Phantastes: A Faerie Romance for Men and Women

“‘How do you know that?’ she retorted. ‘I dare say you know something of your great-grandfathers a good deal further back than that; but you know very little about your great-grandmothers on either side.’”

This passage embodies Anodos’s relationships with women. He knows well the histories of his male forebearers, but until now, women seem to have had so little consequence they may as well not exist. All the women he encounters in Fairy Land are archetypes, symbols, and illusions. If women are taken to represent the spiritual, then Anodos has neglected the spiritual side of his nature.

“And, stranger still, where this carpet, which I had myself designed to imitate a field of grass and daisies, bordered the course of the little stream, the grass-blades and daisies seemed to wave in a tiny breeze that followed the water’s flow; while under the rivulet they bent and swayed with every motion of the changeful current […].”

This passage exemplifies MacDonald’s attention to detail and his care in creating a sense of beauty and wonder. It contains a key point: Anodos designed the carpet himself to resemble a field of flowers. Anodos has been seeking all his life for the magic he finds in the fairy country.

“Pocket, who had been expelled from the company by common consent, went sulkily away towards her hammock, for she was the fairy of the calceolaria, and looked rather wicked. When she reached its stem, she stopped and looked round. I could not help speaking to her, for I stood near her. I said, ‘Pocket, how could you be so naughty?’

‘I am never naughty,’ she said, half-crossly, half-defiantly; ‘only if you come near my hammock, I will bite you, and then you will go away.’

‘Why did you bite poor Primrose?’

‘Because she said we should never see Snowdrop; as if we were not good enough to look at her, and she was, the proud thing!—served her right!’

‘Oh, Pocket, Pocket,’ said I.”

This playful scene illustrates MacDonald’s attempt to integrate the Victorian conception of fairies as playful (and sometimes naughty) children with the older view of the Fairy people as powerful and dangerous. The garden is full of these little dramas like the small dramas of children, which seem so important to them at the time.