Deborah Faith Ramkhelawan

Children’s Literature and Culture: Print Traditions

November 18, 2011

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Two critical problems that become apparent on reading Kenneth Grahame’s The Wind in the Willows are inconsistent characterization and lack of unity in the narrative structure. First published in 1908, the text garnered much criticism, including a notorious review from Punch which described the plot being structured as “‘a sort of irresponsible holiday story’” and the characters portrayed as “‘woodland animals…enjoying most of the advantages of civilization’” (qtd. in Green 256). However, in The Wind in the Willows, Grahame departs from the simplistic plot and flat characterization of traditional western beast fables. Instead, he expands into the genre of animal fantasy, experimenting with anthropomorphic characterization and a dual-strand narrative structure to develop his central themes of nature, home, friendship and loyalty, and, thereby, adding to the book’s initial novelty and generating its continued appeal.

Grahame’s employment of the technique of anthropomorphism — the fleshing out of animal characters with human qualities — poses a problem in that it is not always consistent. Like the anthropomorphism in traditional beast fables, Grahame’s characterization entails a willing suspension of disbelief: Mole, Ratty, Toad, and Badger have semi-human abilities (talking, rowing, driving, etc.) in addition to behaviors more specifically associated with animals (pattering, digging, sniffing, etc.). This technique is typical within the genre and is not problematic in itself. However Grahame complicates his characterization by not always integrating the animal and human aspects of his characters flawlessly. Instead, he often chooses to emphasize one aspect over the other, portraying his characters sometimes as distinctly human (ie., Mole spring cleaning in Chapter One) and sometimes as distinctly animal (ie., Mole smelling his way home in Chapter Five). For readers, this inconsistency could result in confusion; for reviewers and scholars, it certainly generates a sizeable critical problem.

One way to explain the problem of inconsistent anthropomorphism is to examine what Grahame’s philosophy reveals about his own particular perceptions of humans, animals, and nature itself. As a Neopaganist in Britain at the turn of the Twentieth Century, Grahame believed in the supremacy of nature and the superficiality of society. He also felt that humans should behave more naturally, even if this meant following impulse and acting in a manner that was inconsistent with the strict standards of Edwardian society. These ideas form the basis for Grahame’s Pagan Papers; and, in order to express such sentiments yet again in The Wind in the Willows, Grahame uses anthropomorphism in an unprecedented manner: investing animal characters with human qualities¾and doing so inconsistently — all in order to show that human behavior should be more like animal behavior: in its naturalness, and even in its inconsistency.

In terms of the book’s appeal, the inconsistency is indispensable. Grahame uses it to effect irony and humor, to create memorable characters that are both believable and fantastic, and to emphasize the central themes of nature and home. That Toad passes as a purely human washerwoman only pages before his span is encompassed by the arms of a barge-woman who flings him, purely animal, into the river, does not, for example, bother the reader, perhaps because Toad’s antics in both situations are comic, but also because they are particularly effective (if not biologically exact) representations of the characteristic inflations and reductions of toads in the real-world. Thus, Toad’s anthropomorphic inconsistencies are indeed consistent with his nature; and the same could be said for Mole, Ratty, and Badger, whose anthropomorphism is amplified by the fact that they are wild animals in domestic settings. For instance, Mole and Badger are both burrowing animals, yet Mole has a distinctly human dislike of having heaps of dirt thrown up in his garden and Badger is in possession of a door-scraper; furthermore, Ratty forages like a pure animal through Mole’s cupboards, but later covers the cost of an entire feast, impromptu, in coin. Ultimately, Grahame’s characters are charming because of their inconsistencies, not in spite of them; and the anthropomorphism that at first appeared to be a problem may in fact be regarded as one of the chief strengths of the text.

            Inconsistency is not the only problem to puzzle readers and provoke criticism, and the problem of the lack of unity in the plot sparks three questions: who is the hero of the book; how does Chapter Seven fit in; and, above all, what shapes the episodic plot and gives it unity? In The Wind in the Willows, Grahame abandons the simplistic structure of traditional beast-fables in favor of a complex dual-strand narrative. One episodic plot follows the adventures of Toad on the open road, while the other follows the adventures of Ratty and Mole on the river bank. However, the dual-strand structure becomes problematic because its twin plots make it difficult for readers or critics to identify the significance of individual chapters, characters, and events in isolation.

Yet, the advantage of duality is that no element need be considered in isolation. Rather, Grahame juxtaposes, balances, and parallels his chapters, characters, and events so that their significance arises from their relation to one another. For example, in attempting to answer the question who is the hero of The Wind in the Willows, it can be safely assumed that Toad is not the hero but the anti-hero. This is explicit because his selfish character and self-serving actions do not exemplify friendship or loyalty. However, it is also implicit because the structural relation of his plot to the plot of Mole and Ratty’s reveals that despite the fact that his plot is only secondary, Toad’s adventures take over entirely, interrupting twice consecutively before reaching a climax and concluding with the last two chapters of the book.

Whereas Toad is the anti-hero whose adventures build up to a glorious false-climax in the final chapter, “The Return of Ulysses”, Ratty and Mole are the genuine heroes whose adventures escalate to form the work’s aesthetic climax in the seventh chapter, “The Piper at the Gates of Dawn”. This chapter poses a critical problem because it does not fit in with the style of the rest of the work as a whole and seems to contribute to the overall sense of a lack of unity. Ultimately, however, it is a chapter about harmony: Pan, the Greek god of nature, is the piper who plays his magic “dance music” at “intervals”, creating a transcendent experience for Mole and especially for Ratty who can “hear better” (Grahame 140). Therefore, it is quite fitting that Grahame’s use of the poetic style causes this chapter to transcend the rest of the text. Indeed, the only other parts of the book that match the poetic intensity of the possession passage in Chapter Seven are the three other moments of possession: Toad’s possession by destruction (the motor car), Mole’s possession by domesticity (his old house), and Ratty’s possession by poetic lyricism itself (the narrative of the Seafaring Rat). The fact that Badger is never possessed is a clue as to his nature in relation to the other main characters: if Toad is the hopping hedonist, Mole is the aspiring aesthete, and Ratty is the aesthete full-fledged, then Badger is the firmly grounded realist of the group. Thus, an entire chapter that seems out of place is balanced centrally within the narrative just as Pan’s island is balanced in the middle of the River.

It can be concluded that the ultimate structural relation in The Wind in the Willows is also the unifying element of the entire plot: the River. The River is characterized as a “sleek, sinuous, full-bodied animal”; it is also worked into the structure as one of the three main settings, the other two being the wild world and the Wild Wood (Grahame 3). Whereas the rural River is at the forefront of Ratty’s consciousness, and literally flows past his front door, it is at the back of Toad’s mind, and literally flows past the back of his estate. Therefore, while the adventures of the self-deluded Toad form the more action-packed plot, Ratty and Mole’s plot is the more meaningful because it is structured in relation to the rural river, a symbol of the spirit realm and of knowledge (Hanson 11). In The Wind and the Willows, then, characterization and narrative structure are important because they reveal not only Grahame’s aesthetic sensibilities but also his social sensibilities and beliefs about the importance of keeping the realm of the rural River sacred and central by preserving nature, home, friendship and loyalty in a world becoming increasingly polarized between the wild and the domestic, the natural and the mechanical, the physical and the spiritual.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Works Consulted

 

Grahame, Kenneth. The Wind in the Willows. New York: Aladdin, 1989. Print.

Green, Peter. Kenneth Grahame: 1859-1932. London: Murray, 1959. Print.

Griswold, Jerry. Feeling Like A Kid: Childhood and Children’s Literature. Baltimore: Hopkins

UP, 2006. Print.

Haining, Peter, ed. Paths to the River Bank: The Origins of  The Wind in the Willows From the

Writings of Kenneth Grahame. London: Souvenir, 1983. Print.

Hanson, Gillian Mary. Riverbank and Seashore in Nineteenth and Twentieth Century British

Literature. Jefferson: McFarland, 2005. Print.

Horne, Jackie C. and Donna R. White, ed. Kenneth Grahame’s The Wind in the Willows: A

Children’s Classic at 100. Lanham: Scarecrow, 2010. Print.

Hunt, Peter. The Wind in the Willows: A Fragmented Arcadia. New York: Twayne, 1994.

Print.

Rudd, David. “Deus ex Natura or Nonstick Pan?: Competing Discourses in Kenneth

Grahame’s The Wind in the Willows.” Horne and White 3-21.

Yarbrough, Wynn. “Animal Boys, Aspiring Aesthetes, and Differing Masculinities:

Aestheticism Revealed in The Wind in the Willows.” Horne and White 157-186.