A study guide for D. H. Lawrence's "The Horse Dealer's Daughter"

By Gale and Cengage

A study guide for D. H. Lawrence's "The Horse Dealer's Daughter", excerpted from Gale's acclaimed Short Stories for Students series. This concise study guide includes plot summary; character analysis; author biography; study questions; historical context; suggestions for further reading; and much more. For any literature project, trust Short Stories for Students for all of your research needs.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Cengage Learning - Gale
• Release date: May 10, 2016
• ISBN: 9781535821384

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The Horse Dealer's Daughter

D. H. Lawrence

1922

Introduction

The Horse Dealer's Daughter is a short story written by British author David Herbert (D. H.) Lawrence. Lawrence first wrote the story in 1917 under the title The Miracle. Later, he revised it, gave it its current title, and published it in 1922 in the English Review, an influential journal that published his early short stories and poems. Later that year, Lawrence included the story in his collection of short stories England, My England.

The story focuses on Mabel, a young woman whose father has recently died. As a consequence, she and her brothers have to sell off the family's horse business and leave their home. The brothers have options as to what to do with their lives; Mabel does not. In seeming despair, she appears to attempt suicide by walking into a pond, but she is saved by Dr. Jack Ferguson, who then agrees to marry her. For many readers, the story is enigmatic. Some readers see it as a story about the redemptive power of love, but others ask whether the author wanted readers to see the story as one about sexual power—power that enables Mabel to, in effect, coerce Ferguson into marrying her.

Lawrence was a controversial figure during his lifetime. Some of his books, with their frank (for the time) exploration of sexuality and use of sexual language, were regarded as obscene and their publication and distribution banned. At the time of his death, some members of the public saw Lawrence's work as bordering on pornographic, although this was a highly exaggerated view, for many people formed this opinion based on the author's reputation and not on a reading of his work. For two generations he was widely known principally as the author of Lady Chatterley's Lover, an underground classic that was banned as obscene in the United States until 1959 and in England until 1960 and that was synonymous—again, unfairly—with dirty book. With greater acceptance of depictions of sexuality in literature, though, Lawrence has come to be regarded as a major figure in twentieth-century British literature. He wrote in all genres—novels, novellas, short stories, poems, plays, and essays—and he even painted. Many readers, though, regard his short stories as his crowning achievements.

The Horse Dealer's Daughter is widely available in collections of short stories and British literature anthologies, including D. H. Lawrence: Selected Stories, edited by