Howitt's Well-Wrought Fable: A Critical Appreciation of 'The Spider and the Fly' Anonymous 12th Grade

The beast fable is a staple of world literature. In such tales, talking animals learn a lesson from their dealings with each other, and the listener is urged to draw parallels between human and animal behaviour. This essay looks at how Mary Botham Howitt’s “The Spider and the Fly” is written, like an Aesopian fable, as a cautionary tale for the gullible and the innocent by retelling the story of a cunning spider who coaxes a naïve fly with empty words of flattery and lures her to her doom.

The poem opens with a surreptitious invitation that begins the spider’s pursuit of his prey: “‘Will you walk into my parlour?’ said the Spider to the Fly.” The line signals the poem’s ironic, macabre tone: this invitation seems friendly, but both the reader and the fly know that the spider wants to devour the fly. In glowing tones, he paints an illusionary picture of his “parlor” as a place of wonder and beauty –

“‘Tis the prettiest little parlour that ever you did spy.
The way up to my parlour is up a winding stair,
And I have many pretty things to show when you are there.”

The fly wisely declines this offer, secure in her knowledge of the spider’s evil motives. She is aware that “who goes up your winding stair can ne’er come down again”—to...