One thing they all have 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 fall victim to 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 of the two stories studied here. In DH Lawrence's famous story “The Rocking Horse Winner,” a mother emotionally abandons her son Paul, forcing him to seek his mother's love and approval. In the short story "The Painted Door," by Sinclair Ross, a farmer, John, drives away his wife, named Ann, during a snowstorm, forcing Ann to reevaluate their roles in the relationship. While both "The Rocking Horse Winner" and "The Painted Door" feature a character estranged from his loved one, Paul tries to win his mother's love in "The Rocking Horse Winner," while Ann blames John and cheats in "The Rocking Horse Winner". Painted Door. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essay The relationship between Paul and his mother is not one of mutual compassion. Paul longs for his mother's love but she responds only with cold indifference. At the beginning of “The Rocking Horse Winner,” Lawrence describes the mother's cold feeling towards her children by saying, “she felt that [the children] had been entrusted to her and she could not love them. . . Everyone else said of her, 'She's such a good mother. He loves his children.' Only she herself, and her children themselves, knew that this was not the case” (Lawrence 307). The mother does not love her children as she should, and this damages them emotionally. Furthermore, children want her to love them. The boy, Paul, wants his mother's attention, but the mother blames their troubles on the family's lack of money and the father's lack of luck. To win his mother's love, Paul tries to prove that he is lucky. Talking to his mother, Paolo affirms his good fortune, but “he saw that she did not believe him; or rather, that he paid no attention to his statement. This angered him somewhere and made him want to get his attention” (Lawrence 309). Paul feels that his mother is abandoning him and wants to win her back by getting lucky to "get her attention". Furthermore, this compulsion for attention not only pushes him to be lucky, but also pushes him to try to replace his father's role as breadwinner in the home by becoming lucky. To make 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 little girls were playing dolls in the bedroom, he would sit on his big rocking horse, throwing himself wildly into the void, with a frenzy that made the little girls look at him with anxiety. The horse made a great run, the boy's dark, wavy hair tossed, his eyes had a strange gleam. The girls didn't dare talk to him. When he had finished his mad journey, he got out and stood in front of his rocking horse, staring at its drooping muzzle. Its red mouth was slightly open, its large eye was wide and shining like glass. (Lawrence 309) Lawrence, being no stranger to sexuality, uses the secret, rhythmic movement of the rocking horse in this excerpt as a symbol of masturbation. Although the child is not literally masturbating, it is a symbol of a stand-infor mating with its mother. Lawrence wrote the story not long after Sigmund Freud published his work on the Oedipus complex, so Lawrence was likely exposed to the concept that boys want to have sex with their mothers and kill their fathers. While this is not a literal interpretation of the story, it more clearly shows Paul's internal motivation to win his mother's love by replacing his father with luck. In contrast, in “The Painted Door,” Ross conveys a wife's feeling of contempt for her husband, rather than a mother-son relationship. Despite having a slightly different family dynamic, “The Painted Door” still conveys similar themes of abandonment, alienation and surrogates for love. In Ross's story, the protagonist Ann feels as if her husband John is abandoning her. At the beginning of the story, John first decides to leave Ann at home while he goes to check on his father during a storm; Ann protests, however, saying: “It's not right to leave me here alone. Surely I am as important as your father” (Ross 1). Ann feels that John, just as Paul's mother abandons him, is abandoning her. She feels emotionally detached from her husband. Unlike “The Rocking Horse Winner,” however, Ann feels resentment toward her husband rather than a need to prove herself. Rather than seek John's approval, she rebels against him. As she thinks about her current misfortunes, Ann resents John for his lack of adventure and his frugality, recalling: By dint of his thankless job he saved up a few months' salary, added a few extra dollars each fall to his salary payments. mutual; but the only real difference it all made was to deprive her of his company, to make him a little duller, older, uglier than he might otherwise have been. . . They were useless thoughts. He knew it. It was her own devotion that made them useless, that kept her from rebelling (Ross 3 - 4). Instead of having the drive to win John's love as Paul does with his mother, Ann is motivated to betray John because of her emotional estrangement from John. his. Furthermore, Ann also uses a surrogate for her lack of companionship, but a real one rather than a mere symbol. When John leaves to help his father, he invites their neighbor, Steven, to keep Ann company. When Steven approaches, Ann compares him to John, noting, “He was erect, tall, square-shouldered. Her hair was dark and well-groomed, her young lips curved soft and plump. While John, he quickly made the comparison, was stocky, heavy-jawed and stooped” (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 brief relationship with Steven. Both authors center the plots of their stories on one character who alienates another. In “The Rocking Horse Winner,” Paul's mother abandons him emotionally. She alienates him and cannot love him. Likewise, John abandons Ann both physically and emotionally. However, there is a difference in motivation. While Paul's mother dislikes him because she feels he didn't ask to be a mother, John abandons Ann because he is simply unaware of her needs, but still cares for her. This alienation affects both Paul and Ann and they use it as motivation for their subsequent actions. Paul is forced to win his mother's love by giving her what he thinks she wants most: money. Paul sets up a fund for his mother to give her a thousand dollars a year for five years, but when asked to give it to her all at once he replies, “Oh, let her have it, then! We can get more” (Lawrence 315). Paul giving his mother all the money at once despite his plan proves that he is.