WARNING: CONTAINS EXPLICIT MATERIAL - READ AT YOUR OWN DISCRETION!
To help get you in 'the mood'...think of the following lyrics in terms of the Electra complex*...
All you people look at me like I'm a little girl
Well, did you ever think it'd be okay for me to step into this world?
Always saying; little girl, don't step into the club
Well, I'm just trying to find out why 'cause dancin's what I love yeah
I know I may come off quiet, may come off shy
But I feel like talking, feel like dancing when I see this guy
What's practical is logical, what the hell who cares?
All I know is I'm so happy when you dancing there-ere
I'm a slave for you
I cannot hold it, I cannot control it
I'm a slave for you
I won't deny hide it, I'm not trying to hide it..."I'm a Slave 4 U" - Britney Spears (radio provided)
* - The Electra complex is the psychoanalytic theory that a female's psychosexual development involves a sexual attachment to her father, and is analogous to a boy's attachment to his mother that forms the basis of the Oedipus complex.
The idea is based largely on the work of Sigmund Freud, who uses the Oedipus complex as a point of reference for its elaboration. The term, however, was introduced by Carl Jung in 1913. Freud himself explicitly rejected Jung's term, because it "seeks to emphasize the analogy between the attitude of the two sexes", and continued to use the feminine Oedipus attitude in his own writings.
Freud's research on female psychology, sexuality in particular, was limited by then relevant social conventions of gender and class. Women of the period were considered the 'second sex' and many of his female patients were labeled "degenerates."
The "feminine Oedipus attitude" was posited by Freud as a theoretical counterpart to the Oedipus complex. Carl Jung proposed the name Electra complex for Freud's concept, deriving the name from the Greek myth of Electra, who wanted her brother to avenge the death of the siblings' father Agamemnon, by killing their mother, Clytemnestra.
According to Freud, a girl, like a boy, is originally attached to the mother figure. However, during the phallic stage, when she discovers that she lacks a penis, she becomes libidinally attached to the father figure, and imagines that she will become pregnant by him, all the while becoming more hostile toward her mother.
Freud attributes the character of this developmental stage in girls to the idea of "penis envy", where a girl is envious of the male penis. According to the theory, this penis envy leads to resentment towards the mother figure, who is believed to have caused the girl's "castration." The hostility towards the mother is then later revoked for fear of losing the mother's love, and the mother becomes internalized, much the same as the Oedipus complex.
Implementing a series of literary devices, including diction, style, imagery, and allusion to Freudian concepts and psychological theories, D.H. Laurence provides a juxtaposition to the Oedipus complex of the son, or the Electra complex of the mother. Upon the opening and setting the tone of the story, borrowing from the style of fairy-tales to construct one in upon itself, the reader learns that the mother, rather than loving her children, possesses a “hard heart” and a desperate hunger only satiable by more money, and in turn sex from the son. With no reason listed other than the failure of the father figure, the husband of the woman, to provide for the wants of the mother and his inability to slake her insatiable thirst for money, or sex, and thus the mother turns to the son in substitute.
So longing to gratify her own compulsive and animalistic need for sex, or money in this instance, the mother, driven to the brink of insanity by the depravity of acceptance, commits an act so heinous it border upon vile: incest. Wondering why in the world a woman who should care for and nurture her children, rather than treat them akin to sex toys or sensually gratifying objects to use and discard at whim, one can only turn to one answer: the mother, in turn, faced depravation of love and acceptance from her own father during childhood.
Thus, causing an unattainable source of love, one may theorize that the girl-child developed an unhealthy obsession for her father, envisioning acts of sex and equating them with love; and, unable to act out upon such fantasies or even facing hate and further rejection from the father due to her Electra complex had she dared to act upon it, turned embittered, cruel, cold, and “hard-hearted”, and enslaving her to a lifetime of trying to 'redeem' that missing love through sexual and fatherly obsession.
Or, another theory, one also equally likely, presents a different image: that of an involved, caring father, but one with an unhealthy sexual and dominance obsession for the daughter, beating and molesting her and raping her of both innocence and love, scarring the girl-child for life. Attempting to reach out to her father, the girl, although despising him for his vile acts against her, in turn cannot help but adore him, and mistaking his sins for love, in turn craves his abuse, the abuse in itself the crux that fills the need of the girl-child for some semblance of love.
In terms of evidence for such a reason, one need only look upon my two aunts on my father’s side, both of whom faced molestation from a cruel and abusive step-father who wished to dominate the family in every way possible, even resorting to ‘feeling up’ his young step-daughters. One turned to drugs and in turn sought out men akin to the abusive step-father, while the other plunged herself wholly into religious life, ardent ministry, and prayer, in an attempt at distraction.
In a similar manner, the mother in The Rocking-Horse Winner, upon maturation, attempts to distract herself by marrying a handsome man, most likely in resemblance to her father, only to discover his lack of aptitude in both earning sustenance and income for the family, and sexually by failing to satisfy the violent and taboo addictions of his wife, to recreate the oppressive dominance formerly practiced by the father of the mother. In such case, the mother cares not for the father, but only for her own selfish obsessions, her own scars and blinded desire for only her father driving an impenetrable, invisible barrier through not only the marriage, but eventually between a normal, healthy relationship between she and her son.
Whereupon the mother discovers and experiences pregnancy, one may also assume, if the mother equates her husband and her father, that she views the child she carries in terms of love, not a separate entity, but a void filled physically and mentally by the ‘father’ and hers alone. Achieving what she could not before, or so-called love, the mother must naturally obsess and fawn over her pregnancy and the ‘gift’ given to her by the ‘father’, a crude claim of his dominance through his seed taking root and growing in her womb.
When the mother gives birth, however, from the moment the child enters the world and leaves the mother feeling empty and shamed, without ‘love’, the mother turns her sadistic and masochistic affections and attentions upon the son, in a constant and subconscious attempt to drag him back into her womb and give her the feeling of satisfaction and ‘love’ again. Since one cannot re-enter the womb of his mother and rebirth himself – a Biblical allusion taken from a teaching of Jesus to represent the cruel irony of the desperate mother in her desire for salvation from her broken life – the mother faces the only choice left: direct sexual relations with the son.
Trying to appease the mother, the son, unselfish and equally ravenous for love from his cold-hearted and indifferent parent, acquiesces to her demands and in turn develops an Oedipus complex. Beginning the cycle of abuse anew, and akin to his father and mother, the son mentally and physically snaps under the brutal and constant cravings of a love-starved and abusive parental figure. Not without succeeding where his father failed, of course, the son delivers well upon his word: impregnating the mother and providing her with the emotional high of a sense of belonging she so beloved, after the mother previously miscarried, revealed through allusions to impregnation in the horse-race winnings and failures of the son.
With a somber note, D.H. Lawrence ends the grotesque, macabre, and sickeningly inverted fairy-tale with a scathing message: My God, Hester, you’re eighty-thousand to the good, and a poor devil of a son to the bad. But, poor devil, poor devil, he’s best gone out of a life where he rides a rocking-horse to find a winner.
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