Annotated Bibliography

Gaardeb, Bonnie. “The Inner Family of The Wind in the Willows.” Children’s Literature

22.1 (1994): 43-56. Web. 14 Apr. 2012.

Gaardeb believes that the main characters of The Wind in the Willows are not able to be framed as human-like men, but are “ageless, timeless, [and] genderless” (43).  The reader is forced to then classify the characters by species instead of the more conventional gender classification.  They are also separated by their relationships with one another; Badger and Rat are the more mature characters and Mole and Toad as more childlike characters.  Badger takes on the role of the fatherly figure: elusive, authoritative, and guiding.  Rat is the mother figure: nurturing, empathetic, and emotional.  Mole is dependent on Rat’s support as well as naïve and we see him grow (as a child would) into a more independent critter by the end of the novel.  Toad is the misbehaving child who, unlike Mole, doesn’t seem to learn from his mistakes.  Mole is the ego while Toad is more of what Peter Green calls “the Id personified” (282).  In studying the opposing characters, the reader can see the motivation behind Grahame writing; he wanted to show the importance of the home, even when there is yearning for and exploration in the outside.  The composite effect of the “Four Heroes…represents psychic wholeness” (54).

Gilead, Sarah. “The Undoing of Idyll in The Wind in the Willows.” Children’s Literature

16.1 (1988): 145-158. Web. 12 Apr. 2012.

            Sarah Gilead argues that other critics believe children’s literature has created idyllic and therefore unrealistic representations of childhood free of the anxieties associated with adulthood.  In reality, people have overlooked the fact that adults are readers of “children’s” literature, also, since childhood is really “secondary reflections of adult’ wishes, memories, and fantasies” (146).  There are adult themes veiled by these adult anxieties in all types of children’s literature, including The Wind in the Willows.  Mole and Rat’s pastoral ideal world is countered by Toad’s social-moralistic plot.  Even though they encounter danger, there is something that maintains the normalcy and safety of the characters.  Rat and Mole provide “self-denial, domestic order, and familiarity,” while Toad provide seemingly neurotic and selfish adventures (152.). In addition, Rat and Mole represents childhood in the novel while Toad represents adulthood.  These two ideas stand as the two rival plot lines in the text that battle back and forth throughout the text.

Hunt, Peter. “Dialogue and Dialectic: Language and Class in The Wind in the Willows.”

Children’s Literature 16.1 (1988): 159-168. Web. 11 Apr. 2012.

The Wind in the Willows contains language full of second meanings and “one of the main subtexts is that of class dialect” (159).  Peter Hunt argues that the vacillation between dialects of the character avoids blatant class distinction in the text.  Hunt also says that linguistic evidence is necessary in order to interpret the characters of Mile, Badger, Rat, and Toad.  Badger and mole stand as the relationship between upper- and middle-classes, respectively, with Mole acting as the Mr. Potter figure.   It is interesting that with the many distinctions between classes in The Wind and the Willows, Grahame doesn’t point to it in the dialect.

Knoepflmacher, U.C. “Oscar Wilde at Toad Hall: Kenneth Grahame’s Drainings and Draggings.” The Lion 
           and the Unicorn 34.1 (2010): 1-16. Web. 11 Apr. 2012.

Kenneth Grahame, like his The Wind in the Willows counterparts, lived on the banks of the Thames at an early age.  He was a member of the art-for-art’s-sake aesthetic movement later on in his life.  Knoepflmacher discusses how there are two kinds of motion in the novel that counteract one another.  There is a seemingly dynamic movement when Grahame describes the river, but the lyrical writing makes the plot slow-moving.  This is also shown in the contrast of Badger, Mole, and Rat’s easy-going movement and Toad’s unstable eruptions.  Knoepflmacher believes that Oscar Wilde has characteristics like those of Toad’s, including working “to become ‘a very different Toad thereafter’” (5).  Even though Grahame wanted the novel to be free from the clash of sex, the critic argues that Toad has moments of coital and post-coital activities.  This is like the sentence against Wilde of him being “’gay and irresponsible’” in addition to being insolent (6).  Toad was imprisoned for car theft, but 15 out of the 20 year sentence was for cheek.  Also, both Oscar Wilde and Toad are portrayed at some point in women’s dress and are described as effeminate.  It is possible that the illustrator had studied these caricatures of Wilde while working on The Wind.  Still, Toad returns from prison and changes back into the gentlemanly attire assuring that Grahame returns everything to normal.

Lerer, Seth. “Style and the Mole: Domestic Aesthetics in The Wind in the Willows.” The

Journal of Aesthetic Education 43.2 (2009): 51-63. Web. 14 Apr. 2012.

Lerer states that, while it about many things, The Wind in the Willows is first and foremost about aesthetics.  From Mole’s burrow to Toad’s aristocratic estate, Grahame creates a story that characterizes what his wife Elspeth titles the “English style” (51).  The novel opens with Mole doing his spring cleaning, a “lexicon of Victorian domesticity” (53).  The first chapter uses Victorian colloquialism through Mole’s language.  In addition, Lerer points out that the adventures of Rat and Mole start on the water.  The Thames during this time was popular to the middle-class for rowing and it also echoes Jerome’s Three Men in a Boat.  In addition, Grahame’s writing contains elements of a Victorian drawing on Romantic poetry, a Victorian technique that adds to the aesthetic of the work.  Grahame was also influenced by John Ruskin who “had provided reader throughout the late nineteenth century with an ideal of aesthetic evaluation” (56).  Grahame’s Victorian aesthetic world and ideals were shown in his book The Wind in the Willows.

McBride, Andrew J. “Toad’s Syndrome: Addiction to Joy Riding.” Addiction Research

8.2 (2000): 129-40. Web. 11 Apr. 2012.

            McBride poses Toad’s inability to not joy ride against the “psychopathology of car theft and late twentieth century ideas of dependence” in his article (130).  He starts out with outlining Toad’s character.  Toad has a tendency to wag his tongue, but he is a good friend.  He has had dalliances in other things, but none have given his friends so much strife as his addiction to cars.  His friends are worried that he will be ruined after he totals all of his cars.  McBride relates Toad’s addiction to that of Grahame’s father’s alcoholism.  He also compares Toad’s addiction to the joy riders of today stating that car theft is “committed mainly by young men from largely intact families and not infrequently from higher socio-economic levels” (134).  Toad differs where his addiction came first from buying the cars and also he has no more family to speak of.  But he does mirror the psychological and sociological patterns of today’s addicts.  McBride claims that this is a symptom of Toad’s personality and the inability to learn from his mistakes.

Mendelson, Michael. “The Wind in the Willows and the Plotting of Contrast.” Children’s

Literature 16.1 (1988): 127-44. Web. 14 Apr. 2012.

According to Mendelson, The Wind in the Willows really contains two plotlines: that of the adventurous Toad and the idyllic, domesticity of Mole, Rat, and Badger.  Although Toad is the outsider to the quiet of the domestic life of the other characters, children (like Grahame’s son Alistair) believed that Toad is the most important character.  Mendelson argues that the two stories both juxtaposes to and interlaces with one another.  He does this by looking at the dialectic choice of Grahame in his work along with the choice of the chronology of the plotline and chapters. The first couple of chapters is Mole’s call to adventure where his subsequent passion is a threat towards his idyllic world.  This contrasts with Toad thinking that boating had turned into a “silly, boyish amusement” (Grahame 22).  The next few chapters, there is the artistic shift to and contrast from a winter landscape.  This is accompanied by the draw towards home (and away from adventure).  The next few chapters then switch to “the romantic impulse to explore” with Toad (134).  Following the theme of duality, Toad’s problem with stealing cars in these chapters “swings back and forth between exuberance and despair” (135).  Toad’s impulses are countered in the next chapter with Mole lounging by the riverbank.  This pattern continues throughout the rest of the novel and ends with a bang in “The Return of Ulysses” with all of the characters involved.

Poss. Geraldine D. “An Epic in Arcadia: The Pastoral World of the Wind in the Willows.”

Children’s Literature 4.1 (1975): 80-90. Web. 14 Apr. 2012.

Poss argues that Grahame’s attitude towards romance is equal to the “innocence of the children with its ideal world” (80).  He portrays this innocence in an Arcadian vision in his novels.  In a story from Grahame’s The Golden Age called “The Roman Road,” the depressed narrator took a journey towards Arcadia, or an ideal road.  The Wind in the Willows was written later and so Grahame had been able to develop an Arcadia in his writing.  He accomplishes this by omitting any aspects of a heroic life (like all damsels in distress) “that might cause strife and pain and eventually death” (83).  For example Mole’s journey is simply out and back, a relatively safe path to choose with a comfortable home guaranteed in the end.  There are also no gods demanding respect, like in The Golden Age’s “The Olympians.”  Instead, all creatures are truly and wholly innocent.  Poss states that gender is practically ignored so “their Arcadia [will not be] destroyed by the passion or treachery of love” (85).  Toad is the only character who creates weightier problems for himself.  But, otherwise, pastoral tradition is maintained in Grahame’s idyllic Arcadian world. 

Steig, Michael. “At the Back of The Wind in the Willows: An Experiment in Biographical

and Autobiographical Interpretation.” Victorian Studies 24.3 (1981): 303-24. Web. 11 Apr. 2012.

Michael Steig asserts that The Wind in the Willows falls under the “Heimlich” category of novels.  “Heimlich” has become a synonym for “unheimlich,” or uncanny, which means “that which is of the household is familiar and private, even secret, and, paradoxically, strange and forbidden” (305).  Steig relates his own connections with the novel saying that smell is an important part of what makes the novel Heimlich or familiar.  Mole smells his home nearby in “Dulce Domum” and begs Rat to let him go back to that familiar space.  The novel as a whole draws childhood memories to mind during an adult reading, proving that Grahame wrote this book with innocence relatable to childhood.  Steig further states that the seventh chapter of The Wind of the Willow is a reflection of Grahame’s rebellious side, which shows that the novel also symbolically reminds us of Grahame’s own life.  In addition, Steig thinks it is interesting that Grahame’s two books previous to The Wind in the Willows deal with sexual discovery and allude to sexual practices when the book is strictly “clean of the clash of sex” (321).  He points to the one section of the book that could possibly be sexual (the “Ducks’ Ditty”) and takes it as Victorian doublethink.

Thum, Maureen. “Exploring ‘The Country of the Mind’: Mental Dimensions of

Landscape in Kenneth Grahame’s The Wind in the Willows.” Children’s

Literature Association Quarterly 17.3 (1992): 27-32. Web. 11 Apr. 2012.

Thum claims in her article that, much like Grahame’s own countryside walks, The Wind in the Willows “objective world is also portrayed as a subjective mental territory” (27).  For example, Mole’s journey is not just a physical one, but also a chance for mental growth.  Thum asserts that journeys like Mole’s are experimental processes that are not static.  In two of the journeys which Thum refers to, “the protagonists seek the meaning which lies beyond the surface of material reality” (27).  Landscape as it is depicted in the story helps to awake awareness in order to have introspection.  Mole begins to se the world around him in a new light in relation to his new experiences.  The point of the story where he finds himself disoriented in a dark forest can be compared to the dark disorientation that comes from looking deeper into himself psychologically.  Mole “encounters fear, death, dissolution of formal ‘consciousness.’ But he arrives at a new perception in this mental journey both of himself and of the external world” (30).

OTHER SOURCES

“Kenneth Grahame.” Dictionary of Literary Biography. 2009. Web. 17 Apr. 2012.