Why This is Still 1893: The Tale of Peter Rabbit and Beatrix Potter's Manipulations of Time into Timelessness

Beatrix Potter's various rewritings of The Tale of Peter Rabbit, from a letter to a young boy in 1893, through her own privately printed editions in 1901 and 1902, to the late 1902 edition that Frederick Warne continues to publish today, are well-known and documented. But though the various editions are available in scholarly studies of Potter, there has been little analysis of the effect of these revisions. I would like to examine two aspects of these revisions: first, how the changes between editions slow the narrative down and contribute to a greater sense of locating the narrative in the flow of time, and second, how the changes contribute to the longevity of Peter's popularity. The book is not a great moral treatise, touching on ideas of high spiritual and artistic importance in children's literature; when one considers its size, the book seems even less substantial and less likely a candidate for canonization. But no canon of children's literature can ignore Peter Rabbit, and the book remains a best-seller. It is my contention that Potter deliberately sets the book in no particular time, and yet in everytime, both in the narrative and in the illustration, and that the setting contributes to the book's popularity. Why Peter is everychild's everyrabbit is an important consideration for scholars interested in the issue of what makes a classic.

In 1893, Beatrix Potter wrote and illustrated the original version of Peter Rabbit and sent it to the five-year-old son of her former governess and long-time friend. The letter is only eight single pages long, and a comparison with the edition available today is more noteworthy for its similarity than for the changes Potter made. Even though the letter contained only handwritten text and pen-and-ink sketches, most of the pictures are virtually the same, and the text is arranged on the page in a way similar to the final edition. For example, Peter is featured in the foreground, with his sisters "in a sand bank under the root if a big fir tree," just as he is in the final edition, with only slight alteration in the wording, to "In a sand-bank, underneath the root of a very big fir-tree." The picture of Peter confronting Mr. McGregor at the corner of the cucumber frame is virtually the same in spite of nearly universal criticism of the drawing of the gardener.

The few changes Potter does make are significant in the punctuation. Frequently in the final version, Potter inserts a comma where there was no punctuation before, as in the line, "Mr. McGregor was planting out young cabbages but he jumped up & ran after Peter waving a rake & calling out 'Stop thief!'" There is no internal punctuation in the entire line as she wrote it in her letter. In the final edition, the line reads, "Mr. McGregor was on his hands and knees planting out young cabbages, but he jumped up and ran after Peter, waving a rake and calling out, 'Stop thief!'" All that the commas do is slow down the line; perhaps they break the sentence up into smaller and more easily comprehended lines for the young reader or listener, but Potter's primary consideration would seem not to be grammar, but rather, pacing. There are several lines which are ended with semi-colons rather than the former commas, such as

First he ate some lettuce, and some broad beans, and then some radishes, and then, feeling rather sick, he went to look for some parsley;

which becomes

First he ate some lettuces and some French beans; and then he ate some radishes;

[Next page] And then, feeing rather sick, he went to look for some parsley.

Though there are some slight changes in the words—"lettuce" becomes "lettuces," and "broad beans" become "French beans"—the main effect is in the punctuation, accompanied by the page turn, which slows down the action and allows the reader to concentrate on each action individually. There are other individual sentences...