Symbolism in The Horse Dealer’s Daughter Essay Example

style="text-align: justify">And at the same moment she drew away from him and looked at him” (54). In the short story under consideration, Lawrence uses a variety of animal imagery and these images too work as symbols to reveal certain traits of a character or to throw a light on their nature. This kind of symbolism is more universal than that of the specific contextual meanings the author derives out of ‘water’ in the story. For instance, when Mabel, the female protagonist in the tale is compared to a bulldog, the symbolic meaning of the comparison is immediately comprehendible.

She appears impassive to the extent of being almost without emotions. Indeed her brother’s comment about her - “The sulkiest bitch that ever trod” (41) – seems to be quite justified at this point of the story. The brothers are also described similarly with animal symbolism. The first, Joe, is himself, "Marrying, and going into harness. His life was over. He would be a subject animal now" (38). When he rises, he does so in a "horsey fashion "(40). Fred Henry "was an animal that controls, not one which is controlled" (38).

The third brother, Malcolm, has the bovine characteristics. He stares, "out of the window aimlessly" (39). Lawrence tells us that he has a fresh jaunty, museau, which sounds flattering in the English, but translates as "snout" in French. The symbolism reveals the deeper natures of the family members but at the same time points at the social descent that has taken place in the family for the last few years finally revealing the animals in them struggling for bare survival.

The mother’s

grave in the story also functions as a symbol and it is a cultural symbol representing death. Mabel lost and bewildered in her life’s struggle goes to find sanctuary in the graveyard. Her passionate tending of her mother’s grave is used by the author to foreshadow her forthcoming actions. Lawrence makes it quite explicit in the story, the relation between the mother’s grave and her own death wish: "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." (48)

However, it might be argued that the mother’s grave is more of a universal symbol than a culture specific one. Another instance of a cultural symbol can be found in the hearth, which spread warmth in the climactic episode. The house is empty and the brothers gone, but a fire is burning in the hearth when Jack carries Mabel inside the house rescuing her from the cold water.

Both the protagonist feels a physical burning sensation as their passion and love tries to find expression fighting the coldness and death represented by the water: “A flame seemed to burn the hand that grasped her soft shoulder”(55). From the above analysis it might be concluded that Lawrence used diverse symbols drawing from a great variety of sources in his short story The Horse Dealer’s Daughter and he was as competent in using conventional symbols as in using symbols which are specific to the context but that invests the story with meaning beyond what is literal nevertheless.