Truth and Claw: The Beastly Children and Childlike Beasts of Saki, Beatrix Potter, and Kenneth Grahame

Abstract

This essay explores how three writers active in the Edwardian period represent childish bad behaviour. Despite their obvious differences of genre and approach, Beatrix Potter, Kenneth Grahame, and Saki (Hector Hugh Munro) share an interest in bad or naughty characters, adult and child. These characters are driven by a fierce internal logic that cuts across social convention and the needs or desires of other characters: particularly when they write about children, Potter, Grahame, and Saki characterize bad behaviour as wild, natural, and even honest. They do this by associating wildness with animal behaviour; in doing so, they draw on Romantic ideals of the child’s purity and honesty (in the face of corrupt adult society), as well as ideals of animality. The term ‘beastly’ is thus useful here. Bad behaviour can be termed ‘beastly,’ in the sense of ‘acting in any manner unworthy of a reasonable creature,’ but it can also simply mean ‘resembling a beast in conduct, or in obeying the animal instincts’ (OED). Beastly children and childlike beasts live ruthlessly, pay heed only to what they want, are inconsiderate of the wants of those around them, and cause trouble. However troublesome to adults this behaviour might be, it underscores the natural and original qualities of idealized childhood, in stark opposition to the corruption and mixed motives of the adult world.