George MacDonald’s Princess

You see too deeply into things to
be able to laugh nicely,” wrote fairy tale author and art critic John Ruskin to
his friend, George MacDonald, in 1863. Ruskin was referring to the “curious
mixture” of childlike levity and thematic depth in MacDonald’s then-unpublished
short story, The Light Princess.
MacDonald’s works of fantasy would later inspire authors like Lewis Carroll, J.
R. R. Tolkien, C. S. Lewis, and G. K. Chesterton. At the time, however,
MacDonald was struggling to find a publisher for The Light Princess. Readers were unsure of the intended audience: Was
it meant for adults or children?

Eventually,
MacDonald was able to insert The Light Princess into the broader narrative of his book Adela Cathcart (1864) as a story told by one of the central
characters, John Smith. The other characters humorously mimic Ruskin’s
criticisms by asserting that the story is both “too silly” and that “there is a
great deal of meaning in it.” Ruskin wrote back in feigned offense about his
fictional counterparts. Through Smith, MacDonald offers this defense of the
story’s “mixture”: “if both church and fairy-tale belong to humanity, they may
occasionally cross circles, without injury to either.” The story is not meant
for only one age group, but for all who are childlike in faith and
imagination.

One-hundred
and fifty years later, The Light Princess remains
one of MacDonald’s most beloved works. In it, a young, unnamed princess is
cursed by a witch, with the result that the princess has no gravity. The effect
is both physical and spiritual. If not tethered to the ground or leashed to her
royal attendants, the princess is at risk of simply floating away into the air,
never to be seen again. At the same time, she is unable to take her peril (or
anything for that matter) seriously. Even the distress of her parents over her
plight provokes her laughter.

The
princess only finds gravity when she is swimming in water. This baptismal water
makes her solid. It restores her humanity. The solution is only temporary: When
on dry land, the princess returns to her foolishness. Yet, because of the
personal freedom of movement that swimming affords her, she spends a lot of
time in the lake. One day, a prince comes across her swimming and joins her.
They fall in love. Yet the prince discovers that, while the princess behaves
normally in the water, she is foolish outside of it. Though he loves the
princess, marriage does not seem possible, as they cannot live their entire
lives in a lake. The princess is not prepared to be a bride.

Meanwhile,
the witch discovers that the princess is happy and satisfied whenever she is in
the lake, and so the witch begins to drain the lake of all its contents. The
only way to keep this from happening is for a man to enter into the hole at the
bottom of the lake and stop the flow of the water. At that point the lake will
refill, but at the cost of this man’s life. “Death alone from death can save.”
He who closes the pit will bless the princess with a gift of life-giving
baptism, but his own baptism will be a baptism of death. The prince chooses to
give up his life, and descends to his fate. He eats a last supper of bread and
wine. The vaporous princess watches, not grasping the seriousness of the
situation. Her response to his decision is not one of dread but of glee and
delight.

The
water covers the prince and the lake fills. Suddenly, the princess seems to
understand what is happening, and swims to the bottom to save the prince. She
brings his lifeless body to shore, and he is taken into the castle. The
princess no longer cares about the lake. Her cursed state, however, remains.

It
is not until the prince returns to life that her salvation is achieved. The
prince opens his eyes and the princess weeps tears of joy, water of the spirit.
For the first time, her spirit is immersed, not with flighty and foolish
happiness, but with solid and lasting joy. For the first time, her soul has
gravity. Her humanity has been restored by the life-giving water of the
prince’s death and resurrection.

The
Church today is the light princess. To be ready for the eschatological wedding
feast she must be made solid. She must be marked by a sobriety that befits her
time, place, and calling. Ultimately, a culture without faith in the death and
resurrection of Christ is a culture that is flighty, fleeting, and foolish. The
Church is not to be swept up by this but to instead be marked by gravitas in
her witness to the advent of Christ’s kingdom and the new creation. The
sacraments remind us that we do not belong to this age but to the age to come,
when creation shall no longer be vaporous but made whole in Christ. And yet,
the sacraments also demand that we engage the culture, for they remind us that
our faith is not just about spiritual and eternal reality, but about physical
and temporal reality. We engage the culture with the message “repent and be
baptized.” We offer the culture not aimless laughter or cynicism, but the deep
and abiding joy of the Gospel. We follow Christ’s pattern of self-sacrifice so
that the world too may experience the water of life.

The Light Princess is the product of a baptized imagination. It will
baptize the imaginations of you and your children as well. The story is now in
the public domain and can be easily accessed on the internet for free. Tolle lege. 

Albert L. Shepherd V is a
doctoral candidate in divinity at King’s College, University of Aberdeen,
Scotland

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