"The Northern Suburbs Seem to be Quite Frequently Afflicted by Raging Elephants": Identity Fluidity in Beatrix Potter's Tales and Life

Abstract

Central to the effect of Beatrix Potter's tales is her talent at creating fluidity in the boundary between human and animal identities, manifested by her characters' clothing, behavior, and conflicts, as well as by her styles of drawing and writing. This talent flowed from Potter's developmental experience of several jolts to her own identity while her deep connection to animals remained a lifelong constant. The fluidity she depicts between human and non-human identities is consistent with what Loewald (1951, 1952) identified as Freud's implicit theory about the nature of reality—that ego and reality are one during the phase of primary narcissism and gradually separate from each other, entailing a primal relatedness.