City Mouse



The counterpart to Country Mouse. Demanding, often female, often found as a Fish Out of Water on a farm somewhere with disturbingly large and invasive livestock; she may be quite literally out of water where there is no indoor plumbing. If female, expect her to frequently complain about breaking her nails. Unlike the Country Mouse, usually is the recipient of, rather than the deliverer of, An Aesop.

Frequently overlaps with Naive Newcomer and Fallen Princess.

A Sub-Trope of Rich in Dollars, Poor In Sense.

This term and Country Mouse derive from Aesop's Fables, making it Older Than Feudalism.

Anime And Manga

 * Chitose Fujinomiya from the Anime Goldfish Warning
 * Keiichi Maebara from Higurashi no Naku Koro ni.
 * Hachiken Yugo from Silver Spoon tries to beat the country mice at their own game. Hilarity Ensues.
 * Pauley Cracker from Kimba the White Lion is revealed to be this. He used to be the pet of a wealthy hotel owner who ran away to rescue his girlfriend along with other birds from a pet store. He and the other birds eventually made it into the jungle where Caesar allowed him to stay for demostrating such courage for a house pet.

Literature

 * Beatrix Potter retold Aesop's fable as The Tale of Johnny Town-Mouse. A country mouse is accidentally brought to the city, finds it too dangerous, and returns home; a city mouse visits him there, is frightened by the weather and prospect of a cow stepping on him, and returns home. Potter draws the Aesop that people like different things (and ignore different disadvantages).
 * The Witch of Blackbird Pond by Elizabeth George Speare. Kit, the protagonist, is a formerly-rich city mouse from Barbados who comes to live with her aunt and uncle in the small Puritan town where they live. She complains, a lot.
 * Jamie from The Homeward Bounders is this, at least in the beginning: a streetwise city kid who has to learn how to interact with a culture of nomadic herders who laugh at him when he uses the wrong word for "cow".
 * Ponder Stibbons in Lords and Ladies, whose reaction to Lancre is "I bet there's not a single delicatessen anywhere." At the end, it's suggested he might be staying there, but his next appearance shows him back in Ankh-Morpork.
 * Flora Poste in Cold Comfort Farm is a Genre Savvy version.
 * Betty MacDonald's semi-autobiographical memoir The Egg and I casts her as one of these. The book was later adapted into a film with Claudette Colbert.
 * Fleur Delacour plays this role in Harry Potter and The Half Blood Prince, much to the massive chagrin of Mrs. Weasley and Ginny.
 * Mark Twain's novel The Prince and the Pauper had the titular characters switch places. They thought it would be great fun, but turns out neither life is as carefree and pleasant as they hoped.

Live Action TV

 * Eva Gabor's character Lisa Douglas on Green Acres is the most recognizable example.
 * Although, oddly enough, she seemed to have an easier time dealing with Hooterville's craziness than Oliver did.
 * Titularly ironic considering Eva Gabor also voices a rich mouse in The Rescuers.
 * Carrie Bradshaw on Sex and the City, when staying in a log cabin in Suffern.
 * In real life, Suffern is densely populated (over 10,000 residents) and not considered to be in the country, but that didn't stop it from being used as a theme park version of a hick town.
 * Dr. Joel Fleischman on Northern Exposure.
 * Major Charles Emerson Winchester on M*A*S*H in his earlier episodes.
 * Mimi in Jericho.
 * Lacey in Corner Gas.
 * Paris Hilton and Nichole Richie were Real Life examples of this on the show The Simple Life.
 * Darcy in Darcys Wild Life.
 * C.C. Babcock on The Nanny, particularly in "Schlepped Away", as she, along with Fran and the Sheffield family, is stuck in the Fine family's apartment during a snowstorm.
 * Mr. Ernst and his son Buddy in Hey, Dude!.

Film

 * City Slickers has an entire cast of them.
 * Chevy Chase and Madolyn Smith, in Funny Farm.
 * Willie Scott in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.
 * Reese Witherspoon's character in Sweet Home Alabama, although she returns to her country roots and gets back with her hick ex.
 * Renee Zellweger plays one of these in New in Town.
 * Vinny and Lisa, in My Cousin Vinny, are a more blue-collar version of this trope.
 * The Blandingses, of Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House, are sort of a variation of this.
 * The title characters, particularly Meryl, in Meet The Morgans

Mythology

 * Aesop recounted the story of a city mouse visiting a country mouse and scorning his life as simple, but when the country mouse went to the city, he found the danger of cat and concluded that safety and simplicity in the country were best.
 * Not that the country is any less likely to have cats running around. Quite the contrary, actually.
 * Perhaps the cat was symbolic?
 * It is more than that - cats out in the wild are feral and look at mice as a food source and are not as likely to be given food by humans (unless it is their owner) while city cats are able to find food from refuse and other sources, and will often take up mousing as "sport". While both are dangerous to a mouse's health, the threat and likelihood of death increases in terms of hunger.

Webcomics

 * Wapsi Square Monica is a rare one, who knows her limitations

Western Animation

 * Debbie Thornberry in The Wild Thornberrys
 * In Beverly Hills Teens, the teens try working on a farm. Bianca and Pierce are horrible at it, even though the rest of the kids shouldn't know much about farming either.
 * Bianca is even surprised carrots are grown in the ground.

Theatre

 * Ruth Winters in the musical Plain and Fancy. (The show also has a song titled "City Mouse, Country Mouse.")