The Tale of The Flopsy Bunnies - Themes

Themes

Like Peter Rabbit and Benjamin Bunny, the story of The Flopsy Bunnies is about rabbits intruding upon the human domain and bringing the threat of death and destruction upon themselves by their own imprudence. M. Daphne Kutzer, Professor of English at the State University of New York at Plattsburgh indicates in Beatrix Potter: Writing in Code that the tale's principal theme is the trickster animal, though she is careful to point out that, even then, the animals are subordinate to the exquisite garden backgrounds. The reader's interest in the tale, she believes, lies in following the joke played upon McGregor rather than in the dull personalities of the rabbits. Although the trickster qualities of the rabbits are evident but muted in the earlier Peter Rabbit and Benjamin Bunny, it is in Flopsy Bunnies these qualities are brought center stage. Kutzer notes that The Flopsy Bunnies belongs not to the titular characters but to their parents – it is they who save the baby bunnies – and thus the story is often of less interest to children.

Ruth K. MacDonald of New Mexico State University and author of Beatrix Potter points out that, as in Benjamin Bunny, domesticity is implicitly approved in the tale but reflects a sea-change in Potter’s life and work. Peter no longer raids McGregor’s garden for vegetables but grows his own and has his plot surrounded with a fence and chicken wire to keep predatory bunnies out. In effect, he has become McGregor. He is Potter's alter ego and, though he is a mature rabbit in The Flopsy Bunnies, he is still living at home with his mother and tending a garden with her – like Potter, who had achieved a degree of independence by 1909 but was not entirely free of her parents.