On the Wings of Pegasus : Sissy Jupe and National Velvet

The essay examines narrative texts from Victorian into early twentieth-century and contemporary British literature. It deals with the cultural shift occurring in those decades with the rise of a "New Girl." By discussing Charles Dickens's "Hard Times" (1854) and Enid Bagnold's "National Velvet" (1935), in which the horses offer their full support to the weak, timid, ugly girls they escort into life and victory. The essay focuses on a gendered world of facts and emotion, of reality and imagination. According to empiricist agenda and proved logic and figures of Coketown, the horse is a hard fact. As Sissy Jupe, the circus girl, is concerned, horses also evoke sublime wonder, and affect the senses. Dickens suggests that the poetical lightness of an equestrian show will alleviate the gravity of facts. The essay also touches upon Anna Sewell's "Black Beauty" (1877), the film version of "National Velvet" and the contemporary horse and pony stories as a distinctive formulaic genre for girls.