The Tale of the Pie and the Patty-Pan

M. Daphne Kutzer, Professor of English at the State University of New York at Plattsburgh at the time of her Beatrix Potter: Writing in Code (2003) believes The Pie and its two immediate predecessors (the tales of Two Bad Mice and Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle) are transitional works in Potter's life and literary career. All three books confront the meaning of domesticity, work, and social hierarchies while exhibiting an underlying discomfort with the unyielding strictures of Victorian domesticity, and a disengagement from the broad political and social concerns of her earlier books to the more narrow political and social concerns of working farmers and rural people.