“Stuart Little” by E. B. White: Like “The Portrait of a Lady” by Henry James, this children’s classic has an unresolved ending

After discussing Charlotte’s Web, I obtained the author’s earlier children’s classic, Stuart Little, which I have just read. The title character is born to Mr. and Mrs. Little, human parents, and is accepted as their child (along with their older, normal human son), even though Stuart has the tiny body of a mouse. He thinks and speaks like a normal human.

Stuart befriends a female bird, who is taken into the Little family’s New York City apartment. But when a neighborhood cat threatens to eat her, she flies away. Stuart, driving a gasoline-powered miniature car, sets out on the road to find her. At the end of the novel his quest is unresolved: “As he peered ahead into the great land that stretched before him, the way seemed long. But the sky was bright, and he somehow felt he was headed in the right direction” (1, p. 131).

As to an animal alternate personality, if Kafka (search “Kafka”) can have an insect, then E. B. White can have a mouse.

It is purely coincidental that Stuart Little has an unresolved ending, like the novel I had just finished, The Portrait of a Lady by Henry James. The main difference is that E. B. White knew what he was doing.

1. E. B. White. Stuart Little. Pictures by Garth Williams. New York, HarperTrophy, 1945.