Hello Gentle Reader
Earlier last month in March, it had come to my attention that five hundred new fairy tales had been unearthed and discovered in Germany. The world glass slippers, magic fairy godmothers, poisonous apples that put one into a deep slumber, dwarfish men, evil queens, nasty step mothers, enchanted mirrors, witches that eat children, and gingerbread houses – this is the world that once again has been unearthed, in Germany. A local historian in Germany Franz Xaver Schbnwerth who lived from 1810 – 1886, collected these new fairy tales, myths and legends – roughly around the same time as the famous Grimm Brothers were also doing their own collection. It has been reported that the Grimm Brothers were great admires of Schbnwerth who for decades collected the legends and myths of the Bavarian region, from country folk, labourers, farmers, and servants, and placing the oral tradition of the story onto paper, and would preserve them in the books of history.
These stories of people the size of a thimble; or the marriage of a beast and a beautiful woman; these tales however at times varied from region to region and country to country, always shifting and changing. From tragic endings, to endings that became much more polite and happy. yet punishment was spared to others or the ones deserving a righteous thrashing. While in other places brutally violent scenes, of cruel torture, were very apparent, to really drive the point in. The moral or the lesson learned, were always apparent. These stories have had cultural impact from the first days that they were collected. From the days that they were orally passed down to children to teach them, to always do their chores, or to entertain them at night; eventually they grew into other area’s influencing children’s literature, and even propaganda, in war time.
I remember a story from my youth, vividly that I enjoyed greatly was the “Teeny-Tiny and the Soup Bone,” by Joseph Jacobs. The story itself sits resolutely in my mind. The thought of finding a bone, to make some soup – which at first when my mother read it to me, was positively ghoulish and romantically gothic that the bone was found in a graveyard, made me shutter with both fright and curious trepidation into the enjoyment of the story. With the resounding conclusion, of the haunting voice, of what I could only presume was a ghost wanting its missing bone back, calling out in both desperation and a simmering anger to have its bone back, and finally the teeny-tiny woman screaming out in fear for the unpleasant and justly upset ghost to take the bone back, and leave her alone. Then, my mother and I would say good night and the lights were turned off, the door partly shut. Yet like the teeny-tiny woman I was shut in, the dark. Luckily though I had no stolen bone from graveyards in the home.
Children of authors who wrote books for children, like the famous “Peter Rabbit,” by Beatrix Potter (she had no children), and “The Wind in the Willows,” by Kenneth Grahame – often at best had very ambivalent relationships with their parents at best. Two of the Llewellyn-Davies boys, to which “Peter Pan,” was written for, had committed suicide. Alison Uttley had lost her only son to suicide, and both of her husbands. However, children’s literature and the authors that wrote it, is not entirely filled of tragedies and suicides. Diana Wynne Jones, who had recently passed away in March of two thousand and eleven, did not suffer the tragedies that others had suffered. In fact as a child, Diane Wynne Jones and her family during World War II were relocated to the Lake District, the famous home of Beatrix Potter. There she encountered two very nasty creatures who were rich and famous because of children. Arthur Ransome had reportedly complained that Diane Wynne Jones, and her sister were making too much noise, at one point, and in one of her most famous retellings of her childhood, she talks about the nasty witch of Beatrix Potter, who had once slapped her. Diane Wynne Jones, childhood was not even all that wonderful or perfect. Her parents were intellectuals and progressive teachers, but they were stingy with money and affection for their children. This cruel childhood, was what started Diane Wynne Jones career in storytelling. She made up stories for her sisters and herself, and later turned it into a career. However, knowing what childhood was like for herself, perhaps Diane Wynne Jones, did not actively seek to prolong it because it was not a paradise, and that perhaps could have saved her own life from such miserable tragedies like other authors of children’s literature.
The tragedies that the authors of children’s literature had experienced, was what first had brought the attention of Dame A.S. Byatt to what would become her novel “The Children’s Book.” Which Dame A.S. Byatt sums up the tragedies of the past authors of children’s literature as:
“But they saw this, so many of them. Out of a desire of their for a perpetual childhood, a silver age.”
The research into this area, led to may discoveries for Dame A.S. Byatt, especially on the nature of fairy stories, and their connection to the hopeful socialism, and how that could be used for her own characters in her work, who identify themselves as Fabians. However fairy tales also became metaphors for the personal in this work as well, often highlighting certain undisclosed information about the personal lives of the characters. If one were to sum up the themes of this book, it is the power of writing and the responsibility of the writer – but it is also a historical look at the era as well, of children’s literature at its height, and the rise of socialism and Fabian thinking, and the discontent of woman, and the rise in women’s rights – starting with the right to vote. All of this is told in the fashion of a family chronicle through the years, and makes for quite an interesting ride.
The opening of “The Children’s Book,” is a pristine portrait of pastoral England countryside. Olive Wellwood, is a writer, of children’s fairy stories, and her income helps support her family at her home “Todefright,” which is the home of many children – Tom Wellwood, Dorothy Wellwood, Phyllis Wellwood, Hedda Wellwood, Florian Wellwood, Robin Wellwood, and Harry Wellwood – two others also exist but had died young, and they include Peter Wellwood the first child, and the recently departed Rosy Wellwood. Olive writes a story for each of her children. The most famous being the fictional “Tom Underground,” which ends with tragic results. It should come to no surprise that Olive Wellwood, comes from the working class, and a very unhappy childhood, which leads to her more socialist ideologies, and a desire and need to help others – especially the working class.
Her sister Violet Grimwith, who lives at “Todefright,” with Olive and Humphrey Wellwood, remarks to the young Phillip Warren early on:
“We have our beliefs,” said Violet “About what the world should be like. And some of us have experience – like yours – of what it shouldn’t be.”
These beliefs, cause many difficulties for some of the characters. Dorothy the oldest daughter decides she wishes to become a doctor – a surgeon nonetheless; while Hedda my favourite character decides to pick up the cause of woman feminism and take the streets with her beliefs and shared cause. However, the revolution of feminism does not entirely mean that difficulties and secrets of illegitimate children are a openly discussed commodity. The secrets of the older generation only ensure it would appear to justify the mistakes of the younger generation whose liberal leanings and naivety often lead their own lives to be unhinged in desperate moments of passion; and when the secrets of the old trickle down to the young only devastating consequences take place. One of the most common being the misplacement of identity.
When the mother one thought was their mother turns out not to be their mother, or their father is someone else, it leads to unspoken family feuds and very strained relationships. One just merely needs to look at the story that Olive Wellwood wrote for Dorothy Wellwood, about the shapeshifting world of a small animal people in the story “Miss Higgle,” – which appears strongly connected to the German fairy tale “Hans Mein Igel,” – which eventually leads one to start putting the pieces of the puzzle together, and the strained relationship, even resentment, that Dorothy feels for Olive, becomes more apparent and at times justified.
However this novel is large: at a door stopper of six hundred and seventy five pages; and it has many threads running through the tapestry of this novel, which leads to a very interesting book but becomes rather difficult after a while when dealing with all the disjointed plots and the overlap and then it all becomes rush at the end. However the ride there is wonderful. From the depleting era of the high Victorianism and its moral code of conduct, to the more relaxed and even leisurely life of the Edwardian Era and the Golden Afternoon before World War I, which is all shown in great detail – all the peculiarities are shown of the era’s and the views of the people are equally shown. The rise of socialism and the desire, for more rights of the working class, to the hopeful cause of the Fabian Society, and it all appears to end with the loss of innocence, yet to sum it up one could say that it is best described by the following quote:
“These were the people who had evaded the smoke, and looked forward to a utopian world in which smoke would be no more.”
Though it describes the Victorian Era and its smoke stacks and polluted air, it could also be a tragic description of the heavy hopes of what the Great War, was supposed to ideologically do – end all wars. Yet those utopian and naïve thoughts were best left, out of it – as tragedy once again had followed – as it has followed the characters throughout this book; their secret and private lives become cancerous and disease like. They slowly corrode and rust the relationships and the world that these people knew.
Thank-you For Reading Gentle Reader
Take Care
And As Always
Stay Well Read
*And Remember: Downloading Books Illegally is Thievery and Wrong.*
M. Mary
