The Fountains, the Vanity of Human Wishes, and the Choice of Life

The Fountains: A Fairy Tale is a delightful piece of Samuel Johnson's work which has had virtually no literary or critical acclaim. Originally published in Miscellanies in Prose and Verse by Anna Williams in 1766, it has not been included in any modern collections of Johnson's works. And with the exception of some earlier editions, it has been previously republished only once, in the Baskerville Series in 1927.¹ Both James Boswell and Lady Knight corroborate that Johnson was working on the tale for Mrs. Williams, but neither elaborates on the tale itself. Critics writing on the nature of Johnson's fiction have not considered the tale either. In fact, the only attention given it in this century are a Times Literary Supplement review of the Baskerville reprint on 5 May, 1927 (p. 314), which suggests that the tale is an allegory of Johnson's theme of the "vanity of human wishes," and a passing mention by Sydney Castle Roberts, who speaks of Johnson's inadequacy in imagining fairies as part of the natural setting much as Shakespeare imagined them.² In fact, The Fountains is an important part of the Johnson oeuvre both because of its similarity to Rasselas and The Vanity of Human Wishes in thematic considerations and also because of its unique accomplishments in the genre of the fairy tale.

As a fairy tale The Fountains is unique in a number of ways. First, the central figure of the story is a female. This in itself does not entitle the story to any particular praise, but Johnson has given this girl control over her future and responsible judgement with which to control it. Unlike most girls in fairy tales, this one is particularly active and assertive in controlling her fate. There is no Prince Charming to rescue her from her various predicaments. In most typical fairy tales such as "Snow White" and "The Sleeping Beauty," the heroines are actually ultimate figures of passivity, who are rescued from deathlike sleep by their male protectors. Johnson's little girl Floretta is not even guided by a smart and clever boy, as Gretel is by Hansel. In fact, there are only a handful of little girls—Gerda in Hans Christian Andersen's "The Snow Queen," who searches for and finally rescues her playfellow singlehandedly, and the girls of C. S. Lewis's The Chronicles of Narnia, who actively combat the forces of evil in Narnia with sword, bow, and guile, are two of the very few—who actively pursue their fates. Johnson, through the agency of the fairy, gives to Floretta the ability to control her future according to her own wishes. Because Johnson lets Floretta take that option, he has in fact created a new kind of fairy-tale hero, or heroine to be exact, one who is unique in the genre.

Johnson's alteration of fairy-tale convention extends even further, in the device of the granted wish. In a fairy tale, it is the usual practice for some supernatural character—fairy godmother, witch, genie—to offer to a deserving mortal a specific number of wishes, usually three. Even if the number of wishes is unspecified, as with a magic lamp, it is never within the power of the mortal to undo the wishes. Even if one tries to undo the harm with another wish, the situation that results is even more complicated than the earlier one. Johnson, however, has recognized that fairy wishes have been the ruination of many a favored fictional mortal. He therefore restructures the whole wishing device with a new set of guidelines. Floretta may make a wish and then retract it,—first by drinking of the fountain of joy and then by drinking the mitigating waters of the fountain of sorrow. The result is a workable device of plot which saves Floretta from destruction by one false step. It is a device particularly suited to Johnson's didactic and moral intentions as well as to his intention to please and delight his reader. Using her power to both wish and unwish, Floretta...