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
Black Beauty’s new master is harsh and cruel. His name is Nicholas Skinner, and Black Beauty believes he’s the same Skinner Seedy Sam drove for. In Skinner’s stable, Black Beauty finally learns how miserable it is to be a cab horse. Skinner is awful to his men, who are in turn awful to the horses. The horses work on Sundays, and sometimes, large groups of men hire a cab for the day to go 15 miles into the country. This hard work without rest makes Black Beauty feverish and exhausted. His driver is cruel too, and has something sharp at the end of his whip—and he whips Black Beauty on the head and belly. Black Beauty doesn’t fight back. Ginger was right: “men are the strongest.” Black Beauty wants to die.
Readers may recall that the Governor once told Seedy Sam he belonged at the police station based on how abused his horse looked, and now readers learn exactly how the horse came to look that way. Black Beauty suggests that the cruelty rolls downhill: Skinner is cruel to his men, which gives the men seemingly little choice but to be cruel to the horses—remember the men have a lot of money to make just for the privilege of renting the horse and cab. The too-hard work combined with the overt cruelty makes Black Beauty decide that it’d be better to die than to keep going—a sharp indictment of Skinner’s abuse and neglect.
Themes
Literary Devices
Black Beauty’s wish to die almost comes true one day when his driver picks up a family of four and their luggage at the train station. The boy and his mother get in the cab, but the little girl tells her father that Black Beauty looks too weak to carry them and all their luggage. The driver insists Black Beauty is fine—even when the porter suggests the man engage a second cab for the luggage. The girl begs her father to reconsider, but he scolds her and tells her to get in the cab.
Already, readers know something bad is going to happen: the implication is that the little girl is right that Black Beauty is too weak to tow everyone and everything. Though the porter tries to do what he can to help, Black Beauty has no one else to help and advocate for him. Both the little girl and the porter have minimal power to change anything.
Themes
Black Beauty hasn’t had food or rest since morning, but he does his best. At Ludgate Hill, though, the load is just too much—and his feet slip out from under him. He hits the ground hard and struggles to breathe. Black Beauty figures he’ll die as he listens to angry voices and the little girl saying it’s her family’s fault that Black Beauty fell. People release Black Beauty from the cab and after a while, Black Beauty feels himself coming back. A kind man convinces Black Beauty to stand and settles him in a nearby stable with a mash.
Black Beauty’s fall is, the novel suggests, the direct result of months of abuse and neglect, and years of not enough rest. Now, it seems possible he’ll pay the price with his life; if he can’t continue pulling people around, he’s useless as transportation. But though these people are unnamed, Black Beauty still finds that there are kind people everywhere who are ready to help an animal in need just because they can.
Themes
Black Beauty returns to Skinner’s stables in the evening. The farrier who examines him says Black Beauty is just overworked and would recover after six months of rest in a meadow, but Skinner snaps that he can’t do that—he works horses until they give out and then sells them for whatever he can get. Since Black Beauty’s breathing is still fine, the farrier suggests that Skinner rest Black Beauty until a horse sale in two weeks. Unwillingly, Skinner tells the stable man to feed Black Beauty well. Two weeks of delicious food and rest makes Black Beauty think he’d like to keep living. When he’s led to the sale, he keeps his head up and hopes for the best.
Skinner seems to imply that he can’t just put Black Beauty back in a cab since he’d probably just fall again. So in his situation, Black Beauty is useless. The farrier, though, emerges as an advocate for kindness when he suggests resting and feeding Black Beauty in preparation for the sale. Horse sales, remember, aren’t great places for horses, since horses have no control over where they’re going. But it’s a sign of how helpful the food and rest is that Black Beauty is nevertheless able to keep his spirits up as he heads for the sale.
Themes
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