Mark Hultgren   Wordpress Specialist
No one can think of a child and a story, without thinking of the fairy
tale. Is this, as some would have us believe, a bad habit of an ignorant
old world? Or can the Fairy Tale justify her popularity with truly
edifying and educational results? Is she a proper person to introduce
here, and what are her titles to merit?

Oh dear, yes! Dame Fairy Tale comes bearing a magic wand in her wrinkled
old fingers, with one wave of which she summons up that very spirit of joy
which it is our chief effort to invoke. She raps smartly on the door, and
open sesames echo to every imagination. Her red-heeled shoes twinkle down
an endless lane of adventures, and every real child's footsteps quicken
after. She is the natural, own great-grandmother of every child in the
world, and her pocketfuls of treasures are his by right of inheritance.
Shut her out, and you truly rob the children of something which is theirs;
something marking their constant kinship with the race-children of the
past, and adapted to their needs as it was to those of the generation of
long ago! If there were no other criterion at all, it would be enough that
the children love the fairy tale; we give them fairy stories, first,
because they like them. But that by no means lessens the importance of the
fact that fairy tales are also good for them.

How good? In various ways. First, perhaps, in their supreme power of
presenting truth through the guise of images. This is the way the
race-child took toward wisdom, and it is the way each child's individual
instinct takes, after him. Elemental truths of moral law and general types
of human experience are presented in the fairy tale, in the poetry of
their images, and although the child is aware only of the image at the
time, the truth enters with it and becomes a part of his individual
experience, to be recognized in its relations at a later stage. Every
truth and type so given broadens and deepens the capacity of the child's
inner life, and adds an element to the store from which he draws his moral
inferences.

The most familiar instance of a moral truth conveyed under a fairy-story
image is probably the story of the pure-hearted and loving girl whose lips
were touched with the wonderful power of dropping jewels with every spoken
word, while her stepsister, whose heart was infested with malice and evil
desires, let ugly toads fall from her mouth whenever she spoke. I mention
the old tale because there is probably no one of my readers who has not
heard it in childhood, and because there are undoubtedly many to whose
mind it has often recurred in later life as a sadly perfect presentment of
the fact that "out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh." That
story has entered into the forming consciousness of many of us, with its
implications of the inevitable result of visible evil from evil in the
heart, and its revelation of the loathsomeness of evil itself.

And no less truly than this story has served to many as an embodiment of
moral law has another household tale stood for a type of common
experience. How much the poorer should we be, mentally, without our early
prophecy of the "ugly ducklings" we are to meet later in life!--those
awkward offspring of our little human duckyard who are mostly well kicked
and buffeted about, for that very length of limb and breadth of back which
needs must be, to support swan's wings. The story of the ugly duckling is
much truer than many a bald statement of fact. The English-speaking world
bears witness to its verity in constant use of the title as an identifying
phrase: "It is the old story of the ugly duckling," we say, or "He has
turned out a real ugly duckling." And we know that our hearers understand
the whole situation.

The consideration of such familiar types and expressions as that of the
ugly duckling suggests immediately another good reason for giving the
child his due of fairy lore. The reason is that to omit it is to deprive
him of one important element in the full appreciation of mature
literature. If one thinks of it, one sees that nearly all adult literature
is made by people who, in their beginnings, were bred on the wonder tale.
Whether he will or no, the grown-up author must incorporate into his work
the tendencies, memories, kinds of feeling which were his in childhood.
The literature of maturity is, naturally, permeated by the influence of
the literature of childhood. Sometimes it is apparent merely in the use of
a name, as suggestive of certain kinds of experience; such are the
recurrences of reference to the Cinderella story. Sometimes it is an
allusion which has its strength in long association of certain qualities
with certain characters in fairydom--like the slyness of Brother Fox, and
the cruelty of Brother Wolf. Sometimes the association of ideas lies below
the surface, drawing from the hidden wells of poetic illusion which are
sunk in childhood. The man or woman whose infancy was nourished
exclusively on tales adapted from science-made-easy, or from biographies
of good men and great, must remain blind to these beauties of literature.
He may look up the allusion, or identify the reference, but when that is
done he is but richer by a fact or two; there is no remembered thrill in
it for him, no savor in his memory, no suggestion to his imagination; and
these are precisely the things which really count. Leaving out the fairy
element is a loss to literary culture much as would be the omission of the
Bible or of Shakespeare. Just as all adult literature is permeated by the
influence of these, familiar in youth, so in less degree is it transfused
with the subtle reminiscences of childhood's commerce with the wonder
world.

To turn now from the inner to the outer aspects of the old-time tale is to
meet another cause of its value to children. This is the value of its
style. Simplicity, directness, and virility characterize the classic fairy
tales and the most memorable relics of folklore. And these are three of
the very qualities which are most seriously lacking in much of the new
writing for children, and which are always necessary elements in the
culture of taste. Fairy stories are not all well told, but the best fairy
stories are supremely well told. And most folk-tales have a movement, a
sweep, and an unaffectedness which make them splendid foundations for
taste in style.

For this, and for poetic presentation of truths in easily assimilated
form, and because it gives joyous stimulus to the imagination, and is
necessary to full appreciation of adult literature, we may freely use the
wonder tale.
Dec 25th 2007 17:14