I am rereading The Borrowers series and wanting to discuss it with someone. (Years ago, my friend and I had a children’s lit book club with a third friend’s mother — that was fun.) In the first book of the series, the borrowers live beneath the floorboards of an old English country house. Eventually (kind of a spoiler), they are “seen,” a potentially devastating turn of events. I couldn’t help but feel frustrated by the constraints the borrowers lived with at the start of the book. As I read, the question I asked myself was, Was it better for the borrowers to live safely under the floorboards, or better for them to have been forced to confront the outside world — to face their vulnerability, but also to to potentially find freedom?
Is it better to be safe, or better to be seen?
(Photo credit: Magda Ehlers/Pexels)
