The Borrowers
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| Written by: | Mary Norton |
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| Central Theme: | |
| Synopsis: | |
| Genre(s): | Fantasy |
| Series: | The Borrowers |
| Followed by: | The Borrowers Afield |
| First published: | 1952 |
The Borrowers is both a series of children's fantasy books by Mary Norton (who also wrote Bedknob and Broomstick), and the first book in the series.
The book:
Arrietty Clock lives with her parents under the floor in the house of a "human bean". They live by "borrowing" from the human beans (it's only "stealing" if you take things from another Borrower), but never anything that might be missed; a Borrower must never be seen by a human bean, or let a human bean in any way know they exist. Unfortunately, Arrietty is a little too curious for her own good, and ends up talking with a human boy. The boy ends up fetching little things that might help the Borrowers, things they couldn't get for themselves.
Arrietty's parents, Pod and Homily, are frightened and upset, but eventually (if somewhat stiffly) accept that the human boy is going to help them and not harm them. However, soon enough the adults see the Borrowers too, so the family hides and has to pack up and leave the house. They head out into the wild -- like Bilbo, they're not the adventurous type -- and try to make it to a house their relatives moved to years ago.
En route, they encounter Spiller, a loner who says little but sees much. He's a great hunter, and although their initial interaction is cool (as in "not quite frigid"), soon enough they warm to him. (At times it even looks like he and Arrietty might eventually get together, but this never happens within the series. She settles down with a guy called Peagreen who lives in a greenhouse.) He helps them out of a couple tight spots, including when they're captured by humans, and eventually even shows them a miniature village they can live in (crafted by a human, but they stay decently hidden so he doesn't see them).
Aside from the first minor "captured by humans" bit, they are captured one major time, when a human husband and wife decide to put the Borrowers on display in a glass house where they will not be allowed any privacy. Luckily, they manage to escape.
An enjoyable series that made for a pretty good couple of movies, starting with a 1973 made-for-TV Hallmark hall of fame movie. The 1997 film starring John Goodman takes a far more urban setup, overturns the idea that the Borrowers have a low population (the ending is rather like that of Toy Story), and in general is not as faithful to the books as the original movies were.A BBC TV movie adaptation was released for Christmas 2011, featuring Stephen Fry and Christopher Eccleston. It's even more of an In Name Only adaptation, taking place in a modern-day city, featuring a mostly original plot and drastically altered characters. The first book has also been adapted into an animated movie by Studio Ghibli, titled The Borrower Arrietty (released in the US as The Secret World of Arrietty). And there was much rejoicing. This adaptation is one of the more faithful adaptations out there, capturing the spirit of the original book despite introducing a character from the second and ending with a scene from the third.
The Beeb had previously run a couple of miniseries in the nineties that were more faithful adaptations of the books.
The series:
- The Borrowers (1952)
- The Borrowers Afield (1955)
- The Borrowers Afloat (1959)
- The Borrowers Aloft (1961)
- The Borrowers Avenged (1982)
- Bamboo Technology: Loads. Seems less evident in the Ghibli trailer, although Arrietty's sporting a nifty clamp as a hair clip.
- Cultural Translation: Fairly minimal. In the 1997 movie, the human boy and the villain are both Americans, but everyone else is British. New York City is prominently featured in the animated movie, although the Clocks are just visiting.
- Also played straight in the anime adaptation: The anime version takes place in 2010 in Western Tokyo's neighborhood of Koganei which is also where Studio Ghibli happens to be located.
- Dying Race: Arrietty is afraid that Borrowers may be this. In both the 1997 and 2011 live-action movies it gets disproved rather hard.
- The Edwardian Era: Time period when the series is set.
- Framing Device: The first and second books have framing stories of how the author, as a child, meets and talks to people who knew the Borrowers long ago.
- Ill Boy: The human boy was in the house because he was recovering from rheumatic fever, which even to this day is considered a dangerous and chronic disease.
- Insistent Terminology: The Borrowers aren't "thieves".
- Lilliputians
- Literary Agent Hypothesis: The story of the Borrowers is presented as something told to the author when she was a child (she gives her younger self the name "Kate," to distance herself from the "wild, untidy, self-willed little girl who stared with angry eyes and was said to crunch her teeth" she apparently was back then), and which she wrote down for her own children when she was an adult. This is most clear in the first two books, where the Framing Device is the story of how "Kate" meets and talks to old people who either met or were told of the Borrowers in their youths. The latter books (and almost all the adaptations) drop this device, but still include people who could conceivably have talked to "Kate" many years later and told her the story.
- Mouse World
- No Name Given: The human boy who befriends the Clock family. In the early '90s films, he's called George, in the '97 film he's called Pete Lender, in the Studio Ghibli film he's called Sho[1], and in the 2011 film he's called James. Only the '70s Hallmark Hall of Fame version kept him anonymous.
- Opposite Gender Protagonists: The unnamed boy and Arrietty. Arrietty reads to the illiterate boy, strengthening the bond between them. The boy, being far larger than Arrietty, protects her from the dangers the humans present.
- Parody: Some readers believe that the eponymous characters of the Borribles books by Michael de Larrabeiti are intended as a vicious parody of the Borrowers. Given the other vicious parodies in the book -- such as the Rumbles vs. The Wombles -- it's not that far-fetched.
- Posthumous Character: Within the Framing Device story, all of the major characters might be considered this, since the main story takes place so long ago -- though only the Boy (who was the younger brother of Mrs. May, who first tells "Kate" the story of the Borrowers) is actually confirmed to have died; the Borrowers themselves simply left and were never seen again.
- Within the main story of the first book, several Borrower families are described -- all gone by now. The Posthumous Character who gets the most attention, however, is Arrietty's cousin Eggletina -- it was her death that caused Uncle Hendreary and his family to leave the house for good. However, this is Subverted in the second book, when Eggletina proves to be very much alive.
- ↑ Or Shawn, because Dub Name Change. Or Sho, because there are two English dubs, and the other dub does not change the name.