Black Beauty

“You have been well bred and well born; your father has a great name in these parts, and your grandfather won the cup two years at the Newmarket races.”

In this quotation, Black Beauty’s mother tells him about his pedigree and lineage. It was and still is common for a horse’s potential and financial value to be assessed according to his genetic lineage, and at various moments in the plot Beauty’s breeding will be recognized by characters who are knowledgeable about horses. Beauty’s breeding also parallels the Victorian class system, positioning him as appropriate to be the hero of the novel in the same way that a human protagonist might be distinguished as a gentleman or coming from a good family.

“They often hurt themselves, often spoil good horses, and tear up the fields, and all for a hare or a fox or a stag, that they could get more easily some other way; but we are only horses, and don’t know.”

In this quotation, Black Beauty’s mother muses about why she finds the practice of hunting for sport, which is common among the British upper classes, strange and confusing. She can objectively observe the destruction and harm often caused by this pursuit and provides a critique while also maintaining humility. Throughout the novel, Sewell uses the idea of animals being ignorant about the context for human behaviors, such as hunting, drinking alcohol, and going to war, to provide commentary on how strange and irrational these behaviors seem when observed objectively.