摘 要

《木马赢家》是英国作家戴赫劳伦斯创作的短篇小说。小说中，小男孩保罗为了讨得母亲欢心，骑着他的木马开始寻找“运气”。他借助赌马赢得了很多钱，但母亲对金钱的贪欲反而愈演愈烈。结果，保罗不惜以生命为赌注换取金钱，为此付出了沉重的代价。

本文在前人的研究基础上，讨论家庭教育及家长角色的重要性，进而分析小说中家庭成员对主人公保罗的影响，以及最终造成保罗的价值观扭曲，失去生命的原因。通过对小说中三位家长和整个家庭环境的研究分析，探讨小说中家庭教育失败的原因，得出反思和启发，进而阐述良好的家庭教育和家庭成员关系对儿童的健康成长的重要性。

关键词：戴赫·劳伦斯；木马赢家；家庭教育；家庭关系

Abstract

The Rocking-Horse Winner is a short story created by British writer D. H. Lawrence. In the novel, in order to please his mother, the protagonist Paul tried at all costs to win a lot of money through riding a rocking horse with "luck". However, the more he won, the greedier his mother grew. As a result, Paul did not hesitate to sacrifice his life for money, which paid a heavy price.

Based on previous studies, this paper discusses the importance of family education and the role of family members, further analyzing the influence of family members on the protagonist Paul in the novel, which ultimately makes a great contribution to Paul's distorted values and death. Through the analysis of the three family members and the whole family environment in the novel, this paper explores the reasons for the failure of family education in the novel, drawing reflection and illumination, as well as elaborating the importance of family education and the family membership on the healthy growth of children.

Key Words: D. H. Lawrence; The Rocking-Horse Winner; family education; family membership

Contents

1 Introduction 1

1.1 D. H. Lawrence and his works 1

1.2 Literature Review 2

1.3 Structure of the paper 3

2 Study of Family Education 5

2.1 Definition of Family Education 5

2.2 The significance role parents play in family education 6

3 Analysis of failed family education in the novel 8

3.1 Incompetent Mother 8

3.2 Absent Father 10

3.3 Accessary Uncle 11

3.4 Distorted Values 12

4 Reflection and Illumination 14

4.1 Importance of Family Education 14

4.2 Creating a Good Family Relationship 15

5 Conclusion 17

References 18

Acknowledgements 19

Analysis of the Family Education in the Novel The Rocking-Horse Winner

Introduction

1.1 D. H. Lawrence and his works

David Herbert Lawrence was an English writer, critic, poet and painter in the 20th century. Born in a miner's family, Lawrence had a ton of work experience as a butcher accountant, a manufacturer employee, and a primary school teacher. Having been wandering at home and abroad for more than a decade, Lawrence held a critical attitude towards reality. He had created numerous works during his life including ten novels, eleven short story collections, four plays, ten poem collections, four essay collections, five theoretical books, three travel notes, and a large number of letters. The theme of Lawrence's creations is the relationship between man and society, man and nature, man and man, man and woman, but the major emphasis lies in the relationship between man and woman.

The Rocking-Horse Winner is one of Lawrence's most famous short stories. We can not fully understand Lawrence without reading The Rocking-Horse Winner (Lu, 2003). It was created in his later years and was first published in 1933 after his death. It mainly told a story that the main character Paul, in order to meet the strong vanity of his mother and lighten the burden on her, he devoted almost all his energy to betting on the horses. By madly controlling the rocking horse, he was fortunate enough to predict the name of the winner horse. But after the prediction of the last crucial horse race, unfortunately, he fell off the rocking-horse, and died before long. In this story, the pursuit of money distorts the most precious family affection in the world, resulting in such a consequence that the son tried to get maternal love by money. The mother is therefore no longer the source of love, but the root of the tragedy of the son.

1.2 Literature Review

Lawrence was one of the most creative and controversial writers in English literature and he was one of the most innovative and representative writers of realism literature in the 20th century. However, Lawrence is not completely accepted by everyone, only a few novelists and critics give him a applicable evaluation. Unexpectedly, in less than 30 years after his death, his evaluation has undergone earth-shaking changes. The position and significance of his works in the history of literature have become the norm for future generations.

Among the numerous self-styled modernists of the twentieth century, D. H. Lawrence is unique in his extensive theorizing of inertia (Kalaidjian, 2014), famous American literary critic Diana Trilling states in The Portable D. H. Lawrence that Lawrence's works are filled with fantasy and sentiment, Lawrence neglects minor conduct and he is too proud of his own ability. So it is hard for us to understand his writing ideas (Trilling, 1977). Lawrence’s ethics are tied to his aesthetics (Boone, 2016). Some western literary critics like T. S. Eliot regarded Lawrence as a homosexual fascist. They think that Lawrence's works are not worth reading. His magnificent novel The rainbow had been banned for obscenity (Westland, 2002). In the previous works, Lawrence portrayed the beautiful mother image and expressed his love and nostalgia for his mother, which is fully reflected in Sons and Lovers and other novels and poems. But with the increase of age and the maturity of thought, Lawrence’s attitude towards parents began to change. The mother's rationality, the pursuit of a refined and decent life and the control of men have become huge bondage to men in his eyes. In the 1920s, Lawrence began to have a general hostility towards older women, and in a letter to his friend in 1927 he expressed dislike of such women (Reeve, 2003). Although Lawrence received much unfair treatment as a literary giant, many critics supported Lawrence and regarded him as the greatest and imaginative writer in English literary history. F. R. Leavis supported Lawrence strongly and he is the most famous critic who appreciates Lawrence's works. F. R. Leavis highly appreciated Lawrence "the insight, the wisdom, the revived and re-educated feeling for health, that Lawrence brings are what, as our civilization goes, we desperately need (Leavis, 1955)."

In China, Lin and Yu have written comments on Lady Chatterley's Lover in the 1930s (Rao, 1986). It was recognized to a great extent in China at first. From the 1930s to the 1980s, under the influence of various factors, Lawrence was gradually forgotten by Chinese readers. Lawrence has been introduced to China again since the 1980s, and his works have been translated into Chinese one after another. During this period, Lawrence's studies in China mainly focus on communication and translation. In the 1990s, Lawrence's studies in China appeared a prosperous situation, with a large number of monographs and research papers. Among them, it is worth noting that Feng wrote the first biography of Lawrence in China. This biography, with Chinese characteristics, draws the image of Lawrence in the minds of domestic researchers by means of the combination of assessment and review (Feng, 1995). Lawrence's studies in this period are mainly limited to his novels, but they are different from the previous stage: the researchers are no longer limited to the study of the theme of "sex", but have adopted some new research methods. Such as semantics, novel stylistics, psychology, sociology and so on, provides some new references for Lawrence's research. In the 21st century, there was a new expansion appeared on Lawrence's research, such as the study of Lawrence's philosophical social view, the study of Lawrence's problem style. In recent years, Chinese scholars began to pay attention to the symbiotic relationship between Lawrence and modernism. Some scholars began to concentrate on Lawrence's works from the perspective of ecology, and made some useful explorations.

Through the study of Lawrence, it can be found that many of his works involved the relationship between family members. However, there is no paper specifically discussing his works from the perspective of family education. Therefore, this paper will analyze the failed family education in The Rocking-Horse Winner from the perspective of family education and discuss how to create a harmonious family atmosphere.