Summary
Chapter 1: In the Drain
Mrs. Frederick Little’s second son, Stuart, arrives, but to everyone’s surprise he looks like a mouse. He is two inches high and does not act like a baby. He walks right away and wears a gray hat and carries a cane, and Mrs. Little makes him a dapper outfit. A doctor visits and says he is healthy and fine.
The Littles live in New York near a lovely park. Stuart is of great help to his family since he can do things that only someone so small can do, such as fishing something out of a drain.
Chapter 2: Home Problems
Stuart is also helpful at fetching Ping-Pong balls, as his family loves that activity, and fixing sticky piano keys.
But his parents discuss him frequently, as having a mouse in the family is shocking to them and they worry about how tiny he is. Another worry is the potentially offensive song “Three Blind Mice,” and the part about the mouse in “‘Twas the Night Before Christmas.”
The biggest worry is a mouse hole in the pantry from years prior, as Mr. Little does not know how Stuart would feel about that, and he does not know where the hole goes.
Chapter 3: Washing Up
Stuart loves waking early in the morning and doing his exercises and his ablutions. There is a string on the light pull-chain and he has a doll-sized toothbrush, soap, and comb. It is hard for him to turn on the faucet, however, until his father gives him a little hammer that he can use to pound it with.
Chapter 4: Exercise
One morning when he is three years old, Stuart gets ready and goes downstairs. Only the cat, Snowbell, is there. The two exchange some sharp words, and Stuart ends up betting that his stomach muscles are stronger than Snowbell’s. He runs over the shade cord ring and jumps onto it, expecting to pull himself up, but instead the shade snaps up and rolls Stuart up inside. Snowbell is amused and refuses to save Stuart, as he is not fond of him. What he does do, though, is pick up Stuart’s hat and cane and put them in front of the mouse hole.
Mrs. Little discovers the hat and cane and screams that Stuart has gone down into the hole.
Chapter 5: Rescued
George, the Little’s elder (and human) son, proposes breaking up the floor, and cries that his parents only care about Stuart when they shoot down his plan. They decide instead to call out down the hole but there is no answer.
Mrs. Little lies down to cry and Mr. Little calls the Bureau of Missing Persons, the operator for which hangs up in disgust when he hears Stuart is two inches tall. George tries to look for another entrance to the mouse hole, but he has a short attention span and starts using an old rowing machine.
Lunch is a sad affair, and Mrs. Little cries that Stuart is dead. George decides to pull the shade to darken the room to properly mourn, and out tumbles Stuart. They are overjoyed to see him. He says it was an accident and could happen to anyone, and that they drew their own erroneous conclusions about the hat and cane.
Chapter 6: A Fair Breeze
Stuart sets out one breezy morning, “full of the joy of life and the fear of dogs” (26). He occasionally must hide in the tails of a doorman’s uniform to avoid a dog. When he gets on the bus, he cannot make the step himself so he has to hop on the cuff of another passenger’s pants. He does not pay the dime because he is not big enough to carry a normal dime. His father made him coins that were small enough for him, but when he tries to give one to the bus driver, the driver looks at him quizzically and tells him he is no bigger than a dime himself. Stuart is affronted and the driver apologizes.
Stuart arrives at the sailboat pond in Central Park. There are many grown men and boys there, setting out their toy boats. The boats are enormous to Stuart but so glorious, and he hopes to get on one and sail to the other side of the pond. He is a very “adventurous fellow and loved the feel of the breeze in his face and the cry of the gulls overhead and the heave of the great swell under him” (31).
He notices one “big, black schooner flying the American flag” (33); its name is Wasp. He approaches the owner, who is surprised to be addressed by “a mouse in a sailor suit” (33) and says he is looking for berth in a good ship. The man is bemused and intrigued, and asks if Stuart is sober. Stuart responds crisply that he does his work, and the man admires the mouse’s “trim appearance and bold manner” (32). He points out another ship, the Lilliam B. Womrath, which he says he hates with all his heart because its owner is an entitled lazy boy who does not understand sailing. Stuart is sympathetic and the two realize they have much in common. The man tells him if he can beat the sloop, he will give him a regular job. Stuart eagerly agrees and sets out on the ship. He is “so proud and happy [that] he let go of the wheel for a second and did a little dance on the sloping deck” (35).
Chapter 7: The Sailboat Race
News of the race gets out and the sides of the pond are crammed with people. The sullen, fat owner of the Lilliam B. Womrath is a boy named LeRoy, who initially tells Stuart he wants him to come to his boat and will pay him for it, but Stuart refuses.
The two begin the race, Stuart delighting in the wind and the spray of water. But while they are racing there is an accident near the shore—the masses of people accidentally push a policeman into the water. His crash into the water is very destabilizing, and large waves form. A massive wave crashes down on the schooner and Stuart is knocked off, but he refuses to give up and clambers back on. People on the shore cheer for him, but he knows the race is not over yet.
The barometer tells him bad weather has arrived, and sure enough a dark cloud blots out the sun and “the world seemed cold and ominous” (41). On the roiling pond Stuart sees a paper bag floating on the surface, gaping open. He cannot avoid it and sails right inside. This causes him to crash into the Lillian, and the two boats are in a “terrible tangle” (43). Stuart runs forward on his deck and fires his gun to get attention. The owner of the Wasp calls out directions and Stuart is able to use his pocketknife to cut away the bag. The boats shake themselves away from each other, and to Stuart’s joy he sees the Lillian careening in the other direction.
Stuart has sailed the ship “straight and true” and when he arrives back at the shore he is “highly praised for his fine seamanship and daring” (45). The owner introduces himself as Dr. Paul Carey, a dentist, and says he would be delighted to have Stuart on his boat any time.
Analysis
Stuart Little is one of the most beloved children’s classics, and most Americans know at least the outline of the narrative. They most definitely have a picture of Stuart in their heads—a dapper, tiny mouse who comports himself like a human being. But contemporary readers of the text may find much that is surprising, and adults returning to the classic they loved as a child may find that things they did not notice then are quite conspicuous now. The fact is, Stuart Little is a very odd book with a main character who is often querulous, self-absorbed, stubborn, and irrational. Most of the book lacks structure and is episodic, and its conclusion is abrupt and anticlimactic (though there is a sequel). So what, then, is the appeal of the work? Why has it remained in the pantheon of children’s books?
Those are mostly unanswerable questions in any general sense, but the opening lines of the book are admittedly beguiling: “When Mrs. Frederick C. Little's second son arrived, everybody noticed that he was not much bigger than a mouse. The truth of the matter was, the baby looked very much like a mouse in every way. He was only about two inches high; and he had a mouse's sharp nose, a mouse's tail, a mouse's whiskers, and the pleasant, shy manner of a mouse. Before he was many days old he was not only looking like a mouse but acting like one, too –wearing a gray hat and carrying a small cane. Mr. and Mrs. Little named him Stuart, and Mr. Little made him a tiny bed out of four clothespins and a cigarette box.” White’s style is direct; we know everything that is being said is ridiculous, but the irony is cleverly suffused so that the author showcases his affection and generosity toward his creation as well as his respect of his readers.
Scholar Bobbie Ann Mason has praised White’s style, writing of Charlotte’s Web that it seemed to her to possess “clear-headed, sensible, witty style and outlook,” and that it has “the same personal directness, unfailing clarity, and economical humor one finds in [White’s] essays and letters.” She says that “It occurs to me that his children's stories are so much appreciated by adults because he makes few allowances for children. The vocabulary in these stories is simpler, and because there is fantasy they seem to be children's stories – tales about swans that play jazz trumpet, spiders that write, mice that drive cars.” There is a collapse of the divide between child and adult, she notes, for “he brings out the child in his adult readers, and he elicits the capacity for maturity in the child. He asks adults to renew their sense of wonder, and he asks children to try to understand the nature of reality. In the end, actually, he is asking adults to understand reality, since they usually do not understand it any better than children do—unless they have the presence of mind to omit needless words, hold on to a suitable design, use concrete language, and avoid affecting a breezy manner.”
In these first few chapters, readers of all ages can see Stuart trying to navigate a world that is not meant for him. He is, for example, too small to easily use the bathroom or ride a bus or pull on a window shade without getting snapped up into it. He is potential prey for dogs when he leaves his apartment, a small wave on a pond threatens to drown him, and there is always the danger that anti-mouse songs might hurt his feelings. Despite the absurdity of all of this, it resonates: we all feel out of place sometimes, our bodies unwelcome in, or not able to easily navigate, certain spaces. What is appealing about Stuart is that he does not let it get him down—he makes situations work for him and delights in spaces and moments that are accessible to him. Stuart’s love of life is palpable. He is “an early riser…almost always the first person up in the morning. He liked the feeling of being the first one stirring; he enjoyed quiet rooms with the books still standing on the shelves, the pale light coming in through the windows, and the fresh smell of day” (13). Routine and order clearly please him, but he is also “an adventurous little fellow” (31), ready to jump onto a sailboat and see where the wind will (literally) take him. He sets out in the mornings “full of the joy of life” (26), and, at one point when he learns he will get to captain the Wasp, he is “so proud and happy, he [lets] go of the wheel for a second and [does] a little dance on the sloping deck” (35).
It is that sailboat race that encapsulates the delightfulness of the book. White uses imagery to convey the briskness of the day, writing that “Over the pond the west wind blew, and into the teeth of the west wind sailed the sloops and schooners, their rails well down, their wet decks gleaming” (30). He also captures the excitement of a crowd, writing that “the shores of the pond were so crowded that a policeman was sent from headquarters to announce that everybody would have to stop pushing, but nobody did” (36). And he shows how exciting and potentially perilous Stuart’s race is, writing of a wave “like a mountain” (40), “dirty weather” (41), “gray waves with white crests” (41), and a “splintering crash” that makes “the whole ship tremble from stem to stern with the force of the collision” (43). Despite the dangers, though, Stuart is brave and plucky, wins the race, and is “highly praised for his fine seamanship and daring” (45). It is impossible not to root for him.
