The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #163785 Message #3912800
Posted By: keberoxu
23-Mar-18 - 07:33 PM
Thread Name: BS: the books of Elizabeth Goudge
Subject: RE: BS: the books of Elizabeth Goudge
Having reflections and second thoughts on
The Little White Horse.
In some respects, this children's fantasy by Elizabeth Goudge
is a throwback to the nineteenth-century Aberdeenshire native,
George MacDonald, he of
The Princess and the Goblins and
The Princess and Curdie,
among numerous other children's books.
I say "throwback" because of the emphasis on nobility, aristocracy,
and royalty.
MacDonald had some wonderful Wise Woman characters,
a breakthrough of Jungian proportions in those days;
but every growing girl had to be a Princess, it seemed,
in his children's books.
Growing girls had to be exalted to be protagonists.
And so it is in The Little White Horse,
in which the newly-orphaned young lady, with her governess,
goes to the land of her ancestors
and finds that there, she is next in line to the throne.
Which means that now, with her exalted status,
she is qualified to be the protagonist in her own history.
This kind of fabulous exalted princess thing
has its place, and yet it really has been done to death.
With the changing times and mores,
the young lady who need not be exalted in order to make a difference
is more forward-looking, more promising for the future.