top of page
  • Katherine J. Dubke

Unhu and Winnie the Pooh


Christopher Robin, Winnie the Pooh, and Piglet enjoying a picnic in the Hundred Acre Wood

What makes Winnie-the-Pooh (1926) an enduringly popular text? Carol A. Stranger, in “Winnie the Pooh through a Feminist Lens” (1987), traces Milne’s success with children and adults and how Pooh Bear became a cultural icon manifesting himself in readers’ worlds. Stranger is particularly interested in Winnie-the-Pooh’s appeal among female readers arguing that Milne writes with a hidden concern for gender and is sympathetic to female anxieties (47). While Winnie-the-Pooh can certainly be read through the lens of gender, I propose an alternative reading to the text, one that explains its universal appeal through the unhu gaze—a Zimbabwean literary theory that reads for “characters’ experiences of community” (Tagwirei 50-51). Milne writes Winnie-the-Pooh with values that reflect the philosophy of unhu—harmony, connection, what draws individuals together—engaging readers regardless of race, class, or gender.


The Unhu Gaze

Christopher Robin and Piglet

Cuthbeth Tagwirei seeks a way of reading African texts that is rooted in African wisdom and values. He argues that Africa has been influenced by Western criticism which tends to approach texts with a “negative reading,” (49) a lens that analyzes difference and “pulls apart” (50) without considering the “human factor” (49). As an alternative Tagwirei offers the unhu gaze, a way of seeing that elevates human commonalities, the community, and organizes theories of race, class, and gender underneath the umbrella of the “primary and end motives of being human” (54). Difference is not ignored; it is contextualized. Unhu is defined as a “set of moral attributes and beliefs” (50) including “compassion, reciprocity, dignity, harmony . . . in the interest of building and maintaining community with justice and mutual caring” (Nussbaum qtd in Tagwirei 50). While this list is not exhaustive, unhu centralizes human relationships. Tagwirei applies his theory to Zimbabwean children’s literature but states that “any text can . . . be subjected to the unhu literary gaze” (51). I am responding to Cuthbeth’s preceding statement and testing his theory of the unhu gaze on Milne’s Winnie-the-Pooh.


To clarify how I will be applying Tagwirei’s theory to Milne’s text, I use two of the three postulates he describes: “the hero/ine is a link in the chain of human communion” (54) and “differences are resolved through recognition of a common humanity” (55). Winnie the Pooh is inextricably connected to his community and conflict is resolved within and through an understanding of what each individual has in common.


Postulate One: Communion and Connections

Winnie the Pooh is hungry for honey

Though Pooh Bear is the protagonist or “hero” of Winnie-the-Pooh, Milne is careful to introduce him within the context of the other residents of the Hundred Acre Wood, reflecting the unhu value of community. From the beginning, Tagwirei’s first postulate, “The hero/ine is a link in the chain of human communion,” (54) is present and recurs throughout the story whether it is Milne’s reference to bees and their community-centric society, Pooh’s freedom from stuckness, or how other events unfold in response to the community’s relationships. Niall Nance-Carroll says that in this society “everyone is included” (91) and this ethic informs the actions of the entire forest. The Hundred Acre Wood is an unhu society and Pooh is all the more prominent because of his connections to those around him.


Pooh Bear is part of a literal “chain” of community in the chapter “In Which Pooh Goes Visiting and Gets Into a Tight Place.” Pooh visits Rabbit on a bright day and ends up getting stuck in Rabbit’s front door on account of indulging in too much honey. The narrator notes that while Pooh was walking through the forest and humming, he was thinking about “what everybody else was doing, and what it felt like, being somebody else” (26). This empathetic perspective is one Pooh adopts quite often. Over the course of the afternoon Pooh eats too much honey, gets stuck in Rabbit’s front door, and becomes a problem that the community must come together to solve. After waiting for some time, Christopher Robin, Rabbit, and “Rabbit’s friends and relations . . . all pulled together” (34) to free Pooh from the tight space and, in pulling, all of these individuals literally become connected. Milne nestles Pooh Bear among the members of the community who seek out his good, whether by being gracious hosts or by freeing him from his self-indulgence through mutual caring and a friendly push—through unhu.


Winnie the Pooh is stuck in Rabbit's burrow

Postulate Two: Difference and Commonalities

The second postulate proposed by Tagwirei is that “differences are resolved through recognition of a common humanity” (55) which is what happens when Kanga and Roo appear in the Hundred Acre Wood and the rest of the members are confronted by difference. The forest community is one-of-a-kind; however, because these characters are already established within the community, difference is respected and even sought out. Rabbit speaks bluntly: “Pooh . . . you haven’t any brain” (89) and “Piglet . . . you haven’t any pluck” (89). Through Rabbit’s recognition of his friends’ differences, he formulates a plan to kidnap Baby Roo as an attempt to ostracize Kanga and Roo, viewed as “Strange Animal[s]” (88). Rabbit’s plan goes through; Rabbit kidnaps Roo while Piglet pretends to be Kanga’s offspring. As a trick, Kanga pretends not to recognize Piglet and treats him as she would treat Roo by giving Piglet a bath, while Rabbit grows fond of Baby Roo because he spends time with him (98). By actually spending time with the “Other,” Rabbit, Pooh, and Piglet recognize their commonalities with Kanga and Roo while celebrating their differences. In the end Roo calls Rabbit “friend” (102), and Kanga teaches Pooh how to jump; their differences are now respected and incorporated within the established community.


Winnie the Pooh, Rabbit, Piglet, Kanga, and Roo

In Which We Learn Why the Unhu Perspective Matters

In the Pooh stories, all of the characters participate and work with the community to demonstrate values that reflect unhu. Difference is still acknowledged but it is contextualized. In a world where division is prominent and prevalent, literature can be a place where a sense of cohesion is sought out– where readers make sense of and work through the chaos of the world that exists beyond the pages. In the characters of the Hundred Acre Wood, we are reminded of what it means to be human, by acknowledging our interconnectedness to others, celebrating our differences as they serve one another’s good, and recognizing that humanness is inherent—something that we do not need to earn but something we simply are. And Pooh Bear and friends remind us that what we have in common is worth paying attention to.


Winnie the Pooh and friends

Works Cited

  • Milne, A.A. The World of Pooh. E.P. Dutton & Co., 1957.

  • Nance-Carroll, Niall. “A Prosaics of the Hundred-Acre Wood: Ethics in A.A. Milne’s Winnie- the-Pooh and The House at Pooh Corner.” Ethics and Children's Literature, edited by Claudia Mills, Taylor & Francis Group, 2014. ProQuest Ebook Central, https://ebookcentral-proquest-com.er.lib.k- state.edu/lib/ksu/detail.action?docID=1808807.

  • ---. "Not Only, but also: Entwined Modes and the Fantastic in A. A. Milne's Pooh Stories." The Lion and the Unicorn, vol. 39, no. 1, 2015, pp. 63-81. ProQuest, https://er.lib.k- state.edu/login?url=https://www-proquest-com.er.lib.k-state.edu/scholarly- journals/not- only-also-entwined-modes-fantastic-milnes/docview/1696868701/se-2?accountid=11789.

  • Stanger, Carol A. "Winnie the Pooh Through a Feminist Lens." The Lion and the Unicorn, vol. 11 no. 2, 1987, p. 34-50. Project MUSE, doi:10.1353/uni.0.0299.

  • Tagwirei, Cuthbeth. “The Unhu Literary Gaze.” The Routledge Companion to International Children’s Literature, edited by John Stephens, Taylor & Francis Group, 2017, pp.49- 59. ProQuest Ebook Central. https://ebookcentral-proquest-com.er.lib.k- state.edu/lib/ksu/detail.action?docID=5207552.

 

Katherine J. Dubke

Katherine J. Dubke is a graduate of Kansas State University where she completed her MA in English with an emphasis in children’s literature. Her research interests include British children’s literature, Romanticism, and anything that has a hint of wanderlust. She is a poet and published hymnwriter and works as a writing consultant for the Writing Studio at her alma mater, Concordia University Irvine.

bottom of page