E. B. White by Michael Sims (post 2): Story of E. B. White’s prior children’s classic, “Stuart Little,” is self-contradictory, suggesting multiple personality

Although Michael Sim’s biography of E. B. White (1) highlights the story of “Charlotte’s Web,” it also discusses the author’s writing of his previous novel, “Stuart Little,” which is more psychologically revealing.

Mouselike boy or Mouse?

First, the title character of Stuart Little is said to have come to E. B. White in a 1926 dream “of a tiny, mouselike child” (1, p. 145). But only two pages later, E. B. White is reported to have “pointed out that, while Stuart was an imaginary mouse, he did not in any way resemble [Disney’s] Mickey…He explained that because Stuart had appeared to him in a dream, as a gift rather than an invention, he didn’t feel free to metamorphose him from a mouse” into any other kind of animal (1, p. 147).

In 1945, he told his brother “that he suffered from ‘mice in the subconscious.’ Mice had always been a recurring theme in his writing. He had identified with them even more than most children do” (1, p. 149).

Although he dreamt of the title character in 1926, he did not finish and publish Stuart Little until 1945.

“The book is a realistic yet fantastical story about a mouse-like human boy named Stuart Little. According to the first chapter, he ‘looked very much like a rat/mouse in every way’ ” (2).

Puzzling Contradiction

As I have said in past posts, a key clue that a person might have multiple personality is that the person has puzzling contradictions, because alternate personalities often have contradictory views, and if you don’t know that the person has multiple personality, you can’t understand why the person says contradictory things at different times. 

The story of E. B. White’s creation of the title character of Stuart Little is puzzlingly self-contradictory—sometime he says it is a mouse, other times he says it is a mouselike boy—suggestive of the possibility that he had multiple personality trait.

Also suggestive of multiple personality is that White experienced the character as coming to him, not being invented by him. So then who did invent it? Probably his alternate personality. Give credit where credit is due.

1. Michael Sims. The Story of Charlotte’s Web: E. B. White’s Eccentric Life in Nature and the Birth of an American Classic. New York, Walker & Company/Bloomsbury, 2011.

2. Wikipedia. “Stuart Little.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stuart_Little

Added the same day: In rereading the above, it occurs to me that some readers might think that what I call a contradiction (between mouse and mouselike) is merely an inexact choice of words by a sloppy biographer. But the writing in this biography is meticulous and attentive to details.