Criticism

A dear friend and former teacher of mine recently said of Kenneth Grahame’s The Wind in the Willows, “If ever there was a children’s book written for adults, it is this one.” I whole heartedly agree, and not only because of the stunning beauty of Grahame’s prose. By way of explanation, I’d like to share a passage from Grahame’s story that, I think, aims right at the heart of his project…

Nathaniel Hawthorne’s legendary novel, The Scarlet Letter, gets a bad rap. It’s set in the Puritan town of Boston, Massachusetts in the 1640s, a time during which the church dictated literally everything about society: not only public policy and government, but also private morality. Hawthorne introduces his main character, Hester Prynne, as she begins what will be a lifelong punishment for the sin of adultery — public condemnation via a scarlet letter ‘A’ worn on her breast…

Holding my breath, suffocated by the burning odor of bleach, I took up my sponge against the scarred and yellow linoleum of my first apartment’s kitchen floor. The war raged long. Arms weary, knees bruised, I scrubbed like my life depended on it. And when I rinsed the host of suds at the end of a long afternoon…the floor did not look any cleaner. I obsessed over that kitchen floor for the whole first year of my marriage. I took it as a black mark against my identity as a homemaker…

It’s tempting to think that reading fantasy is about escaping from one’s own world. I’d bet that everyone has wished at least once that they could join their favorite characters in their world—things always turn out better, or at least they seem far more exciting through the eyes of our favorite authors. But I think to dismiss fantasy literature as escapism is to ignore the central attraction of a good fantasy novel: its capacity to recast universal truths in winning ways…