The Rocking-horse Winner – Class 11 English Chapter 3 Notes & NCERT PDF

About the Author

D.H. Lawrence (1885–1930; the textbook prints 1895) was born in a mining village near Nottingham, England. His father was a coal miner and his mother a genteel, ambitious former schoolmistress; their conflicting interests shaped his imagination. He wrote novels, poems, short stories and criticism, marked by "intensity of feeling, psychological insight and vivid evocation of events, places and nature".

Summary

A house that whispers

A beautiful woman "married for love and love turned to dust". She cannot love her children, though everyone calls her a good mother. The family — a boy, Paul, and two little girls — live in style with servants, but there is never enough money. The house becomes "haunted by the unspoken phrase: 'There must be more money! There must be more money!'" The children hear it behind the rocking-horse, the doll's house, even the toys.

Luck

Paul asks why they have no car. His mother says it is because his father "has no luck". Luck, she explains, "is what causes you to have money". Paul declares, "I'm a lucky person… God told me," but she pays no attention. Stung, he seeks luck by riding his rocking-horse furiously, commanding it: "Now, take me to where there is luck."

Paul, Bassett and Uncle Oscar

Paul has been betting on horse races with Bassett, the young gardener (wounded in the war and formerly the batman of Uncle Oscar Cresswell). When Paul is "sure", he wins. He tips Daffodil for the Lincoln; Uncle Oscar is amazed when it wins, and joins the partnership. Paul has already won about fifteen hundred pounds, and then makes ten thousand on Lively Spark at the Leger. He tells his uncle he started "for mother", hoping to stop the house whispering.

The secret gift

Paul gives five thousand pounds to the family lawyer, to be paid to his mother as a thousand pounds a year on her birthday for five years. But when she reads the letter her face hardens; she asks for the whole five thousand at once because she is in debt. Paul agrees. The house now has new furnishings, a tutor, and Paul is to go to Eton — but the voices "simply trilled and screamed in a sort of ecstasy": "There must be more money! … More than ever!"

The Derby

Paul loses on the Grand National and the Lincoln. He grows wild-eyed, frail and desperate: "I've got to know for the Derby!" His mother, worried (her family had been "a gambling family"), wants to send him to the seaside, but he refuses to leave until after the Derby.

Two nights before the race, gripped by anxiety at a party, she returns home and finds Paul in his green pyjamas "madly surging on the rocking-horse". He screams "It's Malabar!" and falls unconscious with brain-fever.

The ending

Bassett comes to tell him Malabar won "at fourteen to one" — Paul has won over eighty thousand pounds. "Do you think I'm lucky, mother?" Paul asks. He dies that night. Uncle Oscar says: "My God, Hester, you're eighty-odd thousand to the good, and a poor devil of a son to the bad… he's best gone out of a life where he rides his rocking-horse to find a winner."

Characters

Themes

Literary Devices & Style

Word Power

Exam Focus

Outline: obsession to be "sure" for the Derby → nervous exhaustion → final frenzied ride → "It's Malabar!" → brain-fever → wins 80,000 pounds → dies. Irony of wealth versus life.

She was in debt, had expensive tastes and wanted to be first in something; she asked for the whole 5,000 at once — showing insatiable desire.

He rides it until he "gets there" and knows the winner — the toy becomes a symbol of his desperate quest and of motion without progress.

Other questions: communication channels between Paul and his mother, Bassett, and his uncle; the irony of the ending; "A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush" (Uncle Oscar's advice before signing away the money).

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