Burrowing into The Borrowers

Mary Norton is remembered mainly for her books about the Borrowers, a race of tiny people who survive by “borrowing” things from humans. Little people have had a strong appeal for children for centuries: in Elizabethan times we shrank the fairies to a diminutive stature, in the eighteenth century children appropriated the Lilliputian chapters of Gulliver’s Travels, and more recently Lynne Reid Banks has entertained young readers with a series of books about an Indian in the cupboard. Along with T. H. White’s Mistress Masham’s Repose (1947) and Pauline Clarke’s The Return of the Twelves (1964), Norton’s books about the Borrowers fit cozily into this peculiar English subgenre of children’s literature.

Jon Stott is a great admirer of the Borrower stories. Half of his Twayne volume on Mary Norton is devoted to a discussion of the series—an appropriate concentration, since more than half of Norton’s literary output revolved around the Borrowers. Stott clearly believes that the Borrower books represent the apex of Norton’s literary achievement. Her earlier works, The Magic Bed-Knob and Bonfires and Broomsticks (1957) (better known by their collective title, Bed-Knob and Broomstick (1957) receive more cursory treatment, and Stott seems hard pressed to find literary value in the unusual late work Are All the Giants Dead? (1975). When he discourses on the Borrowers, however, Stott burrows deeply into the books and emerges with armloads of literary treasures.

Much of the discussion centers on the changing narrative structure of the five books, which evolves from ambiguous frame story to direct narrative in a manner that parallels the Borrowers’ increasing independence from the “human beans.” In The Borrowers (1952), the first book in the series, Mrs. May tells the story of a Borrower family from long ago—Pod, Homily, and Arrietty Clock—to her willful niece Kate, leaving the little people’s fate unknown. The Borrowers Afield (1955) and The Borrowers Afloat (1959) also contain frame stories set in the present, but in The Borrowers Aloft (1961) Norton switches to a more direct narration set in the time period of the Clocks—the early decades of the twentieth century. Stott examines the effects of the changing narrative framework and argues that the changes show an increasing sophistication in Norton’s style.

Stott also surveys previous criticism of the series, focusing on aspects of the novels such as their sociopolitical commentary, the female bildungsroman, and ways of seeing. The Clocks are presented as external observers of a human way of life that was quickly disappearing: the English class system and rural gentility. As a bildungsroman, The Borrowers and its sequels center on Arrietty, who matures from a slightly rebellious adolescent to a wiser, self-controlled and self-reliant young woman, learning along the way what it means to be a Borrower and coming to appreciate the dangers of talking to humans. Seeing and being seen are vital elements of the books, as most of the dangers encountered by the Clocks spring from Arrietty’s friendships with individual “human beans.”

Surprisingly, Stott does not address one of the most appealing aspects of the books—the Borrowers’ ingenuity. When Pod and Arrietty construct a balloon anchor by tying two opened safety pins together (The Borrowers Aloft), the reader is charmed and amused. (This incident caused me serious trouble in childhood; reading the book surreptitiously in my sixth-grade science class, I inadvertently laughed out loud at the description of the anchor.) The inventiveness with which the Clocks appropriate small human items and adapt them to Borrower needs is what remains with readers long after they have forgotten the plot and the names of the characters.

Stott discusses Norton’s first two children’s books, The Magic Bed-Knob and Bonfires and Broomsticks, in terms of their relationship to The Borrowers, referring to them as “harbingers of greatness.” These books are about an apprentice witch and the displaced children who come to stay with her during the London blitz. Although the story was made into a Disney film...