Finding Home for Winnie-the-Pooh and Other Bears

Abstract

Abstract: This article shows how A. A. Milne's Winnie-the-Pooh (1926) and The House at Pooh Corner (1928) concern the "real" animal, specifically bears at the zoo. The article follows the buried figure of the bear at the zoo—as a shadow twin of the comfortable and comforting figure of the "Pooh" bear—in the texts surrounding Milne's Pooh stories proper (i.e., stories that take place in the Hundred Acre Wood). In the main text of the Pooh stories, readers—and Christopher Robin—are promptly asked to put the thought of these real bears aside in favor of the pleasure of entering the Hundred Acre Wood with a fictional bear. Two recent picture-book sequels to Pooh stories turn attention back to the problematic figure of the original bear at the zoo, revealing shared cultural anxieties concerning the zoos and those surrounding the unanswerable question of "homing" animals in the Anthropocene.