Three Blind Mice

Three Mice and Two Women - Does the Farmer's Wife Need Backup Here?

These two illustrations depict all three phases of the tail-cutting action. In the one, the three mice are portrayed with their tails unharmed. Although one is hanging on to a door hinge, another is hanging on to a thread, and the third seems to watching as it sits on a shelf, they are not drawn with personified features or details. The realistic texture and line of their hair, feet, and tails establishes them as vermin, perhaps exploring their environment, but certainly not playful creatures or traveling friends. The other picture captures the farmer's wife in her kitchen in the midst of cutting off the tails. Two mice have already lost their tails, and the third is about to. Unlike other illustrations of this rhyme, the farmer's wife is accompanied by three cats and a young woman [perhaps the farmer's daughter?]. One cat is chasing a tailless mouse, one is holding a tailless, possibly lifeless, mouse in its mouth, and the third is watching the mouse on the “chop block.” In this picture, it is not the farmer's wife who presents a look of satisfaction, as in the Tudor illustration, but the younger woman standing behind her, broom in hand, watching over the wife's shoulder. The farmer's wife is poised to chop off the third tail, but appears saddened or disgusted in doing so. She and the woman watching seem proper in their style and appearance; both have curled hair, and the wife's is pulled up under her bonnet, and their dresses are fitted with a collar and scarf respectively. The inclusion of the other person and the cats’ interaction with the mice create a sense of commotion and chaos in what is otherwise an ordered and meticulous kitchen.