Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Black Beauty, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Horse Care, Abuse, and Neglect
Class, Transportation, and Victorian England
Good, Evil, and Power
Dignity and Religion
Summary
Analysis
Up to this point, Black Beauty’s drivers have all known how to drive. But since Black Beauty is quiet, gentle, and dependable, his master often rents him out to inexperienced drivers. Black Beauty suffers through “tight-rein drivers,” who insist on holding the reins very tight to “hold[] a horse up”—as though horses can’t hold themselves up. For a horse like Black Beauty, who has a soft and sensitive mouth, it’s “tormenting” and “stupid.” He also has to deal with “loose-rein drivers,” who keep no tension on the reins and therefore have no control if their horse spooks or if something else happens. Driving a horse like this also teaches a horse bad habits, which must be trained or beaten out later.
In addition to the less-than-ideal stables, Black Beauty also must now put up with incompetent drivers—and this, he makes clear, is maddening. The people who believe they must hold the horse up themselves by holding tight to the reins, Black Beauty implies, essentially refuse to trust that horses are designed to stay upright and move on their own—they don’t believe a horse is competent. The loose-rein drivers, on the other hand, get into dangerous situations like Lady Anne did, since they’re not paying attention.
Themes
The loose-rein drivers are generally careless; they tend to pay attention to anything but their horses. Once, Black Beauty goes out with a gentleman who has his wife and children with him. The man takes no notice as Black Beauty gets a stone caught in his shoe. Any good driver would notice something was wrong immediately, but this man pays no attention as the stone wedges itself tighter into Black Beauty’s hoof and begins to hurt. The man only notices Black Beauty limping after a half mile—and then he exclaims that the livery sent him out with a lame horse. A passing farmer stops and asks to inspect Black Beauty; he removes the stone and tells the incredulous man that horses can indeed get stones stuck in their hooves, and that the stones are dangerous. For a “job-horse,” treatment like this is normal.
This anecdote illustrates just how careless loose-rein drivers can be. The gentleman’s first thought, upon noticing that Black Beauty is limping, is to blame the stable—a sign he hasn’t paid any attention to Black Beauty the entire drive. Then, the gentleman shows how ignorant he is when it comes to horses and horse care. It takes the generosity and concern of a farmer to get the stone out of Black Beauty’s shoe—again, Black Beauty is powerless to help himself and can only hope that people like this will advocate for him—and the gentleman has no idea that such a thing is even possible. Given what tragedies have already occurred in the novel when people have been careless, this creates a sense of foreboding.
Themes
