The Borrowers

Some people might know the story of Arrietty from the Studio Ghibli film, The Secret World of Arrietty. This is based (very faithfully) on a 1950s novel from Mary Norton, The Borrowers, a story told as a frame narrative recounting a nine-year-old boy who discovers the existence of a family of tiny people, the Borrowers. The “Clock” family live under the floorboards beneath a grandfather clock in a big Edwardian house (Pod the father, Homily the mother, and Arrietty the teenage daughter). I found this novel interesting for a number of reasons.

One, the novel makes us think about the importance of scale and the struggles of tiny people. The scale of everything is unimaginably big: a safety pin is the size of a broom, a small book is a pain to carry, and a cat is the most dangerous predator, besides a human (at least, that’s what the Borrowers think).

Two, resources are to so difficult to obtain, especially when “borrowing” (taking leftover things that humans would not notice have disappeared). The worst outcome of a borrowing run is being “seen” by a “human bean.” Arrietty even assumes that humans are nearly extinct because she has only ever heard of a select few humans in the large house. Here she is mocking the human boy, even as she feels afraid of him:

“Honestly,—” began Arrietty helplessly and laughed again. “Do you really think—I mean, whatever sort of world would it be? Those great chairs…I’ve seen them. Fancy if you had to make chairs that size for everyone? And the stuff for their clothes…miles and miles of it…tents of it…and the sewing! And their great houses, reaching up so you can hardly see the ceilings…their great beds…the food they eat…great, smoking mountains of it, huge bogs of stew and soup and stuff,” (78).
“I mean, there wouldn’t be enough stuff in the world to go round after a bit! That’s why my father says it’s a good thing they’re dying out…just a few, my father says, that’s all we need—to keep us,” (78-79).

SPOILERS AHEAD

Three, the exchange of knowledge is extremely risky. After Arrietty has many exchanges with the boy, Pod finds out, and Homily is devastated and fears the family’s demise. However, the family begins trusting the nine-year-old because they become accustomed to his deliveries of luxurious dollhouse furniture, which is not practical, but makes them feel upper-class. The housekeeper, Ms. Driver, begins to notice the absence of dollhouse furniture and some of her belongings. She investigates, and discovers their “nest.” She destroys their home, and orders their extermination.

Four, the greatest irony of The Borrowers is that the reason they exist is because over generations, these people evolved from normal humans. They became smaller and smaller as their views of the world became narrower and narrower. The Borrowers works as a moral tale, since they believe that the big human beings exist to serve them by creating product they can “borrow.” In fact, it’s no accident that the boy is recovering his health so that he can go back to his family in the British Raj. We are left to believe that Clock family escapes the exterminator and “emigrates” to the badger set, where Uncle Hendreary lives.