Mary Norton's "Borrowers" Series and the Myth of the Paternalist Past

Abstract

Contemporary reviewers of Mary Norton’s “Borrowers” series, published between 1953 and 1982, often expressed the desire to see her work placed alongside the “classics” of nineteenthand early-twentieth-century children’s fantasy.1 While evoking the “golden age” is a fairly standard way of praising children’s books, it is, in the case of Norton, particularly revealing, as she is an author clearly invested in representing, cherishing, and preserving a certain vision of the past. Many critics, including Lois Kuznets, Caroline Hunt, and Patricia Pace, have remarked on the “conservative hankering after the past” that characterizes Norton’s work (Hunt 125). Kuznets attributes her longing for a more ideal past (especially in the last instalment of the series, The Borrowers Avenged) to disillusionment with contemporary British society: