The Ox — H E Bates A Brief

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"The Ox" - H. E. Bates A Brief Overview

Herbert Ernest Bates (1905 – 1974), better known as H. E. Bates, was an English writer and author. His bestknown works include Love for Lydia, The Darling Buds of May, and My Uncle Silas.

Novels • Catherine Foster (1929) • A German Idyll (1932) • The Duet (1935) • A House of Women (1936) • How Sleep the Brave (1943) as Flying Officer X • The Jacaranda Tree (1949) • The Scarlet Sword (1950) • The Grass God (1951) • The Nature of Love (1953) • The Feast of July (1954) • The Sleepless Moon (1956) • Death of a Huntsman (1957) • The Distant Horns of Summer (1967)

Short stories • The Spring Song and In View of the Fact That (1927) • The Tree (1930) • Cut and Come Again (1935) • Something Short and Sweet (1936) • The Ox (1939) • The Flying Goat (1939) • The Greatest People in the World (1942) as Flying Officer X • Bride Comes to Evensford (1943) • Dear Life (1949) • Colonel Julien (1951) • The Daffodil Sky (1955) • Now Sleeps the Crimson Petal (1961) • The Four Beauties (1968) • The Song of the Wren (1972)

First publication - “The Ox” was first published in John O’ London’s Weekly magazine on June 9, 1939.

On Bates’ Style Henry Burns in ‘Seven By Five’ (1963) -- Bates has a “dependence on discomfort. Discomfort extended to breaking point, discomfort prolonged beyond all seeming endurance” – though not at all past the bounds of possibility. Certainly one of H. E. Bates’ great strengths would be to show an unsentimental pity for individuals who are suffering alone.

Main Character • The Ox is really a story of Mrs. Thurlow who suffers discomfort towards the limits of endurance and bears her discomfort in addition to existence using the fortitude of the ox. • All day long she worked as a maid-servant, washing and cleaning. She never thought about herself. With an ox-like mentality she only thought of her two sons.

The Crisis • Mrs. Thurlow had saved fifty four pounds working as a maid-servant to provide her sons a better future. • One day her husband committed a murder and disappeared with Mrs. Thurlow’s money. • Mrs. Thurlow was not worried about her husband. She only cared what her money could buy, her sons’ future. • Losing her money introduced her towards the fringe of distress, she felt that her future was destroyed.

The ending • Mr. Thurlow is hanged. His wife does not get back the money. • Her sons too abandon her, choosing to live with their more affluent uncle. • Her existence had arrived at a dead stop. No hope remained to her. But nonetheless she battled on as an ox. She was the animal of burden bearing her discomfort alone. Devastated, Mrs. Thurlow struggled up the hill to her home, with a flat tire in her bicycle and "an impression that she would never reach it. "

Some Important Symbols used in “The OX” • The bi-cycle is the symbol of sole companionship for Mrs. Thurlow. She dreams about it and cannot walk without it. The bi-cycle is an object that externalizes the sway of emotions that lie suppressed in her. • The “ox” - The central symbolism in Bates's story is implicit in the analogy between Mrs. Thurlow and the ox. Right from the title itself to all the details like her 'lumbering' movement, her bi-cycle as the cart, her upturned skirt as the bony tail of the ox, the story develops this symbolism.

The End

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