COMMENTS & QUESTIONS
In this section, we aim to provide the reader
with an array of perspectives on the text, as well as questions
that challenge those perspectives. The commentary has been culled
from sources as diverse as reviews contemporaneous with the
work, letters written by the author, literary criticism of later
generations, and appreciations written throughout the work’s
history. Following the commentary, a series of questions seeks to
filter Kenneth Grahame’s The Wind in the Willows through a
variety of points of view and bring about a richer
understanding of this enduring work.
Comments
THE ATHENÆUM
A simple-hearted Mole, a Water Rat of a poetical
temperament, and a wealthy, boastful, and extravagant Toad, with a
fine Tudor mansion and a passion for motor-cars, are the principal
personages in Mr. Kenneth Grahame’s The Wind in the Willows.
There is also a didactic Badger who is made at times the medium for
conveying information that may be edifying to youthful readers;
and, indeed, all the animals are capable of unusually serious
moments, notably in the case of the vision of Pan beheld by the
Mole and the Rat. The story rambles along in a vein of delightful
extravagance, the misfortunes and ultimate reformation of the
wayward Toad being among its most pleasant and stirring episodes;
but the author seems not to have given himself up whole-heartedly
to his fantasy, and is apt to hinder the charm of his incongruities
by spasmodic efforts to make them congruous. These cavillings
apart, the book, with its scenes of river, forest, and field, and
its whimsical incursions into the human world, forms an all but
perfect blending of idyll and inconsequence.—November 21,
1908
—November 21, 1908
THE NATION
It is difficult to describe the impression made
by this beautifully written book, or to determine whether it was
intended for children, for grown people, or for grown-up
children—perhaps it was meant for all. It is full of dewy nature,
breathes the open air of field, winding river, and forest. The
pipes of Pan are in it, the lure of far blue distances, strange
whiffs from gypsy-land. There is wood magic and melody enough in
it—apart from the sprinkled songs—to set up a minor poet for life.
Yet it tantalizingly fails in its total effect. It goes at times as
far over the heads of children as at others it descends beneath the
heads of adults. It seems as if the author had set out to write a
kind of poetical journal of a group of high-spirited collegians in
their Wanderjahr. When he had done, it seems, in an odd whim he
blotted out the names of human characters and wrote in their stead
Water Rat, Toad, Mole, Badger, and Otter. Aside from their names,
there is nothing to connect their adventures with the lower animal
world. The result is neither a naive animal story nor evenly
sustained allegory—it is a sort of puzzling medley with many happy
lucid intervals and promise of better things.
—December 24, 1908
WALTER CLAYTON
There aren’t very many people who can sing out
to us, “Come and play!”, with that right alluring utterance that
makes us cast aside our workaday concerns and fare forth again
adventurous as in the wonder-years before we left off trailing
clouds of glory. When Tusitala died, and the swarthy-skinned
Samoans buried him beneath the wide and starry sky on the summit of
that mountain, aloof above the huge pacific seas, whose pines are
evermore made musical by singing birds, it looked for a while as if
nobody was left to play with us. Of course there remained that
Barrie fellow who knows all the ducks in Kensington Gardens and
agrees with us that it is very foolish to grow up; but he
obstinately made up his mind to play only in a play-house
thenceforward, instead of telling us stories as of yore. Then along
came a chap named Kenneth Grahame, who had the true miraculous
voice and reminded us of the dream days of our golden age. Surely
he knew how to play! He had not forgotten that everything on earth
is wonderful, that the commonest action is romance, that all work
rightly undertaken is good fun, that hardship is adventure, that
sorrow is poetry, and that happiness is religion....
The Wind in the Willows is a poem in
praise of the glory that can never really pass away from earth,
unless we allow ourselves to grow up and forget—which, you may be
sure, we shall never, never do, until what time the birds shall
cease to sing about the tomb of Tusitala. It reveals anew the
miracle of out-of-doors. The romance of the river, the allurement
of the open road, the tremulous ecstatic terrors of the wild wood,
the sad sweet tug of heart-strings by the sense of home, the
poignant wander-longing, the amusement of adventure,—all these
moods of simple wonderment are told and sung in its enchanting
pages....
In the original and undefiled sense of the word,
Mr. Grahame’s work is worthy mainly because it is irradiated by the
spirit of the amateur. He writes because he loves to: he is too
child-like and playful to subside into the mere professional man of
letters. The Wind in the Willows is fun to read because the
author wrote it for fun. It ranges through all the moods of natural
enjoyment: it is humorous and beautiful, it combines satire with
sentiment, it is serious and jocund. An uproarious chapter, which
satirizes the modern subservience to the latest fads, is followed
by a chapter in which, mystically, we are brought face to face with
the very God of out-of-doors. Mr. Grahame talks in whatever mood
most enchants him at the time: his range is as various and as free
as the aeolian breathing of the wind in the willows.
—from Forum (January 1909)
A. A. MILNE
It is what I call a Household Book. By a
Household Book I mean a book which everybody in the household loves
and quotes continually ever afterwards; a book which is read aloud
to every new guest, and is regarded as the touchstone of his worth.
But it is a book which makes you feel that, though everybody in the
house loves it, it is only you who really appreciate it at its true
value.
—from Not That It Matters (1919)
PETER GREEN
TheWind in the Willows... is a
good deal more than the simple fun Grahame said it was. At bottom
it is a book about Us and Them, River-Bankers versus Wild Wooders.
The ethics are simple and revealing. If you face up to your
responsibilities in the squirearchy, and don’t go haring off in
motor-cars (which exposes you to criticism from the lower orders),
you can live a nice happy bachelor existence for ever, having
enormous picnics and messing about in boats—presumably on the
proceeds of your investments.
—from The Spectator (November 27,
1959)
Questions
1. A reviewer writing in The Nation about
The Wind in the Willows asked whether it was designed “for
children, for grown people, or for grown-up children.” Who would
you say this book is for? Is it for the child in the grown-up, or
for the adult in the child?
2. A. A. Milne said of The Wind in the
Willows that “the young man gives it to the girl with whom he
is in love, and if she does not like it, asks her to return his
letters. The older man tries it on his nephew, and alters his will
accordingly. The book is a test of character. We can’t criticize
it, because it is criticizing us.” What gives the book so much
power that it can divide the world into those who get it and those
who don’t? What type of person likes The Wind in the Willows, and
what type doesn’t?
3. In 1981 Jan Needle published Wild Wood,
a Marxist take on TheWind in the Willows. (The proletarian
weasels, stoats, and ferrets take over Toad’s home and rename it
Brotherhood Hall.) Is there any justification for this variation in
the original? Is there an economic critique built into the
original?
4. Is The Wind in the Willows based on a
common adult fantasy? If so, how would you express it? What do you
think about the relative absence of females? Would you describe the
novel as “escapist”?