Te Horse dealer's Daughter
...nd lay down again." In the brothers interactions with the dog we receive a wealth of information about Mabel and Lawrence paints a portrait of the relationship and position she has in the family. "-the dog rose uneasily from the hearth-rug and looked at the party at the breakfast-table. But still they sat on in ineffectual conclave." "The dog looked up at him in mournful distrust. From this we can gather that she is seen as more of a dog than a person, talked at and not to, and like the dog she has been domesticated over the last 10 years. There are some values that she holds, or at least held, herself. "So long as there was money, the girl felt herself established, and brutally proud, reserved." In the first part of the story what we are told about her is not very redeeming, and that is that while she has been controlled and used most of her life her only depth of character holds vanity over her connection to wealth. It is this set up that allows us to see what kind of person it is trying to drown herself in the pond. She is without the ability to go off on her own. Like the domesticated dog she would not be able to fend for herself if turned out into the world. This coupled with the loss of the only other thing in her life that mattered to her, which is the pride the stems from the power and money she was associated with, leads her to attempt suicide. She has nothing, and when faced with the proposition of reinventing herself, she chooses to remove herself creating the final submission which is to life. Doctor Fergusson is the antithesis of Mabel in that he is the dominator and the controller. The doctor is genuinely lonely but what fulfills his need is the physical contact he gets from Mabel. This egocentric desire correlates with his dominating personality. He does not love but lusts. The void in his life that she fills is one of physical desire. Fergusson would benefit more from a prostitute than from someone he will have to now have to spend the rest of his life with. His vocation, in a way, gives him this in small doses. It allows him to walk into the houses and lives of the working class. These homes no doubt hold a certain voyeuristic pleasantness for him. Walking into them -being able to rub up against families and unbridled emotion- may gave him a kind of contact high. "it excited him, the contact with the rough, strongly-feeling people was a stimulant-" His lust is not for the tender love and bond that people share in marriage but for the passion and emotion he sees there, and his reaction is not cognitive but carnal, "-applied direct to his nerves." As for the control factor, everything about him expresses this standpoint. His job is one of the most obvious and considerable points of examination. He holds the lives of the people he treats in his hands. His vocation puts him in a place where every day people have to submit to him. This relationship is not unlike the one of Mable and him self . The first time that he really notices Mabel is when he sees her in the graveyard. This scene itself is staged in a way that creates dominance and submission through simple positioning. She "lifts her eyes to see him. Mabel is knelt down attending the grave and Fergusson is standing, creating a visual model of power. It is also here, in this place of death, that she is most happy and where the doctor recognizes her as more than just one of the Pervin‘s. As their eyes meet in this position they know the other has what they need, "-feeling in some way, found out by the other." The graveyard paves the way for the crescendo scene where their two twisted desires meet in the pond. The pond too, is full of imagery that Lawrence has placed there for as reason, the most blatant being the water itself. It is not described as pure or clean but as "dead cold", "hideous", and "sta...