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  • Freud in Mr. McGregor’s Garden
  • M. Daphne Kutzer (bio)
Review of The Remarkable Beatrix Potter, by Alexander Grinstein. Madison, CT: International UP, 1995.

Beatrix Potter is one of the few children’s authors of her generation whose books are still beloved by many children, as well as adults. She has been the subject of a major exhibition at the Morgan Library; her farmhouse in Sawrey is visited by thousands every year; her books (and china and toys and paint boxes inspired by the books) are still widely available; there are new video adaptations of her small novels; and a new biographical video is available from Weston Woods. Kenneth Grahame, to name another author of the same period, hardly receives the same attention. There is Peter Hunt’s recent book on Wind in the Willows, some dreadful “adaptations” of the novels, and some dramatic and cartoon versions of the Toad episodes, but nothing like the volume of Potter material available. Potter is treated to what is known in the book trade as a “dumpster”—a special cardboard display for her works, placed prominently in stores. Grahame is relegated to the back shelves.

Potter’s enormous popularity has given rise to a wealth of reasonably good books on the subject of her art and her novels, among which are Ann Hobbs’ The Art of Beatrix Potter (1989) and Judy Taylor’s Beatrix Potter 1866–1943 (1987). But the power of Potter’s work has also led those who are not literary scholars or art historians to attempt to explain her appeal. This is the case with Alexander Grinstein, who is neither a literary nor art scholar, but rather a medical doctor, whose The Remarkable Life of Beatrix Potter is an incredibly odd sort of book.

Grinstein is a practicing psychiatrist whose other publications largely have to do with Freud’s psychoanalytic theories. Dr. Grinstein states in his foreword that his study was not “conceived as a biography in the usual sense” and that he wishes to use a psychoanalytic approach “to provide another dimension for understanding Beatrix Potter” (3–4). One cannot [End Page 291] fault Grinstein for wanting to use his professional expertise to elucidate Potter’s character, and in fact one might be grateful for any sort of biographical approach that is more critical than Margaret Lane’s. However, as literary scholars know, psychological criticism and perhaps especially psychological approaches to biography are fraught with danger. Grinstein fails prey to a number of these dangers.

Grinstein’s biography takes the standard chronological approach, and does not add anything to what we know of the facts of Potter’s life, well-documented as they are by both Lane and by Leslie Linder. What Grinstein wants to provide is interpretation of the facts, and specifically psychological interpretations. In doing so, however, he depends too heavily on standard Freudian theory with little or no understanding of the social and historical context of Potter’s life. For example, in The Tailor of Gloucester Potter writes that “all the beasts can talk in the night between Christmas Eve and Christmas Day in the morning (though there are very few folk that can hear them, or know what it is that they say) (38). Grinstein writes that “We may take this [statement] as an allusion to some early memories [Potter] has repressed . . . Such a statement would lead directly to our supposition that as a child Beatrix Potter herself could not understand what her parents were talking about, especially when it related to material that alluded to sexuality” (62–63). Assuming for the moment that we, like Grinstein, are good Freudians and accept the realities of repressed or suppressed memories, we are still left with the fact that Grinstein has made rather large—and inaccurate—assumptions about Victorian family life. The Potter family was conservative, run by rigid rules, and very proper. It is highly unlikely that the Potters, in the mid-nineteenth century, alluded to sex in any fashion whatsoever, and certainly never in the presence of their daughter. We might want to grant Grinstein the possibility that Potter at some point witnessed the “primal moment” of her parents’ passion when she was not supposed...

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