Although it’s difficult to find evidence that Anna Sewell meant Black Beauty to be an allegory for female oppression during her lifetime, numerous similarities exist between the book’s examples of animal cruelty and real-life occurrences of women’s subjugation in Victorian society. One example of this is the degradation of being treated as a financial commodity. Black Beauty remarks with sadness that “[i]t seems that horses never know each other after they are sold.” (20) Women were similarly used in marriages masquerading as financial transactions: since women had no rights of ownership, their potential suitors could marry them knowing that any land, fortunes, or titles possessed by the woman immediately and legally passes to the husband. This sham use of matrimony reduced women to the size of the dowries; similarly, horses were often only valued at the buying price that they could fetch.

Another popular Victorian children’s book, What Katy Did by Susan Coolidge, alludes to female oppression in a very similar way, albeit using paraplegics instead of animals, to negatively portray the expectations and social standing of women in Victorian England.

In the story and in Victorian society in general, invalids were expected to accept their segregation from society without complaint, and to be cheerful and kind-hearted so that others would benefit from their presence. Likewise, the horses in Black Beauty “bear their pain in silence” (104) and are disposed of like trash when they cease being useful to humans. Like women, overworked carthorses and cripples are expected to willingly accept their position in Victorian society; they are judged by their usefulness and compliance with social expectations rather than being respected just as they are.