The Inner Family of The Wind in the Willows

When all is said the boastful, unstable Toad, the hospitable Water Rat, the shy, wise, childlike Badger, and the Mole with his pleasant habit of brave boyish impulse, are neither animals nor men, but are types of that deeper humanity which sways us all.

[Richard Middleton, circa 1908, quoted in Green 258]

As I began to read criticism of The Wind in the Willows, I found myself disconcerted to see the main characters frequently described as "bachelors." The small but emphatic voice of my childhood reading insisted that these characters were like nothing so pedestrian as adult human males; they were the Rat, the Mole, the Toad, and the Badger—ageless, timeless, genderless. Certainly, as the critics say, the book is rich in literary and social satire, and it gains a great deal of power in its evocation of a pastoral golden age; certainly the main characters resemble Kenneth Grahame's friends as well as aspects of his own personality. But none of this can account for the delight I took in the novel at nine. It seems to me that Grahame's story appeals to all ages because it illustrates at least two dynamics intimately familiar at all ages: family relationships and psychological growth.

That the four main characters are neither plain-and-simple animals nor disguised humans is indicated by their unique presentation in the text. In The Wind in the Willows there are many rabbits and field mice, any number of swallows, and hordes of weasels and stoats, but only one Water Rat, one Mole, one Toad, and one Badger, whose species names and personal names are the same. Like the original, hermaphroditic Adam of alchemy, they include all Ratness, Moleness, and so forth, in their own singular selves, standing out from the more ordinary multitudes of other animals like Platonic forms. Appropriately, as Lois Kuznets has noted, these characters display "feminine" as well as "masculine" characteristics ("Whither Blows" 176, 179): they feed one another, nurture and support one another, and foster among themselves a cosy domesticity. In this context, Grahame's refusal to so much as name any female animal until the very last page of the book does not obliterate the feminine. Rather, it circumvents the reader's habit of classifying individuals primarily by sex,¹ and leads us to differentiate, instead, by species.

But having created four unique and autonomous characters of differing species, Grahame proceeds to set up distinctly familial roles and relationships among them.² Badger and Rat are mature, parental characters. Initiated in their world's ways, they are insiders of River Bank society who can manage the Wild Wood; they are protectors, rescuers, teachers, and directors of Toad and Mole. Toad and Mole are child figures, uninitiated outsiders, the learners and seekers of the book. Mole is a novice on the River Bank, and Toad, although he has inherited a grand house and important social station, has yet to grow into either. Yet these characters do not simply fill family roles. Their autonomy, uniqueness, and gender inclusivity allow us to experience them as psychic entities that inhabit everyone's soul.

Badger, for instance, is the father. He is biggest, potentially dangerous ("Nobody interferes with him. They'd better not" [10]), often gruff and authoritative. When present, he is in charge; he scolds Toad in the name of Toad's father (213-15) and "paternally" pats the other characters on the head (60). He is the final rescuer: "When people were in any fix they mostly went to Badger, or else Badger got to know of it somehow" (68). He alone of the main characters is never seized by violent emotion, never tempted to leave home.

But Badger is not only a father figure. He also resembles the organizing center of the psyche, the "inner guiding factor" that Jungians call the Self. Some individuals experience the Self as an inner source of wisdom, which the Naskapi Indians call the Great Man (Von Franz, "Process" 163), and Badger enjoys "great man" status in his community. He lives in an underground labyrinth in "the heart," "the very middle...