"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 best-known 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 Londons 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. Thurlows 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