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”?