"On Fairy-stories" by J.R.R. Tolkien

And one of the most influential books from my 90's childhood

Last summer, my husband and I regularly loaded up the triple stroller for a family walk around our neighborhood. Our usual route takes us past a Little Free Library, a small wooden box elevated on a post that encourages neighbors to “Take a Book. Leave a Book.” Since our house is already home to more books than some public libraries, we usually look through the plexiglass window but rarely take anything home. But on one particular walk, I stopped short and snatched open the door. I would know that blue spine anywhere, I thought. 

Reaching in, I grabbed the paperback and thumbed through its slightly yellowed and very crinkly pages while standing in the middle of the sidewalk. My husband gave me a surprised look as I placed it gently in the parent caddy of the stroller. “This is one of the top ten most influential books of my life,” I said matter-of-factly. “I have to have it.” 

When I finished Ella Enchanted by Gail Carson Levine for the first time at age nine, I remember thinking, “This is the best book I have ever read.” J.R.R. Tolkien’s essay “On Fairy-stories” has helped me to understand why. 

“On Fairy-stories” began as a guest lecture at the University of St. Andrews in 1939. In their introduction to the gorgeous critical edition my husband gifted me for Christmas this year, Verlyn Flieger and Douglas A. Anderson call it “Tolkien’s defining study of and the centre-point in his thinking about the genre, as well as…the theoretical basis for his fiction” (page 9). Over the course of about 60 pages, the trained philologist and famous Catholic novelist addresses several questions, namely: What are fairy-stories? What are their origins? What is the use of them? 

Here are a few highlights if you’ve never read the essay, or haven’t read it in a long time: 

• No fairies required: Tolkien says that fairy-stories are not stories about fairies, but stories about the adventures that humans have in “the Perilous Realm,” or “Faërie,” where fairies (and elves and ogres and dragons) live (paragraphs 10-11).

• Not just for kids: In one line, Tolkien erased all the shame I harbored in graduate school for reading novels in my free time instead of additional philosophical theology: “If a fairy-story as a kind is worth reading at all it is worthy to be written for and read by adults” (paragraph 63). 

• Enter into a Secondary World: According to Tolkien, when a fairy-story is good, “the story-maker proves a successful ‘sub-creator’. He makes a Secondary World which your mind can enter. Inside it, what he relates is ‘true’: it accords with the laws of that world. You therefore believe it, while you are, as it were, inside” (paragraph 50).

• Satisfy your longings by escaping limitations: Tolkien says that fairy-stories give us opportunities to experience some common human “curiosities” like flying or talking to animals, but a good fairy-story can also awaken desires for things that we never thought were possible (paragraphs 96 and 55). 

• Experience the radical joy of a happy ending: In the essay, Tolkien coins the term eucatastrophe to describe “the sudden joyous ‘turn’...which fairy-stories can produce supremely well.” He writes, “It does not deny the existence of dyscatastrophe, of sorrow and failure: the possibility of these is necessary to the joy of deliverance; it denies (in the face of much evidence, if you will) universal final defeat and in so far is evangelium, giving a fleeting glimpse of Joy, Joy beyond the walls of the world, poignant as grief” (paragraph 99).*

Growing up, my first encounter with Cinderella was Disney’s 1950 film animation. It was… nice? Even as a young girl, I sensed that there was something vapid about this princess. Where was her gumption, her courage, her brain? 

In Ella Enchanted, Gail Carson Levine gives Cinderella all of these missing pieces and more. Set in a fully formed Secondary World, Levine’s retelling of the classic fairy tale does one important thing especially well: it explains why a young, smart, beautiful girl would remain obedient to a horrible stepmother. She’s cursed, of course.  

With that framework in mind, I could see Cinderella as a friend instead of a china doll. She suddenly felt very real and relatable to me. In my own life, at age nine, I was beginning to recognize my independence from my parents: I was noticing that I had my own interior life complete with my own set of quirks and preferences. While I loved my parents dearly, my human development had awakened inside of me a longing for the adults in my life to see me as a fully formed individual, not just an extension or accessory of the people who brought me into the world. 

Ella Enchanted speaks directly to that desire. Because of her curse, Ella struggles in a very real, physical way to gain independence and take control of her life. At the same time, she is wise enough to see that her curse would be a liability if she married her good friend Prince Charmont. She selflessly sacrifices her own happiness for the good of the kingdom, and in a sudden, joyous turn, thereby gains both the freedom and the love she so deeply desires. 

Even though it does feature fairies prominently and was technically written for children, Ella Enchanted’s true genius is that it provides a welcome escape from the natural limitations of childhood and a radical experience of joy against the backdrop of a wonder-full Secondary World. Tolkien has helped me to see that this fairy-story has stayed with me for over 25 years because its theme of independence spoke directly to the longings of my nine-year-old heart.

Tolkien argues that fairy-stories are like time capsules and mirrors, preserving and reflecting our natural human desires through the centuries and connecting us to the storytellers and audiences who have gone before us (paragraphs 39-41). Rereading this beloved childhood novel has put me back in touch with the girl I used to be. And thank goodness for that, because as Tolkien writes: “I do not deny that there is a truth in Andrew Lang’s words (sentimental though they may sound): ‘He who would enter into the Kingdom of Faërie should have the heart of a little child.’ For that possession is necessary to all high adventure, into kingdoms both less and far greater than Faërie” (paragraph 60). 

*I know what you’re thinking as we approach Holy Week, and Tolkien thinks it, too: there is one very special story that “denies universal final defeat” in a very real way. In the epilogue of the essay, Tolkien writes, “The Gospels contain a fairy-story, or a story of a larger kind which embraces all the essence of fairy-stories…But this story has entered History and the primary world; the desire and aspiration of sub-creation has been raised to the fulfillment of Creation. The Birth of Christ is the eucatastrophe of Man’s history. The Resurrection is the eucatastrophe of the story of the Incarnation. This story begins and ends in joy. It has pre-eminently the ‘inner consistency of reality.’ There is no tale ever told that men would rather find was true” (paragraph 104). 

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What I’ve been reading and writing lately: 

• This essay by G. M. Baker on “The Four Constraints of a Catholic Novelist” in Dappled Things gave me much food for thought as both a reader and a writer. 

• I wrote this reflection on St. Oscar Romero for the Jesuit Conference of Canada and the United States in honor of his feast day, which we celebrated on March 24. 

Coming up…

For National Poetry Month, I’ll be writing about one of my all-time favorite poems. I think it’s technically a breakup poem, but to me it feels like Resurrection. Make sure you subscribe so you don’t miss it. 

If you enjoyed this essay, would you forward it to a friend? Thanks for your kindness!