A Children’s Book of Wonder: ‘The Princess and the Goblin’

Duart Point, castle, and the Mountains of Mull. David Dixon/CC BY-SA 2.0

“Of all the stories I have read ... it remains the most real, the most realistic, in the exact sense of the phrase the most like life,” said British writer G.K. Chesterton about “The Princess and the Goblin.” These are surprising words to describe a children’s fantasy novel, yet Chesterton, as was so often the case, saw past the surface of the work to its inner depths.

“The Princess and the Goblin,” despite its otherworldly setting and fantastical creatures, contains a certain realism: the realism of universal spiritual truths at the center of our lives. The delightful novel provides young readers (and old ones) with a well-balanced mixture of wit, wisdom, and wonder.

Chesterton wasn’t the only one inspired by George MacDonald’s writing. The Scottish writer and Christian minister is sometimes considered the father of modern fantasy. His imaginative, mystical books influenced such fantasy titans as Lewis Carroll, C.S. Lewis, and J.R.R. Tolkien. He also wrote theological works, and his novels contain traces of theological speculation.

Cover of "The Princess and the Goblin" by George MacDonald. Public Domain

‘The Princess and the Goblin’

His 1872 children’s novel “The Princess and the Goblin” tells the story of an 8-year-old princess, Irene, who lives in a manor house in a mountainous kingdom. Her father, the King, is often absent, sometimes at his grand palace up in the mountains, and her mother has passed away.

A race of evil goblins are hidden in tunnels and mineshafts in the mountains like ants in an ant hill. They were exiled from the kingdom and want to get revenge. In the upper recesses of Irene’s house, she discovers a room she’s never seen before, occupied by her beautiful and mysterious great-great-grandmother, who becomes Irene’s mentor and ally in the fight against the goblins.

Irene’s other new friend and ally is a young, adventurous miner boy named Curdie. At first, Curdie struggles to believe in Irene’s mysterious great-great-grandmother, whose existence seems impossible, but over time he begins to understand the wisdom of taking some things on faith—and that sometimes it’s necessary to believe before you can see.

Meanwhile, the goblins plot to break into Irene’s castle from tunnels underneath it and abduct her. It will take all the courage of Irene and Curdie and the wisdom of the grandmother to foil their plan.

The Story’s Wonder

In this illustration from a 1920 edition of "The Princess and the Goblin," the princess teams up with the young miner boy, Curdie, as she follows a magical thread only she can see. Public Domain

MacDonald’s Christian mysticism might be responsible for the sense of wonder that suffuses the book and forms one of its most striking features. As I read it, I had the sense that I was experiencing beautiful mysteries—the kind that make the heart beat a little faster, though they remain half-obscured, like a silhouette seen through a veil.

The late University of Kansas literature professor John Senior defined wonder as “the reverent fear the beauty strikes in us.” Many passages in the book describe beautiful and majestic things, such as the moon, which the great-great-grandmother somehow sets in the sky outside her attic room like a lamp. These passages inspire a reverence and longing for the mysterious and marvelous things in the world—in other words, wonder. The book helps readers see the moon as something magical, a sign and a symbol hung from the finger of a cosmic being—which, for all we know, it is.

Chesterton, too, noticed how the novel helped readers see ordinary things as extraordinary. He described one purpose of the book as “making all the ordinary staircases and doors and windows into magical things.”

A young reader can relate to the book’s description of staircases and cellars. These are part of his or her experience. But when Irene goes up a familiar staircase only to find that it leads to a room she’s never seen before, containing beautiful things and a loving and beautiful grandmother who will give her important missions—then the child reader begins to see his own home as a place where adventure could be waiting around any corner.

Chesterton wrote, “that simple image of a house that is our home, that is rightly loved as our home, but of which we hardly know the best or the worst, and must always wait for the one and watch against the other, has always remained in my mind as something singularly solid and unanswerable.”

A true home has a spirit that isn't dispelled even long after it's abandoned. Bob Hilscher/Shutterstock

It was this aspect of the marvelous in the mundane that so impressed Chesterton when he first read the book. With the beautiful grandmother in the attic and the mischievous goblins in the cellar, the book taught him, he said, “how near both the best and the worst things are to us from the first.”

Herein lies one of the spiritual truths of the book: Much of the evil and much of the good in this world reveals itself within the ordinary orbit of our homes and the ordinary circuit of our daily activities. The battle between good and evil works itself out all around us—and within us. The fact that good and evil present themselves under various unobtrusive guises in our humdrum, day-to-day lives doesn’t make them any less powerful or important. Even the simplest things may provide huge scope for this spiritual warfare, so that no action is insignificant or meaningless.

This leads us to another theme of MacDonald’s: It isn’t our appearance or wealth or status that expresses who we really are, but our inner character and actions. MacDonald insisted that royal status had more to do with being courageous, kind, honest, and the like than it did with bloodline.

This means that every human being has the potential to be “royalty.” Each human being has value regardless of their life’s outward circumstances. MacDonald wrote, “Every little girl is a princess, and there would be no need to say anything about it, except that she is always in danger of forgetting her rank, and behaving as if she had grown out of the mud. I have seen little princesses behave like the children of thieves and lying beggars, and that is why they need to be told they are princesses.” MacDonald aimed to remind children of their dignity and their potential to live up to the standard of a prince or princess by means of good conduct.

In spite of these moral messages, the novel never becomes a crude moral fable or obvious allegory, though it contains an allegorical underpinning. We can’t say that the great-great grandmother is a symbol for God, though when we read about her we sense that we’ve learned something about God. We can’t say that Irene’s exile from her father’s castle is a direct allegory for humanity’s banishment from Eden or heaven, and yet this aspect of the story inspires an inexplicable yearning for “Our Father’s house” that certainly resonates with the idea that humanity is in exile. I think the quasi-allegorical nature of the tale gives it much of its mystery and power.

On top of all that, it’s just a delightful and exciting story, beautifully told. It can be enjoyed by readers young and old apart from any philosophical considerations. That’s one joy of literature: We become steeped in meaningful ideas without even realizing it since they’re transmitted through stories that both delight and instruct.

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