Subversiveness in Beatrix Potter’s Picture Books:Mischievous Children, Rebellious Women, and Atypical Tales

• Main Authors: Hsin-Chun Huang, 黃歆淳
• Other Authors: Feng-Hsin Liu
• Format: Others
• Language: en_US
• Published: 2015
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/n2d6hp

碩士 === 國立中興大學 === 外國語文學系所 === 103 === This thesis begins with my exploration of the subversiveness in Beatrix Potter’s tales. Literature reviews show that most scholars previously tend to criticize Potter’s works in the aspects of autobiography, feminism, and ecocriticism. Nevertheless, critics seldom focus on Potter’s subversive characters, especially on spaces left out for the powerless to process a short moment of freedom. This thesis is going to analyze The Tale of Peter Rabbit, The Tale of Benjamin Bunny, The Tale of the Flopsy Bunnies, The Tale of Mr. Tod, The Tale of the Roly-Poly Pudding, The Tale of Two Bad Mice, and The Tale of Ginger and Pickles one by one, in which the mischievous children and rebellious women portrayed by Potter reveal the subversive elements under the atypical tales. In introduction, I first sketch Potter’s lifetime, then generalize the phases of the studies on her works, and finally briefly introduce the theory referred and the thesis structure. In Chapter 1, I concentrate the theme on the mischievous children in the domestic place. Applying James, Jenks, and Prout’s childhood studies which reveal the imbalance of child-adult relationship, I start from The Tale of Peter Rabbit to discuss the measures the little characters take. In Chapter 2, I focus on the rebellious women and refer to de Certeau’s idea on tactics which demonstrate how the comparatively powerless characters, Victorian women under the patriarchal society for example, seize the chance to subvert within the rule of power owner. In Chapter 3, I summarize the phenomenon above and try to interpret the atypical style of Potter’s tales. Under the traditional frame of fairy tale, by slightly adjusting the imaginary elements, Potter seemingly intends to leave implicit messages to her readers. Generally speaking, through the research on the subversiveness in Potter’s picture books, this thesis attempts to interpret the texts and provide for readers with different angles to read her tales of century-long popularity with their lasting charm.