Black Beauty Part 2

Upon further reading it becomes even more apparent that Black Beauty was designed to be its own form of Bible. Now, before you begin to think in religious terms, consider the actual overall purpose of the Bible outside of any religious sense. It is in essence a collection of parables, short symbolic stories with moral lessons inbedded in their conclusions. With this in mind, my meaning should become clear, as each chapter of Sewell's novel serves as its own small symbolic moral cautioning, each with a clear lesson.

I know not how greatly Sewell was influenced by Aesop's Fables in the writing of the novel, but I find the overall theme of the two remarkably similar. In much the same way as the fables, Sewell uses animals and their interactions to tell very human stories, and express very human values, in a manner that entertains and teaches, rather than lectures, her readers. Her own profficiency with maintaining a sympathetic imagination is shown in using this style, in noticing the feelings of even the lowliest of London's servants with lines such as "It often went to my heart to see how the little ponies were used" (Sewell, 172). To take into account the feelings of other beings, the very basis of sympathetic imagination, goes largely against human nature, especially when those sympathies are extended to non-human targets. It is only in the excercise of our compassion that we extend such sympathies to beings outside ourselves, and yet in accomplishing such a task we develop a bond with these other beings, and a strength so prevalent in ourselves, that moral lessons are able to reach us much more effectively through the use of said bond. This then is why Aesop's Fables, and subsequently Black Beauty serve so delightfully to engage our hearts and minds with their simple moral lessons.

And lessons they are, as each chapter tends to end with statements such as "if we see cruelty or wrong that we have the power to stop, and do nothing, we make ourselves sharers in the guilt" (Sewell, 164) and "if a thing is right, it can be done, and if it is wrong, it can be done without; and a good man will find a way" (Sewell, 156). These lessons are not new concepts, in terms of the history of human literature. Far from it, each moral Sewell expresses is positively old hat, and they were all old hat long before she was born. No, what is new is the context of the telling, morals are easily forgotten unless they are retold in a setting with which the common man can identify, and in a way that reaches his heart.

Which is Sewell's goal, she takes to heart the heart of the matter, which is to reach the heart of her reader, and teach it. Since the time of Cupid's famous simple, people have known that as much as we think with our minds, we act with our hearts, and for some strange reason, with our strange belief that animals are somehow innocent where we are not, they reach our hearts more effectively than tales of humans, and with far greater impact. Like a better fletched arrow the woes of creatures reach deeper into us, and do more damage.

What Sewell does is hardly novel, but each generation needs a new set of moral parables with which to identify, and few work so well as a collection of animal symbols. Partly this may be the defenselessness of animals in the face of mankind's relentless existence. In the Victorian era it had become apparent that Man was powerful, but with that power came fear, fear of misuse, fear of disaster. That same fear continues to this day, as well as the misuse that inspires it, and so man endeavors to caution himself against his own inate nature, to terrify himself out of his relentless ways, and the use of innocent animals as martyrs is no less effective, as any of our classmates who saw

can attest. It is an old fear, and an old moral, one Sewell shows herself full-well aware of in quoting "inasmuch as ye have done it to one of the least of these" (Sewell, 181).

DB: Black Beauty Part 1

I find myself glad that the focus of this discussion board is on my reaction to the reading, because more so than any of our previous books, I actually find a reaction in me to Black Beauty. Lo and behold a Victorian novel possessed of not only the trademark devastating emotional lows, but, scarcely to be believed, possessed also of emotional highs! For the first time in our readings, nay for the first time in my experience of Victorian literature, there is actual joy in the story by which to give the inevitable sorrow any worth!

And it does give the sorrow worth. The ideals and principles depicted in Black Beauty are so in league with the ideals and principles we hold today that it is unavoidable that sympathy and compassion develop between ourselves and our narrator. This change in ideals is clearly shown in the statement "Where we saw people who loved their neighbours, and were kind to man and beast, we might know that was God's mark, for 'God is love.' " (Sewell, 52).

This is a new view of the world, a remembrance of the love and joy put forth by the new testament, rather than a constant decline into the ideals of the old, where there is only wrath and punishment, and the supremacy of man in the playground God has bequethed him. This view is shown in God reaching for the image of beautiful man, showing him caring and love, epitomized in Michealangelo's beautiful depiction in the Cistene Chapel.

This view of the world is a celebration of joy and happiness, a newborn delight in the individual's worth and conduct. Sewell's novel shows a delight in and respect for the inborn charity of man that Victorian literature often ignores altogether, a charity of man that I would like to think the last few centuries has cherished and nurtured to the best of its ability. The old views of man as a wretched creature, a sinfull beast, deserving of only misery, and incapable of bettering himself or his world, are dying off, I pray for good. In Black Beauty we see the light great minds of the time were beginning to glimpse, the idea of a unified community of loving individuals, working together to make life not only better, but more joyous.

This ideal of community is shown in Sewell's scathing denunciation of the ideal "Everybody look after himself, and take care of number one." (Sewell, 67). In an age where men began to wonder exactly what good they were capable of, throwing off the old assertion that man was capable of only wretchedness, they quickly came to find that men could do even greater good than any one man. And if men could create great things through kindness to one another, how much greater could their accomplishments be if they showed kindness universally? If they extended goodwill and charitability to all manner of life? This idea was new, unprecedented, and people like Sewell knew it would take time and effort for man to make it a habit to treat all creatures with dignity and kindness. Because of this, she stresses good habits as a positive quality throughout her novel. Good habits in the actions of the grooms created good habits in the actions of their charges, created a better working relationship for everyone in the story. She connects this idea of bad habits to men, even while using horses, with the assertion that "letting [a horse] get into bad habits was just as cruel as spoiling a child, and both had to suffer for it afterwards.' (Sewell 112). To develop bad habits in oneself or one's charges would lead to a loss of the effectiveness of the new principles of kindness and charity that were only just beginning to bloom in the heart of Victorian England.

To go along with this new focus on charity and kindness, in the face of centuries of wretchedness in Western Europe, is a focus in Sewell's writings of throwing off old trappings of style and fashion, especially those that go against common sense and cause harm, such as the oft-maligned bearing reins of Black Beauty, as shown on the right. Being a woman living in her time, Sewell probably had close intimate knowledge of inane fashions and ideals causing her a great deal of bodily and mental harm, and used the story of her gorgeous and well-mannered hero to show how very much harm to the psyche such idiotic social requirements could cause.

Sewell uses animals to get across her novel ideas of kindness and community in an understandable fashion, without looking like she's trying to tell humans how to act in a direct manner, something difficult for an author to do, and flat out impossible for a woman in Victorian England to accomplish. Much like in Jude, animals are used to create an opportunity for the characters to show mercy and compassion for others, and to show it as a beautiful and positive quality to be nurtured and developed.

Triumphant Failure

It becomes apparent that in this floundering "spasmodic" anti-romantic period, great workers of literature finally began to question the concept of "paradise" that all humanity always found itself working towards reclaiming. Buckley, in The Pattern of Conversion points out that to writers such as Browning, "the fulfillment of desire meant spiritual death, for it removed the high remote ideal that had given motive power to the soul" (Buckley 593), and Mill argues that it is "better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied" (Buckley 593). The endless search for personal gratification and joy that the romantic period so passionately endeavored in was now coming under attack, as intellectuals began to realize that earthly satisfaction was in fact a sickening and inhumane achievement in the extreme. The insanity of such a search becomes apparent in the words of the artist Ruskin, when he states that imperfection is "in some sort essential to all we know of life" (Buckley 594). The creators of the world were beginning to accept the inevitability of human failure, and to take joy in it!

The thinkers of the time were finally carefully examining a painfully self-evident truth, that achieving all of your many secular goals completely and spectacularly left you utterly...bored. They were realizing that there simply wasn't enough depth to material success to provide lasting pleasure to the human psyche, and so they turned to the only eternally challenging outlet they knew, the salvation and gratification of the human soul. This then was the conversion process, the realization and acceptance of imperfect and unhappiness in life, and the acceptance of these concepts as wholly neccessary as part of the human condition, culminating in the use of this condition as an impetus for spiritual journeys of insight.

On the heels of this conversion comes Mills, a man who, while raised in Banthamism, denies its tenets and comes to the personal realization that "those only are happy who have their minds fixed on some object other than their own happiness" (Mills, 694). Here then is a further extension of the idiocy of seeking personal comfort and material aggrandizement in life, but changed to reach the common man more directly. It is indeed anti-human to not seek happiness, but it is all too human to fail for want of the right goal. Mills realized that seeking happiness for its own end would never prosper, and like Hobbes comes to the conclusion that to achieve happiness one must learn to find happiness in other goals and objects. He goes on to state that in his philosophy it is "among the prime necessities of human well-being...the internal culture of the indivdual" (Mill, 694). He himself had undergone that conversion which opened men up to the realization that insight, true self-searching, could and would provide the path to satisfaction and joy in life that material culture simply could not match.

And finally comes Carlyle, providing a taste of the emotion and passion humans so need in order to connect to higher ideals. With such terrifying imagery as "Doubt had darkened into Unbelief" (Carlyle, 606) Carlyle sets the strength of emotion and faith needed in such trying times, as he further clarifies by stating "for man's well-being, Faith is properly the one thing needful" (Carlyle 606). And in conjunction with Buckley's insistence on persevering in human endeavors in the face of their imperfection, and Ruskin's delight in the imperfections of humanity's accomplishments, comes Carlyle's argument that "A certain inarticulate self-consciousness dwells dimly in us; which only our Works can render articulate and decisively discernible" (Carlyle 606). He further reinforces Buckley's belief in man's imperfections being a part of his accomplishments by stating "our works are the mirror wherein the spirit first sees its natural lineaments." (Carlyle 606).

This then, is the crux of all three writers' theses, the basis of Buckley's acceptance of imperfection, Mills's search for happiness, and Carlyle's "grim fire-eyed defiance" (Carlyle 606) of the 'Das Ewige Nein' or 'Everlasting No', that humans must persevere in their endeavors even in the face of imperfection, unhappiness, and the great crushing weight of the universe, because only in their works, their search, their defiance, could they hope to better understand the greatest work of their lives, themselves.

ODB: Jude Part Second

I find it strange how much difficulty I am having in divining the overall moral lesson implicit in Jude's tragic tale. As with all victorian works, there is a moral cautioning present, but I cannot seem to divine exactly what the caution is from. Much like Sue's astounding "turn to the right-about like this" (276, Hardy), all the tale seems to build to the advent of joy following Jude's release of all of his stultified ideals and beliefs. For one transcendant moment, Jude finds true love and happiness, and we are lead to believe it is because of his newfound disregard for old practices and traditions. And then all of a moment it all goes to hell! The murder/suicide of little Father Time is unforeseen, unforeshadowed, and entirely unexpected. From the greatest height of contentment in the narrative it falls to the deepest chasm of tragedy it is yet to explore. From this point on there is no further happiness for any character in the tale.

Which is he, or if he is both, what story does he tell?

And even futher, what in heaven's name is the motivation of Father Time? Why that name, why the character, what does this enigmatic child serve the author to say? To be fair, aside from the strangeness of his existence, I found a kindred soul in the boy. No doubt each of us has lead a life filled with adult worries come upon us, seeming to "see all [the world's] terrors before they are old enough to have staying power to resist" (264, Hardy). Father Time's personality left little doubt to the fact that he was an intellectual, and a somber one at that, precisely the stereotype of the typical vitorian scholar. Far too many are the worries we take on in our youth, as a new and changing world finds thousands of novel ways to provide them for us, creating old souls with inexperienced hearts to house them.

A Jude the Obscure

So what is the message to be found here? I confess I simply do not know. It is as confusing in its vagueness as finding that someone would have named a beautiful flower after so dreary and heartrending a tale as Judes. Does Hardy wish to encourage his audience to throw aside convention and tradition and seek happiness in their lives, to seek the happiness Jude so briefly held? Or does he scream that it is a fools errand, an indulgence into wickedness, and that the corruption and loss of all innocence will be its terrible price? These answers are left unclear, unanswered in my mind, for even at the end, when each of them returns to their rightful position in a stultifying and miserable life, they do not find happiness, or even acceptance, only further death and sadness.