The Light Princess

The Light Princess is a book of about 110 pages that I unearthed in the library’s juvenile section. There are a few etexts available (listed here), but this is the version I read.

I’ve read a few other MacDonald stories: Phantastes (years ago), Lilith, and The Princess and the Goblin. C.S. Lewis felt his imagination was “baptised” by Phantastes; me, not so much. Nor Lilith.

But I’ve enjoyed both his tales for children immensely. The authorial voice of this one is less grandfatherly than in The Princess and the Goblin, leaving the reader undistracted from the story as it unfolds. I liked this, for this story is like a diamond: it leaves some strong pictures in the mind, multifaceted and mythic, and it’s a treat to be able to retain them vividly, undistorted by an overbearing narrator.

The basic plot involves a princess who, because her aunt (a witch) was inadvertantly forgotten at her christening, is cursed with weightlessness. Gravity — of any kind — has no hold on her. Her body floats; her mind flits; her heart drifts, failing to attach to anyone. She never cries. She’s a mere shell.

Eventually a prince falls in love with her, just about the time her evil aunt begins to drain the lake where the princess loves to swim. She begins to fade away herself. The only way to restore the lake is for someone to willingly give his life for the princess. What will happen? This is the tale MacDonald spins, playing with the symbolic suggestiveness of light(ness), gravitation, and water.

If the princess is the quintessential picture of empty loveliness, her aunt is the picture of hatred. At one point she casts a spell that involves a long walk during which she mutters, coiled lovingly by a huge snake, locking a seemingly endless string of doors. I enjoyed the strength of these characterizations.

I also developed an appreciation for Sendak’s illustrations. I’m as much of a Where the Wild Things Are fan as anyone else, but I wasn’t sure about these drawings till I got a ways into the story. They have an eeriness that seems, I decided, well suited to this fantasy tale, reminding me of Chris Van Allsburg’s Mysteries of Harris Burdick illustrations. (You can see them here.) Sometimes a careful scrutiny of them brings unexpected rewards… In one, a table beside the king holds a copy of Phantastes. This was a well-told story that will probably stay in mind for awhile.