One of the prompts in the Back to the Classics Challenge this year was to read a children's classic. This is one of my absolute favorite types of classic to read, so I was excited for it. I've already read a lot of the most well-known books of this genre, so figuring out which one to read this year was a little bit of a challenge. I ended up searching through my Goodreads wish list for ideas and came across The Little White Horse, a children's novel written in the 1940s by Elizabeth Goudge. I first heard about this book in an article about J.K. Rowling's favorite reads (this was back when I thought she was a cool person and cared about her opinions). She recommended it and I was interested to see what it was like, so I figured I might as well give it a try now.
The novel is set in the 1840s and follows a young orphan named Maria Merryweather. As the story begins, her father has recently died and she and her governess are traveling to live with her uncle, Sir Benjamin. He lives on a fairytale-like estate named Moonacre Manor, and when Maria arrives there, everything is absolutely delightful. Her new house is like a castle, and the inside is filled with curious objects, amazing food, and beautiful clothes. There are lots of funny, loyal animals around to play with and even a young shepherd boy named Robin to befriend. There is a subtle kind of magic about the place, and Maria settles in very comfortably. The Merryweather family has an old and a deep connection to the land, the house, and the little village nearby, so she feels instantly like she belongs.
But while most things are wonderful at Moonacre, it doesn't take Maria long to figure out that there are a few wrongs bubbling underneath the surface of the idyllic estate. There is a piece of the property that one of her ancestors seized from the church long ago, and the religious community there still longs to have it back. There is also a man that lives in another castle beyond the woods bordering the estate that nurtures an old grudge against the family. He leads a band of men that routinely poach game from Merryweather property and cause general alarm in the village. Before long, Maria feels called upon to right these wrongs and she embarks on a journey filled with danger, friendship, and magic to restore Moonacre to its full glory and bring peace and happiness to everyone.
This is one of those novels that I probably would have loved if I read it as a child. Reading it as an adult, however, with no prior knowledge of what I was getting into, was a very strange experience. Things started off well enough. Elizabeth Goudge writes with a pitch-perfect fairy tale tone, weaving in lots of detail and wonder into her descriptions. Maria was a suitably perfect little heroine, and the impossibly smart animals, rooms full of intriguing items, and Merryweather family legends created an intriguing start to the story. It was very cute and very proper, just like you would expect a children's classic to be.
Eventually however, as Maria started learning more about Moonacre, I realized that I was reading one of those deeply religious children's stories. Similar to The Chronicles of Narnia, the Christian themes ran very deep here. Large amounts of the plot dealt with returning a parcel of land "back to God" and Maria worked closely with the town parson to make that happen. Lots and lots of time is spent describing church services and religious ceremonies. It is clear that one of Goudge's main purposes in the story is to promote Christianity, which is fine if that lines up with your beliefs, but I was more into this novel for the fantasy. This was a very preachy read. I'm not religious, so I was bored with these elements.
The book also reinforces a number of gender stereotypes, which is very common in an older children's story, but I was annoyed by it a bit more than usual in this novel. This is probably because the story directly advocates for girls to be agreeable, proper, and not cause a fuss. One of the subplots involved the breakup of Sir Benjamin's engagement when he was a young man, and the problem was that he and his fiancée had a minor disagreement about something small. When Maria heard about this, she chastises the woman involved for being petty and not agreeing to what Sir Benjamin wanted. Her uncle receives no such criticism, even though he was equally at fault in the situation. Other examples of stereotypes abound throughout the plot as well: all the women in the story are described as small, dainty, and beautiful, female virtue is consistently equated with obedience, and at one point, Maria spends part of the novel in a wedding dress and is claimed as a future bride by another character. There are even a few characters in the story that state point-blank that they do not like women, and have to be won over by Maria's sweetness. A lot of plot elements in it aged very poorly, and I know it sounds silly to be critical of a novel written in the 1940s for this, but honestly, it was a lot.
There were a couple of other parts of the story that didn't age well for different reasons. The Meryweather family, for example, it pretty deeply inter-married. Lots of cousin incest. Lots. In fact, the boy Maria ends up with is distantly related to her, so it's not like the incest was something that only Merryweather ancestors did. Another issue was the name of the antagonist of the story, Monsieur Coque de Noir. He has taken a black rooster to be his symbol and he actually carries a black rooster around with him frequently. Unfortunately, he is called the "black cock" throughout the story, and several references are made to the black cock that he carries around everywhere. I know this is me being immature, but I couldn't help but snicker every time I read about the black cock on his shoulder. Those words appear over and over throughout the text and are hilarious every time. This was all very distracting and took me out of the story.
So basically, this won't be remembered as a particular favorite of mine. I didn't hate it, but it was so religious and full of stereotypes that I couldn't really enjoy it either. That being said, I can totally understand why people who read it when they were children feel an attachment to it. It is magical. It is full of wonder and adventure. Young readers of the past wouldn't notice anything else. Coming to it as an adult wasn't a worthwhile experience. I'm going to chalk this up to one more disappointment J.K. Rowling has given me and move on with my reading life.
Challenge Tally
Back to the Classics 2021 (A Children's Classic): 9/12
Total Books Read in 2021: 34
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So, what do you think?