The Tale of Jemima Puddle-Duck facts for kids
First edition cover
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| Author | Beatrix Potter |
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| Illustrator | Beatrix Potter |
| Country | England |
| Language | English |
| Genre | Children's literature |
| Publisher | Frederick Warne & Co |
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Publication date
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July 1908 |
| Media type | Print (hardcover) |
| Preceded by | The Tale of Tom Kitten |
| Followed by | The Tale of Samuel Whiskers or The Roly-Poly Pudding |
The Tale of Jemima Puddle-Duck is a children's book written and illustrated by Beatrix Potter. It was first published by Frederick Warne & Co. in July 1908. Potter composed the book at Hill Top, a working farm in the Lake District she bought in 1905. Following the purchase, her works began to focus on country and village life, incorporating large casts of animal characters and sinister villains. Jemima Puddle-Duck was the first of her books set wholly at the farm with background illustrations based on the farm buildings and yard, and nearby locales.
Jemima is a domestic duck of the Aylesbury breed, whose eggs are routinely confiscated by the farmer's wife because she believes Jemima to be a poor sitter. Jemima searches for a place away from the farm where she can hatch her eggs without human interference, and naively confides her woes to a suave fox who invites her to nest in a shed at his home. Jemima accepts his invitation, little realising her danger: the fox plans to kill and roast her. Kep, a collie on the farm, discovers Jemima's whereabouts and rescues her just in time. Potter indicated the tale was a revision of "Little Red Riding Hood" with Jemima, the fox, and the dog acting as parallels to the fairy tale's heroine, wolf, and woodcutter. Jemima, Kep, the farmer's wife, and her two children were all modelled on real world individuals at Potter's Hill Top farm.
The book was hugely popular. Spinoff merchandise included a soft Jemima doll in bonnet and shawl, a Jemima painting book in 1925, and illustrated fabric placemats hand-fashioned by Potter and distributed to friends. Critically, the book is considered one of Potter's best.
Plot
The tale begins in a farmyard which is home to a duck called Jemima Puddle-duck. She wants to hatch her own eggs, but the farmer's wife believes ducks make poor sitters and routinely confiscates their eggs to allow the hens to incubate them. Jemima tries to hide her eggs, but they are always found and carried away. She sets off along the road in her poke bonnet and shawl to find a safe place away from the farm to lay her eggs.
At the top of a hill, she spies a distant wood, flies to it, and waddles about until she discovers an appropriate nesting place among the foxgloves. However, a charming gentleman with "black prick ears and sandy-coloured whiskers" persuades her to nest in a shed at his home. Jemima is led to his "tumble-down shed" (which is curiously filled with feathers), and makes herself a nest with little ado.
Jemima lays her eggs, and the fox suggests a dinner party to mark the event. He asks her to collect the traditional herbs used in stuffing a duck, telling her the seasonings will be used for an omelette. Jemima sets about her errand, but the farm collie, Kep, meets her as she carries onions from the farm kitchen and asks her what she is doing and where she keeps going. She reveals her errand, Kep sees through the fox's plan at once, and finds out from Jemima where the fox lives.
With the help of two fox-hound puppies who are out at walk at the farm, Kep rescues Jemima and the "foxy-whiskered gentleman" (Mr. Tod) is chased away and seen again in The Tale of Mr. Tod. However, the hungry fox-hounds ate Jemima's eggs. Jemima is escorted back to the farm in tears over her lost eggs, but, in time, lays more eggs and successfully hatches four ducklings.
Background
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Helen Beatrix Potter was born on 28 July 1866 to barrister Rupert William Potter and his wife Helen (Leech) Potter in London. She was educated by governesses and tutors, and passed a quiet childhood reading, painting, drawing, visiting museums and art exhibitions, and tending a nursery menagerie of small animals. Her interests in the natural world and country life were nurtured with holidays in Scotland, the Lake District, and Camfield Place, the Hertfordshire home of her paternal grandparents.
Potter's adolescence was as quiet as her childhood. She grew into a spinsterish young woman whose parents groomed her to be a permanent resident and housekeeper in their home. She continued to paint and draw, and experienced her first professional artistic success in 1890 when she sold six designs of humanised animals to a greeting card publisher. She hoped to lead a useful life independent of her parents, and tentatively considered a career in mycology, but the all-male scientific community regarded her as an amateur and she abandoned fungi.
Potter had maintained contact with her last governess Annie Carter Moore and had grown fond of her children. Through the 1890s, she sent illustrated story letters to the children. Mrs. Moore recognised the literary and artistic value of the letters and urged her former charge to publish. Potter liked the suggestion, and, in 1900, revised a tale she had written for five-year-old Noel Moore in 1893, and fashioned a dummy book of it in imitation of Helen Bannerman's 1899 bestseller The Story of Little Black Sambo. Unable to find a buyer for the tale, she published it for family and friends at her own expense in December 1901.
Frederick Warne & Co. had once rejected the tale but, eager to compete in the booming small format children's book market, reconsidered and accepted the "bunny book" (as the firm called it) following the recommendation of their prominent children's book artist L. Leslie Brooke. Potter agreed to colour her pen and ink illustrations, chose the then-new Hentschel three-colour process for reproducing her watercolours, and on 2 October 1902 The Tale of Peter Rabbit was released.
Potter continued to publish with Warnes. Early in July 1905 she bought Hill Top, a working farm of 34 acres (14 ha) at Sawrey in the Lake District with profits from her books and a small legacy from an aunt. On 25 August 1905 Potter's editor and fiancé, Norman Warne died suddenly and unexpectedly. Potter became deeply depressed and was ill for many weeks, but rallied to complete the last few tales she had planned and discussed with Warne.
Similarities to "Little Red Riding Hood"
Potter indicated Jemima was a revision of "Little Red Riding Hood", and the similarities between the two are numerous: Jemima and her eggs are substitutes for Red Riding Hood and her grandmother; the farmer's wife and Jemima's sister-in-law Rebeccah are substitutes for Red Riding Hood's mother; the fox and the wolf both conceal their bestial natures beneath the polite behaviour of gentlemen, and the dogs are substitutes for the woodcutters. Both tales touch upon physical appetite, temptation, and foolish behaviour.
Though the tale has a happy ending, tearful Jemima is led back to the farm in public humiliation after losing her eggs to her hungry rescuers. She is allowed to hatch a brood on the farm, but it only produces four ducklings. Potter's revision of "Little Red Riding Hood" more nearly resembles Perrault's tragic tale than the happily-ever-after Grimm version where the heroine is rescued by woodcutters. The author knew her young audience would sympathise with the unhatched ducklings and would not tolerate having Jemima, a mother figure, suffer a bloody end in the fox's shed. The loss of the eggs is sad for the reader, but Potter ended the tale as happily as possible – not only for her audience but for the sake of the real world children of her farm manager, Ralph and Betsy Cannon, to whom the tale was dedicated. Jemima is punished for her headstrong foolishness and must relinquish her hope of finding a nesting spot away from the farm, but the punishment is mitigated when she is allowed to hatch one brood herself.
Merchandising
Jemima Puddle-Duck was popular, almost as popular as Peter Rabbit, and became the subject of ancillary merchandise. She is depicted in one of the four well known endpapers of the Potter books, and was featured on a Christmas card for the Invalid Children's Aid Association. She became the principal character in an unpublished painting book describing the livestock at Hill Top, and appeared in Peter Rabbit's Painting Book and Tom Kitten's Painting Book before being given her own painting book, Jemima Puddle-Duck's Painting Book in 1925, composed grudgingly in response to public demand for yet another book.
Potter waited for ducklings to hatch at the farm to be used as models for the painting book, but in the end, the eggs were rotten. The instructions in Jemima's painting book were similar to those in Tom Kitten's painting book, but the kittens with crayons in Tom's book accompanying the instructions were replaced by six ducklings splashing about in paint water for the similar page in Jemima's book. In the original tale, Jemima's eggs are eaten by her rescuers but in the painting book, a new design was executed for "They took Jemima home"; in the painting book, Kep and the fox hound puppies lead Jemima away from her broken but uneaten eggs. The same theme was depicted on Crabtree & Evelyn chocolate Easter eggs.
The painting book displays Potter's willingness to exploit the commercial possibilities of her characters and tales. The purchaser was alerted to the existence of other Potter books on the inside front cover and directed to a list of books on the back cover. Other merchandise included sets of linen or silk placemats painted by Potter for friends with an abridged text and 12 of the illustrations. In 1910, Potter patented a design for a soft toy duck based on her model of Jemima in a Paisley handkerchief shawl and bonnet. A soft Jemima doll was manufactured by J. I. Farnell of Acton.
Adaptations
- In 1971, the tale became a segment in the Royal Ballet film, The Tales of Beatrix Potter.
- In 1992, the tale was telecast as an episode on the animated BBC anthology series, The World of Peter Rabbit and Friends.
- Jemima Puddle-Duck appears in the 2012 CGI animated television series of Peter Rabbit in Nickelodeon.
- Jemima Puddle-Duck appears in the 2018 animated/live-action film adaptation of Peter Rabbit, and the sequel voiced by Rose Byrne.
