Content area
Full text
The so-called "little books" of Beatrix Potter are ironic on any number of counts. First, although they are physically small, their moral dimensions are quite large. Far from being simple tales of runaway bunnies and kittens, they are miniature novels of emotional weight and depth. Their miniature size (most were published in the familiar 10 x 14 cm size) is deceptive. The small size suggests small readers, but complexities of vocabulary and syntax suggest a more adult audience was intended to be part of the readership as well. And although the small size may seem appropriate to a child reader, any small child knows that larger formats are easier for less-coordinated hands to manipulate. The miniature size appeals more to the adult idea of what a child's book should look like, rather than the child's own ideas. The illustrations themselves provide further ironies: not only do they often make ironic comments on the text itself, but the very fact that quiet pastels illustrate stories of greed and near-death is ironic.
But perhaps the greatest irony in the books can be found in Potter's use of domestic space. In book after book there is at the very least an ambiguous tension regarding the pleasures of home, and at times home itself becomes as perilous as the wilderness. Wildness and wilderness threaten to invade and take over (as in the tale of Mrs. Tittlemouse), or they threaten to burst out of seemingly safe domestic spaces (as in Peter Rabbit).
In some ways we ought not be surprised by Potter's ambiguous feelings regarding domestic spaces. Even as sympathetic a biographer as Lane finds herself using such phrases as "unnaturally lonely" (18) to describe the young Potter and "silence and blankness" (37) to describe Potter's early adulthood. Potter's life was constrained by daughterly duty to an extent extreme even by late Victorian standards, and some of Potter's letters suggest that she herself was not unaware of-and was unhappy with-the nature of her family life. In a letter to Norman Warne, apologizing for her inability to visit both him and his mother, she writes, "I hardly ever go out, and my mother is so exacting I had not enough spirit to say anything about it. I have felt vexed with...