The Horse Dealer’s Daughter

.H. Lawrence's "The Horse Dealer's Daughter"

Commentary by Karen Bernardo

D.H. Lawrence's "The Horse Dealer’s Daughter" could be described as a story in which boy meets girl. Its plot, on the surface, resembles that of any number of traditionally romantic pastorals: a country boy saves a country girl from drowning, sees something in her that he never saw before, and, at the end of the story, proposes marriage. But, as we soon see, there is nothing typical about Lawrence's story, because the psychological workings of its characters, particularly that of the rescuer, defy all our expectations of how such a story should work. Lawrence cuts through the romanticism inherent in such a plot line to reflect the dark and conflicting feelings of the so-called lovers.

In this story, the horse dealer's daughter is a young woman named Mabel, who has recently discovered that her family has lost all its money; her brothers can go off and make their own way in the world, but Mabel has nowhere to go. There are a few options open to her -- going to live with a sister, becoming a servant -- but she has run her family's household ever since her mother's death, and none of these options are acceptable to her.

In great turmoil of mind, she goes down to the cemetery to trim the grass around her mother's grave, which is an activity that always brings her peace because in caring for the grave she feels close to her deeply-missed mother. Suddenly, however, Lawrence says that "Mindless and persistent, she seemed in a sort of ecstasy to be coming nearer to her fulfillment, her own glorification, approaching her dead mother, who was glorified."

This line forms a sort of turning point in the story. We introduce the possibility of Mabel going to her mother literally, through death, rather than just figuratively through a sense of unity with the departed one. The line also represents a turning point because right after this, we shift the point of view away from Mabel herself onto the persona of the idealistic young doctor, Jack Ferguson, who is a friend of Mabel's brother Fred. Jack is passing near the cemetery and sees Mabel there, looking "so intent and remote, it was like looking into another world."

Because there is little except for her physical functions holding her to life, we are not surprised when Jack observes Mabel several minutes later sonambulistically walking into the putrid lake. Being a doctor whose job is to save life, as well as a human being who assumes everyone wants to be saved, Jack plunges into the lake after her, and with great difficulty brings her to the surface. After resuscitating her, Jack brings Mabel back to her deserted house, strips off her wet and stinking clothes, and wraps her in blankets by the fire. Shortly thereafter she regains consciousness.

The exchange that follows is, on the surface, extremely strange. Mabel asks whether he was the one who pulled her out of the water and undressed her. On being told that he was, Mabel responds by asking whether he loved her.

Now logic would tell us that the reason Jack felt free to undress Mabel was that he is a doctor. Doctors do not look at naked women in the same way as, for example, a lover would; there is absolutely no reason to believe that he has ever looked at Mabel lustfully, or even lovingly,