The Pig Who Went to Market: Entrepreneurship and Exploitation in Beatrix Potter's The Tale of Little Pig Robinson

In a letter to her American publisher, Alexander McKay, Beatrix Potter wrote, "I think Pig Robinson looking into a shop window is the best black and white I ever did" (Letter to McKay).¹ The illustration to which she refers (Fig. 1), on page 83 of the American edition of The Tale of Little Pig Robinson,² is one that many modern readers of Potter's works never encounter. The little-known story follows Pig Robinson to town to complete his aunts' errands, to sea after he is kidnapped and taken aboard a ship bound for Newfoundland, and to the tropical island to which he eventually escapes. As its title and plot indicate, Pig Robinson's literary progenitor is Robinson Crusoe; as a Robinsonade,³ the novella belongs to a tradition at the height of its popularity when Potter wrote her first draft in the 1890s. Readers of Pig Robinson would also recognize two other famous literary sailors playing supporting roles in Potter's narrative: the Owl and the Pussy-cat of Edward Lear's 1871 poem, itself inspired by Defoe's novel. By weaving together elements of Defoe's and Lear's texts in Pig Robinson, Potter situates her tale at the nexus of two versions of the Robinsonade. While Robinson Crusoe, the Owl, and the Cat have in common an adventure on a desert island, what the three do upon these islands differs significantly: Crusoe becomes a model of industry and piety, while the Owl and Cat "hand in hand, on the edge of the sand, / … danced by the light of the moon" (ll. 29–30). One works; the others play. These activities perhaps explain the popularity of the Victorian Robinsonade. Parents, as Susan Naramore Maher notes, saw in the typical Robinsonade an appealing didactic message: these texts "privilege action, hardwork, and material progress" (169). Child readers, on the other hand, were eager consumers of the exotic adventure and escape from responsibility the genre seemed to offer. Obedient, industrious, and entrepreneurially spirited, Pig Robinson is poised to capitalize on the economic fantasy the Robinsonade tenders; his failures in the marketplace, his exploitation (by consumers of both the capitalist and gustatory variety), and the exaggerated Lear-esque ending Potter chooses for him critically undercut both the genre's formulaic association of hard work with economic success and its

Fig 1.

Original line drawing for The Tale of Little Pig Robinson (American edition). Image provided courtesy of the Free Library of Philadelphia. © David McKay Co., 1930.

depiction of natural economic laws governing human interactions with the environment. In sending Pig Robinson to market, Potter explores the market forces that influence personal autonomy and childhood identity. Obscure though it is, Pig Robinson's focus on political economy aligns it with a number of major works in the Potter canon that share this same interest—including The Tale of Samuel Whiskers or, The Roly-Poly Pudding (1908), The Tale of Ginger and Pickles (1909), and The Tale of Pigling Bland (1913). The image of "Pig Robinson looking into a shop window" is not simply of interest to Potter scholars because she thought it was her best line drawing; it also serves as the culmination of a lifetime ruminating on the subject of political economy. Around this image coalesce Potter's ideas about the economic underpinnings central to her vision of children's role in capitalist society.

I. Pig Robinson's Antecedents

While its publication date places Pig Robinson at the very end of Potter's literary career (in fact, it is the last work she both wrote and illustrated), the story actually belongs to the same twelve-month period (1893–94) in which Peter Rabbit and Jeremy Fisher were created. Like Lewis Carroll's creation of the Alice books, or Edward Lear's creation of the Nonsense books, initially, Potter wrote her stories as "picture letters" to the children of her former governess, Annie Moore. Most famous is the opening of her letter to Moore's oldest...