Victorian Fiction and the Cult of the Horse

• Published in: Victorian Studies 2007, Vol.50 (1), p.140-141
• Main Author: Gilroy, Amanda
• Format: Review
• Language: English
• Subjects: 18th century; Braddon, Mary Elizabeth (1837-1915); Culture; Dickens, Charles (1812-1870); English language; Fiction; Foucault, Michel; Horses; Language history; Literary criticism; Nonfiction; Novels; Reading; Sewell, Anna; Stubbs, George (1724-1806); Victorian period
• ISSN: 0042-5222; 1527-2052
• DOI: 10.2979/VIC.2007.50.1.140

It's a pity, though, that Dorré did not revise the chapter on Black Beauty [1877], originally published in Victorian Literature and Culture in 2002, especially since Alison Matthews David's "Elegant Amazons," also in that issue, has much relevant material on equestrian fashion.) Dorré is at her most effective in sustained close readings, such as when she reads the Pickwickians' progress from hilarious equestrian incompetence to a semblance of skill as enacting the vulnerability and ultimate affirmation of traditional "masculine agency" (37. [...] coach travel was far from a male upper-class practice (21), and, in fact, eighteenth-century English fiction is full of men and women of all classes traveling in a variety of horse-drawn vehicles; Catherine Morland's reputation is never at risk during her solitary journey home from Northanger Abbey (59 n. 3), only her feelings; diatribes about the risks of reading (128) replay similar debates from the eighteenth century; and although motherhood was a national duty in the late nineteenth century (148), the eighteenth-century literature of motherhood is saturated with a similar moral imperative for another age of imperialism, as numerous critics have demonstrated.