A Recovered Children’s Christmas Story by Mary E. Wilkins Freeman: “The White Witch”

To Mary E. Wilkins Freeman’s vast œuvre, a new story must be added. “The White Witch” appeared on Sunday, Christmas Eve, 1893, in the Boston Globe, Portland Oregonian, Philadelphia Inquirer, St. Louis Republic, and San Francisco Chronicle.¹ Advertisements for the story ran in the Boston Globe for December 21–23, 1893. The story appeared with a series of illustrations, although not every edition reproduced all of them. “The White Witch” is a children’s story and a Christmas story, two possible reasons it has hitherto escaped the notice of Freeman’s bibliographers.

As Mary Reichardt indicates in her introduction to The Uncollected Stories of Mary Wilkins Freeman, scholars have focused particularly on Freeman’s short fiction, which demonstrates her “expertise.” Reichardt indicates in her introduction that of Freeman’s “eighty-odd uncollected stories that do not appear” in her edition, “the majority are holiday tales.” Three holiday-themed stories do appear in Reichardt’s volume; however, she argues for their inclusion on the basis of their artistic merit, as stories that succeed in spite of being written expressly for and in the vein of the holiday story. As she explains, the three “achieve internal power and tension in spite of the overt holiday intent.”² All three stories were written for an adult audience.

Often regarded among her strongest works, Freeman’s short fiction is usually assigned to “either or both of the two following literary traditions: regional local color realism and proto-feminist writings.”³ Still, her œuvre as a whole remains difficult to characterize, given the sheer mass of her production and the number of genres in which she published and experimented: nonfiction, poetry, plays, novels, as well as stories for children and adults. Such scholars as James B. Carter and Karl J. Terryberry have recently “recontextualized” her work in order to pay more critical attention to her “fairy and folk themes.”⁴ For scholars interested in exploring the author’s interest in fairy and folk themes as well as her children’s literature, “The White Witch” should be of keen interest.

“The White Witch” is set in the fictional world of Polaria, a prosperous “undiscovered country.” Polaria is an entirely white place, even in summer. The people have white hair and white skin like “statues.” Fully a third of the citizens were once afflicted by a disease for which we have no equivalent, “hunger for color,” and went around with their eyes closed so that they could imagine hues.

On their part, the children suffer from a “great national discontent,” which causes them to be dissatisfied with their Christmas toys. On Christmas morning, the children reject their dolls and jumping jacks, casting them aside and abusing them. Moreover, they pelt one another with the toys and threw them out the window. Not only do children hurt one another, but they also hurt the toys, who are endowed with feelings.

The King of Polaria calls together a council the week before Christmas to address the problem. All agree with his assessment that the great discontent resulted from the country’s wealth and absence of taxes. While there was agreement regarding the cause, a proper solution was difficult to come by.

The Lord High Chamberlain suggests that the White Witch might know what to do. The council agrees, and the Lord High Chamberlain and the King go to see her. When they arrive at her house, they find six detectives. The King and Lord High Chamberlain—who was among the afflicted who kept his eyes closed—join the detectives to watch as she pours what looks to be boiling hot tea from a bubbling kettle onto her flowers. In the stream fluid, little rainbows appear and colorful flowers spring up from the ground.

The King ventures that the White Witch is using Black Magic. In his pocket book of magic, the King cannot find anything about the White Witch’s spell in either Black Magic or White Magic. One detective suggests that whatever was not White Magic must be Black Magic, and they proceed to take the White...