[Notes] Peter Rabbit’s Character Design and Development (Part 2)

Con­tin­ued from the pre­vi­ous chap­ter:[Notes] Peter Rab­bit’s Char­ac­ter Design and Devel­op­ment (Part 1)

Peter Rab­bit grad­u­al­ly grew up in the sto­ry

The huge suc­cess of “The Tale of Peter Rab­bit” after its pub­li­ca­tion forced Miss Porter to con­sid­er con­tin­u­ing the sto­ry of Peter Rab­bit (or con­tin­u­ing a lit­tle bit in sub­se­quent sto­ries).

The neces­si­ty comes from three aspects: the urgent demand of the pub­lish­ing house. Regard­less of whether the cre­ation is suc­cess­ful or not, the sequel will at least sell well; the needs of read­ers — “What hap­pened to Peter Rab­bit lat­er?”; Miss Porter’s own needs, includ­ing both eco­nom­ic aspects (roy­al­ties) and inner explo­ration — a mir­ror of Peter Rab­bit’s growth as a cre­ator.

Cre­ation is large­ly a process of self-dis­cov­ery. When Miss Porter first wrote about the bun­ny in a let­ter, she must have had a spe­cif­ic idea in mind. She devel­oped the let­ter into a book in 1901, print­ing and sell­ing it at her own expense, and final­ly pub­lish­ing it com­mer­cial­ly in 1902. There was a rea­son for this.

Sim­ply put, Miss Porter at the time yearned for independence—both spir­i­tu­al and finan­cial. Her par­ents, who were wealthy and upper-mid­dle-class, pre­ferred a life “like the aris­toc­ra­cy,” which meant no work, focus­ing their ener­gy on leisure and social­iz­ing in high soci­ety. For exam­ple, paint­ing was fine, a taste­ful pas­time, but mak­ing a liv­ing from it was not, as it was a low-sta­tus lifestyle. Since the 1890s, Miss Porter had been try­ing to earn some extra income by sell­ing her paint­ings (for greet­ing cards and book illus­tra­tions), a rebel­lious act in her fam­i­ly. She col­lab­o­rat­ed with her broth­er Bertram on these endeav­ors. Sim­i­lar­ly, pub­lish­ing books to earn roy­al­ties was even more rebel­lious. Lat­er, she even con­sid­ered mar­ry­ing the book­seller and edi­tor Nor­man Vaugh­an. Her par­ents con­sid­ered this a com­plete­ly inap­pro­pri­ate mar­riage, as book­sellers earned their liv­ings through busi­ness and work, which they con­sid­ered unre­spectable. In fact, Miss Porter’s grand­fa­ther and grand­fa­ther-in-law were orig­i­nal­ly farm­ers. Lat­er, they worked hard to earn a huge for­tune through indus­try and busi­ness. But when it came to Miss Porter’s par­ents, busi­ness and work became not respectable, which is iron­ic in itself.

The suc­cess of Peter Rab­bit was there­fore of great sig­nif­i­cance to Miss Porter’s devel­op­ment. With the suc­cess of this and sub­se­quent books, she final­ly had enough mon­ey to her name, allow­ing her to pur­chase a farm (Knoll­top Farm) in her beloved Lake Dis­trict in north­ern Eng­land in 1905. Orig­i­nal­ly intend­ed as a hol­i­day farm after her mar­riage to Nor­man Vaugh­an, it lat­er became a tem­po­rary refuge when she fre­quent­ly escaped from her fam­i­ly in Lon­don. Even after her mar­riage to Mr. William Hillis in 1913, Knoll­top Farm remained her per­son­al estate, a pri­vate chapel of her spir­i­tu­al inde­pen­dence.

Sketch of Hill­top Farm (by Miss Porter, 1905)

Miss Porter in front of the farm­house at Hill­top Farm

 

In fact, from the per­spec­tive of her per­son­al cre­ative plea­sure, she had no inten­tion of writ­ing (draw­ing) the sto­ry of Peter Rab­bit again, but she real­ly need­ed mon­ey at the time. More mon­ey meant more pos­si­bil­i­ties for inde­pen­dence for her.

The year after The Tale of Peter Rab­bit, she pub­lished The Tai­lor of Glouces­ter and The Tale of the Squir­rel and the Fruit. These three books were all her own cre­ations, gen­uine­ly writ­ten for a spe­cif­ic audi­ence of chil­dren, with a nat­ur­al and engag­ing sto­ry. The Tai­lor was a per­son­al favorite of hers, for many rea­sons I won’t dis­cuss here. Then, in 1904, she final­ly pub­lished a Peter Rab­bit-relat­ed sto­ry: The Tale of Lit­tle Ben­jamin Rab­bit. This was a spe­cial­ly adapt­ed sto­ry, and the illus­tra­tions were just as good as The Tale of Peter Rab­bit, but it still had some traces of “com­po­si­tion­al writ­ing.”

Miss Porter nev­er explic­it­ly explains the rela­tion­ship between Lit­tle Ben­jamin and Peter Rab­bit. There are two pos­si­bil­i­ties: Lit­tle Ben­jam­in’s moth­er and Peter’s moth­er are sis­ters, or Lit­tle Ben­jam­in’s father (Old Ben­jamin) and Peter’s moth­er are sib­lings. In either case, they are cousins.

Ben­jamin and Flop­sy with their lit­tle bun­ny in “The Sto­ry of the Flop­sy Bun­ny”

 

But who’s old­er? Both are pos­si­ble. I’m lean­ing towards Lit­tle Ben­jamin Rab­bit being the old­er one for sev­er­al rea­sons: First, Ben­jamin and Peter are actu­al­ly the names of two rab­bits Miss Porter once owned. Ben­jamin was the first, Peter the sec­ond. So, in terms of order of birth, Ben­jamin is the old­er one. Sec­ond, Lit­tle Ben­jamin Rab­bit lat­er mar­ried Peter’s sis­ter, Flop­sy. This makes him most like­ly Peter’s eldest sis­ter, as the sto­ry begins by say­ing the four lit­tle rab­bits are “Flop­sy, Mop­sy, Cot­ton-Tail, and Peter.” Accord­ing to com­mon prac­tice, the old­est one is always men­tioned first. Third, in “The Tale of the Flop­sy Bun­nies” and “The Tale of Mr. Todd,” Lit­tle Ben­jamin Rab­bit and Flop­sy have a large fam­i­ly, while Peter remains a hap­pi­ly sin­gle man. There­fore, it’s more rea­son­able to assume that Lit­tle Ben­jamin Rab­bit is Peter’s cousin.



A sketch of Miss Pot­ter’s pet rab­bit, Peter

 

How­ev­er, in the recent Peter Rab­bit car­toon series, in order to high­light Peter Rab­bit’s strong char­ac­ter, lit­tle Ben­jamin Rab­bit is sim­ply weak. Nat­u­ral­ly, the Chi­nese ver­sion of the car­toon also trans­lat­ed lit­tle Ben­jamin Rab­bit into a cousin, which I think is under­stand­able. This is relat­ed to the char­ac­ter set­ting of the car­toon direc­tor.

In “The Tale of Lit­tle Ben­jamin Rab­bit,” when lit­tle Ben­jamin first appears, he’s even more clue­less than Peter Rab­bit. Notic­ing Mr. and Mrs. McG­o­na­gall are out, he goes to get Peter Rab­bit to play in Mr. McG­o­na­gal­l’s gar­den. Peter Rab­bit in this episode is a com­plete rever­sal. First, he sits in a cor­ner, wrapped in a red cot­ton hand­ker­chief, look­ing mis­er­able. Only to be dragged back to the gar­den by Ben­jamin, where he’s so ter­ri­fied that he falls head­first while climb­ing down a tree. Just imag­ine how mis­er­able he is!

The scene where Peter Rab­bit retrieves his blue jack­et and shoes from the Scare­crow is quite amus­ing. He explains that it rained the day before, and it seems the jack­et has shrunk. Actu­al­ly, the jack­et was already tight enough in the pre­vi­ous episode, and this scene is prob­a­bly a sym­bol of Peter’s growth. Even after find­ing his clothes and shoes, Peter Rab­bit still isn’t hap­py. He keeps his ears perked up—he’s become a very cau­tious lit­tle rab­bit!

In con­trast, lit­tle Ben­jamin Rab­bit is quite the scoundrel. He even packs onions in a cot­ton hand­ker­chief to please Peter’s moth­er. This detail con­tains a fas­ci­nat­ing irony: onions are a com­mon ingre­di­ent in any British rab­bit dish, whether it’s rab­bit pie or roast rabbit—and yet these two lit­tle rab­bits are bring­ing onions home! In “The Tale of Peter Rab­bit,” when Peter sees the gate in the hedge from afar, Mr. McG­o­na­gall is also “dig­ging onions with a hoe”! Miss Pot­ter uses the “rab­bit + onion” com­bi­na­tion twice in a row. Lat­er, in “The Tale of Jemi­ma Pud­dle Duck,” the fox asks Jemi­ma to col­lect some gar­nish for the roast duck, a com­mon tac­tic of hers.

The worst part of this episode is that the cat (the one star­ing at the gold­fish in the pre­vi­ous episode) shows up and traps the two lit­tle rab­bits under a bas­ket with a bunch of onions. The cat sits on top of the bas­ket, watch­ing as Mr. McG­o­na­gall is about to come home (din­ner and its sides are auto­mat­i­cal­ly pre­pared)! Of course, the two lit­tle rab­bits are final­ly res­cued by old Ben­jamin Rab­bit, but he also gets a good spank­ing. Peter Rab­bit final­ly returns home, for­giv­en by his moth­er, and folds hand­ker­chiefs with his sis­ters, look­ing like a well-behaved lit­tle rab­bit who’s learned a les­son.

Peter Rab­bit in “The Tale of Lit­tle Ben­jamin Rab­bit” isn’t exact­ly a cameo, but he’s def­i­nite­ly a sup­port­ing char­ac­ter, serv­ing as a foil to anoth­er, even more reck­less dare­dev­il. How­ev­er, it can also be said that by this stage, Peter Rab­bit has passed his full rebel­lious phase, becom­ing more prac­ti­cal and cau­tious in his life, aware of the very real dan­gers of risk-tak­ing and rebel­lion. Peter Rab­bit in this book isn’t exact­ly lov­able, but he’s still believ­able. Miss Pot­ter also pos­sess­es a rather ambigu­ous dual­i­ty when it comes to rebel­lion: she longs for it, but she’s also well aware of the risks involved (for exam­ple, her broth­er Bertram lat­er los­es his inher­i­tance after mar­ry­ing a bar­tender’s daugh­ter).

Lat­er, aside from a brief appear­ance in “The Tale of Mrs. Tit­thorne Winthorn,” Peter Rab­bit did­n’t make his offi­cial debut until 1909, in “The Tale of Fos­ter Rab­bit,” where he made a two-page appear­ance. How­ev­er, this appear­ance was def­i­nite­ly a minor one. How­ev­er, two inter­est­ing details were revealed: Peter Rab­bit remained sin­gle and unmar­ried; and sec­ond, he was cul­ti­vat­ing his own veg­etable gar­den, a part­ner­ship with his moth­er! The thought of Peter Rab­bit becom­ing a “good cit­i­zen” might be a bit dis­ap­point­ing, right?

In this book, lit­tle Ben­jamin Rab­bit and his wife Flop­sy raised a bunch of baby rab­bits. They lived a hap­py life of “not car­ing about tomor­row after today”. They nev­er had enough food, and often had to bor­row some cab­bages from Peter Rab­bit, but “some­times, even Peter Rab­bit had no extra cab­bages to share with them” — the fun­ni­est thing about this page was that Peter Rab­bit spread his hands in front, mean­ing that he had no more, but in the back, Peter Rab­bit’s moth­er delib­er­ate­ly held up her skirt to hide the cab­bages behind her!

In this sto­ry, lit­tle Ben­jamin Rab­bit has become a father. He no longer leads his brood of bun­nies in Mr. Mag’s veg­etable gar­den. Instead, he picks dis­card­ed old veg­etable leaves from the garbage dump outside—a rather dif­fi­cult task, one might imag­ine. How­ev­er, remem­ber that Miss Pot­ter had been a farmer since 1905, cul­ti­vat­ing her own gar­dens and veg­eta­bles, and the wild rab­bits steal­ing her veg­eta­bles would like­ly have been unwel­come. Per­haps because of this, the rab­bits in her sto­ries became increas­ing­ly cau­tious and “civ­i­lized.” Or per­haps, by this point, she no longer need­ed to be so rebel­lious.

（To be con­tin­ued, next link)

Pre­vi­ous episode review:[Notes] Peter Rab­bit’s Char­ac­ter Design and Devel­op­ment (Part 1)