“Have a

Carrot”
Theory, Symbolism and
Gender In
Margaret Wise Brown’s
Runaway Bunny Trilogy
And Other Popular Picture
Books

Claudia H. Pearson
 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I am grateful to my thesis directors and
professors in the Hollins University Children’s
Literature program, Lisa Rowe Fraustino and J.D.
Stahl, whose insights were invaluable to the
development of the essays in this book, and to all
of the other outstanding faculty, staff, and students
at Hollins University who inspired and informed my
work, and facilitated my research. I am also
indebted to my friends Carol, Tracy, and
Annemarie, and my husband Richard, my sons, and
their wives. They put up with my career change
and extended absences to attend classes at Hollins,
who listened patiently as I worked my way through
difficult theoretical issues in childhood psychology
and picture book analysis, and helped with the
editorial process.

Nancy Chodorow, Shari Thurer, Ellen Handler

Spitz, Perry Nodelman, Susan Lehr, and many other
theorists and critics were inspire-ational and
instrumental in the development of this text. I am
indebted to them all.

3
CONTENTS

Theory, Symbolism and Gender in Children’s

Picture Books

The Runaway Bunny

Goodnight Moon

My World

Bibliography
Index
 Look Again Press
Birmingham, Alabama

Copyright © 2010, Look Again Press.

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ISBN 978-0-9801113-1-6
Theory, Symbolism, and Gender

THEORY,
SYMBOLISM
AND GENDER IN
PICTURE BOOKS

What do you see, what do you hear when

you read The Runaway Bunny and Goodnight
Moon? The Runaway Bunny and Goodnight Moon
have been popular for more than half a century,
and although the third text in this trilogy, My
World, is not as well known, the three texts are
clearly connected and have recently been
published as a single edition titled Over the Moon.
But to my knowledge, no critical analysis has ever
before approached them as a trilogy, and no one
has ever previously pointed out the pervasive use
of Freudian symbolism or the Oedipal structure of
these books.

When I first suggested that Margaret Wise

Brown and Clement Hurd might have intentionally

6
incorporated Freudian psychological theories and
symbols in their bunny books it raised more than a
few eyebrows among my friends and fellow
students at Hollins University. Many simply refused
to even consider the possibility, and I had no direct
proof to support my conclusion, no admission of
theoretical inspiration similar to that made by
Leonard Weisgard in his Caldecott acceptance
speech for another Brown book, no Bank Street
School psychologist report pointing out that this or
that might suggest castration such as there is for
The Noisy Book.

So I pieced together evidence and

catalogued the extensive use of Freudian theory
and symbols in the text and illustrations, the
structure of the Brown trilogy in support my
argument. Of course the mere presence of Freudian
symbols in a picture book does not mean the
authors and illustrators consciously intended to rely
on or incorporate psychological themes in their
texts. Freud himself has confirmed that the
symbols he identified in dream analysis reflected
not only in our imaginations, but in our
colloquialisms, stories, folklore, songs, and rhymes.

It would be difficult indeed to determine

Theory, Symbolism, and Gender

whether Freudian symbols have gained their

meanings because of the stories we have heard, or
if stories use these symbols because our brains
originally gave them meaning. As Freud points out,
“symbolic relations are not something peculiar to
dreamers or to the dream-work through which they
come to expression,” but have long been employed
by myths and fairy tales to convey meanings
beyond the imaginative stories in which they are
found.1 It is in the very nature of literature to use
symbols, for words are themselves symbols of the
ideas and things they represent.

Educated adults might assume they know

what a word or picture means, and might not
realize that it could mean something altogether
different to an imaginative child, or even to another
adult. But even what seems to be nonsense to an
adult can have meaning to a child, and “simple”
picture books can expand a child’s understanding
of himself, his relationships, and his place in the
world. Some will be requested over and over again,
much to the chagrin of parents for whom the
meanings seem to be fixed. But I have found that
books that are truly simple, which have fixed

1 Freud, Sigmund, Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis.

New York: Norton (1966), pp. 195-196, 204-205.

8
meanings that are easily understood are quickly
tossed aside and ignored after they have been read
once or twice. They have little to offer a child’s
imagination.

Adults reading a picture book may look only

at what is on the surface, which is why picture
books are often described as simple or “childish.”
They might see nothing more than the softness of
the rabbit mother and bunny child, the pastel
colors, the simple words. But the complexity of a
good picture book often hides in its seeming
simplicity. Indeed, what adults “see” in a picture
book is often influenced by their assumptions about
what books contain, about the meanings of words,
and even about childhood itself.

Adults can situate themselves in childhood

only as adults looking back, and consequently our
“adult” perspective imports our understanding of
what children’s literature is and should be into the
way we read picture books. In our minds, words
and illustrations do not function in isolation. Like a
rock tossed into a pond, they create ripples on the
surface that reflect the light and lap at the edges of
our conscious thoughts. Sinking into the depths,
they bump up against other words and images we
Theory, Symbolism, and Gender

have collected. Reaching the bottom, they stir the

mud and leaves of deep memory that are buried
there. Eventually they come to rest, new elements
in our reservoir of symbols.2

There is nothing contemplated in the human

mind that is not shaped by individual perceptions.
Our concept of the “reality” of the present is
tainted by the way we reconstruct our past, and the
future we envision is limited to what we allow
ourselves to imagine is possible. Psychological
analysis tends to focus on this subjectivity, on the
way our personal orientation to the world around us
leads us to notice one thing and not another in a
story or a dream, to pronounce some things more
significant than others. It also recognizes the way
our memories are often shaded by the ever
increasing temporal distance from childhood.

At no time is our unique perception of the

world easier to observe than in childhood. As we
grow older we are taught and come to believe that
words and symbols have specific, sometimes
universal meanings, and we convince ourselves
that we are objective and unbiased observers. But
at the same time, as we learn to empathize with

2 Rodari, Gianni, The Grammar of Fantasy, transl. Jack Zipes.

New York: Teachers & Writers Collaborative (1996).

10
others, we realize that individual beliefs about what
things mean can differ. This paradox is at the heart
of narrative synthesis, for it is often through story
that we seek connecting and common ground, and
hope to discover universal truths about human
experience.

A story can be as simple as a parent’s report

of a child learning to tie his own shoes, or as
symbolically complex as the dreams and
nightmares reflected in novels by Neil Gaiman,
Frank Hebert, Ursula LeGuin, and Stephen King.
Along this spectrum of possibilities, picture books
for children are often considered to be the simplest
of stories. Indeed, as Leonard Marcus has pointed
out, many people assume that a picture book is
and should be nothing more than a “sentimental
repository of innocent thoughts and happy
endings.”3

But as adults we can choose to look again, to

try to decipher why certain books appeal to
children. This was why I returned to school to study
children’s literature, and why, during the course of
those studies, I came to see things in picture books
I had never noticed before.

3 Marcus, Leonard S., Margaret Wise Brown: Awakened by the

Moon, Boston: Beacon, (1992), pp. 4-5.
Theory, Symbolism, and Gender

Margaret Wise Brown’s Runaway Bunny

trilogy was written during a period when Freudian
theories of childhood development were important
topics of discussion among educational experts,
and there can be little doubt that toddlers, the
target audience for most picture books, go through
a phase when their genitals become important as
part of their developing sense of self and their
gender identity. Recognizing their fascination with
their genitals and growing awareness of the mother
and father as sexual beings, Freud openly
advocated that children be taught about human
sexuality, complaining that concealing the role it
would play in their lives prevented them from being
prepared to deal with the “aggressiveness” they
might experience as a result of sexual desires.4

But even today, with sexual acts explicitly

depicted in prime time television shows and Disney
characters displaying unusual physical
endowments, a child’s growing curiosity about what
happens between his parents behind closed doors,
and their recognition of biological differences
between men and women are subjects many
parents prefer to avoid. Parents also seem to be
unaware of the ways in which some children’s

4 Freud, Civilization and Its Discontents, p. 81.

12
books operate to reinforce gendered roles in family
and society, and the way they reflect and comment
upon the psychosexual issues. They may consider
the use of sexual symbols and images such as
those found in Brown’s work perverted, and balk at
reading these books to their children once the
sexual imagery and symbolic content have been
pointed out to them.

A naïve child reader, however, probably

would not consciously recognize or understand the
symbolic or psychological content of the Brown
trilogy the same way an adult would. It is arguably
these books’ appeal to the subconscious, to the
natural inclinations and interests of their young
audience, the deeper, ostensibly “darker” feelings
these texts may evoke, which has caused children
to seek them out again and again for more than
fifty years.

While the general public may have tended to

ignore the social and psychological messages
contained in these texts, increased interest in the
academic study of children’s books has led to an
upsurge in the application of psychoanalytical
theory and feminist analysis to children’s literature.
Excellent bibliographies of this body of work can be
Theory, Symbolism, and Gender

found in Rollin’s and West’s Psychoanalytic

Responses to Children’s Literature, Spitz’s Inside
Picture Books, Griswold’s The Classic American
Children’s Story, Fetterly’s The Resisting Reader,
and Lehr’s Beauty, Brains and Brawn.

These authorities are not the first critics to

apply social and psychological analysis to literature
for children. A quick perusal of Bettelheim’s,
Bottigheimer’s, Luethi’s and Zipes’ works on fairy
and folk tales indicates the degree to which gender,
economic class and psychological theories have
been used to construct meaning from stories which
were originally intended for audiences of all ages,
but are now characterized as “children’s” literature.
Luethi even goes so far as to suggest that the
connection between psychology and fantasy
literature “strengthens us in the belief that we are
dealing with a particular form of literature, one
which concerns man directly.”5

Few parents are familiar with any of these

authorities however, and because the texts of
picture books are short and the words used are
“simple,” many assume that writing for young
children is essentially devoid of literary value. But

5 Luthi, Max, Once Upon a Time: On the Nature of Fairy Tales,

Bloomington: Indiana UP (1970), pp. 21-22.

14
for children the words and pictures are open
vessels which they can fill with content, and the
limited format and vocabulary tends to force
picture book authors and illustrators to employ
sophisticated literary devices.

Certainly picture books speak to children in

ways that neither words nor pictures can alone, in
ways that we as parents and teachers and
librarians should be aware of and appreciate. Even
non-rhyming picture books texts are typically
poetic in form, and each word and each picture in a
picture book operates on many levels, which is
why, even though the text is typically very short,
and is often described as “simple,” picture books
are not easy to create. Writers select specific words
not only because of their literal meanings but also
because of the way they sound, using those sounds
to establish a mood and convey a sensibility that
goes beyond the definitions of the words chosen.

The development of language itself depends

on metaphorical comparisons and contrasts of
unknown things with known things that have
relatively well established meanings. As humans
attempt to name the unknown, to contain and
control it by “putting it into words,” they invest
Theory, Symbolism, and Gender

words not only with literal and often personal

meaning, but also with emotion. The very sound of
words can evoke emotional responses. Some young
children jump at abrupt noises and shrink from
things which growl or hiss, but are drawn to a cat’s
purr and a beating heart. Words that use these
sounds can evoke similar responses.

Naming is a universal activity which recalls

every creation story ever told. It is the conjuring of
a thing which is not present, the containing and
taming of the unknown. “D-o-g” on a page comes
to have meaning for a child not only because other
black lines and colored spaces form images on the
same or an adjacent page and because this
symbolic image is named orally for the child, but
because of the child’s own experience with a dog,
sometimes the teeth, sometimes the tongue,
sometimes the soft ears and wagging tail.

For a young child, naming takes on a magical

quality. A doll or stuffed animal can become a very
real friend who offers comfort and consolation at
bedtime. A stick can be a sword or a gun simply
because the child names it and imagines it to be
so. It doesn’t matter that a “real” friend is
supposed to be living flesh and blood and not fluff,

16
or that “real” guns and swords are made of metal
and do not grow on trees. Naming the thing makes
it “real” to the child.

The process of naming also introduces the

intertextual nature of language. For example, to a
child who has not yet learned his letters, an “O” – a
circle drawn on a page – can be a face or not a
face, a ball or not a ball, a moon or not a moon, a
balloon or not a balloon, some of which you can
touch and smell and taste, and some which you can
not. Because language works by and through a
process of comparing the unknown with what is
known, the image of any one of these things in a
book subtly calls to mind all the other round things
the reader has experienced in other books and in
life, and sometimes their opposites as well.

Thinking of round also conjures non-round

things, straight and pointed and square things. Cold
evokes warm and hot, darkness brings light, soft
blends into hard. Is a bed in a manger soft when
you’ve always slept on the floor? Is it still soft if
you’ve slept on a feather bed?

Illustrations offer a different system of

symbols which can be used like words, not only to
convey meaning but also to evoke emotional
Theory, Symbolism, and Gender

responses from the audience. Artists put one object

closer to the edge of the page, make it larger,
generating a perspective familiar to adults, but
which may communicate to a child who has not yet
learned the conventions of perspective in art that
the larger thing is bigger or more important than
the smaller thing rather than closer and farther
away. They select primary or pastel hues, rich
saturated pigments or translucent water colors,
heavy black outlines or thin etched shadows,
choosing to fill the page or use white space in a
way that adds meaning to the images and text.

Children “feel blue” and “see red” even if

they cannot yet explain the connection between
these colors and the emotions they evoke, the way
the colors feel. Some of these connections and
emotional responses are culturally developed.
Some, like the red actually seen when looking
through squinted eyes, may be universal. Molly
Bang has done a fantastic job of exploring the ways
in which colors and shapes can be used to generate
wordless stories in her books.

Authors and illustrators use these tools in a

way that encourages young readers to embrace
and explore their memories and feelings in order to

18
construct meaning from the story. Some
intentionally introduce ironic discontinuity into their
texts. Indeed, discontinuity between the words and
the illustrations can be a source of humor for adults
who buy children’s books and might otherwise
become bored when reading the same books over
and over. For children, the interaction between the
words and images, the act of making “sense” from
what might seem at first to be nonsense is what
makes books fascinating.

The juxtaposition of words and illustrations

which have different meanings operates to spark
the child’s imagination and understanding.
Discontinuity in a picture book requires the child to
participate in constructing the meaning of the text
at just the point in a child’s life when the child is
learning that facial expressions and other visual
symbols often communicate things that are left
unsaid. It allows children to experience not only the
playfulness of language, but a sense of satisfaction
in making the text their own as they decide for
themselves what is actually happening. It can also
evoke deep emotional responses as children realize
they can not always trust their eyes or ears alone
to determine what is true, and explore the idea that
people don’t always say what they mean.
Theory, Symbolism, and Gender

For example, most children listening to

Horton Hatches the Egg will know that a “real”
elephant can’t climb a tree or sit on an egg without
breaking it even if they haven’t ever seen a real
elephant. They must reconcile this knowledge with
the image and text. Geisel (Dr. Seuss) uses this
discontinuity to open young readers’ to the
possibility that there are many different kinds of
parents, and the story works not just because
Horton is silly, but because Geisel has created the
kind of reliable, touchable creature children would
want taking care of them. Horton’s big eyes and
thick eyelashes, his rotund body outlined in thick
black lines give children the impression that he is
soft but solid, dependable, kind and patient in a
way that the self-indulgent wispy-winged Maisy bird
could never be. Through his creative approach to
the theme, Geisel allows his audience to address
both their fears and hopes with regard to their own
parents, and seems to challenge the readers’
assumptions about what roles mothers and fathers
should play in their children’s lives.

Geisel is not alone in using animals rather

than human characters in his books. Picture books
are filled with small furry animals that symbolically
represent humans. The very process of naming

20
animal characters and giving them clothes
introduces both ambiguity and uniqueness. It offers
a visual metaphor which children seem to under-
stand. Real rabbits don’t wear clothes, but Peter
Rabbit wears a coat and shoes – does wearing
clothes make him human? Does losing his clothes
make him an animal again? Does the fact that
Potter uses animal char-acters soften the impact of
Peter’s father’s death in Farmer McGregor’s
garden? Does it justify Farmer McGregor’s
threatening behavior toward the bunny-child in a
way that readers can understand and accept as
somehow permissible, although similar behavior
toward a human child clearly would not be
acceptable to adults?

Another technique used in picture books is

the interplay of conflicted and often opposing
emotions. For example, in fairy tales, a character
can be angry or greedy. He can intentionally or
unintentionally hurt and even destroy something or
someone he loves. For example, people familiar
with Disney’s version of Pinocchio do not realize
that in Collodi’s original story, the Blue Fairy dies.
Indeed, fairy tales often begin with the hero’s
failure, and focus on the rescue or resurrection of a
loved person, or the restoration of a cherished
Theory, Symbolism, and Gender

object which the hero has lost or broken. It is the

hero’s exile, his journey away, his salvation, and his
return home.

In addition to the openness of words and

images to interpretation by the child, the physical
and emotional interaction between the child and
the adult who is reading the story allow a child to
explore his often conflicted feelings. As parents
change their voices, as they play act the roles of
the different characters, they evoke similar role
playing in the child, allowing the child the freedom
to identify with characters in the book, to “try on”
and “try out” the different roles and the array of
emotions the story portrays.

Conflicting emotions are commonly

experienced by children, especially at bedtime,
especially toward their parents, especially when
they are beginning to explore the ways in which
they can control those around them, and the ways
they cannot. In this context, reading a picture book
to a child at bedtime can become a form of
performance art which reflects in many ways the
very story which is being read. What child held
securely in his mother’s arms has not explored his
own ambivalent feelings as she reads about the

22
little bunny’s defiant flight in The Runaway Bunny,
perhaps even voicing his own ideas about the
forms he might take to escape her confining arms.
What child has not felt the frustration of being put
to bed when he is not sleepy, searching for objects
on each page of Goodnight Moon that have not
been named in the text, actively bidding each one
goodnight in defiance of the old woman’s “hush,”
begging that the book be read aloud again and
again to delay the moment when the lights are
finally turned out?

In pursuing my studies, I found that a

number of children’s literature critics had already
taken a fresh look at picture books. Prominent
writers in the field, including Perry Nodelman,
Allison Lurie, and Ellen Handler Spitz, had already
concluded that picture books can and do address
psychological issues important to very young
audiences. Some texts, such as Sendak’s Where
the Wild Things Are, had been subjected to detailed
analysis by numerous critics, and therefore I have
not revisited those works. Sendak’s books in
particular may have elicited this type of analysis
because he dared to draw anatomically correct
children in some of his illustrations, much to the
consternation of many librarians and parents.
Theory, Symbolism, and Gender

Like anatomically correct illustrations,

psychological issues in picture books can be
presented either directly or in ways that may be so
subtle that the psychological aspects of a text are
not recognized for years. Unlike Linda de Hann’s
King and King, which openly and directly confronts
readers with the issue of homosexuality, in my
opinion, the real power of picture books comes
from their subtle use of metaphor and symbol
rather than from forthright representations,
especially where the subject may be frightening or
potentially embarrassing or shameful. Indeed, as
Ellen Handler Spitz notes, “The representation of a
significant [psychological] theme stands the test of
time only when it is so skillfully rendered that we
come upon it gradually, and it does not diminish in
power with each successive reading.”6 Consistent
with this, Brown’s trilogy was so skillfully rendered
that for more than half a century the underlying
Oedipal theme has not been identified or
mentioned in critical texts.

As I stated before, many of my friends

refused to believe Brown would have intentionally
employed Freudian theory and symbols in these

6 Spitz, Ellen Handler. Inside Picture Books. New Haven: Yale

UP (1999), p. 11.

24
books. Debates over an author’s intent and the
meanings which should be ascribed to the symbols
used should not, however, preclude a discussion of
the ways in which Brown’s picture books can and
do speak to children. The varied and strongly felt
emotional responses children may have to some
books, the fact that some children request the
same books again and again until they have
resolved the psychological issues the books
address, while others cry and throw the books
aside immediately are signs that parents, teachers,
librarians and literary critics should perhaps take
another look.

Certainly Brown would not have been the

first to rely on psychological theories of childhood
development to write children’s picture books that
would both appeal to children and address difficult
issues associated with growing up. As early as the
end of the nineteenth century, psychologists had
pointed to children’s literature as a vehicle through
which children could both better understand the
world around them and be better understood.

Agreeing with this philosophy, Lucy Sprague

Mitchell, the director of the Bank Street School
where Margaret Wise Brown worked, studied, and
Theory, Symbolism, and Gender

wrote her first picture books, scheduled lectures

and weekly discussions which included topics such
as “The Emotional Effect of Stories on Children.”7
Mitchell believed that psychology and an
intellectual approach were important to creating
quality children’s books. ”8 The school taught
Piaget’s theories of language,9 and the premise of
the “here and now” stories Bank Street writers
created reflected Friedrich Froebel’s theory that a
child’s education arises from his active interaction
with the world.

The “here and now” picture books were

based on the philosophy that everyday occurrences
which adults viewed as commonplace could be the
equivalent of fantasy for children, whose innocent
sensuality allowed them to revel in the exciting
new tastes, colors, sounds and textures they
encountered.10 These “realistic” stories challenged
the general belief held not only by New York Public
Library head, Anne Carroll Moore and other
prominent librarians, but also by publishers of the
period, that fantasy forms, such as fairy tales,
7 Marcus, Leonard, Margaret Wise Brown: Awakened By the
Moon,, pp. 85-86.
8 Ibid. p. 66.
9 Ibid., p. 52.
10 Ibid., p. 169 (quoting Brown).

26
myths, and legends, and word-play like nonsense
poetry were the best forms of literature for the
young.11

Some reviewing this book will undoubtedly

focus on the lack of specific evidence that Brown
intentionally used Freudian symbols in her trilogy.
But Brown and her collaborators would not have
openly admitted this. Authorities like Moore, whose
power and influence often determined the success
or failure of picture books, had already objected to
the symbolism and focus on reality in the “here and
now” books produced by Brown and other writers
at the Bank Street School. Her objections to the
“here and now” books would certainly explain
Brown’s silence about the use of Freudian symbols
and Oedipal themes in her bunny trilogy.

But to suggest that Brown was unaware of

the psychological import and symbolic content of
her books ignores Brown’s wit, intelligence and
familiarity with both literary symbols and Freudian
psychological theory. While several theories of
childhood development were taught at Bank Street,
the primary focus of psychological studies at the
School was Freudian.12 Indeed, the school became
11 Ibid., pp. 53-55.
12 Ibid., p. 66.
Theory, Symbolism, and Gender

so well known for its research in the field that it

hosted a “steady parade” of psychologists and
educators from around the world,13 including one of
Anna Freud’s protégés, Edith Buxbaum.14 Given her
association with the Bank Street School throughout
her writing career, it is probable that Brown
personally read not only Freud and Piaget, but Erik
Erikson’s, Melanie Klein’s, and D.W. Winnicott’s
papers on childhood.

There is also evidence that Brown was

personally fascinated with psychology even before
she began working at the Bank Street School.
Although only one course in psychology was
required for graduation from Hollins College, Brown
took almost every psychology course available,
completing not only the required introductory
Psychology course, but Advanced General
Psychology, Child Psychology, Social Psychology,
and Abnormal Psychology.15

In addition to her college studies and

continued exposure to psychological theory at Bank

13 Ibid., p. 61.
14 Helfgott, Esther Altshul, Ph.D. “Edith Buxbaum (1902-
1982).” Women's Intellectual Contributions. Webster U. 9 July
2007.
15 Hollins College Course Catalogue 1930-31, Brown’s Hollins
College records (courtesy Hollins University).

28
Street, in 1940, the same year Brown began work
on The Runaway Bunny,16 she also began dream
analysis with Dr. Bak, a prominent Freudian.17 Her
sessions with Dr. Bak would have touched on her
own life. Her father’s frequent and extended
absences during her childhood, her difficulties with
her parents’ divorce, and her troubled homosexual
relationship with Michael Strange would have
undoubtedly been subjects she would have
discussed with Bak, especially as some theorists
suggested that homosexuality was the result of the
father’s absence during formative years.18

While Marcus reports that Brown

“approached her sessions with Dr. Bak with a
healthy skepticism,” he also reports that Brown
was preoccupied with dreams and their relationship
to “the compelling – and at the time largely
unexplored – theme of the power struggles implicit
in growing up.”19 Her personal experience with
dream analysis may indeed have been what led her
to consider dreams and “the unconscious interior
life, with all its mysterious operations,” resources
16 Marcus, p. 149.
17 Ibid., p. 139.
18 Chodorow, Nancy. The Reproduction of Mothering.
Berkeley: U of California P (1978), p. 175 (quoting Biller).
19 Marcus., p. 18.
Theory, Symbolism, and Gender

which ought not to be shunned by writers.20

Brown knowingly sought inspiration from

“the insights to be gleaned from dreams, from
memory, and from the ‘child that is within all of
us…perhaps the one laboratory we all share,’”21
and even went so far as to confess that she was
“grateful to the world of children’s books for
remaining one of the purest and free-est fields for
experimental writing today,” admitting that most of
22
her books were experiments. It should not
therefore be surprising that Brown’s friends
23
described her as “an experimenter,” or that the
Bank Street writer’s group with whom Brown
worked with to create “here and now” picture
books was called the “Bank Street Writers
24
Laboratory.”

There is even a specific example of Brown

intentionally experimenting with psychology and
symbolic imagery in a children’s book. The Noisy
Book, published in 1939, was expressly identified

20 Ibid.,, p. 66.
21 Ibid., p. 151 (quoting Brown).
22 Brown, Margaret Wise. “Writing for Children.” Hollins
Alumnae Magazine Winter 1949: 14.
23 Marcus, p. 3.
24 Ibid., p. 79.

30
as an experiment with sounds and colors, based on
a “Symbolist-related spec-ulation of Weisgard’s
that sounds might be translated into visual
equivalents through the colors and shapes of an
illustration,”25 a fact reaffirmed in Weisgard’s
Caldecott acceptance speech in 1947.

Not only was The Noisy Book expressly

identified as a psych-ological experiment, but
Brown obtained feedback about the story prior to
publication from at least one Bank Street staff
psychologist who warned that a story about a little
male dog whose eyes were bandaged could
suggest only one thing to a boy reader – castration
26
– and urged her to abandon the project. Although
Brown rejected the staff psych-ologist’s advice and
went ahead with publication, the incident indicates
that, as part of her creative process, Brown
consulted with psychologists at the Bank Street
School regarding the symbolic content of her
books.

There is also specific evidence of Brown’s

interest in creating modern “symbols in the brain”
to use in her picture books. In a letter addressed to
Gertrude Stein dated November 28, 1940, around
25 Ibid. p. 110.
26 Ibid., p. 112.
Theory, Symbolism, and Gender

the same time she began work on The Runaway

Bunny, Brown wrote:

I wish someone would do a book of

modern folk or fairy tales – the world
we know to-day and values in it, or if
it’s a fairy story with princes on tanks
and forsaken mermen in a sea of
submarines. Which is silly, perhaps
because tanks and submarines are not
yet symbols in the brain like white
horses and dolphin’s tails. Or are
they? Anyway. Once there were folk
tales about the world people lived in
and now there arn’t [sic]. But maybe
this would be too hard a book for
anyone to write now.”27
Brown suggested that Stein take on the task, a
challenge very similar to the “beat me to it”
challenge she had made only two months earlier in
a letter to Lucy Sprague Mitchell dated September
14, 1940, regarding the medieval French love
ballad which was the inspiration for The Runaway
Bunny.28

In this semi-erotic ballad, a woman changes

into various animals and is hunted by her lover. Not
only does the inspiration by a love ballad suggest
something unusual for a children’s book, but
comments by Marcus also suggest that The

27 Ibid., p. 141.
28 Ibid., p. 149.

32
Runaway Bunny may have had a private sexual
meaning for Brown. He describes her tumultuous
homosexual relationship with Michael Strange as
“riddled with Runaway Bunny-like, catch-me-if-you-
can evasions and ambiguities,” and noted that
among their friends, Margaret was known as
“Bunny” and Michael was known as “Rabbit.”29

While Marcus does not assert that Michael

Strange was the model for Brown’s Rabbit mother,
he does report that Strange was a domineering
mother whose interference with her son Robin’s
intimate relationships adversely impacted his sense
of self worth. Strange was known to have meddled
in Robin’s homosexual affairs, and left him “little
room for an independent sexual identity,” by some
accounts even going so far as to seduce his male
lovers.” 30

The choice of rabbits as characters for these

books is similarly revealing. For Brown, rabbits
were neither cute nor innocent. She did not
sentimentalize rabbits in the way parents reading
this book might assume, but instead enjoyed the
sport of running rabbits to death with hounds.31

29 Ibid., pp. 168, 172.

30 Ibid., p. 178.
31 Ibid., p. 40.
Theory, Symbolism, and Gender

Rabbits were also one of the first sources of

Brown’s knowledge of sex as she had observed
them as pets when she was a young child.32 The
fecundity of rabbits and their association with
human pregnancy tests may not be something
children today would think about when these books
are read, but certainly Brown would have been
aware of these connections when she chose to use
rabbits as characters in her books.

Arguments supporting the view that Brown

may have intentionally incorporated and relied on
Freudian theory in creating this trilogy also include
the Oedipal structure of the trilogy when it is
considered as a whole. When viewed together the
completeness of the Oedipal frame and the
overwhelming number and specificity of Freudian
symbols in Brown’s trilogy are astonishing. While
some might attribute the presence of Freudian
symbols in the illustrations to the illustrator
Clement Hurd, unlike authors today, Brown
controlled the creative process, retaining veto
power over his illustrations and providing detailed
descriptions and sketches of what she wanted.
Moreover, the symbolic objects in the illustrations
often are specifically named in the texts, and

32 Ibid., p. 16.

34
Brown’s other works such as The Little Island and
The Noisy Book also utilize Freudian themes and
imagery, but were not illustrated by Hurd.

Read as a psychological experiment

addressing a child’s fear of the omnipotent mother
and the process of developing his own gendered
identity, Brown’s Runaway Bunny trilogy
foreshadowed the generally pervasive
characterization of maternal figures in the literature
of the later decades of the twentieth century as
“mostly failed nurturers or intrusive manipulators…
[whose] malevolent hold was specifically
psychological.”33 In the anti-feminist post WWII
environment when women were being sent back
home psychiatrists expanded their theories
regarding “predatory moms” and their alter egos
“neglectful moms” (a code name for “mothers who
had outside interests”) to blame mothers for every
psychological problem children exhibited. Arguably
the predatory mother is the kind of mother
suggested by Brown’s mother rabbit in The
Runaway Bunny, a characterization typified by
psychoanalyst David Levy, who asserted that the
socially maladjusted child may have been “over

33 Thurer, Shari L. The Myths of Motherhood New York:

Houghton Mifflin (1994), p. 268.
Theory, Symbolism, and Gender

protected” and too close to his mother.34

Representations of women have always been

polarized, a pattern which continued in the era of
modern children’s literature. Self-sacrificing “good”
mothers can be found in children’s literature from
as early as the fairy tales, and continued
throughout the end of the Victorian period and on
into the twentieth century. They are featured in
nineteenth century books like Margery Williams’
Velveteen Rabbit and in twentieth century in books
like Shel Silverstein’s’s The Giving Tree. Their
opposites, manipulative mothers, were the ones
who locked their children in towers or relegated
them to performing domestic work for others,
preventing them from finding a spouse. They are
the mothers who trapped the beast in his beastly
form and the frog in his skin so they could not be
loved by anyone else. The fairy tale forms of these
mothers were reinterpreted by Disney into beautiful
yet evil step-mothers and witches.

Given the tendency to characterize powerful

women in both literature and early psychological
analysis as manipulative and evil, it should not be
particularly surprising that I chose to apply not only
Freudian theory but also feminist theory in my
34 Ibid., pp. 271-273.

36
analysis of Margaret Wise Brown’s Runaway Bunny
trilogy and the other stories explored in this book.
Arguably it is the exploration of a child’s fear of the
omnipotent mother which gives rise to “evil”
mother characters in many stories.

Some of the books I have selected affect

both adults and children on a highly emotional
level, sometimes bringing children to actual tears.35
But critics have tended to turn to nostalgia to
explain these feelings, or ignored these indications
that something more was going on in these books.
Instead of looking deeper, many critics have taken
their cue from the following statement by Brown:

A book should try to accomplish

something more than just to repeat a
child’s own experiences. One would
hope rather to make a child laugh or
feel clear and happy-headed as he
follows a simple rhythm to its logical
end, to jog him with the unexpected
and comfort him with the familiar: and
perhaps to lift him for a few minutes
from his own problems of shoelaces
that won’t tie and busy parents and
mysterious clock time, into a world of
a bug or a bear or a bee or a boy living

35 Hurd recounts observing a toddler in tears, stomping on the

pages of Goodnight Moon, although he prefers to interpret this
as communicating the child’s frustration with being unable to
enter the bunny’s world. Hurd, Clement, “Remembering
Margaret Wise Brown,” Horn Book, Oct. 1983, p. 544.
Theory, Symbolism, and Gender

in the timeless world of story.36

It isn’t hard to see the way this passage has
deflected attention from the Freudian content of
these books. She seems to suggest that she is
hoping only to entertain and delight children rather
than offering them a vehicle they can use to deal
with complex emotional issues

Instead of focusing only on how Brown’s

books might make a child laugh, or how the
“simple” rhythms in the language might prepare
them for bed, critics should have recognized the
rather explicit representation of reproductive
organs in the final illustrations of The Runaway
Bunny. They should have asked “whose room is
this” when considering Goodnight Moon, and
wondered why the mother who was so powerful
and threatening in The Runaway Bunny fades into a
mere shadow by the end of My World.

Step by step, these books illustrate the

psychological process of a boy’s separation from
his mother and the development of his independent
gendered identity. The Runaway Bunny explores
the little bunny’s apprehension of the omnipotent

36 Shea, Peter. “Offering a Frame to Put Experience In:

Margaret Wise Brown Presents Opportunities to Very Young
Children.” Univ. of Minnisota. 19 Aug. 2005, p. 6 (quoting
Brown).

38
mother, his ambivalent feelings toward her, and his
fear that she wants to seduce or castrate him.

Continuing this theme, while some critics

have described Goodnight Moon as a soothing
litany intended to establish a ritual and ease the
bunny-boy’s fears at bedtime,37 or teach him to go
to sleep alone,38 no one has asked whose room it is,
whose bed it is, or why the quiet old lady keeps
whispering “hush” –what is it she does not want the
bunny-boy to tell us? No one has suggested that
this is the mother’s room and the mother’s bed, or
mentioned the bunny’s defiance in saying
goodnight to everything in the room.

My World, completes the trilogy. It is the only

text in which the father appears. It not only
explores the rabbit family’s domestic
relationships,39 but the bunny-boy’s competitive
approach to the father he simultaneously resents

37 Marcus, p. 187; Stanton, Joseph, “`Goodnight Nobody’:

Comfort and the Vast Dark in the Picture-Poems of Margaret
Wise Brown and Her Collaborators,” The Lion and the Unicorn
14 (1990) pp. 70-72; Robertson, Judith, “Sleeplessness in the
Great Green Room: Getting Way Under the Covers with
Goodnight Moon,” Children’s Literature Association Quarterly
25:4 (2000-2001), 203-13; Spitz, pp. 27-37.
38 Galbraith, Mary, “`Goodnight Nobody’ Revisited: Using
Attachment Perspective to Study Picture Books About
Bedtime,” Children’s Literature Association Quarterly 23:4
(1998-1999), p. 177.
39 Marcus, p. 236.
Theory, Symbolism, and Gender

and admires. His father’s car is bigger, his father’s

soap makes more suds, his father’s dog is more
aggressive, and the “moon” “belongs to the man in
the moon.” Meanwhile the mother rabbit slips from
prominence in the bunny’s life and into the
shadows. She has become no more threatening to
the little bunny than a shadow on the wall on a
bright sunny day. In the end, the bunny is outside,
no longer confined to the domestic sphere
dominated by his mother.

Given the degree of interest in Freudian

theory Brown exhibited, the general interest in
psychology in the culture which surrounded her,
the evidence that she was intentionally
experimenting with modern symbols in her books,
the private psychological meaning The Runaway
Bunny seemed to have had for Brown, and the
undeniable Oedipal structure of the trilogy, it
seems unlikely that the presence of Freudian
themes and symbols in these books was either
serendipitous or the result of unconscious creative
processes at work. It seems more probable that
their presence is “the work of a dry-eyed and
cunning sensibility,”40 an experiment by Brown with
symbols that would reflect “the world we know to-

40 Ibid., p. 144.

40
 41
day and the values in it,” an experiment that
specifically relied on Freudian theories of childhood
development and dream analysis.”

Whether the Freudian content in these books

was intentional is not really the issue, however.
What is important is that parents, educators,
librarians, and students of children’s literature
understand how and why some children’s books
evoke strong emotions in children. We must make
the effort to understand the multiple ways in which
the words and images can be interpreted in order
to understand what children might glean from
them. We must also realize that children and adults
might not perceive the same text and images in
exactly the same way.

Symbols in picture books are open to

different interpretations and even to
reinterpretation by the same child, depending on
his personal perspective and experience of the
world. This is particularly true of Brown’s Runaway
Bunny and Goodnight Moon. One of the most
notable features of these books is the ambiguity in
the characterization of the mother rabbit. It is up to
the reader to determine if she is “good” like a fairy
god-mother, self sacrificing and ever present to
41 Ibid., p. 141 (quoting Brown).
Theory, Symbolism, and Gender

take care of the little bunny, or evil, controlling and

manipulative, dependent on the bunny for her own
identity, and desperate to keep him close forever –
perhaps too close!

The meaning a child derives from Brown’s

stories is subjective, and it can be recreated,
perhaps even changed, each time the stories are
read. The target audience’s literary innocence,
their lack of experience and familiarity with letters
and words and visual symbols, with generic
expectations and narrative conventions, their
unfamiliarity with the very idea that words and
symbols have fixed meanings might limit a child’s
literal understanding of a text or image. A young
child certainly would not derive the same meanings
from sexually explicit images as a sexually active
adult familiar with Freudian theory.

A child’s lack of preconceived notions about

the ways in which stories are constructed and the
ways in which words and pictures can be
interpreted also allows the child to respond to
picture books in imaginative ways that “literate”
adults may have learned to ignore. Before reading
this, many adults probably assumed they knew
exactly what The Runaway Bunny and Goodnight

42
Moon were about. Some may have even read them
so many times they can recite the texts by heart.
But how many parents have stopped to wonder
why these books have been so popular for so long?
Why do children ask parents to read them over and
over again? Why do some love them and others
hate them without being able to say why?

I am not the only literary critic who has felt

some discomfort when reading these stories to my
children. Cynthia Voigt asks, “Was I oversensitive
to feel a kind of chill when I read the mother
bunny's promise, ‘I will be the wind and I will blow
you where I want you to go’? Was I over-identifying
with the child beside me in her/his longing to
escape that overflowing, overwhelming Mother?”
Ultimately Voigt returns to the premise that picture
books must be about love and asserts that “Have a
carrot” is a line which somehow reflects the love
she is looking for. But she admits that her
conclusion may arise from the positive personal
emotions she feels as a mother when she reads this
line, and that these positive feelings may be less
related to her experience of the book from a child’s
perspective.

Marc Caro complains of inconsistencies in

Theory, Symbolism, and Gender

Goodnight Moon that irritate him. “Why is a phone

in the room?” he asks, noting that the narrator
does not say goodnight to this object. And Elizabeth
Kolbert found the story creepy, asking “What’s that
lady doing in the room whispering ‘hush’? Why
doesn’t she just go away?”42 She describes the
story as both “more lyrical than anything written
for children today” and also, “In its own quiet way
… more brutal,” bringing parents and children
together to contemplate death itself: “You don’t
want to go to sleep. I don’t want to die. But we both
43
have to.”

Mary Galbraith asserts that Goodnight Moon

can be read to reflect either “whimsical humor or
despair and bitterness,”44 and Spitz comments that
while the language in Goodnight Moon is soothing,
the text “admits the possibilities of something
vaguely sinister.”45 While Spitz acknowledges the
“underbelly of anxiety that fuels this book,” like
Voigt, Spitz eventually adopts a sentimentalized
adult point of view, describing the moon as a

42 Caro, Marc. “Goodnight Mush Indeed.” Chicago Tribune Pop

Machine. 21 Aug 2006. 2 July 2007.
43 Kolbert, Elizabeth. “Goodnight Mush.” The New Yorker. 4
Dec. 2006. 9 July 2007, pp. 3-4.
44 Galbraith, p. 175.
45 Spitz, pp. 33-34.

44
mother, “Illuminating the darkness…a beacon in
the frightening realm of the unknown.” Her
conclusion that the moon/mother is a reassuring
presence in the dark totally ignores the fact that
neither the text nor the illustrations mention or
show any reassuring contact whatsoever between
the bunny and the quiet old lady. Interestingly,
Spitz fails to connect her sense of anxiety when
reading Goodnight Moon with her independent
observations relative to other texts that children
are preoccupied with both sexuality and
aggression, and that bedtime conflict with their
parents is normal. Indeed,her analysis of Brown’s
Wait Till the Moon Is Full, explicitly criticizes Brown
for raising and then not addressing the child’s
questions about sexual secrets, about what
happens between parents at night.46

In addition to reflecting Freudian theories of

childhood development, Brown’s trilogy also subtly
reinforces the misogynistic characterization of
mothers which taints early Freudian theory.
Children seem to love stories that address social
and family relationships, perhaps because they are
struggling to identify their own place in family and
society. The subtle power of picture books to shape

46 Ibid., pp. 36-41.

Theory, Symbolism, and Gender

our culture therefore should not be ignored. Some

stories do tend to reinforce existing social
constructs, including established gender roles
within the family and society. As Shea notes, “great
cultures are built on little stories taken seriously.”47
The fact that the stories discussed in this book may
contain potentially controversial content does not
mean that parents, teachers, and librarians should
stop reading them to young children. My only hope
is that after reading this book, you will look at them
again, and perhaps see them in a new light.

THE RUNAWAY
BUNNY
TRILOGY

The Runaway Bunny

47 Shea, p. 3.

46
Margaret Wise Brown’s Runaway Bunny is an
innovative work written for multiple audiences.
While rabbits are soft and furry, Brown did not
romanticize childhood. What Brown wanted
perhaps most was to be recognized among adults
for her work, and she believed that writing for
children was a forum for experimentation with both
psychological theories as they related to childhood
development and with symbols. Her books were
written not only for a child audience, but also with
the psychologists and her peers at the Bank Street
School in mind.

Work was begun on The Runaway Bunny in

1940, but it was not published until 1942. With
many fathers overseas fighting the war, their
absence from the home was undoubtedly more of
an issue than ever before, and a topic with which
many psychologists concerned themselves at the
time. In fact, Brown proposed to write a book titled
“The Fathers Are Coming Home” which was never
actually submitted, but which her editor, Ursula
Nordstrom wanted her to finish. “That could be
such a lovely book,” Nordstrom wrote to Brown,
encouraging her to work on it.48

48 Marcus, p. 241.
Theory, Symbolism, and Gender

It would not be surprising given Brown’s

personal history and concurrent psychoanalysis
sessions that Brown was preoccupied with the
impact of a father’s absence on a child’s
developing identity. The father’s absence focuses
the inquiry on the role the mother plays in
childhood development. What is a “good” mother,
and how is she supposed to relate to her children,
especially in the absence of the father?

Consistent with the divergent opinions that

existed regarding the degree to which mothers
should devote their lives to raising their children,
psychiatrists at the time had developed alternative
theories, all of which blamed the mother for the
child’s problems. “Predatory moms” were those
who stayed at home and devoted their lives so
completely to their children that they defined their
own existence through their children, by how well
their children did in school, etc., and therefore
sought to control every aspect of their children’s
lives. “Neglectful moms” were mothers who had
outside interests or worked, leaving children to
care for themselves or in childcare facilities.49 There
was no middle ground and the “experts” found
fault with whichever choice mothers made.

49 Thurer, pp. 271-73.

48
 Like the “predatory mother” described by
the experts, Brown’s mother rabbit in The Runaway
Bunny is omnipresent and controlling. She is
neither Winnicott’s “good-enough” mother, who is
present but neither encourages nor discourages the
child’s decision to act on his impulses,50 nor does
she resemble Sendak’s Kleinian mother, out of the
picture but still visible through the child’s
51
psyche.”

Because women were demonized, the impact

of the father’s role in a boy’s development was
magnified. According to Freudian theory, the
father’s role was to stand as rival to the boy for the
mother’s affections, forcing both the boy and his
mother to repress their sexual urges. It was
presumed that in the father’s absence, the
relationship between mother and son could become
sexually toned, that the mother and child might
confuse the sensuality associated with nursing an
52
infant with a sexualized relationship. In this
context, it is therefore possible that Brown’s

50 First, Elsa. “Mothering, Hate, and Winnicott.”

Representations of Motherhood. Eds. Bassin et al. New Haven:
Yale UP (1994) pp. 147-150.
51 Spitz, Ellen, “Picturing the Child’s Inner World of Fantasy,”
Psychoanalytic Study of the Child, New Haven:Yale UP (1988)
p. 437.
52 Chodorow, p. 108.
Theory, Symbolism, and Gender

mother rabbit is on the verge of forcing her child

into a sexually charged relationship with her.

Another aspect of Brown’s books should be

mentioned at this point. Not only were her books
psychological and sociological experiments, written
with the staff and students at the Bank Street
School in mind, they were also literary works which
relied on and alluded to other books and literary
symbols. Above all else, Brown wanted to be
perceived as a literary person who chose to write
for children rather than being seen as having been
relegated to writing for children because she was
unable to write successfully for an adult audience.
She admired writers whose literary work for adults
had garnered them acclaim, and wanted to be
admired by them. So she challenged them to write
in her field, the field of children’s literature, with
the same level of complexity and symbolic content
that was typical of adult books. Indeed, The
Runaway Bunny began with a literary work in
French, written for adults and includes numerous
literary references which are well beyond the
knowledge and experience of a toddler.

The power of soft and languid language and

of naïve adult expectations with regard to books

50
ostensibly written for young children is surprising.
Both operate to conceal and misdirect the adult’s
attention from the sexual imagery in Brown’s
books. But if you consider the possibility that The
Runaway Bunny was written with multiple
audiences in mind, not only for children but for
psychiatrists and literary adults, the levels on which
the text and images can communicate ideas
become clearer.

The triggering conflict between the mother

and bunny is never mentioned in The Runaway
Bunny, and is perhaps irrelevant. A child is born
helpless and dependent upon a caregiver who
controls his access to even his most basic needs.
As the child grows older, his need to separate from
his mother has guided psychoanalytic thinking ever
since Freud’s formulations.”53 His rejection of the
mother is not only the result of a desire to define
ways in which he is in control, but a test of her
ability to survive his separate existence.

It is the same process reflected in Sendak’s

Where the Wild Things Are, where Max defies his
mother and threatens to “eat her up.” But unlike

53 Benjamin, Jessica, “The Omnipotent Mother: A

Psychoanalytic Study of Fantasy and Reality,” Representations
of Motherhood, Eds. Bassin et al. New Haven: Yale UP (1994) p.
130-131.
Theory, Symbolism, and Gender

Max, whose mother not only allows him take his

imaginary journey, but brings him a warm supper
after his wild romp, the bunny child’s implicit
demand for a private space from which he can
exclude his mother falls on deaf ears. It is heard by
neither the mother rabbit nor the many mothers
whose nostalgic sentiments lead them to believe
the mother rabbit’s pursuit is a display of affection
rather than a narcissistic need to possess and
control her child. They ignore the tell-tale line: “you
are my little bunny,” she says, and “I will blow you
where I want you to go.”

The fantasy of maternal omnipotence

probably begins at the point where a child is first
confronted with the mother’s independence and
subjective will. Not only does the child realize that
he does not control his mother, but he realizes that
the satisfaction of his needs is in her control, most
particularly with regard to the provision of food.
Oedipal theory focuses on this point because it
relies in part on the idea that boys are sexually
attracted to their mothers. After all, mothers are
really the child’s first seducer, though this occurs
as a result of the mother caring for the child,
feeding the child at her breast and touching his
private parts as she cleans him, rather than from

52
sexual motivations.54

According to Benjamin, the fantasy of

maternal omnipotence as distinguished from
parental omnipotence is the product of a “deeply
rooted cultural bifurcation of all experience under
the poles of gender.” Boys both fear their mothers
and enjoy being taken care of by their mothers. As
a result of their mixed feelings, women tend to be
characterized as desirable but untouchable
domestic saints, or evil witches who must be put in
their place. Because a woman’s sphere of
dominance is the home and children, boys who
want to become men are encouraged to define
themselves as “not women” – a process which is
accomplished not merely through rejection of the
mother who has been their primary caregiver, but
by denigrating all women in order to develop a
sense of justifiable domination over them.

Benjamin suggests that by “unpacking” the

relationship between the reality of the mother’s
subjectivity and the child’s fantasy of maternal
omnipotence we can better understand how and
why these feelings arise during the pre-Oedipal
stage of a child’s development. Interestingly,
Benjamin also notes that changing the roles
54 Chodorow, p. 160.
Theory, Symbolism, and Gender

mothers and fathers play with regard to childcare

would not eliminate this fantasy, because “the wish
for omnipotence and the projection of it onto more
powerful others are an inevitable result of
dependency for which there is no antidote.”
Changing the roles of men and women in childcare
might, however, be a key step toward eliminating
the bifurcated gender roles which have tended to
denigrate women.

The Runaway Bunny offers the listening child

the dream of independence, a universal theme with
which every child can identify. But for Brown’s
bunny, the dream of escape is unfulfilled. There is
no where the bunny can go, nothing he can
become, that will allow him to escape his mother.
Parents reading this story may remember their own
plans to run away as children, a nostalgic
recollection that allows them to recapture, for the
moment, an element of their own childhood and
apply it to their everyday life as adults. Who would
not want to escape the reality of adult life?

Interestingly parents do not generally find

the mother’s overwhelming dominance disturbing,
perhaps because as parents they see it as a
justifiable protectiveness rather than a threatening

54
possessiveness. They see the soft furry rabbits on
the cover, touch their children’s soft skin, and for a
moment try to recall what it was like to sit in their
own mothers’ laps. They long nostalgically for the
closeness they once had, or wish they had with
their own mothers. Like the powerful rabbit mother,
they wish they could stop time, and keep their own
children close forever. They call, and the child
responds, mimicking the pattern of dialogue in the
text. As is clear from the various critics who have
adopted this perspective, The Runaway Bunny can
be read as nothing more than a loving game played
out between a mother and child.

Unlike parents cuddling up for a bedtime

story, however, clinical psychologists might focus
on the complex interaction between the mother
and child. This interaction is played out
symbolically on multiple levels, and the perspective
readers adopt depends on their personal
experience, which affects the point of view they
choose. This could simply be a story about a
healthy child fantasizing about running away, but it
can also speak to the sexually abused child
struggling to escape a mother who insists on an
inappropriate level of intimacy with her son. The
openness of this text to such personal
Theory, Symbolism, and Gender

interpretations aligns it with the principles of

psychological dream analysis, where the subject’s
point of view and perceptions are indicative of the
individual’s mental state.

A child’s threat to run away is far from

abnormal. It is a common expression of a child’s
growing sense of self, and his need to find a space
of his own where he is in control in order to escape
the fantasy of maternal omnipotence, When this
occurs, Chodorow advises that a mother must
encourage her child, especially a boy child, to
express his independence or risk negative
consequences in the child’s development. She
suggests that when a mother refuses to allow her
son to express his independence and find his own
space, his “pre-oedipal attachment” to her can
become charged with conflict and sexual
overtones, focused not only on who possesses who,
who controls who, but ultimately on the connection
between dominance and gender in our society.55

Chodorow’s, Erikson’s and Benjamin’s

theories are refinements of Freudian theories, and
it is a testament to the insights Brown had into
these processes that The Runaway Bunny
continues to address these issues effectively. Even
55 Chodorow, pp. 93-96.

56
her use of the third person omniscient point of view
reinforces the sense that the child is not in control
of his own future. Likewise, the illustrations seem to
reflect the bunny-boy’s struggle to escape the
“reality” pictured in the black and white images, a
reality dominated by the mother’s point of view, by
fleeing into the colored images that represent his
transformation in his imagination. In the end,
however, the very thing he fears and is trying to
escape becomes his reality.

The repeated shift from black and white to

color images in the three books is one of the
patterns which connects them, and could simply be
the result of the publisher not wanting to spend the
money on a full color picture book, but other
elements suggest something more. The black and
white illustrations seem to reflect the bunny’s
struggle to escape the reality dominated by his
mother. He flees into his colorful imagination,
becoming first one thing then another until in the
end he is trapped by his mother, unable to escape
the reality she imposes on him.

Hurd’s illustrations evoke a sensuality some

might consider uncommon to texts for young
children, especially when compared with many
Theory, Symbolism, and Gender

other children’s books at the time. In a speech

delivered at a children’s literature conference in
New York in 2006, David Ezra Stein recalled his
response to The Runaway Bunny as his mother
read the story to him: “I remember almost being
able to taste them, the colors, to feel the magical
way the rabbit’s ear changes into a sail.”

The potential impact of color was a subject

which Brown expressly experimented with in her
work with Weisgard, which suggests that both color
and its absence were considerations in each of
Brown’s books. In the color illustrations there are
few black outlines and the colors bleed all the way
to the edge of the page, vaguely defined,
unrestrained and borderless as our dreams, while
the black and white images seem to be contained
within invisible frames reflecting the way our
behavior is subject to invisible social constraints.

Perhaps the shift from black and white to

color was intended to suggest that nothing is ever
as simple as “black and white,” that things may not
really be as they appear on the surface or as they
are stated in the black and white words. Perhaps
this signals that there is something more to these
stories. Details like these in the illustrations might

58
be attributed to Hurd, but the presence of Freudian
symbols and the focus of the story are primarily
dictated by the text. Hurd’s skill in executing and
focusing the reader on those elements which Brown
apparently wanted emphasized is a tribute to the
effectiveness of their collaboration.

In response to the mother rabbit’s efforts to

maintain her control over him, the bunny-child
indicates that he would rather quit being a bunny
altogether than stay with his mother. As Erikson
notes in his book, Childhood and Society, a boy’s
effort to differentiate himself from his mother by
pretending to be something else is entirely
consistent with a boy’s growing sense of self and
independence. The boy wants to rebel against his
mother’s domination, but almost against his will he
finds he has given in to her. So like Sendak’s Max,
he uses his imagination to become something else,
to go somewhere else, because that permits him to
be his own boss. In his imagination, he obeys no
one but himself.”56

The bunny’s first transformation from bunny

to fish is drawn directly from the original ballad
which Brown used for inspiration. Whether or not it

56 Erikson, Erik, Childhood and Society, New York: Norton,

(1950) p. 211.
Theory, Symbolism, and Gender

was intentional, her decision to retain this first

transformation tends to import the ballad’s sexual
overtones into the children’s book. Something fishy
is definitely going on, and according to The
Dictionary of American Slang, at the time Brown’s
book was written, “fish” was still a term used for a
prostitute.

In response to the bunny’s transformation,

the mother rabbit assembles nets and baskets,
grabs a fishing pole – a phallic symbol, and sets out
after him. Throughout The Runaway Bunny images
of lines and ropes and webs appear, suggesting
both that the mother rabbit wants to maintain the
umbilical connection she once had with her child,
and offering a subtle comparison of the mother to a
spider, weaving a web in which she will catch and
consume her child. Phallic symbols like the fishing
pole also appear frequently.

In the color illustration which follows, the

mother rabbit as fisherman casts her line baited
with a carrot. While Stanton, Spitz, and others
suggest that The Runaway Bunny is a love story
about separation and restoration in which the
mother Rabbit continually rescues her bunny from
the big wild world, this image does not support

60
such a naive interpretation. A carrot is not only a
phallic object, but a symbol for an inducement to
do something the object of the inducement usually
does not want to do.

The image reflects not only the mother’s

desire to catch the little bunny-boy, but the passion
with which she has invested their relationship. Her
eyes are red, a color which symbolizes strong
emotions, especially sexual ones.57 The red color
may also suggest the bloody self-mutilation
Oedipus suffered after he realized that he had
murdered his own father and married his mother.
Real rabbits do have red or pink eyes, but the
mother rabbit’s eyes are not always red in the
illustrations, and ultimately in My World the
mother’s eyes have no color at all.

The sky overhead grows dark, and a dead

and broken tree centrally located in the foreground
between the mother and bunny-fish-child
introduces the idea that something important
between them is broken or has died – ostensibly
the father as the tree is a phallic symbol and he is
never mentioned and never appears in any of the
illustrations in this book. The mother rabbit casts

57 Bettelheim, Bruno. The Uses of Enchantment. New York:

Random (1975), p. 173.
Theory, Symbolism, and Gender

her line over this dead tree, suggesting that she

wants to establish a connection with the child that
will overcome the loss of her relationship with the
father.

Death also threatens the bunny child, for

children know that fishermen kill and eat what they
catch. This image successfully captures the
emotional essence of Horney’s description of a
child’s perception of the mother: She is “malignant,
capable of any crime, a beast of prey, a vampire, a
witch, insatiable in her desires.”58 The “death
threat” suggested by this first color image is
consistent with Freudian theory regarding
childhood development: “When the child begins to
be aware that reality will not always bend to her or
his will, that thought cannot always be translated
into action, a pitched battle of wills can ensue, a
struggle to the death for recognition.”59

Notably, this color illustration reappears as a

black and white picture on the wall in the
subsequent texts of the trilogy, signaling its
importance as an underlying theme. Not only does
this image connect the three works as a thematic
symbol, but the use of a carrot to catch the child,
58 Benjamin, p. 134 (quoting Horney).
59 Ibid., p. 132.

62
an image which reappears at the end of The
Runaway Bunny, suggests both the apple of
temptation offered by Eve in the Garden of Eden,
and the orality of the pre-oedipal relationship
between a mother and child derived from the
infant’s being fed at the mother’s breast.

Rejecting the carrot she casts in his

direction, the bunny-child declares that he will
become a rock high above her. While a child would
probably only think of a rock in the context of his
experience with rocks, and a parent might naively
ignore the suggestiveness of the text, a staff
psychologist at the Bank Street School would have
had no difficulty recognizing this as yet another
symbol of the erect male phallus.60

A rock high on a mountain top would not only

be out of reach, but something which does not
have feelings, does not need to eat or sleep, and
which cannot be injured – something which needs
no mother. In the black and white image the
mother carries a stick, still another phallic symbol,
and a coil of rope hangs in the doorway, an
umbilical cord to be used once again to reconnect
the mother and bunny-child. In the color spread
which follows the bunny-child is shown bound to a
60 Freud, Lectures, pp. 194-195
Theory, Symbolism, and Gender

rock, perhaps frozen with fear, erect and unable to

flee as his mother mounts the crag. Her blue eyes
suggest a coolness that might recall the snow and
ice at the top of a mountain, but the rope hanging
over her shoulder and the red rod in her hand are
both implicit threats to the bunny-child’s
independence and developing masculine identity.
They send a silent message to a listening child as
he explores his own fear of the omnipotent mother:
“Run! Hide! Don’t let her catch you!”

This impression would be reinforced by the

following black and white image where the bunny-
child cringes behind the petals of a flower and
declares that he will become a crocus, another
phallic reference and a symbol of both emerging
sexuality in its erect form and virginity in its closed
petals.61 Although the mother rabbit wears human
clothing in the preceding color illustrations when
she is engaged in the “human” activities of fishing
and mountain climbing, here she is naked, although
ostensibly engaging the “human” activity of
gardening.

She has come to the garden to water the

bunny-boy’s crocus, an Eve to tempt the bunny-
child, or an omnipotent goddess holding the power
61 Ibid.

64
of life and death in the watering can. In the color
image which follows, she wears a farmer’s overalls,
and carries a hoe, an image which once again
represents the threat of death. Like the fisherman
in the trout stream, the farmer eats bunnies he
catches in his garden. There is even a connection
between the carrot the mother uses to tempt the
bunny, and the garden in Beatrix Potter’s Tale of
Peter Rabbit: it was eating vegetables in Farmer
McGregor’s garden that got Peter’s father killed
and Peter into trouble.

The connections between the images in The

Runaway Bunny and Potter’s Tale of Peter Rabbit
are plentiful. The watering can in the mother
rabbit’s hand can closely resembles the can Peter
hides in while in Farmer McGregor’s shed. The
garden on the last pages of The Runaway Bunny
bears a striking resemblance to Mr. McGregor’s
garden with its neat rows of cabbages and lettuce,
there is even a scarecrow wearing a bunny’s jacket.
And the tree in the original illustration on the final
page of The Runaway Bunny recalls the opening
illustration of Potter’s Tale where unlike Brown’s
mother, the mother Rabbit stares defensively at the
reader as she encourages her bunny-children to
come outside.
Theory, Symbolism, and Gender

In the color illustration, Brown’s mother

rabbit carries not only a hoe, but a basket full of
chopped greens. The bunny cringes in the flowers,
watching as she severs crocus blooms from their
bulbs one by one in her effort to catch him. If staff
psychologists at Bank Street were concerned about
the little dog’s blindness in The Noisy Book
suggesting castration, there can be little doubt
what they would have had to say about this image.

The only way Stanton might find these

images comforting and Voigt could conclude that
this is a story about love would be if they are
identifying with the mother rabbit. A child would
perhaps be more likely experience the “fight or
flight” syndrome. Indeed the bunny-child changes
again before his mother catches him. He becomes
a bird and flies away. He has been unsuccessful
with the earth and the water, why not try the air?
There must be somewhere in the world he can go
that she will not be able to follow.

In fairy tales birds represent freedom and the

higher aspiration of the ego and superego,62 but
flying is also a symbol of sexual excitement and
erection.63 The image is therefore arguably a
62 Bettelheim, pp. 101-102.
63 Freud, Lectures, p. 191.

66
reference to the bunny-child’s efforts to break free
from his mother’s obsession and desire to possess
him. In the color double spread which follows the
black and white text, the total absence of any other
trees reflects the mother’s refusal to allow the
bunny to “come home to” any other woman. The
tree is itself an ambiguous symbol, both phallic and
potentially fruitful, although here the only fruit that
will hang from her branches would be the bunny-
bird-child.

Failing to free himself from his mother by

becoming a bird, the bunny-child returns to the
water, a symbol of rebirth, baptism, cleansing and
purification.64 He becomes a boat. But even on the
sea he is unable to escape her. It is in this image
that Voigt sensed an ominous tone, an emotion
reflected in the vivid display of the overwhelming,
godlike power the mother seems to possess. Waves
threaten to crash over the bunny and sink him, and
nothing in the picture suggests his powerful mother
is trying to protect him. Instead, she is to be
blowing up a storm, pushing up the waves and
gathering the dark clouds that loom on the horizon
to blow him where she wants him to go, whether
that is where the bunny wants to go or not!

64 Ibid., p. 197.
Theory, Symbolism, and Gender

Young children who have been exposed to

Bible stories would be likely to make the
intertextual connection between this scene and
Noah. Like God, who created people, children sense
that their mothers “created” them. Like God, who
flooded the world, and drowned his own creation,
the mother rabbit controls the little bunny. Only if
they are like Noah, and do the goddess’s bidding,
only if they allow the goddess to blow them where
she wants them to go will they survive.

But the bunny still does not give in. Forced to

abandon the water, the bunny-child runs away to
the circus. Running away to join the circus was a
fantasy voiced by many children, a theme
epitomized in James Otis’s Toby Tyler. Toby’s
search for food and his efforts to control his oral
obsession are key components in that story. The
possibility that this is a subtle literary reference for
those familiar with Toby’s journey is reinforced by
the appearance of the mischievous monkey in the
following illustration.

The text and illustrations in Brown’s book are

certainly open to a variety of potential
interpretations, none of which advance the theory
that this is a loving story about a child’s desire to

68
be rescued by his mother from the big, scary world.
Nor does it support the claim that the mother is a
“home base” to which the child happily returns.
Advancing on the bunny-child as he peeks through
the labial folds of the entrance to the circus tent, a
visual suggestion that he is discovering genital
differences between men and women, the mother
says that she “will walk across the air” to catch
him, reinforcing her seeming omnipotence.

Perhaps the circus here was intended to

represent the American family in the wider world –
after all, the battlefields where fathers were
fighting and dying were called “theatres” of war.
But at the time this story was written, a circus was
considered an obscene show, typified by semi-
naked dancers and dancing. In addition, dreams of
swinging and flying as on a trapeze suggest sexual
experiences.65

(to read more of this book, go to

www.LookAgainPress.com )

65 Ibid., p. 191.