The Borrowers

Summary

The Borrowers is told within a frame. A girl called Kate, about ten, sits crocheting with old Mrs May, who lives in two rooms of Kate's parents' house. When Kate complains of losing a crochet hook, Mrs May begins to tell her about the borrowers, tiny people who live in the hidden places of old, quiet houses and take what they need from the human beings around them. Her younger brother, she says, saw them long ago, when he was sent home from India to recover from an illness and stayed at their Great-Aunt Sophy's old house in the country. In that house, under the kitchen floor near the grandfather clock, live the last borrowers of the place: Pod Clock, a careful, skilled borrower who makes shoes; his anxious, house-proud wife Homily; and their only child Arrietty, about fourteen, who has hardly ever been outside. Their home is furnished with borrowed things: postage-stamp pictures on the walls, cotton reels for stools, a matchbox chest of drawers, chess pieces and blotting paper. Other families who once lived in the house, such as the Overmantels and the Harpsichords, have gone, and Homily's relatives the Hendrearys left for a badger's set in the fields after their daughter Eggletina vanished, believed taken by the cat. The great rule of borrowers is never to be seen. One day Pod comes home shaken: he has been seen by the boy staying in the house. Fearing for the future, Pod and Homily tell Arrietty the history of the borrowers and agree to let her learn to borrow. On her first expedition outdoors she meets the Boy on the bank by the front door. They argue about whose world is bigger and which people serve the other, and she reads to him, since he reads slowly. She asks him to carry a letter to her uncle Hendreary in the badger's set, and he brings back a reply. The Boy then begins bringing presents through the floor, including furniture from an old doll's house in the night nursery, and the Clocks' home becomes grand. Meanwhile Great-Aunt Sophy, bedridden upstairs, sees Pod borrowing in her room and takes him for a vision brought on by her nightly decanter of Madeira. But the housekeeper, Mrs Driver, notices things going missing, discovers the borrowers' home, and sends for a rat-catcher to smoke them out, keeping the Boy locked in his room. The Boy escapes and breaks open a grating in the outside wall so the family can flee across the fields, but he leaves the house without seeing them go. Mrs May admits that she later went to the house and found a tiny notebook headed Memoranda, and Kate is left to decide whether the story is true. J. M. Dent published the novel in London in 1952 with illustrations by Diana Stanley, and it won the Carnegie Medal that year; Harcourt, Brace published it in New York in 1953 with pictures by Beth and Joe Krush.

Plot or Argument

• The frame: Kate and Mrs May

  Mrs May, crocheting with Kate, explains where lost things go and recalls what her younger brother told her about the borrowers in Great-Aunt Sophy's house.

• Under the kitchen floor

  The Clock family's home, furnished with borrowed objects, and the history of the borrowers who have left the house, including the Hendrearys and lost Eggletina.

• Pod is seen

  Pod returns from a borrowing trip knowing he has been seen by the boy. His parents decide that Arrietty must learn about the dangers and the craft of borrowing.

• Arrietty and the Boy

  On her first trip outside Arrietty meets the Boy; they argue about which kind of people are dying out, she reads to him, and he carries her letter to the badger's set.

• The doll's-house furniture

  The Boy brings gifts through the floorboards, and the Clocks live in unaccustomed luxury while Great-Aunt Sophy mistakes Pod for a vision of the Madeira.

• Discovery and escape

  Mrs Driver uncovers the borrowers' home and calls in a rat-catcher; the Boy, locked in, gets free and opens a grating so the family can escape into the fields.

• Kate and the Memoranda

  Mrs May reveals what she found when she visited the house later, and the book ends uncertain whether the borrowers were real and whether they survived.

Characters

• Arrietty Clock, heroine

  Curious, bookish borrower girl, about fourteen, who longs to see the world outside and befriends the Boy.

• Pod Clock, Arrietty's father

  Skilled, cautious borrower and shoemaker who climbs curtains and stairs to fetch what the family needs.

• Homily Clock, Arrietty's mother

  Excitable, proud housekeeper of the home under the floor, afraid of danger yet fond of fine things.

• The Boy, human friend

  Mrs May's younger brother as a child, sent from India to convalesce, who befriends and finally rescues the borrowers.

• Mrs May, storyteller

  Elderly woman who tells Kate the story her brother told her and who later visited the house herself.

• Kate, listener

  Young girl who hears the tale from Mrs May and who must judge whether it is true.

• Great-Aunt Sophy, owner of the house

  Bedridden old lady upstairs who believes Pod is a vision produced by her Madeira.

• Mrs Driver, housekeeper

  Sharp-eyed cook and housekeeper who discovers the borrowers and tries to have them exterminated.

• Crampfurl, gardener

  Mrs Driver's companion and the house's gardener, drawn into the hunt for the borrowers.

• Hendreary, Homily's relation

  Arrietty's uncle, who left the house for a badger's set in the fields after Eggletina disappeared.

Lessons

• Seeing the world from below

  Norton makes the familiar strange: a postage stamp becomes a portrait, a cotton reel a stool, a flight of stairs a mountain. Arrietty and the Boy each assume their own kind is the center of things, and their argument shows how much depends on where one stands.

  • Which borrowed object in the Clocks' home did you like best, and what did they use it for?
  • Why do Arrietty and the Boy each think the other's people are dying out?
  • How would your own kitchen look to a borrower?

• Borrowing and stealing

  The borrowers insist that they borrow rather than steal, since they believe human things exist for their use. The Boy questions this, and Mrs Driver plainly calls them thieves. The book lets children turn over a real question about ownership and need without settling it for them.

  • What is the difference between borrowing and stealing?
  • Do you think the borrowers were stealing? Why or why not?
  • Why did Mrs Driver get so angry when she found the borrowers' home?

• Safety and freedom

  Homily wants the family hidden and safe; Arrietty longs for the sky and the grass outside the grating. The book honors both, showing that Arrietty's daring brings friendship and danger together and that her parents' caution has good reasons.

  • Why did Pod and Homily keep Arrietty indoors for so long?
  • Was Arrietty right to talk to the Boy when borrowers are never supposed to be seen?
  • What did Arrietty see outside that she had only read about?

• A story we cannot check

  Everything in the book reaches Kate through Mrs May, who heard it from her brother. The ending leaves Kate, and the reader, to weigh the evidence of the little notebook and decide whether to believe.

  • Who first told the story of the borrowers, and how did it reach Kate?
  • Do you think Mrs May's brother made the story up? What clues point each way?

Context

The story is set in a large, half-empty English country house in the early years of the twentieth century, when such houses kept cooks, gardeners and housekeepers and children of families serving in India were often sent home to relatives in England. The frame, in which an old woman tells a child about her brother's boyhood, places that world in the past. Norton wrote the book in a postwar Britain of rationing and scarcity, where making do and mending were familiar habits.

Composition

Norton said that as a short-sighted child she imagined tiny people living in the hidden places of her family's house. J. M. Dent published The Borrowers in 1952, illustrated by Diana Stanley; Harcourt, Brace published it in the United States in 1953 with illustrations by Beth and Joe Krush. Norton continued the story in The Borrowers Afield (1955), The Borrowers Afloat (1959), The Borrowers Aloft (1961) and The Borrowers Avenged (1982).

Reception

The Library Association awarded it the Carnegie Medal for 1952, and in 2007 it was chosen among the ten most important Carnegie Medal winners of the award's first seventy years. It has been adapted for British television, as a 1997 feature film, and as the Studio Ghibli animated film Arrietty (2010).

Comparisons

• gullivers-travels

  Swift's Lilliput, where Gulliver is a giant among tiny people, is the ancestor of Norton's game of scale, though Norton tells it from the small people's side.

• the-cricket-in-times-square

  Small creatures living secretly inside a human world, furnishing their homes from human leftovers and befriending one human boy.

• the-secret-garden

  Both books bring a child home from India to a large, quiet English house and a sickroom, and both turn on secret friendship hidden from the household servants.

• the-wind-in-the-willows

  Two English classics that delight in snug underground homes, and in the tension between staying safely inside and venturing out into the wide world.

• charlottes-web

  In both, a small creature's life depends on a child's friendship and on the adults never quite seeing what the child sees.

Quotes

For Students

A reading companion for classical Christian high school students. See the student guide.

Reading Guide

Watch for

• How the story reaches you: the Boy told his sister, who grew up to be Mrs May, who tells Kate. Notice when Kate interrupts or asks questions.
• The objects in the Clocks' home under the kitchen and what each one was in the human house above.
• The night Pod comes home and admits he has been seen, and why that one event changes everything for the family.
• Arrietty's first trip outside, and the argument she has with the Boy about which people are dying out.
• What Great-Aunt Sophy thinks Pod is, and what Mrs Driver does when she finds the borrowers' home.

Key terms and names

Borrowers

Tiny people who live hidden in old houses and take small things from humans. They call it borrowing and believe they must never be seen.

Human beans

The borrowers' name for human beings, which shows that they think of people as large, useful creatures rather than as masters of the house.

Being seen

The worst thing that can happen to a borrower. When Pod is seen by the Boy, the family's safe life begins to come apart.

The grating

The small barred opening in the wall through which Arrietty first sees the outdoors, and through which the family finally escapes.

Badger's set

A badger's burrow in the fields where Uncle Hendreary's family moved; the Boy carries Arrietty's letter there.

Memoranda

The word on the cover of the tiny notebook Mrs May finds at the end, which might be proof that the borrowers were real.

Seminar Questions

1. Comprehension Who are the three members of the Clock family, and where in the house do they live?
2. Comprehension What did Pod find so frightening when he came home from borrowing, and what did he and Homily decide to tell Arrietty?
3. Comprehension What presents did the Boy bring the Clocks, and how did Mrs Driver find out about them?
4. Interpretation Arrietty says human beans are for borrowers. Why does she think so, and why does the Boy think the opposite?
5. Interpretation Homily loves the doll's-house furniture, but it brings the family into danger. Why might the gifts have been a mistake?
6. Interpretation Why does Mrs May tell the story to Kate at all? What does she want Kate to believe?
7. Big Question Is borrowing what you need from someone who will never miss it the same as stealing? What would you say to Pod?

Faith Connections

• Proverbs 30:24-28 (Scripture)

  Agur names four things that are little on the earth yet very wise, including ants that store food and a lizard that lives in kings' palaces. Pod and Homily survive in a great house by the same small, careful wisdom.

• Exodus 20:15 (Scripture)

  The commandment forbids stealing. The borrowers insist they only borrow, and the book gives children a chance to ask what taking without asking really is.

• Luke 16:10 (Scripture)

  Jesus says that whoever is faithful in very little is faithful also in much. The Boy keeps faith with the tiny Clock family, carrying Arrietty's letter and helping them escape when the grown-ups would destroy them.

Logic and Rhetoric

Central argument: Borrowers survive only by never being seen. Pod is seen, and Arrietty chooses to be seen, so the family's secret passes to a human child. The Boy's friendship first enriches them and then exposes them to Mrs Driver, who treats them as vermin. Therefore their safe life must end; yet the same friend who caused the danger opens the way to escape, and the book suggests that a hidden life could not have lasted anyway.

Rhetorical device: frame narrative. The whole tale is told by Mrs May to Kate from her brother's report, and the closing chapter returns to the two of them weighing the evidence of the Memoranda notebook, so that the reader is left to judge whether the story is true.

Debate: Resolved: The borrowers were stealing, not borrowing.

Writing Prompts

Essay: Was it a good thing or a bad thing for Arrietty to be seen by the Boy? Use events from the story, from the letter to the badger's set to the escape through the grating, to explain your answer.

Comparison with The Cricket in Times Square: Tucker Mouse and the Clock family both live hidden in a human world and furnish their homes with what people leave behind. Compare how each makes a home and what happens when a human child becomes their friend.

Medical Lens

Medical matters are incidental. The Boy has been sent home from India to convalesce from an illness, often identified as rheumatic fever, reflecting the period practice of sending sick children from tropical postings to recover in the English countryside. Great-Aunt Sophy, an elderly bedridden invalid, takes Pod for a hallucination brought on by her nightly Madeira and is unalarmed by him, a comic touch on drink and old age rather than a clinical portrait. Mrs Driver's attempt to smoke the borrowers out treats them as household vermin.

• Opening chapters (frame)

  Mrs May explains that her brother came from India to Great-Aunt Sophy's house to recover from an illness.

  Fever Infection
• Later chapters, Great-Aunt Sophy's bedroom

  The bedridden old lady sees Pod borrowing and attributes him to her decanter of Madeira.

  Alcohol Aging Senescence

Creative Prompts

• Classroom

  Collect ten small household objects and decide, as a borrower would, what each could become in a home under the floor; then draw the room.

• Fiction

  Write a page from Arrietty's Memoranda notebook describing the night the family escaped through the grating.

• Dialogue

  Write the argument between Homily and Pod on the night Pod comes home and admits that he has been seen.

• Essay

  Did the borrowers really exist? Use the clues Mrs May gives Kate at the end to argue one way or the other.

Further Reading

• The Borrowers Afield, Mary Norton

  The 1955 sequel, following the Clocks into the fields.

• The Borrowers Afloat, Mary Norton

• Bedknob and Broomstick, Mary Norton

• The Indian in the Cupboard, Lynne Reid Banks

  A later children's novel about a boy's friendship with a tiny person.