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Kenneth Grahame and Father Nature, or Whither Blows <i>The Wind in the Willows</i>?

1988; Johns Hopkins University Press; Volume: 16; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1353/chl.0.0304

1543-3374

Lois R. Kuznets,

Irish and British Studies

Kenneth Grahame and Father Nature, or Whither Blows The Wind in the Willows? Lois R. Kuznets (bio) To Teddy Roosevelt, a longtime Grahame enthusiast influential in getting The Wind in the Willows published in the United States, Grahame wrote that the book's "qualities, if any, are mostly negative—i.e.—no problems, no sex, no second meaning—it is only an expression of the simplest joys of life as lived by the simplest beings" (Green 274). Had the book been quite as charmingly and thoughtlessly simple as Grahame suggests, perhaps ingenuously, it would probably not have survived until today. For beneath its Arcadian surface lie deeply buried and complex concerns that have saved it from oblivion yet remain troubling for some modern readers. Whereas Grahame claimed to his editor at Charles Scribner's that the novel is "free of problems, clear of the clash of sex,"1 I would argue that at the same time as the novel attempts to repress the clash of sex, it also perpetuates it in the dramatization of certain traditional themes: woman's dangerous power to limit man's freedom, and the male longing to be completely accepted by—and as—the father. Grahame's contemporaries, like a number of recent critics, found his marriage to Elspeth Thomson a severely troubled one. Many would probably have considered it to be the source of his view of sexuality as conflict. I do not find the subject so simple, since much of Grahame's writing prior to his marriage at the age of forty (that is, Pagan Papers, The Golden Age, Dream Days, and The Headswoman ) already juxtaposes a romantically idealized image of women with even more prominent fantasies of a comfortable, mildly adventurous life among similarly minded gentlemen, pleasantly free of social restraints—a number of which Grahame depicted as imposed by women, either as a result of their own domineering nature or as agents of a restrictive society.2 Central to The Wind in the Willows is this vision of a nurturing male society, the idyllic male-only animal world, free of "feminine control."3 The animal community in turn is linked to a mystical [End Page 175] vision of a male nature god, Pan, as well as to the more subtly personified, companionable, storytelling River.4 These two figures suggest Grahame's effort to transform various aspects of nature "herself," so archetypically maternal, into male parents.5 Set against that natural world we find in the human domain of The Wind in the Willows three women: the young girl, the servant, and the dominatrix, all stereotypical figures who lie outside the world of the protagonists and help define its limits. Many interpreters have noted the mock-epic features of the book. Not only is Toad an inept yet convincingly wily Ulysses, but the Odyssean motif of the journey home is repeated in the adventures of Mole and Rat, who must inevitably return and accommodate themselves to their own homes. What we have somehow taken for granted is that Grahame's Odyssey lacks Penelope, the faithful wife, waiting at home and guilefully fooling the suitors while her husband guilefully makes his way back to her.6 Hitherto, we have probably paid too little attention to the way in which Grahame eliminates not only wives but mothers as well, without dispensing with their traditional nurturing functions. In the River Bank world, and even in the Wild Wood that borders it, males rather than females dispense the hospitality, create the welcoming atmosphere, and share the oral delights of food and drink and the talk that goes with them. In the Wide World, it is only the gaoler's daughter who takes over that function. (Of course, only the good parts of this function need be paid much attention anyway—shopping, cooking, cleaning, and maintenance are largely ignored or done by invisible hands, the same hands that finished Mole's spring-cleaning for him when he left it so precipitously to go live with Rat.)7 Not only do males nurture each other by offering hospitality, but they are actively involved in parenting. Exit Penelope,while Telemachus remains onstage. Like Joyce in his Irish Odyssey, Grahame exploits...