The little white horse
The Little White Horse (Engl. The Little White Horse ) is a children's book by Elizabeth Goudge . It received the Carnegie Medal for Children's Literature in 1946 .
action
Maria Merryweather, who lost her mother when she was born and her father at the age of 13, who only left her in debt, comes to the west of England with her governess Miss Heliotrope to live with her last relative, Sir Benjamin, a country nobleman. He lives on his Moonacre estate near the Silverydew settlement. As a spoiled Londoner, she doesn't like to move there.
Nevertheless, at first glance it is not bad there, but at second it is a great improvement, since all the people involved present themselves as lovely, friendly people who want only the best for Maria and the whole world - Sir Benjamin himself, his cook Marmaduke Scarlet, the pastor Old Parson, his housekeeper Loveday and of course the entire country people, represented by the coachman Digweed and Peterkin Pepper.
She even meets her former London friend Robin, whom no one in London could see except her because he only visited her in dreams.
But slowly the evil creeps closer, at first as an almost imperceptible disturbance - nobody is allowed to the beach because of bad neighbors - then more and more clearly - these neighbors use traps even in the park of the Merryweathers to chase down dear little animals, and finally these neighbors always threaten the idyll stronger.
Maria learns the origin of this conflict from the pastor: 800 years ago the first Merryweather tried to take away the then living ancestor of these neighbors, Cocq de Noir, whose land and castle by force, later with a malicious marriage. He almost made it, but the descendants of Cocq have never really let their control of their territory be wrested from them and are now a huge threat.
Maria resolves to resolve this conflict once and for all. She achieved her goal brilliantly in the last three chapters together with Robin, who also turns out to be a Merryweather descendant and is the son of Loveday.
She faces the main argument alone. She only has animals to help: the pony Immergrün (or Bodefreude), the lion Wrolf, who is referred to as a dog throughout most of the story and reminds us of Aslan from Narnia , the cat Zachariah, the rabbit Serena and her rather useless dog Wiggins that has to be carried mainly through adventure.
She persuades Sir Cocq de Noir to give up his evil behavior, solves three actually unsolvable tasks that Sir Cocq has given her as a prerequisite - to provide evidence that the first Merryweather did not kill his contemporary Cocq de Noir, the return of the since 800 years of lost pearls of their ancestor, the wife of the first Merryweather and at the same time daughter of his arch enemy Cocq de Noir to today's Sir Cocq, and the demonstration of the mysterious herd of white horses that roar across the country on full moon nights and which so far only Mary could see. Sir Cocq is convinced, especially when the horses even turn out to be unicorns.
In the last chapter everyone is reconciled at a big tea party and even three weddings are donated - between Sir Benjamin and Loveday, who were already engaged 20 years ago, and between the pastor and Maria's governess, whose love the governess's father prevented because the pastor was an atheist at the time. And of course Maria marries her Robin. Robin's proposal in chapter 8.1 is hilarious, Monty Python- worthy quality.
The story was written in 1940 and takes place in England in 1842. The goodies live in the fairytale-like Moonacre Castle. The bad guys have their castle in the dark pine forest right next door and there are of course also labyrinths that are ideal for chases.
Film adaptations
The book was filmed by Oliver Parker and was released in February 2009 under the title The Secret of the Moon Princess (directed by Gabor Csupo) with Dakota Richards , Ioan Gruffudd , Natascha McElhone and Tim Curry in the leading roles. The 1994 television series Moonacre is also based on the book.
Web links
- Information about the book from Forgan-Smith-Entertainment ( Memento from March 11, 2006 in the Internet Archive )
- Official website of the film