The Horse Dealer's Daughter

In The Horse Dealer’s Daughter, by D.H. Lawrence, romance plays a critical part in the development of the story. It is the result of an accidental rendezvous of the two main characters. It creates a sense of redeeming power – love. Love, in a way, can solve or complicate dilemmas. In this story, love is not as simple as boy meets girl; boy falls in love with girl; boy marries girl. The psychological operations of the characters defy the readers’ anticipation of how such a story would work. In fact, Lawrence works around the typical romance in order to show the conflicting affection between the supposed lovers. The lack of love towards Mabel is what leads to her inevitable attempted suicide in the middle of the story. For example, her brothers have already packed and are ready to leave the farm, where they have called home their entire lives. However, for Mabel, she is not yet ready to leave. She “[has] been servantless in the big house, keeping the home together in penury for her ineffectual brothers.”(P. 282) Throughout her life, she has not fulfilled herself as a woman. She is an undesirable virgin and loves her dead mother more than any living man. She is a needy woman and this forces Jack to love her. The incident that occurs in the pond where Jack saves Mabel is the turning point for both characters. Up until this point in the story, nothing is holding Mabel to life except for her physical functions. Her love for her mother persists and this leaves no room to love anyone else. By trimming the grass around her mother’s grave, she receives “sincere satisfaction” and she “[feels] in immediate contact with the world of her mother.”(P.283) Thus, it only makes sense for her to walk into the dark pond. She does what anyone in need of love and being loved would do – she looks for a way out. Lawrence describes Mable’s life that followed her mother as being “far less real than the world of death she inherited from her mother.”(P. 283) This line serves as an idea of Mabel reuniting with her mother. It also serves as a turning point in the story where the point of view suddenly shifts from Mabel’s to Jack’s. Being a doctor, Jack does the obvious by saving Mabel’s life even though he is a dreadful swimmer. This illogical and ironic act is exactly what love is defined as in this story. Love cannot be logically explained. Thus, when the characters start analyzing their acts, things become more complicated. After Mabel wakes up, the exchange between them is quite strange. As soon as she realizes that Jack saved her and the fact that she is naked, Mabel responds by asking whether he loves her. At this point, both characters are going through transformations in the name of love. Common sense would tell us that the reason Jack undressed Mabel is because he is a doctor. He does not look at a naked woman in a way a lover would. Thus, before Mabel wakes up, this is strictly a doctor to patient relationship. However, by rescuing Mabel out of the water, Jack has taken up the responsibility for her. He feels the need to take care of her. Consequently, following the irrational statements of Mabel, Jack declares his love for her because he feels that it is his responsibility to take care of her. Before this incident, Jack has never felt anything for Mabel. But now, he feels it is his duty to love her. Similarly, Mabel feels ‘love’ for Jack. Because Jack saved her, she assumes that he must love her. Thus, she gives life another chance by substituting Jack as her mother. She uses her sexual power and exerts all her forces in order to pursue him to marry her. This does not turn so well later because she realizes the forced love between them and says: “I’m so awful...You can’t want to love me, I’m horrible.”(P.287) Lawrence wants to make the readers aware that the relationship between Mabel and Jack may go astray if they do marry. He has shown the readers that love has a fated aura surrounding it, drawing the two characters together through superficial force. But the situation sucks them down into an unavoidable catastrophe, because the kind of love shown by Jack is strained.