Black Beauty(黑骏马)

Black BeautyBlack Beauty is an 1877 novel by English author Anna Sewell. It was composed in the last years of her life, during which she was confined to her house as an invalid.The novel became an immediate bestseller, with Sewell living just long enough (five months) to see her first and only novel become a success. This story is about a horse that is sold from place to place. On his way, he meets many different horses, each of which have different personalities. He also meets lots of owners that treat him differently. Each chapter talks about a different incident in Black Beauty's life, and they all contain a lesson related to the treatment of horses.Although not originally intended as a children's novel, but for people who work with horses, it quickly became a children's classic. With fifty million copies sold, Black Beauty is one of the best-selling books of all time.While outwardly teaching animal welfare, it also contains allegorical lessons about how to treat people with kindness, sympathy and respect. Despite recollections to the contrary, there is no evidence that this book was ever banned in South Africa.Crippled and unable to walk since a young child, Anna Sewell began learning about horses early in life, spending many hours driving her father to and from the station from which he commuted to work. Sewell's introduction to writing began in her youth when she helped edit the works of her mother, Mary Wright Sewell (1797-1884), a deeply religious, popular author of juvenile best-sellers. By telling the story of a horse's life in the form of an autobiography and describing the world through the eyes of the horse, Anna Sewell broke new literary ground.Sewell said that her purpose in writing the novel was "to induce kindness, sympathy, and an understanding treatment of horses"—an influence she attributed to an essay on animals she read earlier by Horace Bushnell (1802-1876) entitled "Essay on Animals".Her sympathetic portrayal of the plight of working animals led to a vast outpouring of concern for animal welfare and is said to have been instrumental in abolishing the cruel practice of usng the checkrein (or "bearing rein", a strap used to keep horses' heads high, fashionable in Victorian England but painful and damaging to a horse's neck).Black Beauty also contains two pages about the use of blinders (calling them blinkers) on horses, concluding that this use is likely to cause accidents at night due to interference with "the full use of" a horse's ability to "see much better in the dark than men can.""There is no religion without love, and people may talk as much as they like about their religion, but if it does not teach them to be good and kind to other animals as well as humans, it is all a shame."—Black Beauty, Chapter 13, last paragraph.The book describes conditions among London horse-drawn taxicab drivers, including the financial hardship caused to them by high licence fees and low legally-fixed fares. A page footnote in some editions says that soon after the book was published, the difference between 6-day taxicab licences (not allowed to trade on Sundays) and 7-day taxicab licences (allowed to trade on Sundays) was abolished and the taxicab licence fee was much reduced.“Animals deserve our kindness, sympathy and understanding,”that is what Anna Sewell －the author of Black Beauty－wanted to convince her readers. Thanks to Sewell, I now think about the animal－human relationship from both the human and the animal’s point of view.The inspiration for Anna Sewell’s novel was drawn from her own relationship with horses. Anna Sewell was born on March 20th, 1820 in Norfolk, England and was crippled while still very young. Due to her disability, she relied on horse-drawn carriages and grew to love horses as a result. She also became appalled by the careless and cruel treatment horses often received fromhumans and determined to write a book.. In the second year of work on the book, she was told that she had only eighteen months to live, but she persevered in order “to induce kindness, sympathy and an understandi ng [of the ] treatment of horses.” Five years later, she was still working on Black Beauty, her only book. Unfortunately, Sewell died a few months after publication and never learned of the book’s huge success. Black Beauty formed an impassioned plea for a nimal rights at a time when such a notion had been dismissed as ridiculous.The novel portrayed the real condition of working horses living in Britain during the Victorian Era. In that time period, the wealthy thought that their horses were treated well because they never stepped into the stable. In order to call people’s attention to horses’ hard life, Sewell tells the story through the first-person narrative voice of a horse. This innovative personification of an animal made the book a real success. Re aders heard the stories straight from the horse’s mouth, literally, as an animal spoke of extremes of joy and suffering. People were shocked by the truth exposed by the novel and changed their attitudes towards animals.Sewell formed the novel with three kinds of characters: Black Beauty, Ginger and other farm animals. Through their different experiences, I saw similarly painful lives led by the animals. This method made the earnest appeal for animal rights become more and more persuasive.As a domestic animal, Black Beauty was continuously sold from one family to another. Over the years Beauty enjoyed good masters but also endured mean ones. Sometimes, he was cared for and at other times tortured. In the end, everything turns out all right in a story that is so tender and yet meaningful. His story was so vivid that caught the readers’ heart. The novel brought people laughter and tears and also enlightened them to understand animals at the same time.Animals cannot speak so understanding is significant to them. Once, for example, Beauty was drawing the carriage to a wooden bridge. The bridge was flooded out in the river and John, the groom, was not aware that it was cracked. But the quickly realized that something was wrong because o f Beauty’s abnormal behavior. Momentarily, a man shouted to them, “Stop! Stop!…The bridge is broken in the middle. If you come across, you’ll fall in the river!” Beauty had saved John. However, if John had not tried to understand what Beauty wanted to tell him, there would definitely have been an accident. I learnt from the story that understanding animals is not only essential to them but is also beneficial to us ourselves.。