The theme of Anna Sewell's Black Beauty is primarily the treatment of horses and secondarily the treatment of other animals. Anna Sewell herself was an activist, extremely concerned with humane treatment of horses and wrote the book from the point of view of the horse to arouse in her readers compassion for animals. She was specifically opposed to the bearing rein, which she thought especially cruel because it held the horses’s neck in a very awkward position.. She also was an active member of the temperance movement and alcohol abuse appears as a secondary theme in the novel.