Children's Literature

The Toad, having finished his breakfast, picked up a stout stick and swung it vigorously, belabouring imaginary animah. "I'll learn 'em to steal my house!" he cried. "I'll learn 'em!"

"Don't say 'learn 'em', Toad," said the Rat, greatly shocked. "It's not good English".

"What are you always nagging at Toad for?" inquired the Badger rather peevishly. "What's the matter with his English? It's the same what I use myself, and if it's good enough for me, it ought to be good enough for you!"

"I'm very sorry," said the Rat humbly. "Only I think it ought to be 'teach 'em', not 'learn 'em'."

"But we don't want to teach 'em," replied the Badger. "We want to learn 'em . . . and . . . we're going to do it, too!"

The Wind in the Willows, as Neil Philip points out, is "a densely layered text fairly cluttered with second meanings" (104), and, for the British reader at least, one of the main subtexts is that of class dialectic. This is not simply a tension or conflict between the sense of settled social harmony of the River Bankers and the subversive working-classes of the Wild Wood; rather, class is identified with power, and there are symbolic or actual conflicts between adults of different classes, between adults of the same class, between adults and children—and even between animals, each living "by instinct . . . according to his nature" (Elspeth Grahame 28). Just as the sizes of the animals constantly change, so the power/class perspectives constantly shift. But how are we aware of them? Are they implicitly or explicitly stated?

Kenneth Grahame was a great stylist, who saw himself in a direct line from Sir Thomas Browne, and we might therefore expect his prose to be sensitive to the class-conscious undercurrents of the text—especially when members of the various classes actually [End Page 159] speak. The remarkable "blindness" of the dialogue to this major motivating feature is partly due to Grahame's habit of parody and pastiche; it certainly provides a fascinating s'ociolinguistic commentary on the structural essences of the text.

Grahame's tendency to avoid or disguise the voices of "the people" can be illustrated by the police sergeant, who speaks in a merciless parody of William Harrison Ainsworth and his ilk: "'Oddsbodikins . . . Rouse thee, old loon, and take over from us this vile Toad, a criminal of deepest guilt and matchless artfulness and resource. Watch and ward him with all thy skill; and mark thee well, grey-beard, should aught untoward befall, thy old head shall answer for his—and a murrain on both of them!'" (125). This "instability" of the text, with characters vacillating between parody, normal or "authentic" speech, and authorially mediated speech, allows the text to evade very potent linguistic class distinction and to evade the confrontations latent in a book which deals obliquely with so many societal issues. For example, Toad, the gentleman in distress, confesses all to a working-class worthy, the engine-driver who helps him to escape: "The engine-driver looked very grave and said, 'I fear that you have been indeed a wicked toad, and by rights I ought to give you up to offended justice. But you are evidently in sore trouble and distress, so I will not desert you. I don't hold with motor-cars, for one thing; and I don't hold with being ordered about by policemen when I'm on my own engine, for another . . . . So cheer up, Toad! I'll do my best, and we may beat them yet!'" (160). Elizabeth Gripps saw in this passage "the literary man seeking applause in the self-conscious phrasing and overall polish" (22), but the fact that the linguistic artificiality diffuses (or defuses) a serious sociological point about both cross-cultural alliances and individualism suggests a more subtle reading. Is this a point which Grahame had to evade?

It is instructive to compare Grahame's technique with that of his contemporary, E. Nesbit. Describing a similar encounter with working-class independence in The Railway...