The Tale of Peter Rabbit: Pictures Speak Louder Than Words PDF

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The Tale of Peter Rabbit: Pictures Speak Louder Than Words As Nikolajeva and Scott state, “perspective, or point of view, presents an extremely interesting dilemma in picture books, which once again has to do with the difference between visual and verbal communication, between showing and telling, b...

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The Tale of Peter Rabbit: Pictures Speak Louder Than Words

As Nikolajeva and Scott state, “perspective, or point of view, presents an extremely interesting dilemma in picture books, which once again has to do with the difference between visual and verbal communication, between showing and telling, between iconic and conventional signs” (117). The Tale of Peter Rabbit (Peter Rabbit) by Beatrix Potter is an example of a picture book that represents this dilemma: whereas the narrator’s tone is mostly objective and distant, many of the illustrations show Potter’s personal point of view on the events in the story and its charachters, in other words “we behold the picture(s) from a certain fixed point of view imposed on us by the artist”. (Nikolajeva and Scott 117). This essay explores the dilemma between what the words tell and what the illustrations show in Potter’s tale. It shows how on the surface Peter Rabbit seems to convey a moral message that is in accordance with the norms and values of the Victorian society in which Potter grew up. Yet, to the contrary, it argues how through her illustrations Potter conveys a different message: a desire to break free from convention and a clear affection for the rebellious Peter Rabbit. In order to place the story in its proper context, I will first briefly explain the view on childhood in Victorian society.

The Victorians considered childhood as a unique phase of life. Ideally, children lived a life separated from adults. In the upper classes, to which Potter’s family belonged, this separation was physically realized by confining children to the nursery, where a caretaker raised them. Materially the child wanted for nothing; the nursery was a treasure trove of toys and the child was dressed in the best clothes. The parents carefully chose the caretaker, because she had to be able to instil the parents’ and society’s morals and beliefs into the child. However, the caretaker's primary task was to keep the child separated from its parents. On certain occasions the child might be summoned

before its parents, as a “source of amusement and relaxation for the adult” (Bruscini 7). Emotionally, as patriarchal Victorian society demanded, children were not supposed to express themselves. For their own moral good, children were to be silent and obedient:

The child was a hardship, an obstacle to adult pleasure, and a reminder of one's baser self. He might be innocent, untainted by sexual knowledge, uncorrupted by the world of business, free from the agony of religious doubt; yet he was also potentially wicked and needed constant guidance and discipline (“The Invention of Childhood in Victorian Autobiography”).

Potter's upper class parents held on to this view to the extreme. They hired a nurse for their daughter and at their London home “a room on the third floor was turned into a nursery, and child and nurse began their separate life there together, leaving only for walks in the park or when the nurse took her charge downstairs to see her parents on special occasions or to say goodnight” (Taylor et al. 10). Her parents' control over their daughter lasted until Potter was well into her thirties; they not only repressed her as a child, but also prevented her from socially interacting as an adult. As a result, Potter had a complicated relationship with her parents and developed a profound desire to escape from her constraints, which is represented in many of her tales.

Children’s literature often reflects the norms and values (or: the ideology) of the society in which it is produced and Victorian children’s literature was no exception. A children’s book would probably not have been produced, published and bought if its content did not conform to the ideological views of those involved in the process. Potter was very well aware of this. She was a an artist, but at the same time she was a businesswoman. Her goal was to sell Peter Rabbit, the revenues granting

her independence. Therefore her story had to appeal to both children and adults. According to O’Sullivan,

The audience for children’s literature includes adults as well as children - adults in their capacity as intermediaries (who buy, give and recommend books) reading with the child in mind, adults reading aloud to children, and adults who read children’s literature for their own pleasure. (15)

Peter Rabbit attracts adult as well as child readers. The story has a, what Wall calls, “dual audience” (quoted in O’Sullivan 16), meaning that the adult is not the implied reader, but can take on the role of an implied child reader. O’Sullivan distinguishes at least two variants of this role:

. . . one is regressive, in which adult readers revert to a remembered or imagined childhood while they read, aiming to take a childlike pleasure in the text and excluding ‘adult’ reflections; in the other, adults, aware of their adult status, long for or look back to an idealized childhood, at the same time knowing how impossible it is to realize this longing. (16)

Peter Rabbit is aimed at an audience of young children. Potter had clear ideas on what the book should look like: “the size of the book was to be in accordance with her own ideas of what a child’s book should be like - small enough for little hands to hold, and printed on stout paper” (Linder 95). Also, the book contains little text, mostly only one (often short) sentence per page, while every text page is followed by a page with an illustration. As mentioned earlier, for its content Potter had to consider the ideas that ruled her society. So she ‘disguised’ her affinity with the naughty Peter

Rabbit by an objective and, and at least in the beginning of the story, moralistic narrative tone. Yet, the illustrations show a different story.

Peter Rabbit is told by a third-person, omniscient narrator. Apart from a few lines of indirect speech by Mrs Rabbit and Mr McGregor, the narrator is the only one who speaks; Peter and his sisters do not utter a single word. Nowhere in the narrative feelings and thoughts are relayed from a character’s perspective. In a few passages the focus is on the character’s inner world, but never from its perspective. In the encounter with the white cat, for example,, the narrator states that “Peter thought it best to go away without speaking to her; he had heard about cats from his cousin, little Benjamin Bunny.” Yet, the readers have to rely on what the narrator tells them; they never hear from Peter himself how he experiences his adventure in Mr McGregor’s garden.

The narrator’s tone is mostly factual and objective, apart from a few instances in the story, for example at the beginning, where the narrator intrudes by passing judgement in opposing good versus bad children, as she states that the three sisters were “good little bunnies”, while Peter “was very naughty” (Potter 16 and 19). However, when it comes to the story’s protagonist, Peter Rabbit, Potter does not hide her sympathy towards him. Her subjectivity becomes clear in the illustrations, which play a significant role in the impact the story has on its readers. The illustrations give a deeper meaning to the text and allow the reader to fill in what the narrator does not tell. As Scott argues, “the narrative voice . . . contrasts with the immediacy of the pictures . . . . While the narrative voice of the verbal text may be ambiguous, the illustrations are clear” (n.p.). For example, the narrator tells the reader that Flopsy, Mopsy and Cotton-tail are “good little bunnies” (Potter 17). They are obedient to their mother and do exactly as they are told. In the illustrations the three sisters always appear closely to each other or to their mother.

One of the first illustrations in the book exemplifies the separation in behaviour and character between Peter and his sisters: while his sisters stand very close to their mother, Peter stands alone, looking the other way and already brooding on the mischievous plan he is about to carry out (fig. 1). Peter is not simply a naughty boy, but he longs to be autonomous and escape from the constraints he experiences, although he is fully aware of the dangers, as his mother has already warned him of the fate of his father, being “put in a pie by Mrs McGregor” (Potter 10). Yet, Peter does not care about the possibly deadly consequences of his actions. The illustration on page 12 enhances the reader’s feeling of Peter’s desire to escape the constraints of the family-unit: his mother fastens his jacket up to the topmost button, almost (literally) suffocating him (fig. 2).

! Fig. 1: Potter, Beatrix. The Tale of Peter Rabbit. London: Penguin Group, 1989. 11.

! Fig. 2: Potter, Beatrix. The Tale of Peter Rabbit. London: Penguin Group, 1989. 12.

During Peter’s adventures in Mr McGregor’s garden Peter is portrayed more as the victim than as the perpetrator, at least in the illustrations. While in the text the narrator objectively relays the actions, with the illustrations Potter evokes feelings of sympathy and endearment for the little rabbit. The first encounter between Peter and Mr McGregor exemplifies whose side Potter is on. After feeling sick from eating too much lettuces, French beans and radishes, Peter goes looking for some parsley to relieve his stomach-ache. But “round the end of the cucumber frame, whom should he meet but Mr McGregor!” (Potter 25). Although the exclamation mark indicates a sense of urgency, the text remains objective. Yet, in the accompanying illustration, compared to the imposing and cross looking Mr McGregor, the little rabbit looks vulnerable, as if Potter wants to show her readers that Peter is no match for the dangerous human. In the next illustration Mr McGregor chases Peter while waving a rake, intending to catch and hurt him, which portrays Mr McGregor even more as the antagonist (fig. 3 and fig. 4).

! Fig. 3: Potter, Beatrix. The Tale of Peter Rabbit. London: Penguin Group, 1989. 24.

Fig. 4: Potter, Beatrix. The Tale of Peter Rabbit. London: Penguin Group, 1989. 27.

In the events that follow, Peter gradually loses his human qualities and he is brought back to his natural state, the rabbit he actually is. The shoes and clothes he wears are symbolic for the constraints Peter experiences. Once he has shed them, he is able to be his rabbit-self and escape. First he loses his shoes, allowing him to run faster: “After losing them, he ran on four legs and went faster . . . “ (Potter 30). Next, he gets stuck in a gooseberry net “by the large buttons on his jacket”, almost getting himself caught (Potter 30). Yet, by wriggling out of his jacket, Peter is able to escape again. Peter’s natural state is now complete. He is now a little, cuddly rabbit facing the dangers of a threatening human, turning him from a naughty boy into an innocent victim and at the same time into the hero of the story. Potter evokes pity for Peter from her readers in the illustration where she portrays him standing against a door in the wall, looking desperate and lost, accompanied by the following text: “ An old mouse was running in and out over the stone doorstep, carrying peas and beans to her family in the wood. Peter asked her the way to the gate, but she had such a large pea in her mouth that she could not answer. She only shook her head at him. Peter began to cry. (45) Whereas the words “Peter began to cry” are simply a statement of the facts and have no enhanced meaning in themselves, the accompanying illustration sends a different message to the readers: it appeals to their sense of sympathy for Peter, the sympathy Potter wants her readers to feel, since she feels it herself (fig. 5). Through the illustrrations Peter does not only become the victim of a big bad human being, but also the hero of the story. Of course, this is also obvious from the fact that Peter Rabbit appears on the cover of the book on his own and that the title contains only his name: he is clearly the protagonist.

! Fig. 5: Potter, Beatrix. The Tale of Peter Rabbit. London: Penguin Group, 1989. 44.

On the surface of the text it might seem like Peter is punished for his disobedience of going into Mr McGregor’s garden, despite his mother’s instructions. Peter gets a stomach-ache from eating too much, is frightened and feels hopeless, and “very damp with sitting in that can” (Potter 42). On a closer look, however, Peter does not really have to face any serious consequences of his, what might be considered, serious actions. After all, he disobeys his mother, steals, loses his clothes and trespasses into the garden. Yet, upon returning home his mother only wonders, “what he had done with his clothes” (Potter 54). She does not ask Peter what he has been up to. In the illustration she even looks like she doesn’t care, stirring in a pan while her son has just “flopped down upon the nice soft sand on the floor of the rabbit-hole, and shut his eyes” (fig. 6; Potter 54). There is no mention of any punishment, other than maybe the dose of camomile tea, “one table-spoonful to be taken at bed-time”, although this is not so much a punishment as it represents Mrs Rabbit’s motherly duty of taking care of her son and nursing him back to health (Potter 56).

! Fig. 6: Potter, Beatrix. The Tale of Peter Rabbit. London: Penguin Group, 1989. 55.

Through the illustrations in Peter Rabbit, Potter steers her readers in a desired direction of interpretation, which is far from objective. The illustrations give the readers the opportunity to view the story from a perspective that is different from the (relative) objectivity of the text. Without its illustrations Peter Rabbit might have had a different effect on its readers. The story might have been just a tale of morality, conforming to the norms and values of Victorian ideology, according to which disobedience deserved punishment. Yet, Peter Rabbit is not a tale of morality. It is a story of rebellion and the need for adventure. Potter later wrote The Tale of Benjamin Bunny, in which Peter Rabbit and his cousin Benjamin again venture into Mr McGregor’s garden. Peter Rabbit has not learned, nor was supposed to learn, a moral lesson from his first adventure. On the contrary, Potter enjoyed making Peter Rabbit a rebel against convention.

Works cited Potter, Beatrix. The Tale of Peter Rabbit. London: Penguin Group, 1989. Bruscini, Veronica. “So I Shall Tell You a Story:” The Subversive Voice in Beatrix Potter’s Picture Books”. Honors Projects Overview. Paper 28 (2008): 1-45. Web. 20 March 2017. Linder, Leslie. A history of the writings of Beatrix Potter: including unpublished work. 2nd ed. London: F. Warne, 1971. Nikolajeva, Maria, and Carole Scott. How Picturebooks Work. London: Garland Publishing, 2001. O’Sullivan, Ed. Comparative Children’s Literature. London: Routledge, 2005. Potter, Beatrix. The Tale of Benjamin Bunny. London: Penguin Group, 1989. Potter, Beatrix. The Tale of Peter Rabbit. London: Penguin Group, 1989. “The Invention of Childhood in Victorian Autobiography”. The Victorian Web. Web. 20 March 2017. Scott, Carole. "An Unusual Hero: Perspective and Point of View in The Tale of Peter Rabbit." Beatrix Potter's Peter Rabbit: A Children's Classic at 100. Ed. Margaret Mackey. Lanham, Md.: The Children's Literature Association and The Scarecrow Press, Inc., 2002. 19-30. Rpt. in Children's Literature Review. Ed. Jelena Krstovic. Vol. 165. Detroit: Gale, 2011. Literature Resource Center. Web. 22 March 2017. Taylor, Judy, et al. Beatrix Potter 1866-1943: The Artist and her World. London: The Penguin Books Group, 1987....