Scary Stories for Young Foxes

Throughout the section called “Miss Potter,” Mia is privy to the indifference that Beatrix shows to the animals she captures, but in “Creeeaaak THUMP! Creeeaaak THUMP!” the extent of Miss Potter’s potential for vindictiveness and malice emerges fully. Having left Mia in a cliffhanger moment, desperate to escape the furious Miss Potter, the tale shifts to Uly’s perspective. Thus, the most violent moments of Mia’s struggles against Miss Potter occur “offstage,” as it were, with only Mia’s final predicament to imply the true cruelty of the events that immediately preceded it. In the previous scenes depicting Mia’s captivity, the shattered bottle of ether serves as a historically accurate detail that reflects the casual cruelty of amateur naturalists such as Miss Potter during that time frame. Ether, a common method of anesthesia once popular among physicians through the mid-20th century, is a liquid with vapors that can render patients unconscious. Typically, a cloth is soaked in the drug and placed over one’s nose and mouth. Miss Potter uses ether to render the animals she has captured unconscious; in her mind, she is acting humanely and treating the animals well by sparing them the physical pain of the butchery she inflicts upon them. However, they must still endure long days of sheer terror while in captivity, witnessing the deaths of other animals and losing their own loved ones, as exemplified by the plight of the widower rabbit.

In a further attempt to emphasize the inherent cruelties perpetuated by the historical Beatrix Potter even as he intensifies the theme of Encounters With Dangerous Adults, the author makes it a point to portray Miss Potter’s vindictiveness; this is illustrated with her dire statement that unlike the other animals, Mia will have to experience the process of dying the “hard way.” In a final burst of hypocrisy, Miss Potter refuses to watch the results of the cruelty she inflicts and instead leaves Mia hanging outside, slowly suffocating to death. The connotation of being “hanged” is also significant, for the historical Potter died in 1943, when countries in the Western world were still hanging as a common execution style for condemned prisoners; additionally, hanging was also a means by which cruelty and hatred were enacted against vulnerable members of the human population by other humans. It can be a terribly prolonged and visceral death for those who are strung up to suffocate. Fortunately, Mia’s mettle and determination allow her to chew through the ropes and save herself from asphyxiation, and Uly frees her from any further cruelties on Miss Potter’s part.

It is also important to note that Uly and Mia’s fortunate meeting represents the first real exploration into the ongoing theme of Developing Identity and Choosing One’s Own Family. Just as each fox kit is profoundly affected by their respective traumas and thoroughly shaken by the unexpected loss of their families, they both learn to find a new inner strength, and they also find comfort in each other. Just as Mia is relieved to be traveling with another of her own kind, Uly gets the chance to experience the love and tenderness that his own sisters never cared to show him. Thus, in the midst of all their loss, they have managed to gain something precious: a new sense of kinship, a collective hope for the future, and a means to move forward in life by supporting each other.