I recently had the pleasure of writing a unit on E. B. White’s Charlotte’s Web for abcteach. The full unit is only for members, but you can read a couple pages here. The sample focuses on that great opening line, “Where’s Papa going with that ax?” which I’m not the first writer to extol. I don’t remember liking the book much as a child, actually, but I enjoyed it thoroughly this time around. It’s a lot funnier than I remember; I lay around laughing out loud at the thing. Of course, I then went on to laugh at Madame Bovary, so maybe I was in some sort of fey mood.

A worthy scripture

But I had to admit the book may well deserve its place in the liturgical cycle of the American education system. White flaunts his gourmet taste for words; I didn’t bother to count how many times Charlotte the spider actually defines a word for the hapless Wilbur. No obsequious adherence to grade-level word lists here. And I couldn’t believe it had never occurred to me that Charlotte’s webs are a not-so-subtle metaphor for the magic of words themselves, the frail, tenuous ability to communicate ideas that can change the actions of grown men. A good wind or a boy’s stick could knock the web to nothing, but let it stay, and crowds will trample their way to see it. A fascinating image that resonates the more you consider it.

An apple for Ms. Cavatica?

On the other hand, it’s also interesting to speculate on how much the average teacher identifies with Charlotte. The spider is crisp, kind, brave, helpful, and very very smart. She constantly sacrifices her time for Wilbur, and is rewarded by his love and respect long after she is gone. Yet she has a strange authority over him. In one scene, she orders him to bed, and he has to ask permission to get up for something. It’s a very quick scene, but as the teacher metaphor was already in my head this time, it struck me. Charlotte is not Wilbur’s mother; she eventually has her own children. I suppose you could discuss whether she basically adopts him, but the only motherly action I can think of is the lullaby she sings. Otherwise, she’s a wise old friend, a mentor, and I can’t think of any professor I have ordering me to bed. Of course, Wilbur is a child. Perhaps I’m making too much of it, but if Charlotte is a teacher, Wilbur is a student, and he has no family or parents, only Charlotte. You might gild the metaphor by noting Wilbur actually leaves his home and (unmentioned) pig parents when very small in order to spend the rest of his life at a new barn. Had he stayed at his own home, he would surely have been killed. Seen in this light, the story features a rather narcissistic but mysteriously adorable young child whose only friends, really, are his teacher and her descendants (replenished yearly). All his love, respect, and devotion are for the Cavatica clan alone. Hmm. I musn’t forget Fern. Perhaps Fern is something of a mother figure, and she does come and watch over him at first. But she loses interest, and Wilbur seems to forget her. Nor do his friendships with the other barn animals seem significant beside his beloved spiders. Yes, Charlotte is described at the end as a “good friend and a good writer,” and I don’t want to push the analogy too far. But that one glimpse of her assuming total command of Wilbur as if it were quite natural, and his instant obedience, casts their relationship in a thought-provoking light. Just how much authority does Charlotte, the good friend, think she has? I seriously doubt E. B. White was crafting the metaphor I suggest, of course, but one can’t help wondering why teachers like the book so much. It’s a hallowed scroll in their sacred scriptures, and it’s worth analyzing why. Do Charlotte and Wilbur embody their ideal of the teacher-student relationship? It really is odd that Wilbur gets his new spider friends on a yearly basis. And Charotte is a bit snooty. She’s at her most articulate when she’s dismissing a lesser animal from the conversation, or critiquing an inferior pig. A dangerous habit for any educator to emulate.

“SOME FLY”

Then there’s the whole difficulty of Charlotte’s own diet. Though Wilbur is shocked at first at Charlotte’s cruelty, he learns to accept her “campaign against flies,” even as he moans at the local campaign against pigs. That’s just weird. And perhaps a bit ominous. If you’re going to write a book starring talking livestock and a talking insect, why go out of your way to point out that the heroine eats other insects? (Oh wait, she’s an arachnid. I guess it’s okay.) Naturally I sympathize with E. B. White; you can imagine some smart-aleck nephew hearing the nascent plotline and sneering that spiders themselves aren’t exactly vegan. Still, it’s the tone of the thing. Wilbur has this natural horror of killing other creatures and eating them, and Charlotte “enlightens” him. It’s a crime to kill him. Wilbur, but it’s okay to campaign against flies, because they’re a nuisance, they taste good, and they’re apparently mute. They’re not our kind of animal. Wilbur’s empathy evaporates. In real life, I have no compunction about killing flies, nor pigs, for that matter. (Though the current practice of ripping their testicles off and jailing them in indoor cages their entire lives is, perhaps, another question.) Maybe if a spider wasn’t the heroine, it wouldn’t matter. Microbes in the story die by the thousands, presumably, and I am unmoved. But Charlotte, an arachnid, talks, and Wilbur talks, so there’s no good reason why the flies shouldn’t talk too. We cheer for Wilbur’s life, but because Charlotte herself, almost against her will, has to slaughter whole families of flies daily, well, naturally, that’s a humane and sensible thing to do. If there is any legitimacy to the teacher metaphor, this dynamic of Wilbur’s casual acceptance of genocide cannot fail to disturb. Charlotte does it, it must be okay. Great. Anyhow, all that being said, I still liked the book more now than as a child. Very little flab in the thing, a cornucopia of words, and exquisite description. It’s no surprise that the author is also the “White” in the “Strunk and White” of Elements of Style fame. And my criticisms here only suggest the supreme compliment to any children’s book, that its relevance goes far beyond its plotline.