Summary
When Jack pours the whiskey into Mabel’s mouth, she instantly wakes up. She is confused and disoriented and does not remember walking into the freezing lake, but she immediately recognizes Jack standing in the room. She asks him what happened, and he explains that she walked into the lake and that he pulled her out.
Though he is freezing, Jack finds himself unable to leave the room and change into dry clothes. He is seemingly transfixed by Mabel. She asks him if she is out of her mind, and he replies that she doesn’t seem to be. When he asks where he can find dry clothes, Mabel suddenly realizes that she has been undressed. She asks who undressed her, and Jack tells her that he did, in order to revive her. Mabel then asks if he loves her, as if that would be the only natural reason why he would undress her.
Jack doesn’t answer—he is speechless. During this silence, Mabel crawls toward him and wraps herself around his legs. She declares that he loves her; it is no longer a question to her. She starts kissing his knees. Jack is stunned by this sudden show of affection from Mabel. He had never thought of her in a romantic way, and when he rescued her from the lake he was simply fulfilling his duties as a doctor, sworn to protect patients.
In his prolonged speechlessness, Mabel gradually draws Jack down to the floor with her. Internally, Jack cannot decide whether Mabel has gone mad, or if he has gone mad for entertaining the idea of being with her. He finds himself unable to resist Mabel’s touch and the warmth of her bare shoulders. The moment before they kiss seems to last forever; Lawrence stretches out Jack’s inner turmoil until the tension reaches a boiling point.
They kiss for a brief and tender moment, and then they both notice the putrid smell hanging on both of their bodies and in their hair. Jack is still wearing his pond-soaked clothes. This time, when Mabel asks if he loves her, he responds “yes.” His own answer scares him, but not because he doesn’t actually feel love for her; he is simply frightened by how strange and new the feelings are.
Mabel tries to make Jack put on dry, warm clothes, but he insists that he must return to his surgeries. Jack quickly takes to the idea of loving Mabel, and he repeats the sentiment wistfully, over and over again. He loves her, and he wishes to marry her as soon as the very next day. By the end of the story, Jack is more frightened by the idea that he would ever fall out of love with Mabel than by the sudden and strange onset of these feelings.
Analysis
The final third of the story focuses on the internal battle going on in Jack’s mind and almost entirely loses the close perspective of Mabel. If the story sets out to demonstrate how Mabel is oppressed by the masculine forces in her life, then the end takes an unexpected turn away from an attempt towards feminist inquiry and focuses on the psychology of urgent, passionate love. However, towards the end, we only experience Jack’s inner turmoil about loving Mabel and have no clear idea what she is thinking.
Lawrence employs free indirect discourse throughout the story, but no where is the narration more clearly free-indirect discourse than when Lawrence narrates Jack Ferguson’s thoughts. Free indirect discourse is a style of narration that maintains the third-person perspective, but inhabits to varying degrees the internal thought process of different characters, usually omitting tags like “she thought,” or “he wondered,” in order to create the effect that the character has temporarily taken over the narration. The fact that the story ends so close to Jack’s perspective calls into question who the actual protagonist of “The Horse Dealer’s Daughter” is, Mabel or Jack.
Another element that suggests that Mabel and Jack share the role of protagonist is that they both undergo a major transformation by the end of the story: they each unexpectedly fall in love with someone they never before considered as a romantic prospect. The transformation may seem more complete for Mabel, because Lawrence makes a point to portray her character as both unloving and unlovable.
As we may recall from the beginning of the story, Fred Henry calls Mabel “the sulkiest bitch that ever trod,” (202) and Lawrence does little to oppose that viewpoint. So when Mabel melts into Jack’s arms, it seems completely out of character. For Dr. Ferguson, since we do not have as complete an impression of him going into the third act, the sudden onrush of emotions comes as less of a surprise.
The story leaves off in a place of instability and grave uncertainty. However, like many successful short stories, by leaving the reader in a place of instability and uncertainty, Lawrence references the beginning of the story. The piece is bookended by different versions of uncertainty. Whereas in the beginning, Mabel (and her highly insensitive and bullheaded brothers) have no idea where she will go or how she will take care of herself once the family home is sold, by the end the very answer to that original question has led to more complicated uncertainty—will she and Jack’s love for each other endure, and how did it form in the first place? In “The Horse-Dealer’s Daughter,” Lawrence deftly explores the differences between people's behavior in intimate, passionate settings, and in social settings governed by strict convention.
