Introduction:
Christian author Oswald Chambers wrote that "it is a striking indication of the trend and shallowness of the modern reading public that George MacDonald's books have been so neglected" (The Complete Works of Oswald Chambers, p. 287). Considering that as a pastor, poet and novelist Macdonald has had great influence on Lewis, Chesterton, Lewis Caroll, Mark Twain, and many others, it is to our own hurt that we ignore George MacDonald. According to C.S. Lewis “I know hardly any other writer who seems to be closer, or more continually close, to the Spirit of Christ Himself” (Lewis, George MacDonald: An Anthology, Preface). For Lewis, it is MacDonald’s fantasy rather than his novels that brings his Christ-like worldview best to the reader. It is his fantasies, which “hovers between the allegorical and the mythopœic” (ibid) that are truly his best books. However, Lewis also mentions the difficulty in interpreting his fantasy, that “the meaning, the suggestion, the radiance, is incarnate in the whole story: it is only by chance that you find any detachable merits [from the story] (ibid). Despite the difficulty in detaching merit from the story, it will nevertheless be worthwhile to examine The Princess and the Goblin and discover examples of vice and virtue, divine providence, and MacDonald’s ability to delight the reader with his presentation of each.
Section I: Snappy Summary
First, a brief summary of the plot, to make sure we’re all on the same page. The story centers on Princess Irene, who lives near the mountains and has never seen the stars at night for fear of goblins living under the mountain who come out to wreck mischief on their neighbours. Much of the story follows Irene’s discovery of her great grandmother and understanding who she is, as well as the story of Curdie, a 12 year old miner boy who saves Irene and her nurse from the goblins, and eventually discovers the goblins plot to overthrow the humans by either marrying Irene to the goblin prince, or flooding the human kingdom. Curdie is discovered and captured by the goblins, but by her grandmother’s direction Irene rescues Curdie, whereupon he saves both the princess from goblin marriage, and the kingdom from the goblin’s flood, which instead comes upon their own heads.
Section II: Vice and Virtue
Repeatedly MacDonald uses phrases concerning princess Irene like “Not to be believed does not at all agree with princesses: for a real princess cannot tell a lie.” (23), or “some little girls would have been afraid to find themselves thus alone in the middle of the night, but Irene was a princess.” (76). Being a princess then has less to do with civic duties and more to do with moral ones. This becomes even clearer when the miner boy Curdie is considered a prince:
If a true princess has done wrong, she is always uneasy until she has had an opportunity of throwing the wrongness away from her by saying: 'I did it; and I wish I had not; and I am sorry for having done it.' So you see there is some ground for supposing that Curdie was not a miner only, but a prince as well. (169).
If Curdie the miner is a prince, it is clear prince and princess are terms of ‘spiritual royalty’. Irene and Curdie are kingly and queenly because of their virtue: Curdie is both manly and courageous: as a twelve year old boy, he works into the night to save enough money to buy his mother a petticoat, tracks down the goblin’s royal palace and uncovers their plot to steal the princess on his own, battles the goblins and their monsters to save the princess, and warns the king and his household in time to save all their lives. Irene also embodies several virtues: she knows “a princess must do as she promises,” (195), and in the chapter titled “Irene behaves like a princess,” Irene stands up to her nurse for her own honor, and begins managing her household with authority. Pitted against Irene’s and Curdies’ regal examples of courage, wisdom and self responsibility are the goblins.
The goblins “so heartily cherished the ancestral grudge against those who occupied their former possessions and especially against the descendants of the king who had caused their expulsion, that they sought every opportunity of tormenting them in ways that were as odd as their inventors” (10). Their ancestral grudge is doubly clear when Curdie interacts with the royal goblin household: they talk of their more refined taste of dark caverns then the horrid open land which is “far too glaring for our quieter and more refined taste” (126), and of how feeble the sun-people are compared to their own strength. However the goblin’s talk of refinement and superiority is only talk and nothing more: if the sun-people are so horrible and uncouth, why do the goblins want to marry their goblin prince to their human princess? If the goblins are so superior intellectually, in strength, and in numbers, why have the goblins not destroyed the sun people entirely, instead of the sad reality that their bravest warriors only accomplish stealing milk from nearby farms (126)? It seems the goblins harbor bitterness against the sun people for generations, so much so that though they desire the sun people’s land and prosperity, they would rather see both destroyed in a flood than the sun people should have it. Their talk is as ludicrous and comical as their shapes because their talk is trying (unsuccessfully) to cover an enormous pile of envy. Indeed the extent of their envy is the direct cause of their extreme shape: sometime after the goblin’s defeat at the hands of Curdie, “their skulls became softer as well as their hearts, and their feet grew harder, and by degrees they became friendly with the inhabitants of the mountain and even with the miners” (203). It seems hard heads and soft feet are a direct consequence of their unfriendliness to the miners and sun people: an unfriendliness which is a direct result of envy. Curdie’s mother says it best “[the goblins] think so much of themselves...small creatures always do: the bantam is the proudest cock in my little yard” (163). It is almost as if their heads have swollen with pride, hardened with stubbornness, and bitterness has made their feet soft and easily offended. Envy, born of pride, thinks much of itself but is nonetheless petty, childish, and as the end of the book shows, self destructive. Thus the title of the book is quite apt: by making goblin singular in the title, MacDonald does not contrast an individual princess with a specific race of goblins, but rather princess and goblin qualities: MacDonald contrasts courage, keeping your word, self responsibility on the one hand, and bitterness, envy, and self destruction on the other.
Section III: Great Grandmother Irene
Another of the chief virtues of the story that both Irene and eventually Curdie embody is that of faithful obedience, particularly to Irene’s great grandmother. From the beginning of the story when she first finds her great grandmother, to when she must follow her grandmother’s thread all the way into the goblin’s mountain and out again, to when Curdie himself must find the thread and trust its direction—Curdie and Irene both learn about her great grandmother enough to trust her and obey her. Great Grandmother then, essentially functions like Divine Providence: through her omnipotent instruction and guidance the heroes literally walk through dark places fearing no evil for her thread leads them and guides them. As we shall soon see, Great grandmother gives Irene the courage and guidance she needs to rescue Curdie and become a princess: Curdie receives the humility and guidance to in turn save the princess and the kingdom and become a prince. Great Grandmother is far removed from simply a powerful magician: just as the goblins embodiment of envy hovers between allegory and myth, so Great Grandmother hovers on the verge of an allegory for God’s sovereign will.
Section IV: Stars
The story begins with a curious description of Irene: “her face was fair and pretty, with eyes like two bits of night sky, each with a star dissolved in the blue. Those eyes you would have thought must have known they came from there, so often were they turned up in that direction” (1). It is also curious that the plot’s tension begins when we realize Irene has never seen the stars because of the threat the goblin’s pose. Irene’s great grandmother is also inextricably linked with stars, and as Irene meets her grandmother more and more, she is introduced to more and more stars. Great Grandmother’s bedroom is “spangled all over with what looked like stars of silver” (80), later her slippers “glimmered with the Milky Way” (99), and when Irene first sees her she is dressed in black velvet, and “on the black dress her hair shone like silver” (16), suggesting Great Grandmother is dressed exactly like a star. However the best example of star imagery is Great Grandmother’s moon which shines and helps the faithful in trouble. Towards the middle of the story, as Irene flees from a monster out of her room and into the night where she loses her way, suddenly “a great silvery globe was hanging in the air; and as she gazed at the lovely thing, her courage revived” (94), and trusting her great grandmother she runs to safety. Irene’s part of the story ends as the king and Irene say their farewells and “rode away down the side of the new stream...and into the starry night” (201). Irene begins the story in fear and is considered “little more than an infant,” by the household. As she trusts her great grandmother more, she matures from frightened girl to true princess, and at the story’s resolution when waters flood the king's house, we witness the culmination of her princessly character. This scene is a culmination of her faith: to Curdie’s consternation that grandmother will perish in the flood Irene replies, smiling that “her grandmother is in no danger” (199). This scene is also the culmination of her spiritual royalty: to the King’s satisfaction Irene is a true princess and makes good on her kiss promised to Curdie. This scene is also the culmination of her responsibility, as she rides with the king instead of waiting for him safely indoors. It seems fitting then, when she is most a princess, and perhaps, most like her Great Grandmother, that Irene is finally riding under the stars.
Conclusion:
The Princess and the Goblin presents virtue and envy while also delighting the reader with wit, grand adventure, wicked villains and heroic heroes. The story also features an array of Christian imagery, from Divine Providence, to faithful obedience. Perhaps the best thing about the book however is that it presents both virtue and Christian imagery in a way that makes you see both what they are and desire them. Lewis again:
The quality which had enchanted me in his imaginative works turned out to be the quality of the real universe, the divine, magical, terrifying and ecstatic reality in which we all live. I should have been shocked in my ’teens if anyone had told me that what I learned to love in Phantastes was goodness. But now that I know, I see there was no deception. The deception is all the other way round—in that prosaic moralism which confines goodness to the region of Law and Duty, which never lets us feel in our face the sweet air blowing from ‘the land of righteousness’, never reveals that elusive Form which if once seen must inevitably be desired with all but sensuous desire—the thing (in Sappho’s phrase) ‘more gold than gold’ (Lewis, George MacDonald: An Anthology, Preface).
The Princess and the Goblin gives that to the reader which few novels do—that which is more gold than gold.