One thing everyone has in common is the need for human compassion. People need to interact with other people, so when loved ones deny them this right, it can be devastating. People of all lifestyles experience this type of emotional abandonment, but different people react differently. It is because this feeling is common to all of us that writers often exploit it in literature. This is the case for the two stories studied here. In DH Lawrence's famous short story "The Rocking-Horse Winner", a mother emotionally abandons her son, Paul, leading him to seek his mother's love and approval. In the short story "The Painted Door" by Sinclair Ross, a farmer, John, separates from his wife, named Ann, during a snowstorm, causing Ann to reevaluate their roles in the relationship. While "The Rocking-Horse Winner" and "The Painted Door" feature a character separated from their beloved, Paul attempts to win his mother's love in "The Rocking-Horse Winner", while Ann blames John and betrays him in "The Rocking-Horse Winner". Painted door. "Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why violent video games should not be banned”? Get an original essay The relationship between Paul and his mother is not one of mutual compassion. Paul wants it love from his mother but she responds only with cold indifference At the beginning of "The Rocking-Horse Winner", Lawrence describes the mother's feeling of coldness towards her children by saying: "she felt like [them]. children] had been imposed on her and that she could not love them. Everyone said of her: “She is such a good mother. She loves her children alone. knew it wasn't the case” (Lawrence 307). Paul wants to attract his mother's attention, but she attributes his misfortunes to the family's lack of money and the father's lack of luck. In order to win his mother's love, Paul tries to prove that he is lucky. In talking with his mother, Paul affirms his luck, but he “saw that she did not believe him; or rather, that she paid no attention to his statement. It somehow made him angry and wanted to get his attention” (Lawrence 309). Paul feels that his mother is abandoning him and he wants to win her back by having luck to “attract her attention”. Furthermore, not only does this need for attention cause him to be lucky, but it also causes him to try to replace his father as the breadwinner in the house, becoming lucky. In order to earn money, he decides to bet on horse races. He finds the luck he needs by riding his rocking horse in the hope that the winner will come to him: he wanted luck, he wanted it, he wanted it. When the two girls were playing with dolls in the nursery, he would sit on his big rocking horse and charge madly through the space, with a frenzy that made the little girls look at him with concern. The horse ran wide, the boy's wavy black hair was tossed, his eyes had a strange glow. The little girls didn't dare talk to him. When he had come to the end of his crazy little journey, he got off and stood in front of his rocking horse, staring at its downcast face. Its red mouth was slightly open, its large eye was wide and shiny like glass. (Lawrence 309) Lawrence, being no stranger to sexuality, uses the secretive, rhythmic movement of the rocking horse in this excerpt as a symbol of masturbation.Although the child is not literally masturbating, it is symbolic of a substitute for copulation with the mother. Lawrence wrote the story shortly after Sigmund Freud published his work on the Oedipus complex. So Lawrence was probably exposed to the concept that boys want to have sex with their mothers and kill their fathers. Although not a literal interpretation of the story, it more clearly shows Paul's internal motivation to gain his mother's love by replacing his father with luck. Conversely, in "The Painted Door", Ross expresses a woman's feeling of contempt towards her husband, rather than a mother-son relationship. Despite a slightly different family dynamic, "The Painted Door" still evokes similar thematic themes of abandonment, alienation, and substitutes for love. In Ross's short story, the protagonist Ann feels like her husband John is abandoning her. At the beginning of the story, John initially decides to leave Ann at home while he watches over his father in the middle of a storm; Ann protests, however, saying, “It’s not right to leave me here alone. I’m probably as important as your father” (Ross 1). Ann feels that John, in the same way that Paul's mother abandoned him, abandoned her. She feels emotionally detached from her husband. Unlike "The Rocking-Horse Winner", Ann feels resentment toward her husband rather than the need to prove herself. Rather than seeking John's approval, she rebels against him. While thinking about her current woes, Ann resents John for his lack of adventure and frugality, remembering: Through drudgery he saved a few months' salary, added a few dollars more each fall to his mortgage payments ; but the only real difference it all made was to deprive her of his company, to make him a little more boring, older, uglier than he might otherwise have been. . . They were useless thoughts. She knew it. It was his very devotion that made them useless, that forbade him to rebel (Ross 3-4). Rather than having the drive to win John's love like Paul does with his mother, Ann is motivated to betray John due to her emotional estrangement from him. Additionally, Ann also uses a substitute for her lack of companionship, but a real one rather than just a symbol. When John leaves to help his father, he invites their neighbor, Steven, to keep Ann company. When Steven arrives, Ann compares him to John, remarking: “He was straight, tall, square-shouldered. Her hair was dark and neat, her young lips curved, soft and full. Whereas John, she quickly made the comparison, was stocky, heavy-cheeked, and hunched” (Ross 7). Ann sees Steven as a replacement for John, as a better and more adventurous John. Ann rebels against John's alienation from her by consummating her short relationship with Steven. Both authors center the plot of their stories on one character who alienates another. In "The Rocking-Horse Winner", Paul's mother emotionally abandons him. She alienates him and cannot love him. Likewise, John abandons Ann physically and emotionally. There is, however, a difference in the pattern. While Paul's mother dislikes her because she feels she didn't ask to be a mother, John abandons Ann because he is simply oblivious to her needs, but he still cares about her. She. This alienation affects both Paul and Ann, and they use it as motivation for their subsequent actions. Paul is forced to earn his mother's love by giving her what he thinks she wants most: money. Paul sets up a fund for his mother to give him a thousand dollars a year for five years, but when asked to give it all at once, he.