More Beatrix Potting

Part 5: The Tale of Two Bad Mice.

I really liked this tale.  I liked that Beatrix Potter created a story about a real child's dollhouse and her own pet mice.  I liked how they interacted, I liked the imagination.  I loved reading aloud the name Hunca Munca to little Henry.

But what I liked best was the murder at least one of the children of the mice.  The murders are subtle but they're there.  After the mice have vandalized the doll house and taken as much as they could back to their home, the little girl who owns it wanted her parents to buy a policemen doll to protect it.  Instead the parents buy a mouse trap.  And there, bright as day, the accompanying image shows Tom Thumb and Hunca Munca with their four children staring ominously and the wooden box.

Immediately the story switches to the mice engaging in indentured servitude to the doll house and the dolls therein.  The question is, what has caused the sudden shift?  Just the threat of death or something more sinister?  Were this to have been the first and only book written by Beatrix Potter, I would have assumed the threat of death alone would have cowed the little rodents into subservience.  However, based on her established record of placing young animal children in harms way, it's not unlikely that at least one of Tom Thumb and Hunca Munca's children would have paid the Ultimate Price (Which is not $19.99 in four easy payments) for the crimes of their parents.

Bad mice, indeed.

(For those who care, there a big ol' Wikipedia entry about the book.  Naturally, in order to keep by beautiful brain free from the influence of so called web scholars, I've not bothered to read it.)

Next Time: Something that's not Beatrix Potter-related.  I don't like committing so strongly to a theme.