American Girl books like Meet Felicity got horseback riding wrong

The Horse Woman Canon is Polygon’s celebration and exploration of the books, movies, TV, toys, and video games which have turn out to be important to the cross-generational “Horse Woman” life.

There’s a huge distinction between the Horse Woman fantasy of fashionable fiction and the expertise of really using a horse. I discovered this out the laborious manner.

In elementary college, I wasn’t into horses or the Horse Girl Canon. I used to be into historic fiction, particularly tales about younger girls, and very particularly those that bucked gender stereotypes. So I learn all the American Woman doll books, as a result of just about all of them match that mildew.

I can’t say if the tie-in books succeeded of their intention to show younger youngsters about varied oppressive historic circumstances, however Meet Felicity, set in Williamsburg, Virginia, in 1774, made me decided to experience a horse. I got here for the historical past lesson about colonial America and received hooked on Horse Woman Propaganda.

In Felicity’s time interval, slavery is authorized, the Revolutionary Battle is brewing, and well-to-do white ladies within the American colonies need to find out how embroider garments and make apple butter in an effort to be extra marriageable. Felicity rebels towards these female pursuits, wanting as an alternative to put on breeches and experience horses. The story’s chief battle arises when an area drunken misanthrope takes in a stupendous, skittish thoroughbred and begins violently mistreating her. Felicity does one thing about it.

Particularly, our heroine steals a pair of breeches from the apprentice at her father’s store and sneaks out within the early hours of the morning, day after day, to tame the horse. She names the mare Penny due to her copper shade, and since she’s independent (similar to the American colonies quickly can be — get it???). Though Felicity has no endurance for stitching or calligraphy, she finds that she does have the endurance to take a seat in stillness with Penny, coaxing her out of her shell.

Picture: American Woman

Ultimately, Penny lets Felicity experience her, and over time, Penny may even soar over the fence that ensnares her. Felicity then confronts Penny’s abusive proprietor, arguing that she ought to get to maintain the horse since she tamed Penny. The proprietor refuses to let Felicity have the horse, threatening to kill Penny if Felicity comes close to her once more. The e book ends with Felicity setting Penny free in the course of the evening, watching her horse experience away into the darkness of the wilderness, lastly free.

However hey, don’t fear, Penny returns within the later books. This younger lady and her horse are bonded for all times. Clearly!

This story labored its magic on me. Possibly it was due to Felicity’s rejection of “girly” pursuits, one thing I may relate to as a younger child within the ’90s who didn’t really feel at dwelling with the way in which womanhood had been outlined in a lot of popular culture. However extra seemingly it was the way in which that Felicity appeared to fall in love with this particular horse, to kind a bond that defied cause. In just some brief weeks, Penny goes from skittish and wild to a fence-jumping phenom, all because of Felicity’s care and endurance.

When the e book described Felicity studying to leap over hurdles with Penny, or choosing up the tempo to a gallop, it sounded thrilling. Felicity falls off of Penny many occasions, however she by no means will get critically injured. I don’t even keep in mind Felicity describing this course of as tough. Embroidery was tough. Horseback using got here naturally to her.

It might for me, too, proper?

Not a lot. Listed here are some information about horses that Meet Felicity neglected, all of which I found as soon as I truly took a horseback using lesson at an in a single day summer time camp as a child.

1. Horses are massive

This by no means appears to return up for Felicity, who’s 9 years outdated at first of the sequence. She doesn’t point out how huge Penny is in comparison with her and the way tough it’s to even get onto Penny’s again. Within the illustrations, Penny doesn’t look that huge. Felicity solely seems a foot away from eye stage with Penny.

After I received to summer time camp and I went to the stables, I instantly realized that horses are extraordinarily huge, particularly in comparison with a 9-year-old lady. So huge that you could barely even get onto them, not to mention look into their eyes and kind a deep cosmic reference to them. At the least, not with no footstool.

2. Falling off a horse is a giant deal

The plot-related hazard in Meet Felicity was towards Penny, not from Penny. When Felicity falls off of her horse, she will get proper again on, and that’s all part of the emotional journey they take collectively. Versus, you already know, one thing that might lead to a life-threatening trampling harm {that a} 1774-era physician won’t be capable of successfully deal with.

In actual life, I’ve not fallen off of a horse. As quickly as I managed to rise up onto one, I clung on for pricey life. It regarded like a really, very lengthy strategy to fall.

3. Horseback using is tough

Earlier than we meet Felicity, our heroine has some expertise using horses. She’d ridden the outdated, sluggish horse that lived within the household barn. I had additionally ridden an outdated, sluggish horse round a path with my dad and mom as soon as. I wasn’t completely inexperienced. Additionally, Felicity rode bareback, whereas I received to take a seat in a cushty saddle. Which must be a lot simpler?

Flawed. It felt unsuitable immediately, and it by no means received higher. I discovered to trot and to canter. However the sooner the horse went, the much less management I felt I had, in all probability as a result of that was truly true. I by no means discovered to maneuver with the horse, as Felicity appeared to do immediately. I keep in mind the coach barking orders at me from the bottom, telling me to make the horse go sooner. I keep in mind pondering, very strongly, that I did not wish to try this. So I didn’t. I by no means received as much as a gallop. Not even shut.

4. Few folks get to kind an intense, emotional bond with a horse

Picture: American Woman

As quickly as Felicity noticed Penny, she knew that Penny could be her soul-horse. Soulmate horse. No matter you wish to name it. That they had an immediate, plain bond, OK? And I needed that.

After I received to the stables at summer time camp, I requested which horse I’d get to experience. Quickly after assembly that horse, I referred to it as “my horse,” and the coach immediately corrected me. It wasn’t “my” horse. Not even only for at this time. And I wouldn’t essentially get to experience the identical horse each time.

Might I undertake one of many horses, I requested? By which I meant, may I’ve one horse I received to experience and clear up after? No, she stated, in a tone that I keep in mind reducing me to the bone. She defined that I may come by and clear the stables for all of the horses.

That sounded very reasonable to me. Nevertheless it didn’t sound like a manner for me to kind an intense emotional bond with only one horse. And anyway, not one of the horses in that steady crammed me with the identical emotions that Felicity had described about Penny. One thing simply wasn’t clicking.

If I had truly gone again to the stables typically sufficient, perhaps it could’ve occurred for me. However I get why I didn’t. The horses had been very huge, and I used to be very unhealthy at using them. I didn’t get up extraordinarily early each morning and sneak right down to the stables, as Felicity would have, to present a horse an apple or a sugar dice. I didn’t slowly prepare a horse to heat as much as me and train her the way to leap over a bale of hay or a fence. I didn’t turn out to be a Horse Woman. I didn’t turn out to be an equestrian, both.

Meet Felicity romanticized the issue of what Felicity achieved with Penny. As a child, I felt let down by that. However as an grownup, I’ve an appreciation for it. There have been loads of different actions I did as a child that had been tough and that I didn’t abandon, despite the fact that they scared me or challenged me. The purpose of Meet Felicity, along with educating me … one thing, I don’t know what precisely, in regards to the run-up to the Revolutionary Battle, was to embrace the hobbies that you simply’re obsessed with, even when they’re not what different folks anticipate you to do. I write about video video games now, so I suppose I did try this.

I by no means did discover a horse soulmate in actual life. However that’s OK. It labored loads higher as a narrative in a e book.