by: Katherine Forbes
It is obvious from his work that C.S. Lewis had a genuine love for animals, and we learn from Humphrey Carpenter that this contributed to their significant role in his writings. Despite his interest in animals it is obvious from his work however that Lewis never spent considerable time around them, or at least he never had the chance to work with horses. Lewis falls for several misconceptions that people have about horses, and his descriptions of riding fall far short of accuracy. Narnian horses are of course capable of anything, but the dumb horses Lewis describes deserve a brief defense.
When CS Lewis portrays the cabby horse in The Magician’s Nephew, the horse laments his days as a foal when he could run about in a field all day. Although this is certainly the natural state of horses, this condition isn’t necessarily superior, as Lewis and many a horse-lover would advocate. Think of man when he was a hunter-gatherer: many would say that those people were in a superior state of existence because it was more “natural”. Yet life as a hunter-gatherer was also extremely rough, short, and man was forced to spend all of his time fighting to survive, there was no opportunity for development and refinement in terms of education, the arts, or enlightenment of any kind. Today we enjoy warm, dry homes, modern medicine, longer lives, easy access to food, and many are able to pursue great refinement through education. In the same way horses have been able to flourish under the care of mankind. With their necessary and even unnecessary needs satisfied, horses are able to devote their full faculties to their training, and even a horse with fairly minimal talent can form a bond with a rider and ca become very capable at a task. Horses with more intelligence and talent can become not only refined, but able to perform complex tasks (youtube dressage). They can also come to understand and communicate with people fairly effectively, not with speech of course, but body language and emotion (horses rarely communicate with each other, or people, using sounds).
Although I could delve into the inaccurate manner CS Lewis described riding horses, Along this same line, if you have read Plato’s Republic, you may recall the definition of justice in the final ‘city in speech’ as every individual doing that task for which he is most suited. This concept actually applies to horses fairly accurately. Every horse has a job for which he or she is suited, and in doing the right job each can develop great pride in their work: just as Bree in A Horse and His Boy has great pride in being a war-horse. Although the cart-horse who becomes a winged horse is portrayed disdainful to the task of pulling a cart, had he lived in a less wretched place than London, and given the right care and training, he likely would have enjoyed his job very much. It is not degrading for a horse to be ridden as Lewis portrays, but rather it is the cultivation of a horse's mind and ability, and a respect-worthy achievement which horses take great pride in. This pride causes many horses to reject retirement, and to enjoy even the smallest tasks throughout old age.
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