Phantastes: A Faerie Romance for Men and Women

“And, stranger still, where this carpet, which I had myself designed to imitate a field of grass and daisies, bordered the course of the little stream, the grass-blades and daisies seemed to wave in a tiny breeze that followed the water’s flow; while under the rivulet they bent and swayed with every motion of the changeful current […].”

This passage exemplifies MacDonald’s attention to detail and his care in creating a sense of beauty and wonder. It contains a key point: Anodos designed the carpet himself to resemble a field of flowers. Anodos has been seeking all his life for the magic he finds in the fairy country.

“Pocket, who had been expelled from the company by common consent, went sulkily away towards her hammock, for she was the fairy of the calceolaria, and looked rather wicked. When she reached its stem, she stopped and looked round. I could not help speaking to her, for I stood near her. I said, ‘Pocket, how could you be so naughty?’

‘I am never naughty,’ she said, half-crossly, half-defiantly; ‘only if you come near my hammock, I will bite you, and then you will go away.’

‘Why did you bite poor Primrose?’

‘Because she said we should never see Snowdrop; as if we were not good enough to look at her, and she was, the proud thing!—served her right!’

‘Oh, Pocket, Pocket,’ said I.”

This playful scene illustrates MacDonald’s attempt to integrate the Victorian conception of fairies as playful (and sometimes naughty) children with the older view of the Fairy people as powerful and dangerous. The garden is full of these little dramas like the small dramas of children, which seem so important to them at the time.

“The first thing I remember is the sound of a voice above me, full and low, and strangely reminding me of the sound of a gentle wind amidst the leaves of a great tree. It murmured over and over again: ‘I may love him, I may love him; for he is a man, and I am only a beech-tree.’”

The village of Huntly, where MacDonald grew up, was surrounded by beech trees, and MacDonald often wrote of them with affection as if they were mothers whose branches cradled climbing children. The Beech woman’s words—“for he is a man, and I am only a beech-tree”—imply that she is permitted to love so long as there is no possibility of carnal intimacy.

“‘Then take heed,’ [the knight] rejoined; ‘for, see my armor—I put it off; and as it befell to him, so has it befallen to me. I that was proud am humble now. Yet is she terribly beautiful—beware. Never,’ he added, raising his head, ‘shall this armor be furbished, but by the blows of knightly encounter, until the last speck has disappeared from every spot where the battle-axe and sword of evil-doers, or noble foes, might fall; when I shall again lift my head, and say to my squire, “Do thy duty once more, and make this armor shine.”’”

This passage confirms that the knight is indeed supposed to be Sir Percival, as this is what happened in the actual Grail legend concerning Sir Percival. It tells the reader (and Anodos) what is required to restore the armor of virtue to its former shine, and it foreshadows Anodos’s eventual role as the knight’s squire. The knight is also the adult version of Anodos, having already passed through the tests and trials.

“The odours of night arose, and bathed me in that luxurious mournfulness peculiar to them, as if the plants whence they floated had been watered with bygone tears. Earth drew me towards her bosom; I felt as if I could fall down and kiss her. I forgot I was in Fairy Land, and seemed to be walking in a perfect night of our own old nursing earth.”

In this passage, Anodos discovers the enchantment in his own world. The beauty of a night in his own world is no less beautiful than a night in Fairy Land. It suggests that the author has often walked on moonlit nights and felt he was in a magical world.

“‘But tell me how it is that she could be so beautiful without any heart at all—without any place even for a heart to live in.’

‘I cannot quite tell,’ [the matron] said; ‘but I am sure she would not look so beautiful if she did not take means to make herself look more beautiful than she is. […] But the chief thing that makes her beautiful is this: that, although she loves no man, she loves the love of any man […].’”

This passage has a double meaning. On the surface, MacDonald describes a type of woman he has observed. This kind of woman craves admiration and possibly the power that comes with it, but she has no substance. This is the nature of the huldra, an obvious metaphor. The deeper symbolism is that of a false faith. The Marble Lady represents Enlightenment. The huldra, manifesting as the Marble Lady, appears to be truth but has no substance.

“I found cheerfulness to be like life itself—not to be created by any argument. Afterwards I learned, that the best way to manage some kinds of pain filled thoughts, is to dare them to do their worst; to let them lie and gnaw at your heart till they are tired; and you find you still have a residue of life they cannot kill.”

This philosophy may seem counterintuitive. The natural impulse might be to try to argue oneself out of a painful thought or suppress it and avoid anything that triggers it. MacDonald proposes examining painful ideas, exploring them deeply, and recognizing that they have no power. This is similar to cognitive behavioral therapy, in which one examines one’s painful thoughts and recognizes that exposure to challenges makes one stronger.

“[…] as darkness had no beginning, neither will it ever have an end. So, then, is it eternal. The negation of aught else, is its affirmation. Where the light cannot come, there abideth the darkness. The light doth but hollow a mine out of the infinite extension of the darkness. And ever upon the steps of the light treadeth the darkness; yea, springeth in fountains and wells amidst it, from the secret channels of its mighty sea. Truly, man is but a passing flame, moving unquietly amid the surrounding rest of night; without which he yet could not be, and whereof he is in part compounded.”

This passage from the ogress’s book is a statement of the author’s philosophy with Light and Dark reversed. In particular, the image of Light hollowing a mine out of darkness is a clear reversal, like a photographic negative. It is a beautiful passage in its own way, which suggests the attraction of Darkness, explaining why a person might be drawn to it. This passage inspires Anodos to call this hut the Church of Darkness.

“[…] suddenly, and as if it had been running fast from a far distance for this very point, and had turned the corner without abating its swiftness, a dark figure sped into and along the passage from the blue opening at the remote end. […] On and on it came, with a speedy approach but delayed arrival; till, at last, through the many gradations of approach, it seemed to come within the sphere of myself, rushed up to me, and passed me into the cottage. All I could tell of its appearance was, that it seemed to be a dark human figure. Its motion was entirely noiseless, and might be called a gliding, were it not that it appeared that of a runner, but with ghostly feet.”

Like the description of the Ash spirit, this scene is cinematic in its effect. Modern horror movies often use some of the images here—the approaching horror that seems to jump forward like a skipping cinematic reel (many gradations of approach) and the perception of noiseless gliding. This is another example of MacDonald’s immersive world that transformed the fantasy genre for later generations of writers.

“[…] I now began to feel something like satisfaction in the presence of the shadow. I began to be rather vain of my attendant, saying to myself, ‘In a land like this, with so many illusions everywhere, I need his aid to disenchant the things around me. He does away with all appearances, and shows me things in their true colour and form. And I am not one to be fooled with the vanities of the common crowd. I will not see beauty where there is none. I will dare to behold things as they are. And if I live in a waste instead of a paradise, I will live knowing where I live.”

Anodos is gradually adopting the creed of the farmer, who is happy in his mundane world. It is also MacDonald’s interpretation of the Age of Enlightenment/Science/Reason. Although the Enlightenment introduced the idea of equality and understanding based on the scientific method, MacDonald and the Romantics felt that Science and Reason robbed the world of its beauty and magic. MacDonald also expresses the sense that reason has a vanity and smugness that he finds distasteful.

“I came to a village, the inhabitants of which could not at first sight be distinguished from the dwellers in our land. They rather avoided than sought my company, though they were very pleasant when I addressed them. But at last I observed, that whenever I came within a certain distance of any one of them…the whole appearance of the person began to change. […] When I receded to the former distance, the former appearance was restored.”

The entire episode in the village seems particularly autobiographical. MacDonald is describing his sense of alienation from the people in his world. He can interact pleasantly as long as he maintains a distance. To come too close repels him, revealing that his inner nature is incompatible with theirs. The fact that the villagers also avoid him suggests that they detect that he is unlike them.

“Why are all reflections lovelier than what we call the reality? […] All mirrors are magic mirrors.”

Shortly after, Anodos will read a story about the interactions of reality and reflection. The theme of mirrors and reflections occurs in the work of MacDonald’s contemporaries and his followers. MacDonald encouraged his friend Lewis Carroll to seek publication for Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. Its sequel—Alice Through the Looking Glass—specifically opens with a scene in which Alice wonders what the mirror world is like and passes through the mirror to find that the mirror world is full of magic and strangeness.

“They who believe in the influences of the stars over the fates of men, are, in feeling at least, nearer the truth than they who regard the heavenly bodies as related to them merely by a common obedience to an external law. All that man sees has to do with man. […] No shining belt or gleaming moon, no red and green glory in a self-encircling twin-star, but has a relation with the hidden things of a man’s soul, and, it may be, with the secret history of his body as well. They are portions of the living house wherein he abides.”

This is the tension between the Age of Science and the Romantic movement. Science, in MacDonald’s view, reduces the universe to atoms and mathematical orbits, cold and meaningless. The Romantics sought meaning through connection to the universe and the natural world. This passage observes the beauty of the universe and shows mankind to be intimately entwined with that beauty.

“After they grow up, the men and women are but little together. There is this peculiar difference between them, which likewise distinguishes the women from those of the earth. The men alone have arms; the women have only wings. Resplendent wings are they, wherein they can shroud themselves from head to foot in a panoply of glistering glory.”

Unlike the men, the women of the story are angelic in aspect. The author represents them as apart from the men, a society to themselves. Their wings render them both untouching and untouchable. They do not need the men at all since reproduction is a matter of finding babies under trees and behind bushes. This society is “pure” without the contamination of sexuality, and that “purity” is specifically embodied in women.

“Sometimes [the story] seemed only to represent a simple story of ordinary life, perhaps almost of universal life; wherein two souls, loving each other and longing to come nearer, do, after all, but behold each other as in a glass darkly.”

This passage contains the mirror motif. In other instances, mirrors turn the mundane world into magic. In this case, the mirror seems to obscure and separate the objects it reflects, allowing neither to see the other. The implication is that no two people can ever truly know each other, no matter how close in spirit. Metaphysically speaking, the lady in the mirror represents the enlightenment Cosmo tries to attract and set free, but he does so only at the point of death.

“Though of a noble family, [Cosmo] was poor, and prided himself upon the independence that poverty gives; for what will not a man pride himself upon, when he cannot get rid of it?”

This is a deceptively simple observation. To be poor but not bitter or envious would seem to be a virtue. However, Cosmo’s pride isolates him from his peers. It manifests the foolishness he must shed to win enlightenment from his lady. He is also not conscious of his poverty in relation to God, the lack of which must be remedied before he can receive enlightenment.

“[…] suddenly one turned round, and with a loud whoop, rushed into the midst of the others. In an instant, the whole was one writhing and tumbling heap of contortion […]. As soon as one was worked out of the mass, he bounded off a few paces, and then, with a somersault and a run, threw himself gyrating into the air, and descended with all his weight on the summit of the heaving and struggling chaos of fantastic figures.”

A moment earlier, the kobolds had been taunting Anodos. The author might have ended the scene with Anodos leaving unmolested. Instead, MacDonald adds this detailed scene of kobold life. The incident enhances the sense of an immersive world for the reader in which the underground creatures have a life and society entirely separate from Anodos.

“Soon I fell asleep, overcome with fatigue and delight. In dreams of unspeakable joy—of restored friendships; of revived embraces; of love which said it had never died; of faces that had vanished long ago, yet said with smiling lips that they knew nothing of the grave; of pardons implored, and granted with such bursting floods of love, that I was almost glad I had sinned […].”

Having emerged from the underworld and surrendered himself to the icy sea, Anodos finds that by defying his fear, he is forgiven and washed clean of past sins. He has undergone a baptism and been embraced by the sacred feminine. He has trials yet to go through, but he has passed this test.

“‘Surely this youth will not serve our ends,’ said [one of the brothers], ‘for he weeps.’

The old woman smiled. ‘Past tears are present strength…’if I mistake not, he will make you weep till your tears are dry for ever. Tears are the only cure for weeping.’”

The chivalric ideal of masculinity valued courage, strength of arms, virtue, purity, and love (especially chaste love). It didn’t value great stoicism in the face of sorrow. Knights who lost a loved companion or lady were often described as weeping freely. The idea of emotional stoicism is a more modern ideal. MacDonald shows how men can be strong without being emotionally isolated.

“I was approaching a forest. Everywhere in Fairy Land forests are the places where one may most certainly expect adventures.”

This is a key observation about fairy and folk tales and the role of forests. Fairy tales evolved in times when northern European countries were heavily forested, and forests were dark, frightening, and full of predators. They were naturally associated with danger, chaos, adventure, and the unknown. Forests are traditionally the place where the adventurer experiences transformation.

“Do you not know me? But you hurt me, and that, I suppose, makes it easy for a man to forget. You broke my globe. Yet I thank you. […] I took the pieces, all black, and wet with crying over them, to the Fairy Queen. [...]; but she sent me away without it, and I have not seen it since. Nor do I care for it now. I have something so much better. I do not need the globe to play to me; for I can sing. I could not sing at all before. Now I go about everywhere through Fairy Land, singing till my heart is like to break, just like my globe, for very joy at my own songs. And wherever I go, my songs do good, and deliver people. And now I have delivered you, and I am so happy.”

Some readers have seen an explicitly sexual connotation in the incident with the girl and her singing globe. In the context of MacDonald’s philosophy, the girl’s gladness is inconsistent with an explicitly sexual interpretation. A broken heart is a more likely parallel, particularly when the girl says, “as if my heart would break.” The moral point is that sorrow is ennobling. Her broken heart made her a woman, giving her the wisdom and power to do good.

“I learned that he that will be a hero, will barely be a man; that he that will be nothing but a doer of his work, is sure of his manhood.”

Manhood is one of the major themes of the story. Manhood defines both what a man should be and what is demanded of him if he will serve God. The accomplishment of glorious deeds is little more than vanity. Men who crave power, dominance, and adulation are boys as Anodos has been. The essence of manhood in the story is doing what needs to be done for the sake of the doing.

“Self will come to life even in the slaying of self; but there is ever something deeper and stronger than it, which will emerge at last from the unknown abysses of the soul: will it be as a solemn gloom, burning with eyes? or a clear morning after the rain? or a smiling child, that finds itself nowhere, and everywhere?”

Anodos has surrendered his vain, prideful self, and the self now exposed is prideful in its own way, vain of his very humility. MacDonald is observing a common stage of enlightenment in which the individual, first discovering a lack in him or herself experiences a vanity, even a sense of superiority in recognizing his or her own wrongness. It is the zeal of the new convert, which usually mellows into the calm of confidence.