What point of view is the Princess and the Goblin written in?

[button color=”black” size=”big” link=”http://affiliates.abebooks.com/c/99844/77798/2029?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.abebooks.com%2Fservlet%2FSearchResults%3Fisbn%3D9780060095529″ target=”blank” ]Purchase here[/button] George MacDonald (1824-1905) was a Scottish Congregationalist minister whose tolerant views caused him so much trouble that he switched to a career in writing. Even so, it wasn’’t until late in his career that he began writing stories for children, which are mainly what he is remembered for today. To MacDonald’s eleven fairy-tale-loving children, we owe not only the pleasure of reading their father’s books, but perhaps even Lewis Carroll’s Alice stories, which were read to the MacDonald children before they were published, with encouraging results.

But enough about the author. You’’ve come here to find out about the book, I hope. It’s well worth finding out about, and it grieves me that I did not find it much sooner. The Princess and the Goblin is an adorable story full of classic fairy-tale gestures as well as original enchantments. The Princess Irene, on the one hand, is a paragon of princessly virtue; but she is also a spirited heroine who has strange adventures that lead her into dark and dangerous places in order to help herself and others. On the other hand, there is the miner’s son Curdie Peterson, who is a fine enough lad to be sure, but one who isn’t always perfectly nice to the princess. Together, and aided by a mysterious “grandmother” whom not everyone can see, and a magic ring attached to an invisible thread, and other wonderful things, the two children thwart a plot by the goblins that live under the mountain.

The story is enchanting enough by itself; but equally enchanting is the sense of a tale being told out loud. At one point, MacDonald pauses in his narrative to have a facetious discussion with his illustrator about how to draw a picture of the princess. Later, he refers to the king’s minstrel “chanting a ballad which he made as he went on playing his instrument,” and for a moment it seems as if the author had made himself a part of the story. And in between flights of fantasy—some of them breathtakingly mysterious, others almost teasing in their silliness—MacDonald slips in passages in which characters converse like real people, and weaves through everything a gentle lesson about the difficulty of believing and the unbearable feeling of being disbelieved.

Let me share this little scene with you:

‘Please, king-papa,’ she said, ‘will you tell me where I got this pretty ring? I can’t remember.’The king looked at it. A strange beautiful smile spread like sunshine over his face, and an answering smile, but at the same time a questioning one, spread like moonlight over Irene’s.

‘It was your queen-mamma’s once,’ he said.

‘And why isn’’t it hers now?’ asked Irene.

‘She does not want it now,’ said the king, looking grave.

‘Why doesn’’t she want it now?’

‘Because she’s gone where all those rings are made.’

‘And when shall I see her?’ asked the princess.

‘Not for some time yet,’ answered the king, and the tears came into his eyes.

This book has a sequel called The Princess and Curdie, and still other delights from the pen of George MacDonald are in store for anyone who seeks them.

Thanks for exploring this SuperSummary Plot Summary of “The Princess and the Goblin” by George MacDonald. A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality study guides that feature detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, quotes, and essay topics.

Published by Strahan & Co in 1872, George MacDonald's fantasy, The Princess and the Goblin, details the adventures of Princess Irene and miner Curdie as they outwit a horde of goblins.When her mother fell ill, Princess Irene was sent to be brought up by country people in a large, castle-like house on the side of a mountain. Now eight, she lives with her nursemaid Lootie, and her father visits occasionally.Irene is not allowed outside at night because of the goblins that live inside the mountains. The goblins are night creatures and have hidden themselves away because of some unknown political disagreement with a previous king. The goblins' life underground has altered their appearance to look unusually grotesque, but they've become more intelligent. They are resentful toward humans, especially those of the royal line. The goblins torture anyone with the misfortune of meeting them.One day the princess gets lost in the castle. She climbs a tall tower and follows a humming sound into a room. There, she sees an old woman with long white hair sitting at a spinning wheel. The woman tells Irene that she is her great-great-grandmother and that Irene is her namesake. She lives off of pigeons' eggs and spins spiderwebs brought by the pigeons. Irene tells Lootie about her grandmother, but Lootie doesn't believe her. The next day, Irene goes in search of her grandmother but isn't able to find her and assumes she was dreaming.A few days after she meets her grandmother, Irene and Lootie go for a walk. The two wander too far, and darkness begins to fall. Just as a group of goblins begins harassing them from the shadows, Curdie, a young miner, comes upon the pair. He scares the goblins away by singing loudly, and Irene promises him a kiss at a later date.The next night, Curdie decides to stay in the mines, earning extra wages to buy a red petticoat for his mother. Curdie overhears a family of goblins talking about how they have very sensitive feet. He follows them to the goblin palace where he learns about the goblins' plan to flood the mine and drown the miners.A season or so passes, and the princess gets a prick on her thumb from an old brooch. Her sore quickly becomes infected, and Lootie puts her to bed. Irene wakes up in the night and wanders again to her grandmother's tower. Her grandmother heals her with an ointment and Irene falls asleep in her grandmother's bed. Irene wakes in her own bed, having promised to go back to the tower Friday night.That Friday night, a goblin creature climbs into Irene's window, and she runs out of the house into the night. No longer pursued, she turns and sees her grandmother's light in the tower window and follows it home. Irene's grandmother gives her a ring with an invisible thread made from a spider's web.The goblins catch Curdie sneaking into their cavern, and Curdie is successful at warding most of them off by stomping on their feet. The goblin queen, however, is wearing stone shoes and manages to capture and imprison him. Curdie is left to starve in the goblin prison, but Irene is led to him by her magic thread, and she rescues him. Curdie manages to steal one of the goblin queen's shoes on their way out.Following the thread, Curdie and Irene head up to the grandmother's room. Curdie can't see Irene's grandmother and is cross with Irene for what he thinks is a cruel joke. The grandmother explains that Curdie isn't able to believe yet and therefore can't see her.When Curdie arrives home, he tells the whole story to his parents. His mother relates a story from her childhood when a great white pigeon rescued her from a group of goblins. She implies that the royal line has some magical powers and that Irene may have been telling the truth.On another fact-finding mission, Curdie learns that the goblins plan to dig a tunnel into the castle to capture Princess Irene. Upon her capture, they plan to marry her to Harelip, the goblin prince.Curdie regularly visits the palace grounds at night to see how far the goblins have progressed on their tunnel. On one such night, the palace guards shoot Curdie with an arrow and throw him into the castle prison. There, he develops a fever and Irene's grandmother heals and releases him.The goblins carry out their plan while Curdie is in the castle. Curdie stomps on the goblins' feet and encourages the staff to follow suit, causing the goblins to flee. The castle staff believes that the goblins seized Irene, but Curdie finds her magic thread and follows it all the way back to his family's house.Meanwhile, the goblins flood the mines. The miners have blocked their tunnels, unbeknownst to the goblins, and the water floods the goblin caverns and comes up under the castle and floods it as well. Curdie gets Irene, the king, and his staff away safely. The king offers Curdie a position as a bodyguard, but Curdie wants to stay with his parents and instead asks for a new red petticoat for his mother.  Most of the goblins have drowned, and they no longer pose a threat.

There have been a few different adaptations of the novel, including an animated film that came out in 1992. The sequel, The Princess and Curdie, was published in 1883 and reunites the two protagonists in the interest of saving the king's life from his corrupt ministers. George Macdonald was friends with JRR Tolkien and CS Lewis, and his novels are known to have influenced their work.

After completing At the Back of the North Wind, George MacDonald again returned to writing realistic novels for a time, until his imagination was once again caught by the ideas of princesses, mining and goblins, all leading to perhaps his best known book: The Princess and the Goblin, published in 1872.

Aside: I have never been able to figure out why the title says “Goblin” and not “Goblins.” The story has lots of goblins of various shapes and sizes—MacDonald even takes a moment to give their histories and explain how their pets evolved into monsters. (Darwin’s On the Origin of Species had been published in 1859, and although I don’t know if MacDonald actually read it, he had certainly absorbed some of its arguments.) Yes, I realize the goblins hope to attach the princess to one specific goblin, but still. Moving on.

Irene, an eight year old princess, is bored. Very bored, despite oceans of toys—so many that MacDonald literally pauses his narrative to beg the illustrator not to bother trying to depict them. And because it is cold and wet and miserable and even with the toys she has nothing to do, she climbs up a staircase she has never explored before, and finds an old woman there, spinning. The woman, she discovers, is a grandmother, of a sort, and also a fairy.

Also, Irene lives very near some miners, and some evil goblins. You can tell the goblins are evil because they hate poetry. (Although, in defense of the goblins, if the only poetry they’ve been exposed to is MacDonald’s, their hatred may be justified. I also can’t help wondering if someone said something about the poetry to MacDonald, who good-humoredly responded with turning his poems into actual weapons of mass destruction. I’m telling you, just terrible stuff.) Apart from the poetry issue, they also want to eat people, have major issues with toes, and terrify the miners.

But even here, the compassionate MacDonald hints that the goblins did not exactly turn evil by choice: the goblins were, he thinks, former humans who fled underground to avoid high taxes, poor working conditions, corruption and cruel treatment from a former human king; only then did they evolve into toeless, evil creatures, a none too subtle reference to the often appalling working conditions faced by miners and other working class people in Victorian times. The work that these men and children did often could and did cause physical injuries and disfigurations; nonfiction literature of the period speaks of the inhuman appearance of 19th century miners. MacDonald continues this theme by noting how many of his human miners (working near the goblins) are forced to work overtime, in dangerous, solitary conditions, just to earn enough money for necessities and clothing, even though they work very near a pampered princess with too many toys to play with.

These bits are also the first hint that this tale is going to be about a little more than just a princess and a goblin, whatever the title may say, and is going to spend a surprising amount of time chatting about toes.

In any case, when Irene tries to tell people about her grandmother, she finds that she isn’t believed—upsetting, and also odd, given that the people she is telling are quite aware that they haven’t been telling the princess about the various evil creatures that come out at night, so why they wouldn’t believe in a fairy godmother who comes out during the day is more than a bit odd. Quite naturally, she begins to doubt the reality of her grandmother’s tower—but just begins.

Meanwhile, that doubting nurse leaves Irene outside just a little too late in the evening, allowing Irene to meet Curdie, a miner’s son, who just might be part prince (MacDonald has just a touch of the “royalty are better people than the rest of us” in him). Part prince or not, he is still of a lower social class than the princess, leading to some chatter about social distinctions and the perils of kissing across class boundaries, all of which seems a bit much for a friendly kiss from an eight year old, but this is Victorian England. Curdie returns to the mines, where he overhears the goblins plotting; eventually, his curiosity leads to his capture by goblins.

The book really gets going once the goblins enter it again. They may be royal (well, royal by goblin standards), but they are certainly not bound by royal dictates to be polite, and they have some hilarious dialogue as a result. They also provide some real stress and tension, and this is when the book’s adventures get going, and when the book starts hitting its psychological stride. On the surface, yes, this is about a princess and a boy attempting to stop a goblin invasion. But that’s only the surface. The core of the book—made clear shortly after the goblins reappear—is about faith, about holding to your beliefs when you know you are right, even if others, and especially others who matter to you very much—keep telling you that you are wrong.

Already doubted by her beloved nurse and father, Irene finds, to her horror, that Curdie cannot see the bright thread that leads them from the darkness to the light, or see the woman who gave Irene the thread. An infuriated Curdie believes that Irene is making fun of him, and leaves in fury. Irene cries, comforted only when her fairy grandmother patiently explains that seeing is not believing, and that it is more important to understand, than to be understood. Curdie’s parents gently chide him for his disbelief, explaining just when certain things do have to be taken by faith.

These are beautiful passages, symbolic of the Christian faith in things that must be believed because they cannot be seen (especially with the motif of the light leading from darkness and evil), but it can equally be applied to other things. It’s a plea for tolerance, for understanding, for listening, and—surprisingly for MacDonald—not all that preachy, despite the way I’ve summarized it.

And it leads to one of the most satisfying scenes in the book, when Irene, finally convinced that she was, indeed, right, faces down her nurse, who has been, throughout the book, entirely wrong. Remember back when you were eight, knowing that you were right and the adults were wrong, but you couldn’t do anything about it? Irene, of course, as a princess, has access to slightly better resources, but it still makes for a satisfying scene—one touched with more than a bit of Christian forgiveness.

I am also oddly fond of the Goblin Queen, even if she wants to eat Curdie. (Maybe because she wants to eat Curdie.) She’s fierce, practical, and generally right, and never hesitates to stand up to her husband or refuse to show him her feet. (It helps that she has some of the best dialogue in the book.) I am considerably less fond of the other women in the book—Curdie’s mother, pretty much the stereotypically good mother of Victorian fiction, needing the protection and support of the men of the house, and Lootie the dimwitted nurse, often rude and dismissive, and more critically, prone to putting her charge into danger, and who needs to be completely removed from her position, like, now.

But against that, as said, the book offers the Goblin Queen, the calm, insightful fairy godmother, and best of all, Irene, perhaps a little too sweet and naïve, but able, with considerable effort, to overcome her very real fears and doubts. It probably helps that she’s eight, an age where it’s easier to believe in magical strings, but on the other hand, this is also the age where she has to struggle against the seeming omnipotence of those older than she, and find her own beliefs and faith. Which she does, quite well. If I doubt some of MacDonald’s comments about real princesses (specifically that they are never rude and never lie), I find myself definitely believing in Irene. (It’s only fair to add that this is not a universal belief: Irene’s sweetness and cuteness may grate on some readers.)

With its quiet social and religious commentary, along with, for once, a fairly tight plot, this is one of MacDonald’s best and most satisfying books—although I still have to urge you to skip the poetry, since reading it might cause you to turn into an evil goblin—or worse, not get to the good parts of this book.

Mari Ness doesn’t hate poetry, she swears. Just the poetry in these MacDonald books. She lives in central Florida.