Setting as Social Critique in "The Lottery" and "The Rocking-Horse Winner"

Introduction: Setting as Implicit Ideology

The setting of a story can reveal important things about the narrative's larger meaning, because the setting implies certain things about the characters, context, and themes that would otherwise remain implicit or undiscussed. In their short stories "The Lottery" and "The Rocking-Horse Winner," Shirley Jackson and D.H. Lawrence use particular settings to comment on the political and socio-economic conditions of their characters without inserting any explicitly political or socio-economic discussion into the narrative. In the case of "The Lottery," the setting transforms the story from one of simple horror into a more nuanced critique of American society — particularly its dedication to arbitrary, destructive beliefs. Lawrence's "The Rocking-Horse Winner" makes a similar point, but in this case the setting serves to implicitly critique the consumerism encouraged by capitalist hegemony in England. Comparing and contrasting these two settings allows one to better understand how each story makes an identifiable ideological point without making that ideology explicit.

Lawrence's Suburban Setting and the Critique of Class

The earlier of the two stories is Lawrence's "The Rocking-Horse Winner," and it takes place in or around London, as evidenced by the fact that some of the characters visit Richmond Park, which is located in London (Lawrence 236). However, the story does not concern itself with the hustle and bustle of the city, but rather the quiet, almost mundane existence of a family living "in a pleasant house, with a garden," who "had discreet servants, and felt themselves superior to anyone in the neighbourhood" (Lawrence 230). Despite their relative financial and social comfort, "they always felt an anxiety in the house," because "there was never enough money," as there was "not nearly enough for the social position which they had to keep up" (Lawrence 230). This introduction to the story's setting establishes the stage for the entire narrative that follows, revealing a number of important things about the ultimate meaning to be gleaned from Paul's eventual death — which comes in the service of winning his family more money by correctly guessing the names of winning racehorses.

Most crucially, Lawrence's decision to set the story in a relatively well-off house in a middle-class neighborhood forces the reader to reconsider the relationship between poverty and class. Lawrence could have easily set the story in a poor neighborhood and focused on a poor family, and the larger narrative would not have changed substantially; Paul would still likely have internalized his parents' constant need for more money, and would still likely have died after frantically riding his rocking-horse. However, if Lawrence had set the story in a poor neighborhood, Paul's death would have been far more tragic and arguably noble, because he would have been helping his family overcome real hardship. By setting the story in a well-off neighborhood, and making the family's financial anxiety dependent not on a lack of basic necessities but rather on the cost of maintaining their social status, Paul's death becomes arbitrary and almost comical — as much as the death of a child can be. His desire to raise money for his family is not a noble quest but rather indicative of a neurosis born out of deference to ultimately meaningless class signifiers, and Paul is simply too young to recognize this.

Lawrence uses the story's setting to demonstrate the process by which deference to arbitrary standards of social worth is transferred from generation to generation, and how that transfer is accompanied by the increasing mental destruction of each succeeding generation.

Jackson's Ambiguous American Town and Arbitrary Belief

Jackson's story was written just over two decades later, but she confronts some of the same underlying problems, albeit by focusing on slightly different symptoms. "The Lottery" takes place in a small, unnamed American town. The precise location is never given, but the town's agricultural economy, regular community gatherings, and hints about the pronunciation of foreign-sounding last names suggest that it is meant to represent a kind of Anytown, USA, during the middle of the twentieth century (Jackson 291–292). This ambiguity is conducive to the story's larger meaning: if the story were set in a specific town — whether real or fictional — the story's ultimate condemnation of commitment to arbitrary religious beliefs would not carry the same resonance. By leaving the setting ambiguous, Jackson allows the story to take on the character of a fable or fairy tale, which ultimately makes its message more universal.

The particular town in the story believes that a yearly sacrifice is necessary to ensure a good harvest, and although this may appear barbaric, cruel, and patently ridiculous to contemporary readers, it is no more barbaric, cruel, or ridiculous than the religious beliefs held by millions of people — beliefs that have motivated American foreign and domestic policy from the time of the story's writing right up to the present day. By setting the story in an ambiguous town in middle America, Jackson was able to dramatize the frequently hidden violence and cruelty perpetrated every day in American society.

Conclusion: Why Setting Is Central to Meaning

Shirley Jackson's "The Lottery" and D.H. Lawrence's "The Rocking-Horse Winner" differ substantially in terms of plot, characterization, and narrative. While Lawrence focuses on a single family in a single home, Jackson depicts an entire village, and their respective writing and narration styles are self-evidently distinct. However, the stories share an ideological and critical kinship, because they use their respective settings to critique different symptoms of the same underlying problems. Lawrence uses the setting of a well-off neighborhood to dramatize the damaging effect of deference to arbitrarily determined standards of social worth, while Jackson uses the setting of an ambiguous American town to demonstrate the same damaging effect created by deference to arbitrarily determined standards of religious and political belief.

The particular setting of each story is crucial to its larger meaning. Had the settings been different — for example, a poor neighborhood or a specific named town — the meaning created by the deaths of the central characters would have been substantially altered. By choosing the specific settings that they did, Lawrence and Jackson ensured that their readers would be unable to avoid the unsettling critiques of society embedded in each story.

Works Cited

Jackson, Shirley. The Lottery and Other Stories. New York: Farrar, Strauss, and Giroux, 2005.

Lawrence, D.H. Selected Short Stories. Toronto: Dover Publications, 1993.