The World Needs More Fairy Tales

“If any strain of my ‘broken music’ make a child’s eyes flash, or his mother’s grow for a moment dim, my labour will not have been in vain.”

I was struck by a thought last night while reading to my daughter: people no longer write fairy tales.

Sure, we have ‘renditions’ of fairy tales: the Disney renditions, the beautifully illustrated (or, as is sometimes the case, hideously distasteful) childrens’ books that recount the fairy tales of past ages…but who writes their own fairy tales these days?

If we are missing some obvious contemporary writer of childrens’ fairy tales (J.K. Rowling doesn't count), please inform us. But as it is, it doesn’t seem like the fairy tale is a popular genre these days. Certainly not as popular as the pseudo-vampire genre.

This is a tragic event for humanity. The world needs more fairy tales. I have only recently discovered the tales of George MacDonald,  who was one of the primary inspirations of Lewis, Tolkien and Chesterton. He was also Scottish and had an excellent beard, which are both endearing qualities in our opinion. In his astounding essay, “The Fantastic Imagination,” MacDonald summarizes the true nature of the fairy tale:

“The best thing you can do for your fellow, next to rousing his conscience, is---not to give him things to think about, but to wake things up that are in him; or say, to make him think things for himself. The best Nature does for us is to work in us such moods in which thoughts of high import arise. Does any respect of Nature wake but one thought? Does she ever suggest only one definite thing? Does she make any two men in the same place at the same moment think the same thing? Is she therefore a failure, because she is not definite? Is it nothing that she rouses the something deeper than the understanding---the power that underlies thoughts? Does she not set feeling and so thinking at work? Would it be better that she did this after one fashion and not after many fashions? Nature is mood-engendering, thought-provoking: such ought the sonata, such ought the fairytale to be.”

That's not to say that the fairy tale is arbitrary and without relation to law, to truth; according to MacDonald, the fairy tale "...cannot help having some meaning; if it have proportion and harmony it has vitality, and vitality is truth. The beauty may be plainer in it than the truth, but without the truth the beauty could not be, and the fairytale would give no delight." There is something spontaneous and vibrant at work in the fairy tale, beyond the arbitrary whim of fancy.  But what allows for the meaning of the story to unfold is its relation to truth. The fairy tale world is not simply one of lawless imagination, but is rather “the product of live Law,” based in a truth which, as discovered by the author himself, "came from thoughts beyond his own."

Fortunately, a good fairy tale is also timeless. My daughter and I have been reading The Princess and the Goblin every night since Christmas and are almost finished. The book is tremendous and has produced many a flashing and dim eye in daughter and mother, respectively. We recommend it to any readers who, like us, lament the loss of the fairy tale. Thank goodness there is a sequel!