The Tale of Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle - Scholarly Commentaries

Scholarly Commentaries

Ruth K. MacDonald, Professor of English at New Mexico State University, past president of the Children's Literature Association, and author of Beatrix Potter (1986), views the plot of Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle as "thin" and lacking the complications of Potter's previously published The Tale of Two Bad Mice (1905) and later books. The tale is held together, she asserts, by its attractive central character, and points out that, like many girls' books of the period, it is set indoors and revolves around household chores and duties. Unlike Two Bad Mice however, there is no ironic commentary on housekeeping; Potter gives her tacit approval to Mrs. Tiggy-winkle's spic and span cottage and her housekeeping practices. MacDonald points out that Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle is the first of Potter's books to depict a countryside of simple dwellings, pathways, stone fences, and the timeless, unchanging ways of rural life. Actual place names in the tale such as Skelghyl, Garthsgate, and Little-town ground the tale in a real world locality yet the tale is mythologized by suggesting a remote time before mechanical means of doing laundry had been invented. She notes that Mrs. Tiggy-winkle has become "synonymous for female hedgehogs and for fastidious housekeepers".

M. Daphne Kutzer, Professor of English at the State University of New York at Plattsburgh and author of Beatrix Potter: Writing in Code (2003) indicates Potter was venturing into new territory in creating a tale with a large human presence (Lucie). Potter's artistic uncertainty is evident in her attempt to establish a relationship between clothes and the social and animal selves of humans and animals. Mrs. Tiggy-winkle wears human clothing while the neighbourhood animals wear and shed only their skins. Logically, Kutzer points out, all the animals should wear either human clothing or only their skins. She believes Peter Rabbit's blue jacket is used in the tale as a gimmick to remind the reader that other Potter books exist for purchase, and a gimmick that disrupts Potter's artistic intent. If Peter wears human clothing then why do the other animals wear only their skins? The issue of animal clothing versus human clothing is further confused when Mrs. Tiggy-winkle sheds her human clothing at the end of the tale to reveal herself a hedgehog who may or may not be able to shed her skin as well. If she can shed her skin, then why is she wearing human clothes? Kutzer believes these questions remain unanswered and erode the tale's logic.

Shedding one's clothes, Kutzer observes, is a symbol of shedding the social self and its constraints to then embrace the freedom of the animal self, but Lucie, who sets off for an adventure after shedding her pinafore and handkerchiefs, fails to embrace her animal self and learns nothing new about herself. True, she learns something about the animal world – hens shed their stockings and robins their red vests – but Lucie began her adventure as a well-behaved, proper young Victorian child and remains so at tale's end, taking delight in the goffered pinafore and the laundered handkerchiefs that confine and define such a child. Having not learned something new about herself, Lucie's success as a literary heroine is moot.

By inserting her authorial voice in the tale's epilogue, Potter reveals her uncertainty about the believability of her fantasy, and her uncertainty mars the narrative line which, Kutzer remarks, is analogous to a "comedy sketch that should have stayed at joke length, but is unwisely stretched into ten minutes of tepid comedy." The notion of having animals shed their skins for laundering provides opportunities for amusing illustrations, but the tale does not have a strong narrative line to hold it together or to grip the reader's attention. The tale is held together solely by the quaint language and work of the charming central character.

Literary scholar Humphrey Carpenter writes in Secret Gardens The Golden Age of Children's Literature that Potter's work shows thematic shifts, seeing in The Tale of Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle a utopian theme of nature-as-redemption in which the background represents a return to Arcadia of sorts. Young Lucy finds in Mrs. Tiggy-winkle's kitchen a place of refuge, and although unlike Potter's previous stories the main character is unthreatened by other characters or external circumstances, Carpenter writes "while no external threat enters this most utopian of Potter's books, there is none the less something faintly sinister about Mrs. Tiggy-winkle herself".