Cinderella Comes to the Shire

"According to Tolkien, fairy stories offer recovery, escape and consolation from the sickness, confinement and hopelessness of this world of wickedness."

From The Imaginative Conservative

By Joseph Pearce

According to J.R.R. Tolkien, fairy stories offer recovery, escape and consolation from the sickness, confinement and hopelessness of this world of wickedness. They provide not an escape from reality but an escape to reality. It is an escape from the world of false philosophies and fake realities, rooted in Pride.

I believe in fairytales. Take Cinderella, for instance. I believe in her for the simple reason that I saw her in the flesh a few days ago. She was standing right in front of me at a local Catholic high school. She was not more than a few yards from me. There she was. Plain as day. How can I not believe the evidence of my own eyes? How can I not believe in her? Seeing is believing!

It is true, if we must concede a minor point to the pedant, that Cinderella was being played by a student in the school’s production of the Rodgers and Hammerstein version of the story. But this really is a minor point. What I was seeing was the real Cinderella, and the real Prince, and the real wicked stepmother, and the real stepsisters, and the real fairy godmother. They were real because fairy stories are real. In Tolkien’s memorable phrase, fairytales hold up a mirror to man. They show us ourselves. And not merely our physical selves. A plain old physical mirror can do that. They show us our real selves. Our spiritual selves. Not merely our flesh and blood selves, but our body and soul selves. Not merely our material selves but our moral selves. Not merely the shallow surface but the deep psychological depths. Not merely who we are but who we should be, and who we shouldn’t be. In other words, the mirror that the fairytale holds up to us is a magic mirror that shows us much more than any mere material mirror could ever show. It’s a moral mirror that can change magically into a moral compass, which enables us get our moral bearings, to find our way when we are lost or disoriented; to show us the way out of the dark wood of wickedness in which we might find ourselves. It should go without saying that a moral mirror and a moral compass are also moral blessings, which is why anyone who looks into the magic mirror, or walks through the magic wardrobe, or opens the pages of a book of fairy stories, is being blessed.

According to Tolkien, fairy stories offer recovery, escape and consolation from the sickness, confinement and hopelessness of this world of wickedness. Recovery, Tolkien says, is the “regaining of a clear view” which results in a “return and renewal of health”. It is “seeing things as we are (or were) meant to see them”.

With respect to the escape that fairytales offer, Tolkien insists that it is not an escape from reality but an escape to reality. It is an escape from the world of false philosophies and fake realities, rooted in Pride, which can be defined as the imprisonment of the self in its own egocentrism. Fairy stories enable us to break out of this prison of Pride: “Why should a man be scorned, if, finding himself in prison, he tries to get out and go home? Or if, when he cannot do so, he thinks and talks about other topics than jailers and prison-walls?”

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, fairy stories offer the consolation provided by what Tolkien called “the joy of the happy ending … the joy of deliverance”. In denying and defying “universal final defeat”, the triumph of evil, fairytales show the “good news”, evangelium, “a fleeting glimpse of Joy, Joy beyond the walls of the world, poignant as grief”.

Having listened to the wisdom of Tolkien, a sage who is even wiser than Gandalf, let’s return to the Shire in which I live and the high school production of Cinderella.

Walking into the small theatre space at Our Lady of the Rosary Catholic School was like crossing the threshold into a wonderland where a clear view of deep truths could be re-gained, a place where our health, our peace of mind, could be returned to us and be renewed. It was a place of escape from wickedness, war and “woke”, of vice, violence and viciousness, and also an escape to the homeliness of home itself. It was a place where the beautiful goodness of truth could shine forth in the hearts of those who had entered the magic kingdom of fairyland.

Seated in the second row, I found myself sitting next to the mother of the young lady who was playing Cinderella. I was watching her as she was watching her daughter. The look on her face, which I am at a loss to put into words, was one of the most beautiful things I had ever seen. I imagine that this must have been the look on the Mother of Jesus as her soul magnified the Lord. I was transfixed by this mother’s transfiguration. Her countenance was full of “the joy of the happy ending… the joy of deliverance”. Such joy, such beauty, exorcised any thought, any possibility of “universal final defeat”. Evil could not possibly prevail in the presence of the power of such beauty. I saw in that mother’s face the reality of her soul reflected in the magic mirror of fairyland. I saw the “good news” shining forth in epiphanous splendour. Evangelium! I had caught “a fleeting glimpse of Joy, Joy beyond the walls of the world, poignant as grief”.

Yes, I believe in fairytales. How can I not believe the evidence of my own eyes? Seeing is believing!

The featured image is an illustration by Otto Kubel of Cinderella (1930), and is in the public domain, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.