Phantastes: A Faerie Romance for Men and Women

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1858

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Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapters 1-5

Chapters 6-10

Chapters 11-15

Chapters 16-20

Chapters 21-25

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Background

Authorial Context: The Author and the Story

George MacDonald grew up in the village of Huntly in Scotland. At the time, the region’s dominant religion was a strict form of Calvinism focused on the doctrines of original sin and election, which holds that there is nothing mankind can do to earn salvation; God has already determined who will receive salvation regardless of personal merit. Although the creed itself offered no incentive to virtue, followers were held to such rigid standards of behavior that sending a child to the market for milk on the Sabbath was tantamount to mortal sin. Even as a child, MacDonald rejected this doctrine. He saw the kingdom of God in the hardworking people who lived hand-to-mouth. Nevertheless, the MacDonalds were devout Christians, and George displayed an early inclination toward ministry.

As a young man, he discovered the writing of the German Mystics, who greatly influenced his writings and personal theology. The Mystics asserted that introspection and yielding oneself could lead to divine unification. This is the underlying philosophy behind Anodos’s quest in Phantastes. His pursuit of beauty leads him through tests and trials. In each test, he learns greater self-knowledge and self-control, eventually leading to surrender, making himself a servant to Sir Percival.

MacDonald did not call himself a theologian or a philosopher. He didn’t ascribe to any existing theological or philosophical system and didn’t attempt to codify his own theological beliefs. MacDonald did have what he believed to be the (or at least a) true theology but felt that to set it out in writing allowed too much scope for misunderstanding. As MacDonald put it, Jesus Christ was his only and entire theology. MacDonald argued that relation to God couldn’t come from the wise, who studied theology and bent it to their desires. Only the innocent and the ignorant were equipped to find union with God through a love of their fellow human beings. His theology soon led to a schism in his church, resulting in him losing his appointment.

MacDonald’s rejection of dogmatic theology is expressed in Phantastes by Anodos’s determined tendency to veer from the clear path and to do the opposite of whatever he is advised to do. While this might seem to be stubbornness, willfulness, or foolishness, his road is nevertheless the right one for him. His mistakes are his path to enlightenment. Part of MacDonald’s genius is that none of his stories purport to lay out the “true” or “right” road. If they are allegorical, they illustrate only one of many possible right roads, the one that is right for this individual at this time. Adhering too closely to a metaphor would undermine his message.

Phantastes is a spiritual journey but isn’t as simple as an ordinary allegory. It is sometimes difficult to establish a one-to-one relationship between a character, setting, or episode and whatever it might be supposed to represent. For example, Anodos’s relationship with the unnamed knight might be interpreted as an allegory for man’s relationship with God, but the parallel isn’t clear enough to say definitely that the knight represents Christ. Beauty may represent authentic truth and enlightenment, but Anodos seems to find enlightenment only when he gives up his pursuit of beauty and makes himself a servant.

His work may seem simple and moralistic to a modern reader versed in the fantasy genre that sprang out of MacDonald’s soil. It requires a reversal of perspective to see that he was not the imitator of a genre but its instigator. He profoundly influenced several of his contemporaries, including Lewis Carroll, and young writers, notably J. R. R. Tolkien and C. S. Lewis. Tolkien and Lewis were members of a literary discussion group, the Inklings. The group was led by Lewis and also included Charles Williams, who was more successful than the others in the early years but was gradually eclipsed by Tolkien and Lewis.

Historical Cultural Context: MacDonald and the Romantic Movement in Germany and England

MacDonald was heavily influenced by the literary Romantic movement, particularly the early German writers. Romanticism emerged as a reaction to the Age of Enlightenment (aka Age of Reason). The Enlightenment applied the principles of the Scientific Revolution to society, promoting life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness as well as the separation of church and state. The Enlightenment popularized ideas like the rights of women and the idea of the inalienable human right to liberty and justice regardless of class. At the same time, the Industrial Revolution was forcing farmers into cities to work in factories.

On the other hand, the Romantics were reacting against what they felt to be a cold and mechanistic view of the universe. Romanticism emphasized emotion, individualism, and the sanctity of nature. They often associated nature with divinity in a kind of Christian “paganism.” They venerated folk art and ancient cultural traditions. At the same time, they espoused radical politics, spontaneity, and authenticism.

The Romantics venerated an idealized version of the Middle Ages. In England, this veneration was represented especially in the Arthurian saga, which formed a specifically English mythology. Ireland and MacDonald’s native Scotland retained their pre-Christian mythology of fairies and goblins. The Romantics idealized even those myths, converting the often “ugly” and unfriendly fairies into beautiful and magical beings. MacDonald had a great appreciation for the traditional folk mythology of his country. He blends the “pagan” fairies, tree spirits, ogres, kobolds, and goblins with the English/Welsh Arthurian ideal represented by Sir Percival.

MacDonald’s first exposure to Romanticism was through the German Weimar Classicists, who synthesized ideas from Romanticism, Classicism, and the Enlightenment. Their primary concern was with aesthetics—the importance of beauty—which they felt was neglected by the philosophies of Enlightenment and Reason. Thus, Anodos’s quest in Phantastes is driven by the pursuit of beauty.

MacDonald had an unorthodox view of religion and spirituality. The Romantic movement held that true enlightenment came only from inner knowledge; it cannot be imposed from without or deduced by reason as the philosophers of the earlier Age of Enlightenment would have it. The Romantics, both German and English, emphasized beauty as the most authentic expression of truth and emotion as the most authentic means to reach that truth. The artist’s role is to invoke the most intense emotion possible, whether wonder, awe, terror, or sympathy. A large part of Phantastes is dedicated to producing a sense of wonder and beauty along with episodes of terror, evoked with remarkable detail as in the description of the dreadful Ash man. As imagination is how beauty is expressed in human creation, imagining is the key to enlightenment or union with the divine.

Many critics have spoken of the structure—or lack thereof—in Phantastes. In fact, there is structure, but that structure is dictated by the spontaneous overflow of the author’s feeling rather than any formal narrative arc. The Romantics proposed the theory of “romantic originality.” They believed authentic and emotionally driven artists would spontaneously create the form best suited to a particular work. In particular, the artist should not look to existing models or conventions for guidance.

The Romantics were, in a sense, quite correct. Certain commonalities of human experience (growing up, coming of age, seeking a goal) tend to be processed and organized very similarly by different people. An artist plumbing the depths of their feeling will likely express themself instinctively in a way that makes sense to a fairly wide audience. Phantastes, for example, takes the form of a Bildungsroman, a growing-up story following a young person’s progress to adulthood. If MacDonald set out to write the story as it came to him—or from him—it was natural that the story should take a form reflecting the common experience that it expressed.

Genre Context: The Quest and the Bildungsroman

One of the most common criticisms of the story, particularly by modern readers, is its apparent lack of structure. Readers have tried to deduce various kinds of structure, but their conclusions are largely unconvincing. Phantastes contains many elements of the quest narrative, sometimes known as Joseph Campbell’s archetypal Monomyth or Hero’s Journey. The hero, Anodos, is living in the ordinary world when a herald appears to deliver a call to adventure. Anodos enters a special world and embarks on a quest to pursue beauty (Enlightenment). He encounters challenges and obstacles along the way until he passes through a transformation and returns home to the ordinary world, bringing new knowledge and understanding with him.

However, while the story contains many quest elements, the narrative arc does not progress toward a definitive climax and resolution. Rather than seizing the object of his quest and returning to the ordinary world in triumph, Anodos abandons his pursuit and turns instead to serving someone greater than himself. As his service has no specific object that he can lay hold of, that service has no definitive end. To serve is an end in itself. Finally, Anodos sacrifices himself, dies, and is reborn and returned to his world.

The quest elements of the story are contained within the broader form of a Bildungsroman—a German term referring to a “growing-up novel” or “development novel.” The Bildungsroman is exactly what it sounds like, the story of a young person’s growth and development toward adulthood. It is sometimes used interchangeably with the term coming-of-age, but the Bildungsroman and the coming-of-age have distinct and important differences. The coming-of-age takes place over a short period consisting of days, weeks, or, at most, months. Although Anodos is told by his sisters that he spent only 21 days in Fairy Land, his subjective experience is 21 years—the span of his entire childhood.

The coming-of-age is typically a single transformative event that marks a distinct before and after. Anodos, however, passes through many adventures, each one tempering him as he gradually develops from youth to man. Each of his adventures has an internal narrative arc with a beginning, middle, climax, and conclusion, but the overarching storyline remains more or less level.

If in doubt, the key to whether a story is a coming-of-age or a Bildungsroman can be found in the reader’s sense of closure. The Bildungsroman frequently leaves the reader feeling frustrated, cheated, or even outraged by the sense that the story has no ending. The story concludes with the protagonist achieving adulthood, but adulthood is not an ending.

Although many readers complain that Phantastes has no climax or resolution, the embedded quest elements give it some sense of closure. Anodos experiences death and resurrection before his return to the ordinary world, where he will assume his role as an adult. The transformation and return signal an ending for the reader, even if Anodos’s story is just beginning.