Why doesn't the mother know what the noise is in "The Rocking-Horse Winner"?She stood, with arrested muscles, outside his door, listening. There...

In D.H. Lawrences' "The Rocking-Horse Winner," the sound
that the mother hears but can't recognize is the rocking of her son on his wooden horse.
This is significant because it shows the kind of mother she is: if Paul's mother spent
more time with her son, she would know the sound
instantly.

Throughout the story, all Paul's mother cares
about is having more money. Even the house whispers, "There must be more money! There
must be more money!" Like any child sensitive to the worries and fears of his parent,
and Paul feels the pressure (and he hears the house whisper). Soon he discovers that he
can make money by betting on horse races—while he rides his
rocking-horse to guarantee that his horse wins. With the help of Bassett, the family's
gardener, and Paul's Uncle Oscar, Paul is able to place bets and collect the
winnings.

With Oscar's help, Paul anonymously gives a large
sum of cash to his mother, and though the money should satisfy
her—and the whispering of the house—it does
not.

We can see how Paul's mother values wealth. When Paul
first gives her a thousand pounds (with the promise of another thousand on her birthday
for the next four years), it should ease her worry, but in her foolish obeisance and
idolatry of money, his mother is ungrateful—the present is "quite moderately nice," she
says...

...her
voice cold and absent.

Paul,
so anxious to please his mother, gives his mother the "whole five thousand at once," and
the feeling that comes over the house is much like the craziness that takes hold of Paul
later. The voices go...

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...mad, like a chorus of frogs on a spring
evening.

Later, as the money
is spent, the voices...

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...trilled and screamed in a sort of
ecstasy.

Paul knows that the
most important race (the Derby) is coming up, and he must be able
to ride. His mother's parenting instincts try to speak out
over her desire for more money, but instead of listening to her
uneasy feelings about Paul, she goes to a party—this takes place two days from the
Derby. The quote referenced above describes the sound that Paul's mother hears from his
room when she returns.

Agitated beyond words, pool Paul is
racing on his horse. He is driven by his mother's anxiety for money, but that desire has
become "rushing and powerful," "huge, in violent, hushed motion." The need is out of
control. On the other side of the door, the noise "goes on and on…like a madness." When
Paul's mother opens the door…

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The room was dark. Yet in the space near the
window, she heard and saw something plunging to and fro. She gazed in fear and
amazement.

…her son…was madly surging on the
rocking-horse.

Paul's
mother fails to understand the needs of her son, seeing only what
she wants. She forgets that before all else,
she should be the loving parent. It is only as Paul goes still and crashes to the floor
that "all her tormented motherhood" rushes over the boy's mother. It is, of course, too
late. In several days, though Paul learns that their horse has won, he dies. Oscar
chastises his sister on creating an environment that required so much of the boy that
while gaining money for his mother, he lost his life. Uncle Oscar's well-known line
closes the story...

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…he's best gone out of a life where he rides his
rocking-horse to find a
winner

…because for Paul's
mother, her son and all that she had in life didn't satisfy her. The winners Paul finds
are the horses—for Paul feels he is not important enough to be a winner in
her eyes, just for who he is.