”’It’s a Missage,’ he said to himself, ‘that’s what it is.” : Morals in A.A.Milne’s Winnie-the-Pooh and the House at Pooh Corner

Abstract: This essay focuses on morals and different moral stages of the characters in A.A.Milne’s Winnie-the-Pooh and the House at Pooh Corner. The books about Winnie-the-Pooh are children’s books and like most books written for children, they contain valuable lessons that are meant to teach children something, usually something about morals. Both Winnie-the-Pooh and The House at Pooh Corner demonstrate, as I will discuss, different kinds of morals, which vary between different characters. The method I use is a close reading of Milne’s books about Winnie-the-Pooh, applying to them theories from Jean Piaget and other authorities on cognitive development and moral behavior. The result of my research points to different moral stages of the characters and the different lessons there are to learn from them. Utilizing Piaget’s theories on cognitive development, my conclusion is that some of the characters represent the adult world and mature adult behavior and some of the characters are more immature and behave as children. For the young reader, there are thus lessons to learn both from the representatives of the adult world and from the experience of children.