The Rocking-Horse Winner (D.H Lawrence)

In a family there is a woman whose husband did not earn enough money. “The mother had a small income, and the father had a small income, but not nearly enough for the social position which they had to keep up”.

The woman thought that having money is being lucky. Paul her son asked his mother what being lucky means. His mother said that "It's what causes you to have money. If you're lucky you have money. That's why it's better to be born lucky than rich. If you're rich, you may lose your money. But if you're lucky, you will always get more money."

After that, Paul felt that being lucky required not to be wealhty but also requires being loved. What the child wanted is to gain his mother attention and get rid of her ambition that worried the boy. But the boy wanted to see her mother happy so he needed desperately to know about the winners of horse races in order to gain money through bets. The boy tried to make her mother feel lucky until the boy felt ill and died. The story shows the “overestimation” that people give to money more than the interest in people they love.