by Moe Zilla

Created on: May 05, 2010

"The Tale of Two Bad Mice" actually begins by describing a doll house - made of tiny red brick with white windows, real muslin curtains, and a front door and chimney. Beatrix Potter describes the two dolls that live inside - Lucinda and Jane - and even supplies a drawing of tiny toy foods in their house. ("They would not come off the plates, but they were extremely beautiful.") But after introducing the delicate setting, she introduces the two mice who would despoil it. She draws two long-eared, dark-eyed mice, poking their heads curiously through a hole in the wall!

They've got suitably magical mouse names - Hunca Munca and Tom Thumb - and first she describes the sounds they make, enjoying her gentle, leisurely approach to story-telling. ("Tom Thumb put out his head for a moment, and then popped it in again. Tom Thumb was a mouse...") The delighted mice discover the dollhouse, and all the tasty-looking foods inside. But they're furious to discover that they can't eat the toy foods, and eventually start knocking it onto the floor.

"Then Tom Thumb lost his temper. He put the ham in the middle of the floor, and hit it with the tongs and with the shovel - bang, bang, smash, smash!"

It's a funny premise, and the story was based on two real-life mice that Potter rescued from a trap in her cousin's home, according to Wikipedia. (And she was also inspired after seeing a doll's house her publisher had built for his niece.) Potter adopted one of those mice as a pet, and what makes this story so fascinating is that its mice characters are all drawn realistically. There's finally a reason why Potter's characters are seated around a mouse-sized table eating a mouse-sized ham - or at least, trying to.  Their confusion is understandable, and so is their eventual anger.

More than some other Beatrix Potter stories, these animals seem to be living in the real-world. And though she ultimately dedicates the story to "the little girl who had the doll's house," it seems like her story also has sympathy for the mice. Hunca Munca - the wife in the mouse couple - steals "some useful post and pans," and her dark eyes seem bright with happiness as she wears a grand blue gown that she's taken from the dollhouse. And at the end of the book, the honest mouse are even repaying the dolls for the things that they've taken.

"[V]ery early every morning - before anybody is awake - Hunca Munca comes with her dust-pan and her broom to sweep the Dollies' house!"

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