The Psychological Uses of Ruthlessness in a Children's Fantasy Tale: Beatrix Potter and The Tale of Peter Rabbit

Beatrix Potter's The Tale of Peter Rabbit (1902) is one of the top best-selling children's books of all time. In an attempt to account for its staggering success, this paper examines the dynamic processes through which meaning shapes itself out of fictional constructs. A study of Potter's tale presents insights into the psychic logic of the author's intentions and her uses of narrative to give order through form to desire. Drawing on the work of Freud, Brooks and Winnicott, concepts such as transference, masterplot and wish fulfilment are considered as ways of illuminating the symptomatic uses of Peter for Potter. Arguably, the little hero's enactments of ruthlessness, 'mouth love' and defiance function as symbolic containing devices through which the author expresses her capacity for self-knowledge. The story's symbolization of greed serves not only as a displacement of the psychic reality of hunger felt by a gifted, rigidly controlled Victorian female author, but equally important, as a transitional space for child readers through time to imagine the capacity to go to extreme limits in terms of satisfying psychic spaces left empty and angry by want.