The Horse Dealer's Daughter Illustrated

Book excerpt: D.H. Lawrence's 'The Horse Dealer's Daughter' could be described as a story in which boy meets girl. Its plot, on the surface, resembles that of any number of traditionally romantic pastorals: a country boy saves a country girl from drowning, sees something in her that he never saw before, and, at the end of the story, proposes marriage. But, as we soon see, there is nothing typical about Lawrence's story, because the psychological workings of its characters, particularly that of the rescuer, defy all our expectations of how such a story should work. Lawrence cuts through the romanticism inherent in such a plot line to reflect the dark and conflicting feelings of the so-called lovers.