"On Fairy-Stories," Part 3: "Children"
Ack! I can't believe how long it's been since I posted. And to think I thought I could finish this project in a couple of weeks...but I always seem to find so much to say when I dig into this essay!
Part 3, "Children"
* Haven't we all seen books advertised as suitable for kids from "six to sixty" or whatever? I was quite amused to learn that this particular bit of advertising language had been around at least since the time of the essay! Now I wonder how far it dates back; I wouldn't be surprised if it went all the way back the time when children's books (apart from instructional tales) started to be regarded as a distinct and separate branch of literature.
* I like Tolkien's comment about how children are not some kind of different species, but just normal, immature humans. There speaks the man who had four children of his own!
* The point about fairy-stories being given to children as a way of stuffing them out of adult sight is a very interesting one. I like the metaphor of an attic, the idea that we as a society tend to shove any old thing that we're a bit ashamed of into "children's territory." There's no proof, of course, but it does seem plausible to me. I'm thinking, for instance, of a friend of mine who sniffs at anything lighter than LOTR, classifying it as "just a kids' book." And even LOTR is a bit suspect in her eyes for not having enough sex in it.
* Also, I'd say that (western) society values sophistication very much these days--perhaps it always has? Or is sophistication just especially in fashion right now? And fairy tales are seen as naive, as the opposite of sophisticated. What's even more interesting is the way adults are allowed to play with fairy tales as long as we don't take them at face value. I'm thinking now of things like the book/musical Wicked, or the recent movie Enchanted. (Disclaimer: I haven't read/seen either one, so I'm going on reputation here.) Or possibly Terry Pratchett in one of his deconstructionist moods, though he sometimes slyly turns around and affirms what he's just torn down.
* I do wonder what his thoughts are on any changes to the stories; he disapproves of "adapting them for children," but perhaps it could be argued that this is part of the process by which such stories survive? Maybe he doesn't see the stories as things that are still evolving, but as things which are now complete and should be preserved. On the other hand, he later says that the stories we have today are not the ones that our so-called naked ancestors told, even if some of the elements in them go back that far. That definitely sounds like a recognition and acceptance of how things change.
* I really like the point that liking fairy tales is more a matter of personal taste than of age.
* His Note C, about what children who write actually make up, is fascinating. I actually did go through a phase around the age of about six where I wrote and illustrated a LOT of stories. I can't remember for sure whether any of them were about animals, but I think there probably were a few. I'm almost certain that at least a couple were about mermaids. But most of them, if my memory isn't playing tricks on me, were everyday, slice-of-life stories of children who lived in the real world. Of course, my plotting skills weren't up to constructing anything as complex as a fairy-tale plot, but the fact that I didn't even draw on very many fairy-tale elements is interesting. It seems to support Tolkien's theory that most children don't naturally tell stories that way.
* I don't remember troubling myself very much as a child with the question of whether fairy tales were true or not. Not after the age of about five, anyway. It was pretty clear that they were set in the distant past, so I wasn't too worried about dragons coming to my neighborhood. I wonder whether this had anything to do with the fact that I live in the United States, where everything is terribly new? Maybe it would all have seemed more possible if there was a ruined castle just down the road.
* I also think I remember managing a sort of double layer of belief as a child. For example, I'd never met any talking rabbits myself and didn't expect any of the ones I saw on the lawn to speak to me...but on the other hand, I was open to the idea that there might be talking rabbits somewhere. And I definitely remember somehow (again, at about age six) having the idea that if I could push hard enough on one of the walls of the girls' bathroom at school, it might just move and open a doorway to some kind of magical land. At least, I sort of believed it--enough to try it on more than one occasion!--but some part of my mind also suspected that that sort of thing only happened in books.
* The distinction between "willing suspension of disbelief" and truly being lost in a story makes a lot of sense to me. I particularly like his description of his state of mind while watching cricket, and how it differs from real immersion.
* Actually, a great deal of this essay makes sense to me; it just seems so naturally applicable to the way real people actually read and experience stories, as opposed to some of the more heavily constructed ideas of formal lit-crit. (I suppose it would all be considered conservative to the point of stodginess in modern lit-crit circles, so it's probably a good thing I didn't go for that as a career.)
* I can well believe that Alice didn't produce the "desire" that a real fairy-story would, but I hope JRRT would concede that it's a successful as a dream-tale. I have loved the Alice books for as long as I can remember, but I don't recall ever wanting to be Alice or experience the things she experienced. In that sense, I know what JRRT meant about it being "merely" amusing.
* When the ROTK-EE movie came out, I was quite furious about the inserted scene between Faramir and Pippin in which Faramir says that he neglected his studies as a child because he dreamt of fighting dragons. Someone suggested that it might have been intended as a nod to this statement of JRRT's:
I desired dragons with a profound desire. Of course, I in my timid body did not wish to have them in the neighbourhood, intruding into my relatively safe world, in which it was, for instance, possible to read stories in peace of mind, free from fear. […] The dweller in the quiet and fertile plains may hear of the tormented hills and the unharvested sea and long for them in his heart. For the heart is hard though the body be soft.
I still don't like the movie line, but the thought that it might be connected to this mollifies me just a little. It is a wonderful quote. It really seems more applicable to Bilbo, Frodo, or even Sam than Faramir, though!
* I was very interested in the firm distinction JRRT makes between faërie and the natural world, and how irritated he felt at any attempt to mix or compare the two:
I was keenly alive to the beauty of "Real things," but it seemed to me quibbling to confuse this with the wonder of "Other things." ...I did not want to be quibbled into Science and cheated out of Faërie by people who seemed to assume that by some kind of original sin I should prefer fairy-tales, but according to some kind of new religion I ought to be induced to like science.
This strikes me as a side effect of the idea that fairy tales are only for children! The underlying thought is that introducing children to science is like bringing them out of childhood and toward adulthood.
* Not only does Note D give me a vivid picture of young John embarking on a rant of the sort he would perfect later in life, but I think it makes an excellent point about how people read different things for different purposes. I love the fact that he can appreciate both "real things" and "other things," without prioritizing one over the other.
* Hmph, I liked The Blue Bird as a child! I remember seeing an excellent version of it which I believe was made for television.
* I seem to remember not particularly caring what the punishment suffered by the baddies in most stories was, as long as they had one. I'm a little hazy on when I started feeling this way, but I do remember thinking that some of the punishments in some versions of stories were rather excessive--Cinderella's stepsisters having to dance themselves to death in red-hot shoes, for instance.
* I nodded along with his distinctions about how the terms "child" and "adult" can each have both a positive and a negative connotation.
* It occurs to me that the plea with which this section ends, for adults and children alike to read fairy-stories, must have sounded much more radical at the time it was said. Nowadays, fantasy--quite a large part of it imitating or at least inspired by Tolkien's work--gets as much respect as any genre fiction ever does, for adult reading matter. But in 1939, fantasy as a genre didn't really exist yet.
* Relatedly, I really wonder to what degree Tolkien was consciously trying, in LOTR (and perhaps even more in The Silmarillion) to create fairy-stories for adults.
Useful Link:
Andrew Lang at Project Gutenberg (includes the various colored Fairy Books as well as Prince Prigio and Prince Ricardo)
This bit of the introduction to The Green Fairy Book is the sort of thing JRRT is reacting to in his essay:
...Men were much like children in their minds long ago, long, long ago.... They believed that witches could turn people into beasts, that beasts could speak, that magic rings could make their owners invisible, and all the other wonders in the stories. Then, as the world became grown-up, the fairy tales which were not written down would have been quite forgotten but that the old grannies remembered them, and told them to the little grandchildren....
I do think he probably agreed with (and chuckled at) this part, though:
There are not many people now, perhaps there are none, who can write really good fairy tales, because they do not believe enough in their own stories, and because they want to be wittier than it has pleased Heaven to make them.
That made me wonder what Andrew Lang would have thought if he could have lived long enough to read The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings! I hope he'd have wept with delight to find that there were, in fact, still a few who could write fairy tales.
And finally, some questions...
Did you believe that the stories you heard as a child were true?
Did you believe that dragons and other fantastic elements in stories you heard were real?
Did you often ask whether stories you heard were true?
What sort of stories did you make up most often as a child?
Part 3, "Children"
* Haven't we all seen books advertised as suitable for kids from "six to sixty" or whatever? I was quite amused to learn that this particular bit of advertising language had been around at least since the time of the essay! Now I wonder how far it dates back; I wouldn't be surprised if it went all the way back the time when children's books (apart from instructional tales) started to be regarded as a distinct and separate branch of literature.
* I like Tolkien's comment about how children are not some kind of different species, but just normal, immature humans. There speaks the man who had four children of his own!
* The point about fairy-stories being given to children as a way of stuffing them out of adult sight is a very interesting one. I like the metaphor of an attic, the idea that we as a society tend to shove any old thing that we're a bit ashamed of into "children's territory." There's no proof, of course, but it does seem plausible to me. I'm thinking, for instance, of a friend of mine who sniffs at anything lighter than LOTR, classifying it as "just a kids' book." And even LOTR is a bit suspect in her eyes for not having enough sex in it.
* Also, I'd say that (western) society values sophistication very much these days--perhaps it always has? Or is sophistication just especially in fashion right now? And fairy tales are seen as naive, as the opposite of sophisticated. What's even more interesting is the way adults are allowed to play with fairy tales as long as we don't take them at face value. I'm thinking now of things like the book/musical Wicked, or the recent movie Enchanted. (Disclaimer: I haven't read/seen either one, so I'm going on reputation here.) Or possibly Terry Pratchett in one of his deconstructionist moods, though he sometimes slyly turns around and affirms what he's just torn down.
* I do wonder what his thoughts are on any changes to the stories; he disapproves of "adapting them for children," but perhaps it could be argued that this is part of the process by which such stories survive? Maybe he doesn't see the stories as things that are still evolving, but as things which are now complete and should be preserved. On the other hand, he later says that the stories we have today are not the ones that our so-called naked ancestors told, even if some of the elements in them go back that far. That definitely sounds like a recognition and acceptance of how things change.
* I really like the point that liking fairy tales is more a matter of personal taste than of age.
* His Note C, about what children who write actually make up, is fascinating. I actually did go through a phase around the age of about six where I wrote and illustrated a LOT of stories. I can't remember for sure whether any of them were about animals, but I think there probably were a few. I'm almost certain that at least a couple were about mermaids. But most of them, if my memory isn't playing tricks on me, were everyday, slice-of-life stories of children who lived in the real world. Of course, my plotting skills weren't up to constructing anything as complex as a fairy-tale plot, but the fact that I didn't even draw on very many fairy-tale elements is interesting. It seems to support Tolkien's theory that most children don't naturally tell stories that way.
* I don't remember troubling myself very much as a child with the question of whether fairy tales were true or not. Not after the age of about five, anyway. It was pretty clear that they were set in the distant past, so I wasn't too worried about dragons coming to my neighborhood. I wonder whether this had anything to do with the fact that I live in the United States, where everything is terribly new? Maybe it would all have seemed more possible if there was a ruined castle just down the road.
* I also think I remember managing a sort of double layer of belief as a child. For example, I'd never met any talking rabbits myself and didn't expect any of the ones I saw on the lawn to speak to me...but on the other hand, I was open to the idea that there might be talking rabbits somewhere. And I definitely remember somehow (again, at about age six) having the idea that if I could push hard enough on one of the walls of the girls' bathroom at school, it might just move and open a doorway to some kind of magical land. At least, I sort of believed it--enough to try it on more than one occasion!--but some part of my mind also suspected that that sort of thing only happened in books.
* The distinction between "willing suspension of disbelief" and truly being lost in a story makes a lot of sense to me. I particularly like his description of his state of mind while watching cricket, and how it differs from real immersion.
* Actually, a great deal of this essay makes sense to me; it just seems so naturally applicable to the way real people actually read and experience stories, as opposed to some of the more heavily constructed ideas of formal lit-crit. (I suppose it would all be considered conservative to the point of stodginess in modern lit-crit circles, so it's probably a good thing I didn't go for that as a career.)
* I can well believe that Alice didn't produce the "desire" that a real fairy-story would, but I hope JRRT would concede that it's a successful as a dream-tale. I have loved the Alice books for as long as I can remember, but I don't recall ever wanting to be Alice or experience the things she experienced. In that sense, I know what JRRT meant about it being "merely" amusing.
* When the ROTK-EE movie came out, I was quite furious about the inserted scene between Faramir and Pippin in which Faramir says that he neglected his studies as a child because he dreamt of fighting dragons. Someone suggested that it might have been intended as a nod to this statement of JRRT's:
I desired dragons with a profound desire. Of course, I in my timid body did not wish to have them in the neighbourhood, intruding into my relatively safe world, in which it was, for instance, possible to read stories in peace of mind, free from fear. […] The dweller in the quiet and fertile plains may hear of the tormented hills and the unharvested sea and long for them in his heart. For the heart is hard though the body be soft.
I still don't like the movie line, but the thought that it might be connected to this mollifies me just a little. It is a wonderful quote. It really seems more applicable to Bilbo, Frodo, or even Sam than Faramir, though!
* I was very interested in the firm distinction JRRT makes between faërie and the natural world, and how irritated he felt at any attempt to mix or compare the two:
I was keenly alive to the beauty of "Real things," but it seemed to me quibbling to confuse this with the wonder of "Other things." ...I did not want to be quibbled into Science and cheated out of Faërie by people who seemed to assume that by some kind of original sin I should prefer fairy-tales, but according to some kind of new religion I ought to be induced to like science.
This strikes me as a side effect of the idea that fairy tales are only for children! The underlying thought is that introducing children to science is like bringing them out of childhood and toward adulthood.
* Not only does Note D give me a vivid picture of young John embarking on a rant of the sort he would perfect later in life, but I think it makes an excellent point about how people read different things for different purposes. I love the fact that he can appreciate both "real things" and "other things," without prioritizing one over the other.
* Hmph, I liked The Blue Bird as a child! I remember seeing an excellent version of it which I believe was made for television.
* I seem to remember not particularly caring what the punishment suffered by the baddies in most stories was, as long as they had one. I'm a little hazy on when I started feeling this way, but I do remember thinking that some of the punishments in some versions of stories were rather excessive--Cinderella's stepsisters having to dance themselves to death in red-hot shoes, for instance.
* I nodded along with his distinctions about how the terms "child" and "adult" can each have both a positive and a negative connotation.
* It occurs to me that the plea with which this section ends, for adults and children alike to read fairy-stories, must have sounded much more radical at the time it was said. Nowadays, fantasy--quite a large part of it imitating or at least inspired by Tolkien's work--gets as much respect as any genre fiction ever does, for adult reading matter. But in 1939, fantasy as a genre didn't really exist yet.
* Relatedly, I really wonder to what degree Tolkien was consciously trying, in LOTR (and perhaps even more in The Silmarillion) to create fairy-stories for adults.
Useful Link:
Andrew Lang at Project Gutenberg (includes the various colored Fairy Books as well as Prince Prigio and Prince Ricardo)
This bit of the introduction to The Green Fairy Book is the sort of thing JRRT is reacting to in his essay:
...Men were much like children in their minds long ago, long, long ago.... They believed that witches could turn people into beasts, that beasts could speak, that magic rings could make their owners invisible, and all the other wonders in the stories. Then, as the world became grown-up, the fairy tales which were not written down would have been quite forgotten but that the old grannies remembered them, and told them to the little grandchildren....
I do think he probably agreed with (and chuckled at) this part, though:
There are not many people now, perhaps there are none, who can write really good fairy tales, because they do not believe enough in their own stories, and because they want to be wittier than it has pleased Heaven to make them.
That made me wonder what Andrew Lang would have thought if he could have lived long enough to read The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings! I hope he'd have wept with delight to find that there were, in fact, still a few who could write fairy tales.
And finally, some questions...
Did you believe that the stories you heard as a child were true?
Did you believe that dragons and other fantastic elements in stories you heard were real?
Did you often ask whether stories you heard were true?
What sort of stories did you make up most often as a child?