This work traces the concepts of initiation, transformation and rebirth
though Beatrix Potter's personal writings and her children's fiction.
Her letters and journals reveal attempts to escape from what she called
her "unloved birthplace" and her overbearing parents. Potter felt that
her life culminated in her forties, when she was, in effect, reborn
through marriage as Mrs. William Heelis, a farmer raising Herdwick sheep
and buying land for the National Trust. From her first book, The Tale
of Peter Rabbit, through some of the last, such as The Fairy Caravan
and The Tale of Little Pig Robinson, central characters undergo
processes of initiation during which they mature toward adulthood. The
most successful ones move from being helpless children to more mature
creatures on their way to independence, while others experience no
change or even regression.