HORSES AND CORSETS: BLACK BEAUTY, DRESS REFORM,AND THE FASHIONING OF THE VICTORIAN WOMAN

Extract

WHEN ENGLISHWOMAN ANNA SEWELL died in 1878 of an indeterminate chronic illness, she left a modest note among her papers which read: “I have for six years been confined to the house and to my sofa, and have from time to time, as I was able, been writing what I think will turn out a little book, its special aim being to induce kindness, sympathy and an understanding treatment of horses” (qtd. in Chitty 178). Published in 1877 just months before her death, the “little book” that Sewell wrote proved to be the sixth most popular work printed in the English language¹; she entitled it Black Beauty: The Autobiography of a Horse. Sewell’s sentimental tale charts the rise and fall of a beautiful thoroughbred gelding, Black Beauty, from the wholesome pastoral bliss of his early life on a landed estate to his ultimate degradation as a cab horse working the dirty, crowded streets of London. From among the many instances of physical abuse depicted in Black Beauty, Sewell isolates those incurred in the name of “Fashion” as the most pernicious, and her narrative passionately participates in what was at the time a heated public controversy: the application of the curb-bit and the bearing rein, two popular harnessing devices which held the horse’s head tightly erect, compelling the animal into contrived and painful postures for the purpose of appearances alone.