This is a decidedly different sort of work entirely from Grahame's two previous works, for a number of reasons, not the least of which is its departure from the realism, albeit wonder-tinged, of The Golden Age and Dream Days. Instead, we're in a world where certain animals dress and act in the same manner as people do, where the size of those animals in relation to humans seems to be based purely on what the narrative requires at that moment, and where an amphibian in a rather poor disguise can be easily mistaken for a human.
The first place to look for differences is simply in the nature of the work. During the ten-year gap between Dream Days and this work, Grahame became a father, which significantly changed the shape of his audience. Rather than writing for an ostensibly adult audience, as his newspaper columns were, The Wind in the Willows began as a series of tales that he was telling to his son. This doesn't change his diction or his writing voice, but it does make this work rather less introspective. Instead, it allows a shifting of perspectives between the characters to match the tone of each story.
There are three primary characters here, who are used as 'narrators' (though the whole work is told in the third person), though a fourth is generally considered a main character and has been included as a major character in all of the various adaptations over the years. The character we spend the most time in the mind of is Mole, a simple but determined fellow who follows through on anything he's set to doing and tends to be easily drawn into other folks' activities. Mole feels a sudden urge at the start of the book to leave his underground home, digs up to the surface, and is immediately overwhelmed by everything that is Springtime. We're in a similarly pastoral setting to what was seen in The Golden Age and Dream Days, though without any time spent interacting with the nearby village. Instead, the world of the animals is the wilds, with meadows, a river, a nearby forest, and beyond, the world of humans, which the animals prefer to steer clear of. Mole quickly discovers the River, which is mindboggling to him, given that he's never seen anything of the sort. At the same time, he meets Water Rat, a relaxed sort of fellow with a love of everything that has to do with the river and a taste for poetry. Mole quickly decides to move in with Water Rat after the two share a picnic; the two will rarely be apart for the rest of the book.
Toad appears as a minor character, just spoken of, in the first chapter; he doesn't become a primary character until the second chapter, where a visit to Toad Hall results in him dragging Mole and Rat into his latest fixation, a horse-drawn caravan which he intends to go traveling the countryside in. The characters are hesitant to get too involved, because Toad has a tendency to fixate on one thing until it loses some degree of charm for him, before moving on to something else; his exuberance for the idea of life on the road is able to push through his friends' reticence so that they end up going on his journey with him. This goes well until the two rodents force Toad to actually do some of the work involved in this sort of travels, which quickly sours him on the prospect, aided by the caravan being run off the road and wrecked by a motor-car driving by at speed. This sets up Toad's overall plotline (and the only actual ongoing plotline for the book), as he becomes obsessed by cars instead, and by the following morning has placed an order for one of his own.
We next meet Badger, a gruff sort of country gentleman of the sort who doesn't particularly care for society but is most welcoming to those in distress, who lives in the middle of the Wild Wood. Mole and Rat come to his home during a snowstorm that leaves them stranded in the forest, and he gladly lets them in to stay the night and warm up. He's a kind but stern fellow, whose biggest desire seems to be for there to be a certain degree of civility and stability to the countryside. He's the sort that nobody particularly wants to cross, as well; Mole and Rat were somewhat threatened by the weasels and stoats who also live in the forest when they were caught after dark, and Badger makes it clear that they'll not see any further issues once it's known that they're his friends; after all, a badger is rather larger than most other mustelids. At the same time, we learn that the Wild Wood is in a place where humans used to have a village; Badger's home is built in what is apparently a former basement. This doesn't mean humans are gone, just they're not in that particular spot right now.
The small plotlines that continue in the book are similar small pastoral adventures, with Rat and Mole encountering a forest god (implied to be Pan) in one chapter (though they promptly forget, a gift from the god stated as being a way to ensure that their lives won't be seen as never reaching that peak again), and another having Rat be tempted toward running off to sea, until Mole returns him to his sanity.
The largest plotline, though, is Toad's misadventures as his arrogance and lack of common sense gets him in trouble, repeatedly; this is what the Disney film dealt with, and what the youthful me was expecting. His fixation with motor-cars refuses to be sated even after he has wrecked six of them, and landed in the hospital three times; when Rat, Mole, and Badger attempt a forced intervention, he flees out the window, runs halfway to the human village nearby, steals a car, gets himself arrested, and winds up thrown into jail. The subsequent escape (thanks to the warden's daughter who takes some pity on him because he's an animal) involves cross-dressing, sneaking aboard a train under false pretenses, stealing a horse, hijacking the same car again and driving it into a lake, and finally being swept up in the River's currents and delivered to Rat's door, across several chapters. This leads to the revelation that the weasels, stoats, and ferrets from the Wild Wood have taken over Toad Hall, and finally a nighttime raid by the four friends to retake the manor from the invaders, and Toad finally learning a little bit of humility in the process.
It's obvious just why Toad is so beloved; children are obviously going to be amused by a goofy character who gets into all manner of slapstick scrapes. But while his plotline may be the lion's share of the novel (six of the novel's twelve chapters deal with the Motor-Car fixation and its results, from beginning to end), the overall feel of the piece is far more in line with the lifestyles of Mole, Rat, and Badger. These three are content with their lots in life; Mole may get homesick for his burrow, but he knows where it is and can easily stop by, and in fact does, and a more dependable fellow simply can't be found. Rat may be swayed easily by a bit of storytelling, but the small pleasures of riverside life are more than enough for him if he just spends a bit of time writing. And Badger stands by his friends, even if he's a bit of a scary old codger at times. They serve to ground things against the rampaging id that is Toad, and where Toad is apt to give up at a small setback and rarely seems to think beyond a few moments ahead, the three of them together are more than able to offset Toad's shortcomings.
The one thing that is perhaps the most perplexing about this piece as a whole is the question of just what an 'animal' is within this context. There are a number of characters who are apparently of similar size to one another despite being far differently-sized in nature (particularly Badger alongside everyone else), and Toad in particular interacts with a number of clearly human artifacts, including his motor-cars and the washerwoman's outfit that he 'borrows' in order to escape from jail, and that's leaving aside the question of the manor-house that is Toad Hall, and, well, the success of the washerwoman disguise. On the other hand, Rat's temptation toward the seas comes from encountering a Sea Rat on the road, who has apparently made a habit of sneaking aboard ships by climbing into rowboats or up ropes, and likes to bunk in the captain's cabin, which implies that he's, well... rat-sized. Songbirds are kept in cages by both people and animals alike, but Rat is able to have conversations with migratory avians on the subject of why they go south for the Winter rather than sticking around closeby. Toad's caravan is pulled by a horse, who clearly isn't the same kind of animal as the other folk; the horse he steals during his escape from the law is likewise little more than a pack beast. And the warden's daughter apparently likes animals as pets, but knows better than to mention that to the captive Toad.
It's a strange dichotomy that is far from clearly-delineated, and serves to give a sort of dream-like quality to the work, that makes it a wonderful chaser for Grahame's other two major works. It's the only one of the three that really felt like it had a fully-satisfying ending, though; where The Golden Age and Dream Days both ended with a sort of eulogy for childhood, The Wind in the Willows wraps up with the promise that while Toad may be a little less conceited and devoted to his impulses, the four of them are going to continue in their lives with the status quo re-established. All has been brought back to the way it should be, and the pastoral life remains, a little slice of Arcady within the English countryside, complete with the god who mythologically lived in the Greek region. It's a version of the world seen in Grahame's earlier works that can go on in adulthood, where there may be some strife between residents but existence is largely harmonious, and where the line between nature and 'civilized' life is blurred to the point of nonexistence.
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