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Chapter 8
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
The vicar Mr. Blomefield sometimes brings his children to play with Miss Jessie and Miss Flora. Merrylegs gets a lot of work when the kids visit, as they all take turns riding him. One afternoon, though, James brings Merrylegs back to the stable and scolds him to behave himself. Black Beauty asks what happened, and Merrylegs says the kids didn’t know when he or they had had enough—so he threw them off. Shocked, Black Beauty says Merrylegs knows better. Offended, Merrylegs says he’d never hurt Jessie or Flora, or even the tiny children. In fact, he’s especially calm for the small nervous ones, and then he goes a bit faster when they’re more comfortable.
It's a total shock for Black Beauty to learn that Merrylegs did something mean and inappropriate to the kids riding him—Merrylegs is known around Birtwick as being nice and trustworthy around children. And as Merrylegs defends himself to Black Beauty, he reiterates that he’s good and trustworthy—but he’s also a teacher. Describing how carefully he works new riders up to going at speed shows that Merrylegs is methodical and takes his responsibilities seriously—implying that throwing kids off may have been intended as a lesson.
Themes
Merrylegs says it’s the boys that need to be broken in, just like young colts. He explains that the other children had been riding him for several hours when the older boys decided it was their turn. They had a grand time galloping, and Merrylegs gamely put up with the boys using big hazel sticks as riding whips. But he got tired and stopped to drop a hint. Boys, Merrylegs says, think horses are like steam engines and can go forever, without any feelings. So when one of the boys was whipping Merrylegs, Merrylegs just stood up on his hind legs and let the boy slide off. The other boy got on and Merrylegs ejected him, too.
Merrylegs confirms that he was trying to teach the boys a lesson by getting rid of them. Essentially, Merrylegs tried to teach the boys that they can’t be cruel and expect horses to go forever. Instead, they must learn to listen to their mounts and take their mounts seriously, stopping when the horse says it’s tired and has had enough. Horses, this shows, can be teachers just as much as people can—and hopefully Merrylegs’s relatively gentle lesson got through to the boys.
Themes
Merrylegs says the boys aren’t bad and don’t want to be cruel, but they needed to learn. James, Merrylegs believes, was really only upset that the boys were using such big sticks. Ginger quips that she would’ve kicked the boys. Merrylegs says he’s not foolish enough to make Squire Gordon or James ashamed of him. And besides, the adults trust Merrylegs with the kids. He says he heard Squire Gordon telling Mrs. Blomefield that Merrylegs will take care of kids as well as they would, and said he’d never sell the pony. Merrylegs adds that he’s been treated well here for five years—that’s not worth giving up just because of some cruel boys. If he kicked, he’d be sold, and he’d find himself being worked to death by a butcher.
As far as Merrylegs is concerned, he and James are in agreement that the boys were at fault—but James has a responsibility to his employers to look like he disapproves of Merrylegs’s behavior. Horses, in this sense, may have a bit more freedom to express themselves than their human caregivers. But Merrylegs does acknowledge that he walks a fine line when he decides to discipline boys. If he misbehaves too much, he’ll be deemed dangerous and untrustworthy—and even Squire Gordon, he suggests, can’t be counted on to protect a supposedly dangerous horse from overwork by a new owner.
Themes
