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I'm Dr. Caroline Batten for Oxford Fantasy, and with me today for our podcast is Claire Mulley,

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who is a doctoral researcher at the University of Oxford, Faculty of English.

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And today we are going to be talking about George MacDonald. Hi, Claire.

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Hello. 
Great to have you here. 
Great to be here.

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Thank you for having me. 
So, George MacDonald, I don't know anything about him, really, but I guess we'll sort of start with the basics.

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I mean, who was he? What was he about?

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I mean, I am going to come across as probably very vague in this whole thing because he is - there is so

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much to say about him that it's very difficult to condense it into one small space.

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I guess the easiest way to start with is to see him as a kind of grandfather of fantasy fiction.

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And he inspired so many of the Oxford writers who are famous today and whose fame has in many ways outlasted his own.

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Which is a shame because I think more people need to know about him, hence my choosing him.

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He was born in Scotland and he was born into a Calvinistic background, which is always interesting.

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But he was one of these people who very much changed his thinking.

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He had a very radical change of spirit on religion, and I think it caused him a lot of guilt in some ways,

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because when you're born in that kind of strong background, it's not just a simple seasonal change to change your religious persuasions.

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It feels like a betrayal, I guess. But when he underwent the transfer, I think he didn't like the general strictures.

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I think he didn't like the lack of emphasis on beauty, the fact that naturally pleasurable things should be thought guilty.

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And I think one of his sayings, if I'm quoting it correctly, was God, God loves the beautiful.

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And he saw beauty as a manifestation of inner goodness

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of the spirit and all that was good with the world and the idea that one could grow towards something.

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So whereas Calvinism was very much about ignoring the material side, ignoring anything beautiful, seeing it as superficial.

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He definitely saw some beauty as superficial, but there was a way of looking at it which could bring you closer to God.

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And I think it's just it's some of the things – one of the things I really like about him, actually.

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So he started off training to be – he started off not really knowing where he was going.

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He trained to be a chemist, couldn't find work, went to London, ended up tutoring three small boys.

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And then he eventually went for the ministry and was trained, he started off his training at Highbury.

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But then he stopped training and simply went into preaching.

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I mean, in those days, some churches, congregational churches,

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all that was needed was the vote of the congregation after you've given a few sermons and

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he got accepted at Arundel and it was while he was he would eventually move on from there,

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too. I mean, but he eventually ended up teaching at University College London.

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And he just wrote. He became I suppose he became a working writer.

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And the more he wrote, the more he was recognised for that and the more he earned from it.

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But his family life was quite hard due to illness and he had a lot of children and they got ill too, quite a bit.

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I mean, tuberculosis became the kind of family companions. So I don't know.

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They had an incredibly rich and varied life. But I guess they were always edging on the side of poverty.

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And they did have to have some help from some of their grander friends at various points. There's just so much to say about him.

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As you can tell, you know. 
It already sounds like he led a fascinating life.

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So what kind of time period are we talking here? 
Victorian.

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OK, so he he was friends with a lot of people who we would call household names.

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Now, like Ruskin, one of the people he met most famously was Lewis Carroll, Charles Dodgson.

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And it was actually down to MacDonald that partly, I'd say for the most part, to MacDonald and his children that Lewis Carroll published Alice at all.

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He was one of the ones that he sent it to. One of his friends said, oh, you should publish this.

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And he said, ooh, I'm not sure. And then he sent it to MacDonald because he got to know a couple of the children,

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Greville and Mary were two of his favourites, and said, What do you think of this?

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MacDonald loved it and the children loved it. So he said, OK, I'll publish it, 
So it's thanks to George MacDonald that we have Alice in Wonderland?

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Yeah, it's thanks to George MacDonald and actually Carroll, or Dodgson, whatever you prefer to call him,

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He took a lot of inspiration, I think, from certain fairy tales of MacDonald's, certain dream narratives.

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There's a dream narrative called – I can't remember whether you pronounce it FAN-tas-tees or FON-tahst, like the French.

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But it's it's a whole dream narrative in which there is a spiritual journey going on.

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But you don't have any particular one meaning you take from it. And certain figures like a white rabbit do appear.

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A lot of people think – I mean, a lot of people have tried to guess where Carroll's white rabbit came from,

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and I'd say it's a fair assumption to say that a trigger could have been MacDonald, because a white rabbit

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comes across the protagonist in the forest and seems to lead him on for a while and run away from him.

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And the sort of spirit guide into the dream world, the type of type of role.

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It only comes up once, I mean, the white rabbit is a far more consistent thread in Wonderland, but it's one of I mean, the story – Fantastes,

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I mean, that's my that's my way of pronouncing it, although I may be completely wrong.

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It really excels. And that it has several very visual, richly visual figures which crop up again and again.

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And while you might lose the thread, you remember the figures and one of MacDonald's children actually did crop up in Through the Looking Glass.

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I think it was the white – Lily crops up as the white pawn figure.

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And Mary's kitten, I think it was Snowdrop. If I'm right, I think she came in as well so there were lots of links to be had.

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And the mirror the idea of going through a mirror also came from one of MacDonald's nobles, Lilith, I think.

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Yeah, so let's kind of dig into his life and work a little more.

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So how did – tell me a little bit about sort of how his Calvinist upbringing and childhood, how did that how did that affect him throughout his life?

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What did that do to his work? 
I think what it did to his work...

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Calvinism meant that he always had a religious outlook.

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I mean, I suppose the Victorian era was always with an eye on the spiritual.

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I mean, it was very it was very rare to find a book for children which didn't have some kind of moral.

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But I think he – many of his novels, in a way, went against the Calvinist.

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I think it was more when he moved away from than what he grew up with.

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So a lot of his novels are to do with some kind of spiritual journey in which the bad things that happen to you are part of the good. He saw,

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he had very interesting views on the devil, in that he was allowed to wreak havoc on Earth.

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But it was in the end his idea that was that the devil would eventually be redeemed,

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that he had his role and everybody could be saved. This viewpoint that everyone and every

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person of any persuasion could be saved with something that got him a lot of unpopularity.

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Unsurprisingly, a few congregations refused to have him because of it, but because of it,

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a lot of his characters, they come to – a lot of it involves some sort of journey towards the good.

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And it's not just goodness for the sake of being good, because that is what you should do.

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It's the idea that they will grow.

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I think spiritual growth is probably the big through-line. Truth in certain types of beauty and also the fact that he didn't believe that,

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you know, he didn't use, say, the figures of princes and princesses and fairies in an allegorical sense,

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I think he believed everybody had the potential to be a prince or princess or a fairy.

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But for him, those qualities were to do with how you treated people and how you sought the higher good rather than just some fantasy figure.

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He found the imagination to be a way of speaking the truth. He found that to be a higher truth in a way,

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in the sense that all of his portrayals of corruption are portrayals of people thinking in a real world way.

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So people there's a very interesting passage in Fantastes where he meets his the protagonist meets a shadowy figure.

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And through the influence of the shadow figure, everything takes on a real hue in fairyland.

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So he meets a fairy child and in the shadow, the child becomes a normal workaday human child.

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So it's not a disappointment as such.

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It's just showing that real everyday thinking, which is so much looked up to realism in itself, is not necessarily the be all and end all.

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And you have to have to some extent, a mind in the fairy realm in order to reach that higher place.

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So fairy tales in that sense are not trivialised. They are shown to be the ultimate truth and everybody has their own thing to take out of them.

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I think that made C.S. Lewis like him so much and Tolkien as well.

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This reminds me a little bit of Tolkien's idea of sub-creation,

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the idea that by creating, the artist is kind of doing tribute to God, right? And to God's act of creation.

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Yeah, I think I think that is very much a maxim that MacDonald would have taught him.

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I mean, if you look at Tolkien, a lot of the the boggles or the bad elements of Middle Earth are to do with machinery, are to do with realism.

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Yeah. And actually that's MacDonald all over for you.

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I mean, you get badness in inverted commas is not really so much to do with someone doing awful things.

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It's more to do with someone trying to bring everything down to their mundane level for the sake of realism.

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You get a lot of – even the goblins. His most famous book is probably The Princess and the Goblin.

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And I love that book.

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I think it's definitely one I would, if I had children, I would read it to them. And the goblins are these underground creatures who can't stand poetry.

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It hurts them. You know, they are so rational and stony and they want to make everybody in the big human world like them,

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whereas the way to beat them is to be creative, just to make poems up on the spot and to rhyme and to sing.

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They hate that. So in a way, it is the higher mind defeating the mundane for the sake of modernity.

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And I think that's why I like it so much. It would be very easy to just have these horrible little things that just are menacing.

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But actually what you're doing is defeating the lower mind.

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So tell me a little bit more about The Princess and the Goblin, then. Does she defeat them through poetry and so on?

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She, well, she is Irene, named after one of MacDonald's daughters.

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Princess Irene is the protagonist. Again, he's actually a very strong feminist.

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He knew quite a lot of strong feminist figures in his day and so was quite forward in that sense.

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And there's two people in the story to contend with as the boy Curdie, who is a mining character, and there's the girl, Irene,

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and they both come from quite different sectors of society, but they both have stuff to teach each other, which is nice.

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So Curdie is very much the rational boy. He's down the mines all the time where the goblins are a threat.

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And he has learnt to rhyme on the spot. And he teaches Irene how to do it when she gets menaced in the forest, lost.

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It's really cute like he says, oh, they're all right.

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You just have to watch. You have to watch out for them.

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But if you just sing at them or if you just do a little poem and they're mainly in the form of nursery rhymes. And he sends them away.

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And Irene is also amazing because she's just, she's what you call a princess, one of his princesses of the mind.

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She's a very nice kid. She's just genuinely straightforward. And she likes to play like all children.

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And in her house, she has a magical, great-great-grandmother who sort of represents – she's sort of the anima,

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which is typical of many of MacDonald's works,

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a strong female, almost like a goddess figure representing sort of the opposite side of the usual view of God,

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very feminine, very strong, very world wise. And she could be seen by frightened people as a crone, probably, but by the right people.

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She would seem beautiful and perfect. So, again, a lot chimes in with Lewis here, I think.

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And it's a quest. Curdie can help Irene get rid of the goblins who plan to kidnap her and ultimately they

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want to drag her underground and make her their princess and so defeat the human world.

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But Irene is the one who, through her own intuition, gets to know this

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great-great-grandmother faery figure who teaches her a higher way of thinking,

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and that way of thinking is also necessary for defeating goblins. And Curdie, as a very rational being,

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doesn't quite have the trust of the higher level of understanding needed to meet this.

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She tries to introduce them, but he can't see the figure when they get to the tower room where she's meant to be.

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You know, Irene can see her, but Curdie can't see her.

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But eventually when she helps him, after he gets wounded, he does get to meet the grandmother.

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And then he sees that Irene wasn't just making up childish stories. And together they defeat the goblins and restore the kingdom.

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So it's sort of – it's your typical fairy story, but it's not boy saves girl.

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It's sort of boy saves girl and girl saves boy. And the main God figure is female.

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It's rather wonderful. I think Tolkien said that death was the main inspiration for MacDonald.

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And I think in a way he was right. But death seen as the great change, the gateway to something that could be really beautiful,

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really pure, really wonderful, and that we should anticipate rather than fear.

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I think that's a fair assumption, actually.

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And one that we see very much in Lewis and Tolkien, both as well, right? At the end of The Chronicles of Narnia, right?

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Death is a victory. It's a triumph. It's a happy ending.

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Yes. And they don't even know it's happened. That's what's curious. And there are certainly elements where that's very MacDonald.

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Some of his characters end up in a dream world where they're not quite sure whether they're alive or dead.

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And the reader's not entirely sure either.

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So everything is working towards this great, wonderful change, which people fear only if they have dropped out of the higher meaning,

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if they have gone away from God or whatever one might view as the equivalent of God.

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What is the higher mind, according to McDonald? What is this sort of state of spiritual purity that we need to get back to?

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What does that consist of?

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I think, you see it's very difficult to pin this down because a lot of his symbolism, as I say, it is possible to read one of several ways.

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But a common thread seems to be creativity, seems to be a lack of selfishness.

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Seems to be disinterested love,

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the idea that you can grow together and the interest in behaving to everyone

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as though they mattered and, I think, seeing beyond seeing beyond the moment.

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Perhaps one good example is part of Fantastes.

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There's a scene in the – oh, no, sorry.

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It's called The Golden Key. The fairytales bleed into each other.

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A character called Mossy runs across one of his other anima figures, who is a fairy woman living in the forest.

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And she has this in one's tank of multicoloured rainbow fish, flying fish, and they eat one.

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And she says,  she's horrified because the fish seem to serve the woman.

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But she says, oh, well. In fairyland, the creatures seek to be eaten because that is their higher purpose,

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but that's because something else happens to them and if you look into the pot in a minute, you'll see more than the dead fish comes out.

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So they eat the fish. But then a sort of colourful spirit or ghost comes out of the pot.

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And the idea is it's been released. It's like this whole thing.

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So it's a sort of sacrifice image, I suppose.

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But it's more than that. The idea that there is more than you can see in the here and now,

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that there is always a passage somewhere else and that there's always something to grow towards.

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I think the higher mind is always seeking to grow. It's more what it isn't.

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And it's not looking just in the moment, not looking just for your own gain,

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not assuming something is important just because everybody else believes it is important or society believes it is.

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I would always recommend someone goes first for The Princess and the Goblin.

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A definite story, a definite ending. And it's very satisfying and highly feminist in many ways.

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It's definitely one that is good for – I'd say it's still very good for kids.

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You know, it's never died in that sense. Surprising for a Victorian children's work.

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I know. I think he was very much in love with his wife and she was very much a proper helpmeet and she had a lot to contend with.

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So I think he had very definitely inspiration from their partnership.

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And as I say, he was well abreast of feminist politics in the day in a way that some other people weren't.

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And he met several of the figures.

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And it was yeah, I think his son, I think, had particular trouble at school because compared to many of his classmates,

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he was brought up in a relatively bohemian household and with all these new ideas and he had quite long pre-Raphaelite hair, which his parents had to bother to cut.

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And he got dreadfully bullied. Poor kid.

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He was sort of ahead of his time, I think. 
I identify strongly with long pre-Raphaelite hair as a look.

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Yeah, I know, all about it.

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Yes. That poor old Greville had had a difficult childhood in that –

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well, no, I think he had a nice childhood in the sense that the family were highly interesting.

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And MacDonald was a very good father in many ways. But he was also quite a strict disciplinarian.

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And I suspect that it was a very definite sort of upbringing.

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I suspect he would have had trouble breaking out of it,

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and it would have contrasted very strongly with what a lot of his classmates were receiving at home.

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And when you're, you know, 10 or 11, it's incredibly difficult to reconcile the two together, I think.

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Yeah, I'm sure it is. So tell me a little bit more about this about this family and their family life.

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It seems like MacDonald sort of lived his values in the way that he conducted his family life.

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He really did live his values. He met Louisa,

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his wife, she was the daughter of a family he became friends with in London.

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And they were quite in their own way, quite artistic, but more conservative, perhaps, than he.

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And he met them through his cousin Helen, with whom he had had a sort of romantic attachment,

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although I don't think it ever got to the point where they got engaged. He just sent her lots of poems, as they used to.

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And through that family, he met his wife, Louisa, and she was famously said to be quite plain.

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But he he fell in love with her for her character and he fell in love with her for the way they could talk and the way they got on.

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I think it was a proper friendship romance, which is always lovely to hear about.

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I mean, to the extent that he even – perhaps unflatteringly, but I sort of like it about him.

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He wrote a letter to a friend in which he exhorted him to find a plain wife because he said,

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well, you're not going to get distracted by ephemeral beauty,

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and what doesn't matter. You find someone who can think like you and you're not going to be,

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you're not going to be looking at her for the wrong reasons. On today's feminist terms,

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that's pretty appalling. But there's also something kind of wonderful about it in the context of the day.

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I think I get what he was saying. You get his drift.

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If he'd phrased it differently and just said, look for your soul mate rather than the face, it probably would have been more acceptable.

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Perhaps. So, yeah, they went on. They had, as far as I remember now, this is where my knowledge is more hazy because I'm new to it.

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I think he had 11 children and four of them died.

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I mean, it was a hard time. And, you know, tuberculosis generally was the cause.

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And throughout his life, he went through periods of being an invalid and spitting blood and his wife had to nurse him.

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There were times when they had to leave the children with family or with friends and travel for his health.

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So I think poor Louisa had quite a lot to put up with. Death was very much on the doorstep.

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I guess his thinking helped him because every time – it would have had to, every time they lost a child,

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he could think, well, we have to think of it as the great crossing, the great change, the beautiful thing.

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We mustn't be too sorry they've gone. And I guess that's the only way to survive losing a kid, really, in many ways.

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So and with the rest of his children, he, yeah.

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I think they were very much encouraged in the arts, a lot of them learned music,

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the fact was the whole family used to put on plays together when they were low on income at a time when again, it was very much frowned upon,

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the family would put on spiritual plays like The Pilgrim's Progress and the fairy tale

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plays like Cinderella and at one point the go to the public in to pay because she said,

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well, we do this anyway. We might as well get people to come and see us.

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So I think they lost a few friends through it, but the people who mattered stayed with them and realised what they were doing.

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And he, MacDonald, would take part in the plays. He would be like the elderly squire or an older figure or a spiritual godlike figure.

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And the children would play the roles.

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And one of the daughters at one point wanted to be an actress or she very seriously considered it.

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But she got engaged and lost her fiancé through her inability to give it up

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because he his mother disapproved of him marrying a woman who did family theatricals,

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although they were very tame theatricals and said, well, it was basically a question of, well, either the acting goes or I do.

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And she didn't – as far as I remember, she decided she couldn't marry him on that basis.

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She wants to be accepted for it. It would have been a dishonest match.

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And so they called off the engagement and it was very sad. But, yeah. 
I hadn't realised that family theatricals were something to be disapproved of.

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Well, you wouldn't think so.

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I mean, I can't think of much tamer than putting on Cinderella or The Pilgrim's Progress, but it was considered common, I guess.

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But it's ridiculous what some people find undignified, isn't it?

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Or would have found something to disapprove of? But as far as I can tell,

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it was just it was something that brought them together as a family and they did beautifully.

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And Dodgson, or Carroll, did watch some of that theatricals and really enjoyed them, I think. He fitted in with the

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family much as he did with Alice and her sisters because he was comfortable with children.

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I mean, I know there's been a lot of studies into Dodgson for this reason.

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And my reading of it is that he was just nervous around adults. So he just couldn't – I don't think he could hack it.

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And I can see why. He was just much more at his ease in a world where he could play characters and muck about and be unselfconscious.

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And that was when his stammer disappeared.

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So watching the children integrate so readily with the adults and put on plays and in a family where it was very child-centric,

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I think he felt very much at ease. And with the father being a writer and telling the children stories, it was something he could join in with.

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Yeah, that sounds about right to me, I can see why. 
I definitely think it's – it's by chance they met,

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but it was a friendship that would last a long time. And while he dropped off a bit when the children got older, as is true to Dodgson,

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I think he felt less he felt less comfortable frequenting all the time because the children had their own agendas.

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And I think there was one of the daughters.

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I think it was Mary, although my memory may be wrong, when she got engaged, he sent her a letter which some might even view as creepy.

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But I think I see the sense of it. It was saying to the extent of, I know some people don't want old childhood companions when they get married.

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And I wouldn't want to be tedious to you, but I hope we can still be friends.

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He didn't – he was aware that she might have grown out of him for want of a better expression.

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I think he saw himself as a kid in a way. But, yeah, it's in a way it's sad.

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But you can sort of understand it, I think. 
Yeah.

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So as a parent and as a writer, sort of both sides of his life, how did MacDonald kind of fit in to his cultural moment?

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Was he different than other writers,

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was he – were there people that he sort of was on a level with, people who shared ideas with, was his parenting style unique?

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How did he live his life in his cultural moment? 
I would say, as far as I can tell, he was somewhat outside the mainstream.

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I think he very much fitted into the pre-Raphaelite type of thinking.

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So the kind that would form a small coterie based around certain ideals,

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which didn't necessarily go entirely with the mainstream or the ideal of realism, shall we say, which was starting to grow.

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I mean, that was another big thing that was coming around the time. And you can see why. I think he did know a couple of the pre-Raphaelites.

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He definitely hung out with them. And I think he wasn't particularly in the public eye in that sense for much of his life.

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I think he did very – his first novel was published in Scotland.

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And this was only because a friend of his had sort of almost forced her publisher to accept it because she believed it was worthy.

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And from that moment on, he didn't have any trouble, but he didn't earn as much as Dickens,

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I don't think. I don't think he was ever truly, you know, up there, but he was in his time, he was more famous than he is now,

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and there's certain people like G.K. Chesterton who would forever go on to exhort him as the master.

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And I think he was known to people who shared his ideals. Very much

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someone who was beloved by people who enjoyed fairy tales and people who enjoyed that kind of gentler, more spiritual literature.

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Maybe his reception today or maybe the lack of knowledge around him is partly

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based on the fact that he wasn't ever as mainstream as someone like Dickens.

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He was always sort of floating around the outskirts. And where he was known,

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he was very well loved, but I don't think he ever got to the stage where he was –

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I think it was the fairy tales that would have been more of a household name. If he was known,

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it was probably more for that.

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And children's literature has always been a gateway for people who perhaps don't fit the adult dynamic as well as they'd like to.

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Yeah, I think that's true, even in fantasy today, really,

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some of our most innovative stuff happens in children's literature and kind of flies

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under the radar because we're so focussed on sort of putting aside childish things, right?

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We don't have a lot of respect for children and things that children enjoy. Speaking, though, of writers who really understood children.

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Yeah. 
Let's come back to this thread that's been popping up throughout our whole conversation, which is MacDonald's influence on other fantasy writers.

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And let's start with Lewis Carroll. So, as you said, they were friends.

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He was the one who told him to publish Alice; Dodgson was coming to their family theatricals.

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So tell me about that relationship, how'd they meet? What was their friendship like?

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How did it work? 
The friendship was, again, by chance. As far as I remember,

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They met through a medical sideline. So Dodgson was recommended –

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Now, this is going to be shameful because I won't remember the name of the person,

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but he was recommended the same doctor or therapist as MacDonald, and I think they met through that tagline.

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They met on that basis and just started to chat. And Dodgson ran into two of his children as well at a sculptor's.

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There was there was a Scottish sculptor working at the time.

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And he was interested. I think MacDonald had met him through the artistic channels.

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And both Mary and Greville were just down in the studio just to do a quick sketch.

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And Greville was being sculpted for this, for a boy with a dolphin statue.

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I think he decided to use him.

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And Dodgson got into this whole philosophical conversation with the children about whether he should have a marble head or not.

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You know, he basically, he started this very academic conversation, say, well, do you know why you should exchange your head for a marble one?

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And because you don't have to comb it. And Greville got convinced and said, look, Mary, I didn't have to comb my hair, because remember he had very long hair.

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And so they got into this hilarious discussion just purely based on that,

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And eventually Dodgson would sketch Greville with the marble head in memory of that conversation.

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So they called him Uncle Dodgson. He used to come round.

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And I think it was much like the Liddell family. He would come round, he would socialise with the parents as well.

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But he would ultimately he would make up stories especially for the children.

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He would talk to them like they were adults. And he took a couple of the children out for treats.

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He'd take them to shows, he'd take them for buns, and just, he acted like an honorary uncle and and where the children were, there MacDonald was.

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And they could have a chat. And both of them were spiritually similar, I think, in that they had their own personal crises of faith.

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Dodgson was forever undercut by this feeling of not being good enough in some way.

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And he was also anxious and he had a stammer.

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So many things barred him from becoming what he would have wished to have been in the church, or he saw his way as unclear.

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And similarly, MacDonald had gone through his own crisis of faith where he'd been brought up in one very strict religion and essentially abandoned

315
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it in many ways and become a preacher and then had been rejected by a congregation for having unfashionable views.

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So both of them found a great deal to talk about in common spiritually. And I think they could both exercise their ideals.

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And in the end, I think Dodgson ended up ascribing to a lot of similar viewpoints to MacDonald and he was looking for – in terms of beauty,

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in terms of change, in terms of looking for a way to grow. I think they shared a lot.

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And I think he got a lot of, just in terms of his later stories, listening to MacDonald and reading his work,

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just, I think it triggered off a lot of his ability to see in a dream dimension.

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I think things like mirrors, things like games of chess, things like, as I said,

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the rabbit, the idea of metamorphoses and not knowing exactly where you were.

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And Alice perhaps coming into her sense of self, always looking for this ideal,

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but always finding chaos. That very much is due to MacDonald's influence.

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But unlike MacDonald, there is much more of the dream narrative as opposed to the spiritual narrative.

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I think he made it more of just a straight romp.

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And I think that does to some extent explain its popularity compared to MacDonald.

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Even with the beauty of MacDonald, we're always aware that there's a religious element somewhere.

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And I think that makes a lot of people suspicious, whereas Alice is very much, it's over,

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And then I woke up from the stupid land and and it was all a dream.

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And you can just have it's basically playtime without the lesson,

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in a way. 
I do wonder, Alice is fun. Right.

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And it's meant to be funny and it's meant to be a romp.

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But I wonder if it is such a classic because there's a little bit of MacDonald-like depth to it, a little bit.

335
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There's this sort of sense in Wonderland that we're having fun, but also that we're sort of grappling with something existential.

336
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Yeah. And it's, and at the time, it's not fun for Alice,

337
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is it? 
No, she's not having a great time for much of it. 
People love Wonderland, but for Alice it isn't fun at all.

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She's this quite rational child and she just sees things that don't make sense and they irritate her.

339
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She has to work our way through this. Yeah, I think you're right,

340
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to some extent. Because MacDonald lent this readable symbolism,

341
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all this very flexible symbolism, I think to some extent that has lived on in Dodgson.

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And that's what has made Alice so popular,

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because there's so many ways you could read Alice's story or impose meaning on it in a way that worked for you.

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And there's always a character which people like, you know. Do you, I mean,

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do you have a favourite Wonderland character that speaks to you in some way?

346
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Oh, that's a good question. I feel like so many of them speak to me because I'm a profoundly nerdy person.

347
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I've always liked the Dodo, which I know Dobson based on himself because – 
Yes, I was going to say, I like the Dodo.

348
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Yeah, I feel a kinship with the poor awkward Dodo.

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I think the Dodo is who I am and the Cheshire Cat is who I'd like to be.

350
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I think to some extent a lot of us would like to be like the Cheshire Cat.

351
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We'd all like to just be that slight, sardonic, grinning presence that just conveniently disappears.

352
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And we've all had – I've definitely had a Red Queen day when I know there's nothing rational,

353
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but I just feel angry and I just sort of want to yell at people. And you know that if you gave in to this desire, you would be a horrible person.

354
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But we all like her to some extent because she just flies off the handle and it's fun.

355
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The Red Queen is the Id of Wonderland. 
She is the Id, isn't she?

356
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Really. But that's that's, I mean,

357
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I think MacDonald has that ability to read our own personalities or problems onto certain characters and had Dodgson just made it,

358
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had it just been a weird dream narrative

359
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where we don't get to meet anyone or the characters don't get much chance to speak or they just, or it's mainly about the protagonist,

360
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then it might not be so much fun. 
Well, the sense of play also is something that it sounds like MacDonald would have greatly approved of,

361
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because that's the creativity and a willingness to see beyond realism, beyond the mundane, that seems to fit his idea of the higher mind

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very well. 
Definitely. And the children loved it.

363
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I mean, Greville said, his quotation was, he said, I rather actually said I wish there were sixty thousand volumes of it so I could read them all.

364
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And it is, you know, typical hype, hyperbole coming from a child who loves something.

365
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I want eleventy billion copies, but, you know, you can see why they would have eaten it up.

366
00:35:57,140 --> 00:36:01,860
So we see MacDonald's imprint in it, on Lewis Carroll in Alice in Wonderland.

367
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What about later fantasy writers? What about C.S. Lewis and what about Tolkien? How do they relate to MacDonald?

368
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Well, I think the important one is definitely Lewis.

369
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And he first read Fantastes, however you pronounce it.

370
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And he realised, he actually called MacDonald his master, which I think a lot of people, again, don't know.

371
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It's just something. And even Lewis himself expressed astonishment that people didn't realise to whom he owed his inspiration.

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He talked about MacDonald and people wouldn't necessarily know him that well,

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but he essentially gave him the importance that Dante gave Virgil, literally.

374
00:36:45,990 --> 00:36:54,840
I mean, in The Great Divorce, he – when he gets to heaven in the bus, George MacDonald is sent to meet him.

375
00:36:54,840 --> 00:37:02,190
And he addressed him as my master. And MacDonald is the person who conducts him towards heaven and teaches him along the way.

376
00:37:02,190 --> 00:37:07,480
It's just a sign of how much he loved him and how much he saw him as a teacher.

377
00:37:07,480 --> 00:37:15,280
Wow, that's incredibly – that's sort of a very intense artistic debt that I didn't really know about at all.

378
00:37:15,280 --> 00:37:19,480
So what did Lewis take from MacDonald?

379
00:37:19,480 --> 00:37:24,100
What did he see in MacDonald that that shows up in his work? 
I mean, so much.

380
00:37:24,100 --> 00:37:27,580
I guess you you would need a couple of hours probably to pick up threads.

381
00:37:27,580 --> 00:37:33,790
But it was Lewis's claim that he pretty much quoted MacDonald in nearly everything he wrote.

382
00:37:33,790 --> 00:37:41,620
I mean, the higher – certainly one of the big things for me that seemed to have been taken away was this

383
00:37:41,620 --> 00:37:48,730
emphasis on seeing beyond the mundane for the mundane's sake or the realist for the realism's sake.

384
00:37:48,730 --> 00:37:56,230
I mean, famously in The Screwtape Letters, a lot of the hellish thinking is based on common bureaucracy,

385
00:37:56,230 --> 00:38:01,240
the idea that everything has a cost, everything must be made capital out of.

386
00:38:01,240 --> 00:38:03,490
There's no such thing as disinterest.

387
00:38:03,490 --> 00:38:11,410
And I mean, having hell as a bureaucracy I think is a stroke of genius. 
I mean, I think Hell undoubtedly is a bureaucracy.

388
00:38:11,410 --> 00:38:17,740
I would see it that way. I mean, obviously not common theological practise.

389
00:38:17,740 --> 00:38:22,420
And most of Lewis's writing could be seen more as, it's good for spirituality

390
00:38:22,420 --> 00:38:27,460
rather than necessarily what most people would term strict theological works.

391
00:38:27,460 --> 00:38:32,290
But it does contain that important element of, you know,

392
00:38:32,290 --> 00:38:39,610
not following the crowd for the sake of following, or trying to lose your self-consciousness in trying to grow,

393
00:38:39,610 --> 00:38:42,340
trying to grow, because, you know, it's the right thing to do.

394
00:38:42,340 --> 00:38:51,940
And also seeking out the beauty of disinterested love, seeking out people who think like you and trying to see what is beyond the everyday.

395
00:38:51,940 --> 00:39:01,660
Even if you don't believe, seeing how you can grow as a person and not just thinking of... and trying not to drag everything down.

396
00:39:01,660 --> 00:39:06,280
And this is something Lewis is all about. You know, not dragging things down.

397
00:39:06,280 --> 00:39:10,300
I mean, most of the things that will get you said to Hell are the small selfishnesses in his world,

398
00:39:10,300 --> 00:39:17,470
like, things like focussing on what people are wearing or how smart you sound or how much you like dinner at somebody else's expense,

399
00:39:17,470 --> 00:39:21,430
when what you could be doing is just trying to be a bit nicer to people.

400
00:39:21,430 --> 00:39:24,490
And it's all about slogging through that day when you're really tired,

401
00:39:24,490 --> 00:39:30,040
but still finding time to say a few kind words or trying not to snap at somebody

402
00:39:30,040 --> 00:39:35,260
when you're tired and make them feel stupid, stuff that really we all should try to do.

403
00:39:35,260 --> 00:39:44,140
Mm, because Screwtape says to Wormwood, doesn't he, that the road to Hell is very gentle and very gradual. 
The daisy path.

404
00:39:44,140 --> 00:39:45,100
Yes, it is.

405
00:39:45,100 --> 00:39:57,850
So yeah, to come back from a rambling sideways path, I think for Lewis I think this seeking of a higher mindset was a big thing.

406
00:39:57,850 --> 00:40:01,990
In terms of theme though, just quite apart from the way of thinking,

407
00:40:01,990 --> 00:40:08,320
the theme of talking beasts, a particular land where time had a different time to ours.

408
00:40:08,320 --> 00:40:12,550
That's something that crops up in MacDonald again and again with the dream narratives, like with Lilith,

409
00:40:12,550 --> 00:40:17,830
with Fantastes, where you have someone entering another realm and they might come out of it.

410
00:40:17,830 --> 00:40:23,980
And it's just the next morning or maybe a couple of months have passed, whereas 50 or 100 years have passed in that realm.

411
00:40:23,980 --> 00:40:36,580
And that's very much MacDonald. The idea of metamorphosis, the idea of the forest, I mean, it's again, it's partly fairytale based, isn't it,

412
00:40:36,580 --> 00:40:39,430
with the fact that things happen in a forest, but a lot of Narnia,

413
00:40:39,430 --> 00:40:45,130
a lot of the major events I think are in nature and a lot of them are to do.

414
00:40:45,130 --> 00:40:52,870
MacDonald was, again, very much about those scenes where a character sits in a bath or an underground spring in The Golden Key and is transformed.

415
00:40:52,870 --> 00:41:01,330
And that very much harks again forward to Eustace the Dragon getting in a bath and having his scales taken off as part of his selfishness cleansing.

416
00:41:01,330 --> 00:41:13,030
It's yeah, there's a lot of that element, that cleansing, that metamorphosis, the travelling, the talking animals, the realm of fairy,

417
00:41:13,030 --> 00:41:19,540
which is not necessarily about the little pixies, but about things, I think, things that aren't just what Tolkien would call a beast narrative.

418
00:41:19,540 --> 00:41:25,360
So whereas Beatrix Potter is just a world where animals talk, nothing magic happens in that sense,

419
00:41:25,360 --> 00:41:30,520
they just happen to speak, Lewis is very much part of Fairy, as was MacDonald.

420
00:41:30,520 --> 00:41:37,270
And you could run into anything, but it would all – you'd come out of it changed, was the idea, and there would be challenges along the way,

421
00:41:37,270 --> 00:41:40,810
which would appear very tempting, much like the Grail Quest.

422
00:41:40,810 --> 00:41:46,060
You would come across corrupt elements that look really nice or a character who might lead you astray.

423
00:41:46,060 --> 00:41:50,860
But ultimately, that was all for your own good because you're held back momentarily.

424
00:41:50,860 --> 00:41:58,300
But you learn a lesson you'll never forget. It's a very comforting way of seeing, if it can be called that, the bad,

425
00:41:58,300 --> 00:42:02,110
because it means there's no experience which doesn't bring you something, I think.

426
00:42:02,110 --> 00:42:07,000
And that's what I think modern therapy or psychology would also in terms of

427
00:42:07,000 --> 00:42:13,300
wmotional, spiritual well-being, I think it's what people are taught a lot, it's it's something I would personally very much ascribe to.

428
00:42:13,300 --> 00:42:20,950
Everything teaches you something and whether you're strong enough to recover right away or it takes you awhile to recover,

429
00:42:20,950 --> 00:42:25,840
it's still part of a journey.

430
00:42:25,840 --> 00:42:33,880
So it sounds a little bit like sort of the Lewis' kind of insistence on his Faery as kind of parallel to the real world,

431
00:42:33,880 --> 00:42:38,890
as something that you move in and out of, as opposed to something like Tolkien's Middle-earth.

432
00:42:38,890 --> 00:42:45,520
Right. Which exists sort of within its own kind of self-contained universe.

433
00:42:45,520 --> 00:42:50,860
No one hops from Middle-earth to 1940s London.

434
00:42:50,860 --> 00:43:00,220
It sounds like some of that comes from MacDonald, from MacDonald's insistence on using fairy tales and dream narratives as a way to find truth.

435
00:43:00,220 --> 00:43:04,300
Yeah, I mean, Tolkien had a lot of courage in that sense.

436
00:43:04,300 --> 00:43:10,630
I mean, in a way, one might argue that Lewis took the easier path by having his world parallel to the

437
00:43:10,630 --> 00:43:16,270
human world and so people can experience things in the context of modern day London,

438
00:43:16,270 --> 00:43:26,330
whereas the context of Middle-earth exists all by itself, although I guess in a way that one could see it as, you could still read into it.

439
00:43:26,330 --> 00:43:31,930
I think the Shire is very much, as Tolkien would have said, based on the Midlands.

440
00:43:31,930 --> 00:43:35,080
And it does have that very English atmosphere about it.

441
00:43:35,080 --> 00:43:39,970
It just claims no existing England within the context of the narrative.

442
00:43:39,970 --> 00:43:44,800
It lives in itself. It's a sort of parallel universe, unofficially.

443
00:43:44,800 --> 00:43:53,500
And I think another thing that he got from MacDonald, on another note, was, I mean, I think it was partly to do with Catholicism, to be fair.

444
00:43:53,500 --> 00:43:59,980
But the presence of the female anima, the godlike female figure,

445
00:43:59,980 --> 00:44:06,460
a lot of his major, what one might turn spiritual figures or goddess figures, are female.

446
00:44:06,460 --> 00:44:13,840
So you have Galadriel, you have Arwen. And, you know, they are in a way different to men.

447
00:44:13,840 --> 00:44:20,380
They sort of sit apart, but they have their own terrific power. And particularly Galadriel's light.

448
00:44:20,380 --> 00:44:24,850
The essence of her appears in dark places and guides the wanderer, like Frodo.

449
00:44:24,850 --> 00:44:32,140
And that's very much like MacDonald's fairy women, someone who could, by the evil side of life,

450
00:44:32,140 --> 00:44:40,450
be seen as a hag or a terror, someone of terrible power, someone who has the ability to frighten,

451
00:44:40,450 --> 00:44:44,830
but only because she ultimately is symptomatic of a higher good,

452
00:44:44,830 --> 00:44:50,110
which perhaps someone hasn't reached yet, and therefore meeting that is highly intimidating.

453
00:44:50,110 --> 00:44:53,920
But yeah, it's that kind of figure is very important to Tolkien.

454
00:44:53,920 --> 00:44:58,990
I mean, one could also argue that the Virgin Mary comes in there. And I mean,

455
00:44:58,990 --> 00:45:03,820
also we have Eowyn who is very much a shield maiden and symptomatic of Old Norse.

456
00:45:03,820 --> 00:45:10,450
And I guess all of that mixes in. But I would say MacDonald has a large part to do with it.

457
00:45:10,450 --> 00:45:17,530
I think imagistically Tolkien got a bit from MacDonald, but in terms of his philosophies, he was far more his own person.

458
00:45:17,530 --> 00:45:21,730
I think Lewis very much saw MacDonald as his leader, his guru.

459
00:45:21,730 --> 00:45:27,580
And it was a much more symbiotic relationship in that – well, I can't say symbiotic because they weren't around the same time.

460
00:45:27,580 --> 00:45:34,970
But he was more, his style was more integrated into what had come before, shall we say.

461
00:45:34,970 --> 00:45:49,960
Yeah, I think often of the way that Faramir describes Galadriel as perilously fair and Sam Gamgee in his infinite wisdom says, I don't know about perilous.

462
00:45:49,960 --> 00:45:56,470
And he says that you could dash yourself to pieces against or you could drown yourself in her like a hobbit in a river.

463
00:45:56,470 --> 00:46:03,270
But neither rock nor river would be to blame, it's only because she's so strong in herself.

464
00:46:03,270 --> 00:46:11,780
The thing only a hobbit could say, really. Gimli is converted, he goes from seeing her as a potential threat and then realises,

465
00:46:11,780 --> 00:46:19,550
oh, God, she is actually, she is genuinely that pure and wonderful and I want to worship this.

466
00:46:19,550 --> 00:46:25,880
It's that that moment of Gimli's spiritual awakening. And again, that's quite a MacDonald element.

467
00:46:25,880 --> 00:46:35,330
That's one of perhaps the strongest MacDonald threads, where, one might argue, an earthly creature who is very concerned with with wealth.

468
00:46:35,330 --> 00:46:38,900
I mean, admittedly, as a craftsman, he sort of gets out of jail that way.

469
00:46:38,900 --> 00:46:44,210
The dwarves are, they could go either way, couldn't they? They are very corruptible in that they love gold.

470
00:46:44,210 --> 00:46:52,460
But if they love gold for the sake of making, and the sake of its beauty as opposed to what it can buy them, then that in itself is a level of spirituality.

471
00:46:52,460 --> 00:47:00,500
And this is a side of the good kind of that spirituality meeting the higher plane and realising and humbling itself,

472
00:47:00,500 --> 00:47:04,820
travelling to a higher realm and changing, realising there's more to the world than what's underground.

473
00:47:04,820 --> 00:47:09,230
And I want to seek out the beauty in the world outside as well.

474
00:47:09,230 --> 00:47:15,980
And I will put, I will put my pride aside and recognise the power of this

475
00:47:15,980 --> 00:47:20,330
She, this anima, and give it due reverence. Yeah.

476
00:47:20,330 --> 00:47:29,210
Yeah. So maybe to finish up, let's talk a little bit about these about these spiritual women in MacDonald,

477
00:47:29,210 --> 00:47:33,590
because this seems like an important thread in his work. So tell me about his women.

478
00:47:33,590 --> 00:47:41,270
What are they like? 
His women. So they range from the goddess figure to the little girl.

479
00:47:41,270 --> 00:47:46,220
I mean, those are the two main types that one encounters, particularly in the fairy tales.

480
00:47:46,220 --> 00:47:53,450
And they are refreshingly, even the goddess figures are refreshingly normal, if such a word can be used.

481
00:47:53,450 --> 00:48:02,810
So, for example, Irene, the princess, who's one of my favourite characters, is just, she's just a playful little girl who likes to run around.

482
00:48:02,810 --> 00:48:09,740
She gets bored like other little girls. She's not always the best behaved, but she's a kind child at heart.

483
00:48:09,740 --> 00:48:14,000
And the grandmother is a figure, is, the anima figure is often a caring one.

484
00:48:14,000 --> 00:48:21,260
Interestingly enough, she bathes hurts. Irene gets a scratch from one of the goblins, the grandmother bathes

485
00:48:21,260 --> 00:48:25,880
her, there's a lot of baptismal imagery, which is definitely the religious side.

486
00:48:25,880 --> 00:48:32,930
So there's, a lot of the time there's the image of the bath, getting a wash. You get spiritual cleansing, that's feeding.

487
00:48:32,930 --> 00:48:40,910
And I think this also comes from the fact that MacDonald lost his mother at quite a young age and he always kept one of her letters,

488
00:48:40,910 --> 00:48:46,070
which she sent to her mother in law about weaning him, which she was very upset about.

489
00:48:46,070 --> 00:48:50,150
So there is perhaps a Freudian element going on here, in that she, you know,

490
00:48:50,150 --> 00:48:56,660
she talks about how upset she was at hearing the baby crying, but not being able to feed him and and then she dies.

491
00:48:56,660 --> 00:49:04,070
And MacDonald is grief struck, I think. I think a lot of his anima figures were based on this feeling of a lack of a mother.

492
00:49:04,070 --> 00:49:07,250
It also fits in with MacDonald's thinking on sexuality.

493
00:49:07,250 --> 00:49:14,630
He genuinely believed that one could find God or become closer to God through sexual desire and sexual love,

494
00:49:14,630 --> 00:49:21,320
unlike Calvinism, because it was all part of the beauty of, it was all part of the beauty of disinterested love.

495
00:49:21,320 --> 00:49:29,870
And if done in the right way, it would show you, you know, it was one of the keys to creation and it would make you a better person and purify you.

496
00:49:29,870 --> 00:49:38,390
So, yeah, some sexy women, mainly a sort of I would say mother goddess is is the clearest way to describe most of the women,

497
00:49:38,390 --> 00:49:48,140
mother goddess and the nice girl, but not nice girl in the sense of twee little princess or little saint.

498
00:49:48,140 --> 00:49:56,420
Very much a child who wants to be good, is playful, and is open to growing and open to suspending disbelief.

499
00:49:56,420 --> 00:50:03,770
But if you haven't read The Princess and the Goblin, do. You know, especially at a time when one is ill, get it out.

500
00:50:03,770 --> 00:50:11,830
Goodness me. Give yourself a treat. Read it in bed. It's brilliant. 
I mean, well, in that case, I know what I'm doing with my Sunday morning.

501
00:50:11,830 --> 00:50:20,650
That sounds wonderful. Right, well, I think that might be as good a place as any to wrap up our introduction to George MacDonald,

502
00:50:20,650 --> 00:50:26,890
who is so much more exciting than I would possibly have guessed.

503
00:50:26,890 --> 00:50:35,890
Thank you so much. 
You're welcome. And for any gaps in knowledge anyone has noticed you can find, I'm going to recommend a good book for you to read.

504
00:50:35,890 --> 00:50:40,870
So the major biography of George MacDonald by William Raeper,

505
00:50:40,870 --> 00:50:49,750
R-A-E-P-E-R, will contain most of the names and dates that I have missed out and will fill you in on more of the clear information.

506
00:50:49,750 --> 00:50:55,190
And even his son, Greville MacDonald, wrote quite a good biography of his father as well.

507
00:50:55,190 --> 00:50:59,510
So that's that's when you can check out. I would highly recommend doing so.

508
00:50:59,510 --> 00:51:02,570
Brilliant. Thank you. 
You're welcome.