Society trains families to maintain a certain level of social ranking, however, there are certain implications as to how that status is to be maintained. In the Rocking-Horse Winner, Paul has an opportunity to try and help his family's desperate financial situation and he tries very hard to do so. Paul's assumption that his mother would stop him from riding his rocking-horse (which is his device to obtain luck for horse bets) is probably correct for three main reasons: he is simply too old to be playing with toys, she would not allow Paul to overtake the role of provider for the family, and her past experience with gambling has lead her to believe it has a negative impact.
             The first thing to consider about Paul's assumption that his mother would stop him, is the physical action of riding the horse. His mother sees the rocking-horse as a childish toy and she even confronts Paul about it; "Surely you're too big for a rocking-horse!" (293). Paul uses the excuse that he would like to keep the horse till he can have a real pet of his own. His mother accepts this answer, but only in a mocking way since Paul claims he simply likes having the horse around, and appears to not have a boyish need for the toy. She simply laughs and asks if the horse keeps him company. Paul's mother needs to believe her family is conventional one, and she knows that Paul needs to enter the next stage of his life: adolescence. The horse is a symbol of his boyhood, and she needs to know that he can be successful in his transition away from being a child. If she knew that the horse was winning Paul a great deal of money, she would stop him and get rid of the horse.
             Though the mother wants money desperately, she wants even more to be successful. Towards the end of the story she gets a job sketching for newspaper advertisements. This is ironic in two ways: the first being that she is drawing women in furs, sil...