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SEWELL: AN ADVOCATE FOR THE IMPROVEMENT OF ANIMAL TREATMENT HER PURPOSE: In her fifties, Anna Sewell first envisioned to write a book about horses. Sewell had a lot of difficulty walking because of her health complications, and henceforth heavily relied upon horse drawn carriages to mobilize. “Pulitzer Prize”, winning novelist Jane Smiley writes, “Sewell loved to drive the family pony and she loved to talk to the pony as if the pony could understand her". Sewell recorded in her diary that she wanted her text to be an instructional book to “induce kindness, sympathy and an understanding treatment of horses”. Sewell’s target audience was in fact adults, despite “Black Beauty”, becoming known as a children’s book. . Sewell’s literary advocacy, in the form of “Black Beauty”, contributed to the alteration and eventual expulsion of the bearing rein. In the 18th and 19th centuries, the “bearing rein” was utilised to keep the heads of horses up. In “Black Beauty”, the horses are required to keep their heads up to a very extreme degree due to fashion. In the text, Sewell pushes forward the message that the use of the “bearing reign”, creates chronic health problems with the spine and back, as well as restrains breathing, which in some cases diminished the value of horses as working animals.

WHY IT WAS EFFECTIVE Sewell’s use of anthropomorphism is what makes “Black Beauty” effective as a text that advocates for the improved treatment of horses in Victorian England. The story is narrated from Black Beauty’s perspective and resultantly the reader gains insight into how horses suffer from the forced involvement of human beings with restrictive and unhealthy technical objects like the “bearing rein” and “blinkers” as well as cruel procedures like cutting off the tales of the horses. For instance Ginger describes the physical effects of the “bearing rein” to Black Beauty, by stating, “… it is dreadful… your neck aching until you don’t know how to bear it… its hurt my tongue and my jaw and the blood from my tongue covered the froth that kept flying from my lips”. Tess Cosslett highlights that Black Beauty’s story is structured in a way that makes him similar to those he serves. The horses in the text have reactions as well as emotions and characteristics, like love and loyalty, which are similar to those of human-beings. Coslett emphasizes that while “Black Beauty” is not the first text which possesses an animal autobiography, it is a novel that “allows the reader to slide in and out of horse-consciousness, blurring the human/animal divide". Black Beauty’s suffering is distressing to the reader because his characteristics, emotions and feelings are similar to those of human beings.

THE REACTION Upon release of the text, many readers related to the pain of the victimized horses, sympathised and ultimately wanted to implement standards that would improve the well-being of horses. Two years after the release of the novel, one million copies of “Black Beauty” were in circulation in the United States. In addition, animal rights activists would habitually distribute copies of the novel to horse drivers and to people in stables. The depiction of the “bearing rein” in “Black Beauty”, spurred so much outrage and empathy from readers that the use of the “bearing rein” was not only abolished in Victorian England, but public interest in anti-cruelty legislation in the United States also significantly amplified. The detrimental social practises of the horses in “Black Beauty” inspired the development of legislation in various states that would condemn such abusive behaviors towards animals. The strong impact of the novel is still very much recognized today. Claudia Johnson and Vernon E Johnson, authors of “In the Encyclopedia of Animal Rights and Animal Welfare”, have referred to “Black Beauty” as being “the most influential anticruelty novel of all time”. They have also written that while many texts in literature have been drafted with the purpose to promote a change of heart in the harsh treatment of animals, the most significant text, with the widest impact is indisputably Anna Sewell’s “Black Beauty”. Comparisons have also been made between “Black Beauty” and the most important social protest novel in the United States, “Uncle Tom’s Cabin”, by Harriet Beecher Stowe, on account of the strong degree of outrage and protest action that both novels snowballed in society.