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Chapter 36
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
Several weeks later, Polly comes running out as soon as Jerry and Black Beauty get home with news: Mrs. Briggs wants Jerry to take her out tomorrow, since none of the other cabs are good and clean enough. Jerry laughs. After this, Jerry drives Mrs. Briggs often, but never on Sundays.
The novel links Jerry’s clean, safe cab to his virtue—implying then that the available Sunday cab drivers aren’t as virtuous, since their cabs aren’t so clean.
Themes
Once, though, Black Beauty and Jerry do work a Sunday. Polly approaches Jerry on Sunday morning and says that Dinah, a neighbor with an infant, needs to travel 10 miles into the country to see her dying mother. Jerry is concerned for the horses’ welfare, but Polly says she’d like to help others as she’d want others to help them. Jerry borrows a light trap (a smaller, lighter cart) from a neighbor, and he, Black Beauty, and Dinah set off midmorning. It’s May, and the weather is lovely and fresh.
While the Briggses read as wealthy, Dinah doesn’t. So agreeing to drive her on a Sunday is essentially an act of charity that Jerry performs, which Polly (and the novel’s logic on the whole) suggests is acceptable for him to do. Jerry does recognize, though, that there’s a cost to do thing this: Black Beauty is going to be tired after a 20-mile round trip. By borrowing the trap, he can ease Black Beauty’s burden.
Themes
Finally, Jerry, Dinah, and Black Beauty reach a farmhouse. Rather than put Black Beauty in a cowshed, Jerry asks to turn him out in the meadow with some cows. Black Beauty happily rolls in the grass, gallops, nibbles the grass, and naps. Jerry seems just as happy as he reads from a small book and picks flowers. They come home slowly and when they arrive, Jerry tells Polly he attended a service in the meadow—the birds were singing hymns.
The trip to the country seems restorative for both Black Beauty and for Jerry. They both get a few hours to enjoy themselves in the meadow, and Jerry’s book is presumably a Bible—so he’s not ignoring that Christianity insists Sunday is a day of rest and religious reflection.
Themes
