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KITTENS AND KITCHENS: FOOD, GENDER, AND THE TALE OF SAMUEL WHISKERS

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 September 2008

Heather A. Evans
Heather A. Evans*
Affiliation:
Queen's University
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Extract

With the publication ofThe Tale of Mr. Tod (1912), Beatrix Potter articulated her impatience with “goody goody books about nice people” (Linder 210) and declared her intention “to make a story about two disagreeable people” (Potter, Tale of Mr. Tod 7). Yet although the subjects of the story, Tommy Brock and Mr. Tod, might be the most viciously disagreeable protagonists in Potter's children's stories, her readers were already acquainted with characters who challenged the boundaries of propriety, graciousness, and respectful deference to authority. Throughout her oeuvre, many such characters are not entirely punished for their trespasses, a pattern which often surprises modern readers who blithely assume that the daintily-illustrated books about woodland critters and barnyard creatures affirm conservative Edwardian conventions of behavior and standards of decorum.

Type
Research Article
Information
Victorian Literature and Culture , Volume 36 , Issue 2 , September 2008 , pp. 603 - 623
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2008

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References

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