Kittens and Kitchens
Food, Gender, and the Tale of Samuel Whiskers
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 12411556 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Heather A Evans (Queen's University, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2008 |
| Volume | 36 |
| Issue | 2 |
| Pages | 603-623 |
| Publication date | 2008-06-12 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Victorian Literature and Culture (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1060-1503 • E-ISSN: 1470-1553 |
| Publisher | Cambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1017/s1060150308080364 |
| OpenAlex | W2170237063 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 6 |
With the publication of The Tale of Mr. Tod (1912), Beatrix Potter articulated her impatience with “goody goody books about nice people” (Linder 210) and declared her intention “to make a story about two disagreeable people” (Potter, Tale of Mr. Tod 7). Yet although the subjects of the story, Tommy Brock and Mr. Tod, might be the most viciously disagreeable protagonists in Potter's children's stories, her readers were already acquainted with characters who challenged the boundaries of propriety, graciousness, and respectful deference to authority. Throughout her oeuvre, many such characters are not entirely punished for their trespasses, a pattern which often surprises modern readers who blithely assume that the daintily-illustrated books about woodland critters and barnyard creatures affirm conservative Edwardian conventions of behavior and standards of decorum
Aesthetics · Art · Creatures · Decorum · Deference · Literature · Folklore, Mythology, and Literature Studies · History · Psychology · Themes in Literature Analysis
| Highly cited | No |
|---|