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H.E. BATES THE OX WHY THIS TITLE
Henry Miller wrote in the Preface of H.E. Bates selection of stories Seven By Five (1963) that Bates with an obsession with pain. Pain stretched to breaking point, pain prolonged beyond all seeming endurance yet not by any means beyond the bounds of possibility. One of H.E. Bates great strength is to show a manly and unsentimental pity for those that suffer alone.
The Ox is a story of Mrs. Thurlow who suffers pain to the limits of endurance and bears her pain as well as life with the fortitude of an ox. Herein lies the justification of the title. More than one time Mrs. Thurlow has been compared to an ox. Mrs Thurlow was a washerwoman. At half past seven every morning she pushed her great rusty bicycle down the hill, and pushed it back at six in the evening, loaded with grey bundles of washing, oilcans, sacks, cabbages, old newspapers. She never rode the bicycle but always pushed it. Her relation to the bicycle was like that of a beast to a cart. She was the ox pulling the cart. Slopping along its side, her flat heavy feet pounding painfully along under mudstained skirt. Her face and body ugly with lumpy angles of bone she was like a beast of burden.
All day long she worked for a number of people, washing and cleaning. She never went beyond her regular boundary. She never thought about herself. In an oxlike way she thought about her two sons. She was ambitious for them, that they would become established. She had washed and scrubbed for fifteen years and had saved money for them. She kept it in a bag under her mattress. All the time she saved money religiously. Sometimes when she had no cleaning, she picked and planted potatoes, cabbages, roots peas, did more washing. Everyday she washed and ironed. She worked by candlelight. At night she folded clothes or cleaned boots. All along with an ox like fortitude she saved money. She had saved fifty four pounds. Every night she counted her money. It was an ox like obsession she had. She worked in the fields with her skirt pinned up like a tail looking like a bony ox.
She had one relaxation. On Sunday afternoons she read the newspapers. She read about wonderful things but her face remained ox like in its impassivity. She worked and saved emotionless like an ox except her one obsession.
Mr. Thurlow had a silver plate in his head. He often boasted about it. He had a bill hook. Her world crashed when one day Mr. Thurlow came with blood on his hands. He had committed a murder. He left the house with Mrs. Thurlows savings. Mrs. Thurlow was not concerned about her husband. She only cared for the money, her sons future. The money was missing. She told the police about it. The loss of her money brought her to the edge of distress. It symbolized the future. She moved about ponderous, flatfooted and unhurried, resolutely like an ox. But her future was destroyed. When her husband did not return she walked resolutely four miles to the next village. She held her bicycle firmly because she felt a sense of security and fortitude holding it. She went to her brother who was a master carpenter and talked to them about keeping her sons. Her sons hated the cheapness of Mrs. Thurlows home. They departed to live with their uncle.
Mrs. Thurlow was informed that her husband had been found. She went to the police station. She walked in heavily like an ox. She hardly registered anything. The only thing she asked when she met her husband was if she knew anything about the money. But he could not remember. The one hope that Mrs. Thurlow had also came to an end.
Mrs. Thurlow went back to her work with the resoluteness of an ox. I got my cleaning to do. I got to pick up my bicycle. She returned to her work and felt a return of security. She went back to reality. But she was oppressed by a sense of duty. She resumed her duty expressionless like an ox. She suffered the pain in silence, she felt bitterness, her life was a suffering. She pushed the bicycle back and forth each day in the same ox like manner, her heavy feel slopping dully beside it.
She still had one hope, her boys. She hoped they would return to her. She went to her brother to bring them back. But they had liked the comfort of their uncles home. They did not want to return to the discomfort of their home. So they refused to return. Mrs. Thurlow stood still, with the crushed core of her optimism and faith. As she returned with her bicycle the tyre gave way with a faint hiss. Ox like she struggled up the hill. Her life had come to a standstill. No hope remained for her. But still she struggled on like an ox. She was the beast of burden bearing her pain in silence.
