The Little White Horse

The Little White Horse, Elizabeth Goudge, 280 pages

Maria Merryweather and her governess, Miss Heliotrope, come to her distant cousin’s estate, Moonacre Valley, after her parents die, leaving her with nothing. She immediately finds herself at home in the beautiful countryside – the castle-like manor house with the tiny room just for her, the quaint village with a stream running through it, the magnificent hill with a ruined monastery on top, the odd dog-like creature Sir Benjamin keeps, and the mysterious little white horse glimpsed in the moonlight. But all is not well in Moonacre. The Men from the Dark Woods haunt the pine woods, reminders of an ancestral sin. Maria must make amends for the past and solve the mystery of the little white horse, lest she be forced to leave the valley forever.

I read The Little White Horse several times as a child, and it made more of an impact on me than I think I realized. It’s a truly charming story. Evil is defeated not through guile or strength of arms, but through kindness, love, and forgiveness. The valley itself is described in heartbreakingly beautiful terms, and it’s easy to see why Maria instantly falls in love with it, and how it makes her want to better herself and everything around her. Goudge’s sense of Christian spirituality is apparent and explicit, and could be distracting, but is handled with such tenderness that even a non-Christian reader will see the beauty in her philosophy. All that being said, the book’s gender roles are unfortunately a product of their time and it does suffer for that. But The Little White Horse is still a magnificent, charming, and beautifully kind story of amending past wrongs, healing generational trauma, and finding forgiveness within yourself.