Abstract
Anna Sewell’s Black Beauty, one of the most popular books ever written in the English language, has often been slighted by critics who have dismissed it as merely children’s literature. This chapter argues that the novel is an important statement about animal ethics, drawing upon Donna Haraway’s critique of Derrida’s The Animal That Therefore I Am to assess the significance of the concept of “play.” “Play” describes ways a human being may begin to imagine the perspective of nonhumans through observation and response to their postures, movements, and sounds. Sewell, an astute and sensitive observer of horses, deliberately invites her readers to develop similar perspectives as they “play in horsehood” through reading the autobiography of a horse.
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Yeniyurt, K. (2017). Black Beauty: The Emotional Work of Pretend Play. In: Mazzeno, L., Morrison, R. (eds) Animals in Victorian Literature and Culture. Palgrave Studies in Animals and Literature. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-60219-0_12
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-60219-0_12
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