 M. Daphne Kutzer , Professor of English at the State University of New York at Plattsburgh and author of Beatrix Potter : Writing in Code ( 2003 ) , points out that the tale is a comic one taking place completely indoors and one with an obvious anxiety about dirt . There is not the sort of revelry one would expect in a tale about a miniature household but rather a " desperate sense " of wanting to keep that household free of invaders and unwanted outsiders . The Tale of Two Bad Mice is another tale about a miniature household , but there Potter is on the side of the invading two bad mice . Mrs. Tittlemouse is concerned as much about middle class proprieties as the dolls Lucinda and Jane in The Tale of Two Bad Mice but , in Mrs. Tittlemouse , Potter is on the side of the invaded rather than the invaders , who are purely animals with no human characteristics . 
