Growing up with little or no love from your mother can be a very difficult thing to live with. In "The Rocking Horse Winner", this is partly why Paul resorts to gambling and becomes sick. Paul's family is not very well off financially and that problem is recognized by both Paul and his mother. This shortage of finances in their household makes Paul's mother greedy for money. These all contribute to the fact that she can be blamed for Paul's death. Paul's mother's greed for finances impedes her from loving her family the way she should, which is why she both contributes to the beginning of Paul's illness and why she cannot do anything to stop it from getting worse when she develops a concern about it.
The mother can be blamed for her son's death. One way is that Paul's mother, in her conversation with Paul, mentions filthy lucre, which means that money gets in the way of things, here specifically, family relationships. When Uncle Oscar mentions filthy lucre to Paul, he thinks that it means money so he mentions it to his mother and she clarifies for him what it means. "Filthy lucre does mean money" (96). That is one reason why she can be blamed for Paul's death, because of the mother's sense of greed for money. .
In that same conversation, is another reason why she can be blamed for Paul's death. Paul's mother mentions luck and that she married someone who has no luck, which is why they are poor. She answers Paul's question of why are they the poor ones in the family. ""Well-I supposed," she said slowly and bitterly, "it's because your father has no luck"" (96). This introduces the fact that luck brings you money which is one way that Paul's mother influenced her son to gamble and it also shows the mother's greed. The tone that Paul's mother answers his question in suggests that she is greedy because it seems like she should not have married that person that she did because he is not lucky and if she did not marry him than maybe they would be richer.
