“[T]hat very ugly saddle”

Within the world of the novel, there is a direct connection between Richard’s disability and his father’s riding accident. It is assumed by all the family, and even by the doctor, that the unborn Richard has been literally shaped by his mother’s trauma upon looking at his father’s injured body. More subtly, Sir Denzil’s devil-may-care riding holds up a dark mirror to the first Richard’s celebrated horsemanship, showing us the other side of aristocratic male power and privilege—not the attractive “vigour” of the debonair Sir Richard, but a selfish carelessness, a brutal disregard for the vulnerable and a willingness to trample the inconvenient. One of reasons critics have perhaps resisted recognising the erotic charge between Honoria and Richard is that it could be seen as a straightening-out of two queer characters. Honoria has consistently identified herself as a man trapped in a woman’s body, and has expressed romantic attachments only to women, most powerfully of all to Richard’s mother, Katherine.