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  • Commitment and Escape:The Fairy Tales of Thackeray, Dickens, and Wilde
  • Ellen Tremper (bio)

A Wildean paradox, minus the humor, opens this discussion of the fairy tales of Thackeray, Dickens, and Oscar Wilde. We generally think of the high Victorians as willing to confront reality, or the important issues of their age. On the other hand, the writers of the Decadence have a reputation for their desire to escape from the harshness and ugliness of life. Yet The Rose and the Ring by Thackeray and The Magic Fishbone by Dickens are apparently escapist in character, full of fairies who, while they may drive hard bargains and put the hero and heroine through their paces, ultimately resolve all difficulties through effortless magic. Wilde's volume, The Happy Prince and Other Stories, by comparison, is a repeated immersion in the bitter waters of worldly experience.

A question to ask is whether the attitudes usually present in these writers' adult fiction are, for some reason, overturned in their juvenile stories. In other words, does Dickens really deny, in The Magic Fishbone, the bleak reality of little Joe, the street-crossing sweeper of Bleak House, and, conversely, does Wilde throw his theatrical flouting of society to the boards in these poignant, indeed, heart-rendering tales written for his children? If the answer to these questions is yes, we should be faced by more than a case of superficial paradox. However, an examination of the reader's moral and emotional responses to these stories reveals that our original expectations of the authors' values and positions, based on our knowledge of their other writings, will hold true in their children's fiction as well. The Rose and the Ring and The Magic Fishbone are, then, despite their reliance on abracadabra, stories that ask their young readers to embrace fully the values of Victorian society. And Wilde's stories, if the reader can bear to read to the end, lead him to the inescapable conclusion that, as James Thurber [End Page 38] has said, we should "Run, not walk, to the nearest desert island."1

The Rose and the Ring, first published by Thackeray in 1855, seven years after Vanity Fair, is, I think, despite its reputation, the least charming and interesting of these works. It relies ponderously on the usual "fairy business":2 the fairy whose birth presents to the two princes and princesses are the result of the misuse of the rose and the ring she had formerly bestowed on two of the queens, the mistaken identity of Rosalba (otherwise the traditionally good and beautiful Rose White), and the fairy's ultimate aid to the morally deserving prince and princess. Under his pen name M. A. Titmarsh, Thackeray introduces the tale that follows with a brief account of the circumstances of its creation. He had written it, during a Christmas season spent in Italy, for a group of young children including his own. He then goes on to comment:

If these children are pleased, thought I, why should not others be amused also? In a few days Dr. Birch's young friends will be expected to reassemble at Rodwell Regis, where they will learn everything that is useful, and under the eyes of careful ushers continue the business of their little lives.

But, in the meanwhile, and for a brief holiday, let us laugh and be as pleasant as we can. And you elder folks—a little joking, and dancing, and fooling will do even you no harm. The author wishes you a merry Christmas, and welcomes you to the Fireside Pantomine.3

The dichotomy between duty and pragmatism, on the one hand, and pleasure and escape on the other, is clearly uppermost in Thackeray's mind. Yet, ironically, even when this Victorian consciously set about writing a story, the purpose of which was to please and serve as a respite from the duties of life, he could hardly escape his own formidable arsenal of moral armaments that represented his critical commitment to society. And so we find him moralizing, drawing attention to the faults of the characters of his pantomime, with the obvious [End Page 39] intention of getting his young audience to make...

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