The Wind in the Willows and the Style of Romance

ORI GIN AL PA PER

The Wind in the Willows and the Style of Romance

R. B. Gill

Published online: 16 February 2012

� Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2012

Abstract The style of Kenneth Grahame’s The Wind in the Willows arises from an

alternative vision and choice of values characteristic of romance. Romance seeks

fulfillment beyond the consequences of everyday relationships and the constrictions

of ordinary life. Causal relationships give way to lists of independent items,

unmotivated outcomes, and fulfilled wishes. Typical syntax in The Wind in theWillows includes compound listing of elements: instead of subordinating the parts to

each other, both sentence style and larger organization deemphasize causality,

giving an additive and coordinate nature to the work. Grahame’s style is an

appropriate vehicle for a ‘‘new life’’ that is inherently rather than conditionally

worthwhile. Characters acknowledge each other as ends. Such a style is a natural

outcome of the worldview of romance.

Keywords Romance � Style � Syntax � Worldview � Children’s literature

The Wind in the Willows and the Style of Romance

One complaint about works of romance is their improbability. Actions and

outcomes are driven by wish fulfillments rather than by realistic chains of causation.

But that, of course, is the appeal of romance: it paints the world as one would have

it, not the world as it is. Romance does not offer realism or even reform so much as

R. B. Gill is M. S. Powell Professor of English at Elon University. He has published studies in

Renaissance historiography, seventeenth-century satire, and William Beckford’s Vathek. Articles on

comedy include studies of Kerouac, Fellini, and dark humor in modern novels. Forthcoming works

include articles on speculative fiction and interdisciplinary connections in the works of Wren and

Dryden.

R. B. Gill (&)

Elon University, 2338 Campus Box, Elon, NC 27244, USA

e-mail: [email protected]

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Children’s Literature in Education (2012) 43:158–169

DOI 10.1007/s10583-012-9161-8

differentness. Contrast with the ordinary world, with its inevitable causes and

consequences, is a desirable characteristic of romance. A point of Shakespeare’s

The Tempest is precisely that Prospero’s grace and magic are non-natural, what we

ordinarily do not find; and, similarly, modern pulp romance contrives to give its

heroes and heroines gratification lacking in the lives of their ordinary readers.

Romance is a worldview or paradigm according to which one understands and

models the world. Its visions have always allowed indulgence in the marvelous and

the ideal, in lands far away and a world notable for wish fulfillment.

This description of romance emphasizes its nature as a literary mode or enduring

way of thinking. The term, of course, is notoriously broad. It is used for the French

language itself and a body of works, especially medieval, composed in it.

‘‘Romance’’ also denotes a literary genre in verse and prose emerging from these

early antecedents and exhibiting diverse conventions in subject matter and form.

The term can refer to material from Arthurian adventure to the loves of popular pulp

fiction, all most often beyond ordinary experience. As material beyond the ordinary,

romance often is characterized in terms of its ability to affect the reader, to operate

as wish fulfillment and a (often questionable) substitute for engagement with the

issues of real life. Some critics have preferred to explore the strategies of narration

used by its authors. These definitions lie between the polar positions of archetypal

and transhistorical approaches on the one hand and historically delimited

description on the other. Failing to find one approach to definition that encompasses

all the possibilities, a number of recent critics have rested content with

acknowledging them all and beginning their commentary from a starting point of

what Barbara Fuchs calls its ‘‘multiple incarnations.’’ In fact, Fuchs notes at the

beginning of her account of the genre that her students have a tacit understanding of

the term—‘‘‘that fairy-tale feeling,’ a mixture of the archaic and the idealizing…’’

(pp. 1–2). This tacit impression, or something akin to it, is perhaps the most

common understanding of the term and suffices for our purposes, which are to

explore some possible shapes that a mode of thinking may impose on the style of a

work. It is, then, as a popular—and general—paradigm of experience, rather than a

historically situated genre, that we approach romance.1

The Wind in the Willows follows the pattern of romance, not just in its choice of

content but in its way of viewing the conduct of one’s life. Kenneth Grahame’s story

is an escape to realms beyond the spaces of ordinary existence and into the essence

of experiences we all desire but as inhabitants of the mundane world must miss.

Readers and critics find the varieties of wish fulfillments especially appealing: a

child’s sense of the security of home, inviting enclosures, the joys of companion-

ships, effortless picnics and meals, escape from the cares and threats of the Wide

World, and the happy indulgence of desires (Rat’s boating and Toad’s automobile

rides come to mind). Grahame’s romance began as bedside tales for his son. Settled

in a difficult marriage and a job in the Bank of England, Grahame himself seems to

1 Fuchs’ Romance (2004) is a general introduction to the history and strategies of the subject. Parker’s

Inescapable Romance (1979) analyzes romance as an ‘‘organizing principle’’ in both narratives and lyrics.

Frye’s Anatomy of Criticism (1957) and The Secular Scripture (1976) are widely influential examinations

of romance as archetypes. Jameson’s often-cited ‘‘ideological analysis’’ (p. 12) of romance in ThePolitical Unconscious (1981) examines its movement through historical contexts.

Children’s Literature in Education (2012) 43:158–169 159

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have longed for a different life. The Wind in the Willows takes its place among

Edwardian romances of escape from adulthood. Peter Pan first appeared in 1904;

The Wind in the Willows was published in 1908.

The original attraction of The Wind in the Willows may have stemmed from its

nostalgic view of a Victorian past endangered by modern encroachments, but the

tale has a timeless interest for all readers who find themselves trapped in adult life.

Much of the psychological appeal of The Wind in the Willows arises from the tidy

homes, underground or at least under banks. They are womb-like in their enclosed

spaces—intriguing, beckoning safe havens from the ordinary world. Badger’s home

opens

into a sort of a central hall, out of which they could dimly see other long

tunnel-like passages branching, passages mysterious and without apparent

end. But there were doors in the hall as well—stout oaken comfortable-

looking doors. One of these the Badger flung open, and at once they found

themselves in all the glow and warmth of a large fire-lit kitchen.

Leaving the snow-covered world above, ‘‘it seemed to the storm-driven animals,

now in safe anchorage, that the cold and trackless Wild Wood just left outside was

miles and miles away, and all that they had suffered in it a half-forgotten dream’’

(pp. 61, 62).2

Grahame’s romance is careful to emphasize the removed nature of this setting.

Badger’s home lies beneath the traces of an abandoned city of people: ‘‘People

come—they stay for a while, they flourish, they build—and they go. It is their way.

But we remain’’ (Grahame, 1983, p. 73). The difference lies not between animals

and humans but between the ways of romance and those of ordinary life, for the

animals are humans like us, viewed under the aspect of romance. Seen in the shape

of their animal counterparts, human wishes escape responsibility to the real world

and are liberated into the imagination. Badger’s way is an embodiment of our inner

yearning for a lost mode of being. Grahame’s wife, Elspeth, perceptively remarked

that The Wind in the Willows originated in the first stanza of Wordsworth’s

‘‘Intimations Ode’’ (McFall, 2005, p. xvii).

The style of The Wind in the Willows also arises from a basic worldview that

seeks fulfillment beyond the consequences of everyday relationships. In romance’s

characteristic portrayal of conditions that avoid the constrictions of ordinary life,

causal relationships give way to lists of independent items, of episodes on a journey,

of surprising, even unmotivated outcomes, and of fulfilled wishes. For instance, Sir

Thomas Mallory’s knights exist as a series of adventures, for the most part

independent of each other. The Golden Ass of Apuleius combines a string of

episodes under a covering premise. The Wind in the Willows illustrates this

disposition towards loose sequencing in its listing of events joyful in their own right

and free of causal entanglements. Furthermore, Rat, Mole, and Badger know that the

most important things in life lie beyond concern for ordinary consequences. As

2 See Jerry Griswold’s use of Badger’s home as an example of snugness, one of five major themes that he

finds recurring in children’s literature: ‘‘What lies behind this miniaturization and the vision of enclosed

space is a wish to make life more manageable, a wish for control’’ (2006, p. 10). ‘‘The snug place is a

refuge,’’ Griswold writes. ‘‘Or it may simply offer immunity from the cares of the world…’’ (2006, p. 12).

160 Children’s Literature in Education (2012) 43:158–169

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early as the second paragraph of the book, the Mole gives up spring cleaning in

order to enjoy the sunshine: ‘‘Jumping off all his four legs at once, in the joy of

living and the delight of spring without its cleaning, he pursued his way across the

meadow….’’ Says the Rat about boats, just a bit later, ‘‘in or out of ‘em, it doesn’t

matter. Nothing seems really to matter, that’s the charm of it’’ (pp. 2, 6). That is, for

both the Mole and the Rat, the charm and value lie beyond ordinary cares and

purposes.

Setting out on the Rat’s small boat for the first time, the Mole is captivated by

that joy of living. Grahame writes: ‘‘Absorbed in the new life he was entering upon,

intoxicated with the sparkle, the ripple, the scents and the sounds and the sunlight,

he trailed a paw in the water and dreamed long waking dreams’’ (p. 8). It is possible

to find a parallel to this quote in almost every episode of the book because it

contains three characteristics that are keys to the style of romance in The Wind in theWillows:

First, the Mole experiences a ‘‘new life.’’ He makes a transition from life as he

has ordinarily lived it to a new life that allows him to find truer values. Second,

those values are sensuous and indulgent and thus fulfilling; the joy of the animals

involves both physical and psychological comfort. Rat, Mole, and Toad set off on a

‘‘golden afternoon. The smell of the dust they kicked up was rich and satisfying…’’

(p. 30). The adjective ‘‘rich’’ intensifies the smell and distinguishes it from

commonplace sensations; ‘‘satisfying’’ implies fulfillment of the whole being.

Ample description of the pleasures of life is a salient feature of the book. Later the

Rat contemplates the idea of a Mediterranean fisherman ‘‘hauling his nets at

sundown against an apricot sky, chords of guitar and mandoline from gondola or

caique’’ (p. 171). His vision appeals to a full range of senses.

And, third, the quote is shaped in the typical syntax of The Wind in the Willows, a

compound listing of elements: the sentence opens with two parallel participial

constructions and a preposition with a series of five objects, and then continues with

the main clause, which is composed of two verbs and their modifiers. Instead of

subordinating the parts to each other, the sentence lists or compounds its elements. It

is a string of pleasures rather than a detailing of causal relationships.

Later in the story, the gaoler’s kindly daughter decides to cheer up the imprisoned

Toad by offering him food. In the paragraph describing her efforts, the thoughts that

this food inspired in Toad are related as independent items, conjoined by commas

and coordinate conjunctions. The word ‘‘and’’ occurs repeatedly. The thoughts tend

to be generic, even when they focus on felt images. Sun, wind, warm snap-dragon,

chairlegs on the floor; many items are stated in their general form rather than

delimited by the definite article. We hear a list of dreamy impressions, not of

encounters with specific instances that have actually occurred. This syntax of

compound elements instead of conditional relationships ends appropriately in

Toad’s decision to escape. Although it comes at the end of the passage, Toad’s

conclusion is really the last item in a list, not the result of a causal process:

So the wise girl retired for the time, but, of course, a good deal of the smell of

hot cabbage remained behind, as it will do, and Toad, between his sobs,

sniffed and reflected, and gradually began to think new and inspiring thoughts:


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of chivalry, and poetry, and deeds still to be done; of broad meadows, and

cattle browsing in them, raked by sun and wind; of kitchen-gardens, and

straight herb-borders, and warm snap-dragon beset by bees and of the

comforting clink of dishes set down on the table at Toad Hall, and the scrape

of chair-legs on the floor as every one pulled himself close up to his work. The

air of the narrow cell took on a rosy tinge; he began to think of his friends, and

how they would surely be able to do something; of lawyers, and how they

would have enjoyed his case, and what an ass he had been not to get in a few;

and lastly, he thought of his own great cleverness and resource, and all that he

was capable of if he only gave his great mind to it; and the cure was almost

complete. (p. 136)

The cure comes as the climax of generic dreams, one of those happy, unearned

developments of romance. Appropriately, Toad’s escape itself is the narrator’s gift;

it is what the reader wishes rather than what the narration plausibly develops. In

short, the coordinate syntax of this passage is an appropriate shape for modes of

thinking characteristic of romance.3

In addition to the sentence style, the larger construction of the book—its sections,

chapters, and paragraphs—is basically coordinate rather than subordinate; The Windin the Willows proceeds as a series of delights, to be experienced as a child (or as the

child within the adult), not as an older person burdened with responsibilities and

consequences. Each chapter is a separate event, mostly in chronological order: The

River Bank, The Open Road, The Wild Wood, Mr. Badger, Dulce Domum. Events

do not depend on each other in tight causal relationships. Critics have noted the

influence of Homer’s Odyssey on Grahame’s little book—the wanderings, the

homecoming, the battle with usurpers, specific allusions to warriors in action

(Greene, 1959, p. 260; Kuznets, 1987, p. 100). The parallels are sporadic and slight,

but even as a loose model, Homer merely affirms the additive nature of The Wind inthe Willows. Like the Odyssey, Grahame’s tale is structured as a series of adventures

rather than a tight chain of causes. And Grahame avoids entanglement with dire

consequences. As Geraldine Poss perceptively puts it, ‘‘Through his book Grahame

weaves the gentler trappings of epic, dividing it into a classical twelve chapters, but

omitting from the work all aspects of the heroic life that might cause strife and pain

and eventually death’’ (1975, p. 83). It is important to note that the pageant-like

nature of Grahame’s work does not imply a looseness of conception or execution

but rather a style appropriate to its basic worldview. The Wind in the Willows is

romance rather than epic.

Of course, even in the coordinate style of Grahame’s romance, there are some

causes and consequences, lessons to be learned, results of actions, and so on. The

animals make mistakes and are heartily sorry for them. But they apologize and all is

3 Grahame’s coordinating style is paratactic, ‘‘a construction of arguments by means of repetition,

juxtaposition, antithesis, and elaborations… [a contrast with formats of] cause and effect, subordination,

qualification and the like’’ (Atkinson, 1989, p. 63). As a description of the style of The Wind in theWillows (1957), parataxis is a de-emphasis of causal and subordinating elements; it is an idealization of

simple relationships desired in actual experience. For a helpful model of connections between a paratactic

style and worldview, see Auerbach’s Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Literature(1957), especially chap. 5, ‘‘Roland Against Ganelon.’’


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acceptable again; they refuse to pursue issues into personal conflicts. Relationships

are not held together by calculated purposes but by self-fulfillment and pleasure, by

needs that spring from one’s inner self or essence, not from a self that has been

adapted to external demands. The result is acceptance for what one is. Exchanges,

therefore, are phatic; that is, they are a respectful acknowledgment of the presence

of others, a recognition of them as independent beings rather than as means to an

end: Rat accepts Mole’s mistakes (upsetting the boat, his rash trip to the Wild

Wood). And there are no consequences when Mole objects to Rat’s duck poem (pp.

22–23); the exchange is phatic because it establishes personal connections and

social accommodations between the two friends. The nature of the exchange is

shaped by the goal of friendship rather than by some decision about ducks and

poetry. When Toad perceives Rat nudging Mole as Toad indulges himself in

boasting, he ‘‘burst out laughing. ‘All right, Ratty,’ he said. ‘It’s only my way, you

know.’’’ The two understand each other’s way; their responses come as acknowl-

edgment, not as calculated design, and are the sign of two selves complete in

themselves maintaining contact rather than interacting causally. Skeptical about

Toad’s plans for a caravan trip on the open road, ‘‘Rat, though still unconvinced in

his mind, allowed his good-nature to override his personal objections. He could not

bear to disappoint his two friends…’’ (pp. 26, 30). Friends count for more as ends

than as means to one’s goals or obstacles in the way of personal intentions.

Even when the Badger accosts Toad in the last chapter, demanding that he

reform, Badger speaks with apologies, saying that he has only Toad in mind; he has

spoken up to save Toad from unfortunate entanglements: ‘‘Would you have him a

common laughing-stock, mocked and jeered at by stoats and weasels?’’ (p. 236). As

for Toad himself, it is not at all clear that he has learned anything from a chain of

causes and consequences; it is not clear that his exuberant self has been repressed.

The narrator observes that ‘‘he was indeed an altered Toad!’’ but that statement

comes at the end of a section in which Toad has discovered that ‘‘modest responses’’

make him ‘‘an object of absorbing interest to everyone’’ (pp. 239–240). Grahame

himself noted that ‘‘Toad never really reformed; he was by nature incapable of it’’

(Greene, 1959, p. 248). Of course, we the readers do not want Toad otherwise.

Similar omissions of consequences occur throughout the book. What happened to

all those policemen chasing Toad? They commandeer a train to pursue him, but then

they disappear, even though Toad returns to his original home. And why don’t the

weasels and stoats try to regain Toad Hall after being tossed out? The Toad resumes

a life ‘‘undisturbed by further risings or invasions’’ (p. 240), an improbable outcome

if this were the real world instead of a romance. On first reading, details like these

bother a reader who is unable to let go of the nagging background awareness of

consequences that bedevil adult life. But The Wind in the Willows is written for that

sense of romance within us that embraces life in the present instead of dwelling on

unhappy results in other times.

Other misadventures lack consequences. Returning home, Toad falls into the

river and is swept along. When he is able to gain the shore, where is he but in front

of the home of Rat, who pulls him out of the river? Grahame constructs his narrative

so that the coincidence comes right at the end of a chapter and leads to a cheerful

outcome rather than a more realistic conclusion. On their way to regain Toad Hall,


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Toad once more falls into the water, but here his misadventure is like a cartoon

incident or comic routine (p. 224). Similarly, the final battle happens rather than is

caused. Grahame writes: ‘‘The affair was soon over. Up and down, the whole length

of the hall, strode the four Friends, whacking with their sticks at every head that

showed itself; and in five minutes the room was cleared’’ (p. 227). In Grahame’s

romance, righteousness prevails with ease, and the cleanup is done according to

desires and ideals of appropriateness rather than to the necessary conditions of

actual work.

An awareness of the style of romance, with its coordinate constructions and de-

emphasis of causes and consequences, clarifies the relationships among the various

sections of The Wind in the Willows. At times critics separate the narrative strands

of the book into Mole and Toad episodes, ‘‘safe enclosures’’ vs. ‘‘adult realities’’

(e.g. Hunt, 1994, p. 26; Gilead, 1988, p. 151). That perceived separation is

understandable, but all sections of Grahame’s tale are united by emphasis on the

journey into self-fulfillment rather than into external pursuits. In the episode titled

‘‘Wayfarers All,’’ Rat hears a ‘‘peremptory call’’ to change as autumn approaches.

The chorus of the orchards and hedges is shrinking as his feathered friends, group by

group, obey that call; the field-mice are preoccupied with preparations for the

winter; a ‘‘sweet unrest’’ fluttering through dreams at night beckons the animals

with ‘‘the scents and sounds and names of long-forgotten places’’ (p. 158). Will our

Rat leave his idyllic life and follow the wizened Sea Rat in an animal version of the

Edwardian fascination with travel beyond the oceans? Grahame writes in his most

luxurious prose of the spellbinding appeal of the ‘‘red and glowing vintage of the

South’’ and the ‘‘changing foam-streaked grey-green of leaping Northern seas’’ (p.

170). Here he purposefully imitates travel narratives, his sensuous description

abetted by the penchant of romance for contrast with ordinary existence.

Spellbound, Rat starts South ‘‘to the shores that are calling me!’’ Fortunately,

though, Mole saves Rat by giving him a pencil and few half-sheets of paper: ‘‘‘It’s

quite a long time since you did any poetry,’ he remarked. ‘You might have a try at it

this evening, instead of—well, brooding over things so much. I’ve an idea that

you’ll feel a lot better when you’ve got something jotted down—if it’s only just the

rhymes’’’ (p. 176).

Rat is saved from an appealing but for him inappropriate journey abroad in order

to continue a parallel journey to the core of domestic experience that Mole and he

enjoy throughout the book. The call of overseas adventure is strong, but it is better

that Rat stick with the sheltered romance that is so much the major appeal of

Grahame’s work. He has literature, his rhymes, to bear him lands away. Desire and

fulfillment are the attracting forces in this chapter, often compatible in romance, but

here the desire is nervous, described repeatedly in terms of unrest and necessary

obedience. The Sea Rat is footsore and hungry but compelled, nevertheless, by ‘‘the

old call… which will not let me go’’ (p. 163). And the fulfillment entails the

exigencies of external journeys. Mole’s solution is to lead Rat to attainable desires

more characteristic of their type of interior romance. Rat is freed from the demands

of peripheral desires and enabled to pursue an inward journey to his own core being.

The Wind in the Willows is not a pairing or balancing of ‘‘safe enclosures’’ and

‘‘adult realities’’ but, rather, a choice of the enclosures of romance over the realities


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of adult life. In a sense, the story is the opposite of The Odyssey: it is not so much a

journey as a residence. The call of the novel is to domestic romance.

Mr. Toad also wants distant journeys—in his motor car. Although Toad in fact

attempts all sorts of trips, ironically he never gets beyond himself. Toad has one of

the most egregious egos in children’s literature. It is instructive that Rat’s wayfaring

chapter immediately precedes ‘‘The Further Adventures of Toad.’’ In one respect his

journeys are all surface travel and repeatedly entangle him with the Wide World; the

other animals try to teach him better. But Toad’s inability really to reform is, of

course, part of his lovability; he is irrepressible; he follows his desires with a gusto

that we all might envy. So, in another respect, his journeys are a type of escape to

personal essence, to endorsement of personal desire. They are the alternative that

romance promises to ordinary life. In fact, Toad even makes up a little song,

contrasting his famous, intelligent, intrepid, respected, and handsome self to run-of-

the-mill heroes: ‘‘never a name to go down to fame/Compared with that of Toad!’’

(p. 190). In name and romantic self-absorption, Toad is definitely beyond the

ordinary! When he tells Mole his adventures in rather augmented style, the narration

contrasts them with ordinary experiences: ‘‘Those are always the best and the raciest

adventures; and why should they not be truly ours, as much as the somewhat

inadequate things that really come off?’’ (p. 222). Toad, then, pursues a journey into

what is true life for him, though clearly undesirable for the other animals. He is, in

fact, the foil against which their domestic pursuits shine, the comic Sancho Panza or

Papageno who connects the otherness of romance with the urges and discomforts of

our ordinary world.

Both Rat’s poetry and Toad’s episodes replace the causes and consequences of

adult realities with a purposefully and self-consciously created world. In The Windin the Willows, the reader loses expectation of hard realism and, instead, becomes

more at home in an artistic environment where enriched description and story-book

romance are expected conditions. The Wind in the Willows, Seth Lerer writes, is

‘‘first and foremost, an essay in aesthetics. Style governs each and every creature of

its woods and mansions….’’ Lerer refers to English style, a ‘‘Victorian domestic

pastoral and a fable of life that would be shattered by social upheaval and world

war’’ (Kuznets, 1987, pp. 51, 53). This essay in aesthetics is harmonious with

romance in several ways: not only is outdated English style an aesthetic alternative

to the present, Grahame’s work self-consciously makes clear that it is available only

as an aesthetic creation. Mole calls our attention to the ‘‘created’’ nature of the

narrative. When Rat deduces the presence of Badger’s home beneath the snow in

Sherlock Holmes fashion, Mole marvels, ‘‘Well, I’ve read about that sort of thing in

books, but I’ve never come across it before in real life’’ (p. 56), as if to say that these

sorts of things are occurring in a book, and one that contrasts with real life.

A passage like the description of the coming of June is presented as a pageant, as

a work of art at a remove from a natural word-to-world fit: ‘‘The pageant of the river

bank had marched steadily along, unfolding itself in scene-pictures that succeeded

each other in stately procession…’’ (pp. 41–42). The account continues to a

somewhat incongruous inclusion of the characters of human romance: ‘‘One

member of the company was still awaited; the shepherd-boy for the nymphs to woo,

the knight for whom the ladies waited at the window, the prince that was to kiss the


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sleeping summer back to life and love….’’ Incongruous but an easy inclusion since

the alternative lives that these little animals experience are nearer akin to art than to

reality. The metaconscious style of The Wind in the Willows carries the message that

romance creates its worlds, to fulfill desire rather than to depict reality.

The shepherd-boy, knight, ladies, and prince are also easy inclusions because

Grahame’s animals are really humans. Often an author will anthropomorphize an

animal character, but Grahame portrays us, human figures, in the guise of animals.

The animals engage in human actions without seeming inappropriate because the

basis of their characterization is human rather than animal. They have chicken for

dinner (p. 7), fried ham (p. 69), rabbit with onion (p. 181), a gipsy stew of

‘‘partridges, and pheasants, and chickens, and hares, and rabbits, and peahens, and

guinea-fowls, and one or two other things’’ (p. 189), keep birds in cages (pp. 23,

36)—humans in cities also keep birds (pp. 78, 135)—use a horse to pull their cart (p.

33), have rows with the police (cf. Toad’s difficulties) and generally react like

humans. Toad lives in Toad Hall with a graveled carriage drive. It is hard to tell the

life of the wayfaring rat from the life of a regular sailor. The Wind in the Willows is

about us, ‘‘animalized’’ as a means of portraying the otherness of this romance. In

spite of some references to ‘‘animal etiquette’’ and instinct (pp. 10, 77) and actions

appropriate to animals rather than humans, we don’t think first of the animal

reaction or the character as animal but rather of the human reaction. ‘‘What’s a little

wet to a Water Rat’’ says Rat cheerily when Mole overturns the boat (p. 19), but

even here the animal characteristic is necessary because we have reacted as if he

were a human. The animal traits add quaintness, it is true, but more basically they

remove the characters from the responsibilities of ordinary human life, allowing

them to live their difference with greater ease.

‘‘The Piper at the Gates of Dawn,’’ an intriguing chapter at the heart of the book

in both position and theme, emphasizes this call to a different and true life that is the

message of romance whispered by the wind in the willows. Little Portly Otter has

wandered off, he doesn’t swim very well yet, and ‘‘then there are—well, traps and

things—you know’’ (p. 120). His worried father waits faithfully each night for

Portly’s return. Mole and Rat go out on the river to look for him. There they

experience the rising moon washing the shadowy river ‘‘clean of mystery and

terror’’ (p. 122) and then the happy call of a distant piping. ‘‘Rapt, transported,

trembling, [Rat] was possessed in all his senses by this new divine thing,’’ and Mole

too, breathless and transfixed, ‘‘stopped rowing as the liquid run of that glad piping

broke on him like a wave, caught him up, and possessed him utterly’’ (p. 124).

Because sensuous descriptions of the essence of experience become a familiar part

of the romance of The Wind in the Willows, this ecstasy seems an appropriate

tableau of what we have been experiencing all along. On an island in mid stream,

‘‘fringed close with willow and silver birch and alder… it hid whatever it might hold

behind a veil, keeping it till the hour should come, and, with the hour, those who

were called and chosen’’ (p. 125). There ‘‘in that utter clearness of the imminent

dawn,’’ Rat looks ‘‘in the very eyes of the Friend and Helper; saw the backward

sweep of the curved horns… the long supple hand still holding the pan-pipes…’’

with Portly, the baby otter, nestled peacefully between his hooves (pp. 126–127).


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The Pan figure, a trans-sectarian combination of Christian and pagan elements,

seems an appropriate part of that intensified essence of natural joy that the animals

have been experiencing (cf. Prince, 1994, p. 92). In this romance, Mole and Rat

have been called to journey to the charged heart of the quotidian. There ‘‘the two

animals, crouching to the earth, bowed their heads and did worship’’ (p. 127). The

revelation of Pan remains deep within them as a dim sense of the beauty of a dream

that one struggles to recall till ‘‘the dreamer bitterly accepts the hard, cold waking

and all its penalties’’ (p. 128). ‘‘The Piper at the Gates of Dawn’’ is a striking version

of Romantic ‘‘intimations,’’ of the journey within and its contrast with the everyday

world. The otherness of Pan and the sacred nature of the experience operate as a

central tableau of the novel’s basic vision. Here The Wind in the Willows lies in the

tradition of romances like A Midsummer Night’s Dream. There are alternatives to

ordinary existence—in the imagination, in art, in Grahame’s and Shakespeare’s

midsummer nights, in the core of one’s being.

The animals live in the essence of their lives rather than in the sad entanglements

of the mundane world. That is part of their great appeal: they lead the life we would

lead if we could toss the housekeeping as Mole does or the bank job as Grahame

himself obviously wished to do: ‘‘It’s my world, and I don’t want any other. What it

hasn’t got is not worth having, and what it doesn’t know is not worth knowing,’’

said the Rat (p. 9). As the ripening summer moved onward, Mole ‘‘learnt to swim

and to row, and entered into the joy of running water; and with his ear to the reed-

stems he caught, at intervals, something of what the wind went whispering so

constantly among them’’ (p. 18). And that is what we too catch a glimmering of in

The Wind in the Willows: the romance of new life, pure and true.

Grahame has a gift of pulling readers into his narration—by the animals, who are

clearly us in their feelings and reactions (or at least they are the way we would like

to be), by description that is imaginatively appealing, by the overblown but

attractive travel accounts, and also by the quiet descriptions of wonder: ‘‘a yellow

moon, appearing suddenly and silently from nowhere in particular, came to keep

them company and listen to their talk’’ (p. 31). Simple yet involving; Grahame has

personified the moon’s appearance. It is a statement of the apprehension of the

characters rather than an objective description of scene. Grahame taps into the

affective dimensions of a thought. That ability to draw readers into the setting

psychologically is one of the major appeals of The Wind in the Willows.

For some readers the question arises whether Mole’s return-to-home philos-

ophy is restrictive and the lessons of the book basically negative. An important

strain of criticism, as Peter Hunt explains in his review of critical approaches to

the book, claims that Grahame’s world is built on a series of denials and

evasions (Hunt, 1994, pp. 61, 77). These understandable views, though, take on

new coloring when Mole’s inner journey is considered as a characteristic of

romance in which ‘‘evasion’’ is seen as positive and the return to home as a

choice of enlightened values. A view of The Wind in the Willows as romance

does not determine the ethics of alternative worlds, but it does place the debate

over Grahame’s message in a context of moral choices. It also affects one’s

understanding of the book’s audience; that is, whether indeed The Wind in the


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Willows is a children’s book.4 Romance appeals to a reader who can appreciate

the desirability of another situation, environment, world, or life. Child readers

who understand such an appeal will best respond to the book. If not, they will

miss a major component of Grahame’s romance, though they may enjoy other

aspects of it.

The additive and sequential nature of The Wind in the Willows combined with a

clear avoidance of subordination and causality is no doubt a hallmark of Grahame’s

own stylistic identity or preferences; Lois Kuznets remarks that Grahame’s early

letter style is paratactic (p. 114). But in addition to its roots in Grahame’s personal

style is its congruence with the worldview of romance, which acknowledges the

dark side of life but encourages neither tragic confrontation nor realistic reform. The

impulse of romance is to find alternatives; the style of The Wind in the Willows is an

instructive concomitant of such a worldview. Grahame’s style should be considered

not so much an ordering of words alone as both the product and the fitting shape of a

worldview. To analyze the style of The Wind in the Willows is to analyze an

alternative vision and choice of values. Sensuous, Grahame’s style appeals to

feelings and present fulfillment. Additive and loosely sequential, it lists elements

valuable in themselves. In this respect, the style parallels the discovery of a ‘‘new

life’’ that is inherently rather than conditionally worthwhile. Phatic, its characters

acknowledge each other as ends. Self-conscious, it calls attention to its status as

creation rather than mimesis. Such a style is a natural and appropriate outcome of

the worldview of romance.

References

Atkinson, Paul. (1989). Goffman’s Poetics. Human Studies, 12(1), 59–76.

Auerbach, Erich. (1957). Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Literature. Garden City:

Doubleday.

Frye, Northrop. (1957). Anatomy of Criticism. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Frye, Northrop. (1976). The Secular Scripture: A Study of the Structure of Romance. Cambridge, MA:

Harvard University Press.

Fuchs, Barbara. (2004). Romance. New York: Routledge. Accessed October 3, 2011, from EBSCOhost.

Gilead, Sarah. (1988). The Undoing of Idyll in The Wind in the Willows. Children’s Literature, 16,

145–158.

Grahame, Kenneth. (1983). The Wind in the Willows. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons.

Greene, Peter. (1959). Kenneth Grahame 1859–1932: A Study of His Life, Work and Times. London: John

Murray.

Griswold, Jerry. (2006). Feeling Like a Kid. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.

Hunt, Peter. (1994). The Wind in the Willows: A Fragmented Arcadia. New York: Twayne.

Jameson, Fredric. (1981). The Political Unconscious: Narrative as a Socially Symbolic Act. Ithaca:

Cornell University Press.

Kuznets, Lois R. (1987). Kenneth Grahame. Boston: Twayne.

4 Jacqueline Rose attempts to ‘‘dismantle’’ the innocence of the child in her examination of the troubled

history of Peter Pan (1992). It is not an issue of what the child wants, she writes, ‘‘but of what the adult

desires’’ (p. 2). In this view, Grahame’s myth of childhood, like Barrie’s, is an adult choice, a ‘‘political

mystification of the child’’ (p. 11). That, of course, is the choice of romance, a mystification no doubt but

also an overt and plain choice of alternative values.


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Lerer, Seth. (2009). Style and the Mole: Domestic Aesthetics in the Wind in the Willows. Journal ofAesthetic Education, 43(2), 51–63.

McFall, Gardner. (2005). Introduction. In Gardner McFall (Ed.), The Wind in the Willows. New York:

Barnes and Noble.

Parker, Patricia A. (1979). Inescapable Romance: Studies in the Poetics of a Mode. Princeton: Princeton

University Press.

Poss, Geraldine D. (1975). An Epic in Arcadia: The Pastoral World of the Wind in the Willows.

Children’s Literature, 4, 80–90.

Prince, Alison. (1994). Kenneth Grahame: An Innocent in the Wild Wood. London: Allison and Busby.

Rose, Jacqueline. (1992). The Case of Peter Pan or The Impossibility of Children’s Fiction. Philadelphia:

University of Pennsylvania Press.


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The Wind in the Willows and the Style of Romance

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