Black Beauty Analysis

Analysis—Black Beauty  

Published in the year 1877, Anna Sewell’s Black Beauty is a work of literature that cultivates empathy for animals. Black Beauty is now defined mainly as a text for children, but was originally produced for adult readership and is aimed to induce kindness, sympathy and an understanding treatment of horses among their routine handlers. The character that is going to analyze in this text is the main character, Black Beauty---the protagonist as well as the storyteller of the novel. Black Beauty is a beautiful black horse, who started his carefree childhood as a colt on a farm, and then is sold to various owners, ultimately experiencing many hardships and recounts cruelty and kindness. The experience of Black Beauty makes Black Beauty a special character which has profound representations and values. In other words, Black Beauty’s characterizations are fairly successful: Black Beauty’s inner thoughts challenged people’s stereotypical views and treatment of horses; Black Beauty’s experience also directly addresses issues connected with the moral improvement of the working classes; the life of Black Beauty is associated with economic hardships during Victorian era, and Beauty’s life serves to argue  that despite Sewell’s strong intend to provoke animal rights, human kindness and affirmations of right and wrong in the novel,  our experience is ultimately structured and determined by fluctuating economic conditions indifferent to considerations of good character. From these perspectives, Black Beauty is a typical character, which is written not only to challenge people’s stereotypical views about animals but also to represent social norms of the Victorian era.

Black Beauty’s thinking process challenges how people treat horses. One of the techniques Sewell uses to portray Black Beauty as an effective character is through the juxtaposing diction. Since Black Beauty speaks directly to the readers, his words are his weapon to fight against people’s certain treatments of horses. When Beauty put on his collar and harness, he describes his collar as ‘stiff’, ‘heavy’ and ‘unpleasant’, and his feeling for crupper as ‘hatred’, which immediately creates a sense of oppression to the readers. However, he still thinks he could not kick ‘such a good master.' The juxtaposition between Beauty’s feelings and Beauty’s reaction creates immense sarcasm, as it exposes how disempowered, and obedient Beauty was. The ironic situation gives the readers sense of guilt, which effectively helps to speak up for horses’ feelings, and contributes to Sewell’s purpose of advocating better animal treatments because horses ‘cannot tell us how they feel’, but ‘they do not suffer less because they have no words’. As Sewell herself described, Black Beauty is a character that “allows the reader to slide in and out of horse-consciousness.”  Therefore, giving Black Beauty the power to speak for himself and other horses, Sewell creates a character which effectively induce people’s empathy for horses.