constantly berate her with questions of what she will do with herself, they pay no attention to the fact that she does not volunteer any answer. In fact, no one even notices her presence at the table. Only when she begins to clear the table does anyone actually notice her. She, like her surroundings, has deteriorated into an empty shell. With this suggestion, Lawrence seems to be saying that without her mother or the business, Mabel's life has no purpose, just as an empty stable would have no purpose.
Without a purpose in life, Mabel has no reason to continue on in the life she has been living. This realization comes to her as she visits her mother's grave at the church cemetery. The overwhelming sense of death is prevalent through this scene as Mabel tends to her mother's headstone and the surrounding landscape. Lawrence describes the afternoon as, "grey, deadened, and wintry, with a slow, moist, heavy coldness sinking in and deadening all the faculties,". While she is tending to her mother's grave, Mabel feels a "sincere satisfaction" in her work. With that, Lawrence seems to be saying to the reader that because Mabel takes such satisfaction at attending to her dead mother, she wishes she was dead so she could be with her mother, and Mabel's actions following the graveyard scene would also suggest those desires. Immediately following the graveyard scene, Mabel is seen near a "square, dark pond,". By describing the pond as square and dark, Lawrence seems to be evoking an image of an empty grave, which would suggest Mabel's impending death. Mabel is described by Lawrence as, "a figure in black," and this description continues a scene that would seem to be mirroring that of a funeral. Mabel continues to walk slowly into the water and she disappears into, "the dusk of the dead afternoon,".Lawrence's continual descriptions of the setting as "dead" and "cold" seem to reflect the same feelings in Mabel, and while Jack the doctor saves Mabel from literal death, this scene seems to be Lawrence's representation of Mabel's metaphysical death.
Mabel's story does not end with her death, though, as she is reborn, as reflected by the setting of Lawrence's story. After Jack rescues Mabel from drowning in the pond, he brings her back to her house, strips her of her wet clothing, wraps her in blankets, and sets her down by a burning fire. During all of this action, Lawrence describes Mabel as, "conscious in herself, but unconscious of her surroundings,". While Mabel drew her vitality from the house in her "old" life, she no longer needs to. None of the elements of her "old" life are present in the house. Obviously her mother is still dead and the horses are still gone, but so too are all three of her brothers and even the dog that was mentioned in passing at the beginning of the story. She has even been stripped of the clothing from her old life. There is a fire burning next to Mabel as well, which conjures images of a warm and inviting environment very much contrary to the cold and dead scene of the pond. Also, by having Mabel lay naked next to the fire after very nearly drowning, Lawrence seems to be referencing the myth of the phoenix, which, after dying, rose to life in a burning fury from its own ashes. Lawrence seems to be equating Mabel to the phoenix. When Jack first touches Mabel after she becomes fully conscious, Lawrence even describes it as though, "A flame seemed to burn the hand that grasped her bare shoulder,". Because of Jack's actions to save her, Mabel has interpreted Jack's actions as a love for her, and this gives her life new purpose. Lawrence seems to be saying that having a man in her life gives Mabel's life purpose, and a reason to continue living. After all, it was when the original man in Mabel's life died (her father) that everything began to spiral downward for her.
So it would seem that Lawrence is trying to use the setting in this story to illustrate the life, death, and rebirth of Mabel. Mabel's original life had become empty and meaningless just as her home had once the horse dealing business had gone under; she left that life behind when she died in the pond that Lawrence described in a manner that would represent a grave and a funeral procession, and she rose to a new beginning from the ashes of her past life just as the fire burned in her house that was devoid of all elements of her past life. Overall, Lawrence seems to be making a statement that life needs to have a purpose to continue on living.
Published by Rodger Thornhill