The Princess as Role Model

A guest post by Gwyneth Jones

I’ve always been attracted to fairytales. I knew I was a storyteller long before I knew I’d be a writer: I took on my father’s mantle, and told epic bedtime stories to my brother and sister, at an early age, and my father’s stories (also epic, endless episodes from the same saga, about the same characters) were all based on a traditional tale, the one about a girl who finds out that she once had seven brothers, who were banished and turned into crows when she was born. It has many variants, but from internal evidence the original must be the Moroccan one, The Girl Who Banished Seven. Naturally, she sets off to find them and rescue them from the enchantment. That’s typical of a fairytale princess (she’s one of those who becomes a princess by marriage, but it’s all the same to me). They do the right thing. They stand up to evil step-mothers, and no task is impossible...

As a child I was small, podgy, clumsy and, worst of all, I was obviously going to pass that dreaded public exam called “The 11 Plus” and go to Grammar School. I felt for the princesses in the fairy tales. First they tell you you’ve been awarded fairy gifts (which you never asked for) and then wham, you’re plunged into bizarre vindictive hardship. Your mother dies, you end up sleeping in the ashes, washing bloody linen in a cave, knitting nettle shirts on a bonfire, wearing out your iron boots over razor sharp glass mountains. But I admired them too, and found them a tremendous comfort. They were so tough, so resourceful, and so decent. When everyone (not least the other little girls I knew) was telling me you are second-rate, they made me proud to be a girl. As I nursed my little bullied self home from school, by the most unobtrusive route, I thought about Cinderella. Elle s’estoit bien, says Perrault, and I wanted to be that person. To behave well, to stand up and be proud. (I knew it worked, too. The best way to frustrate a bully is to stay cheerful; be nice. It drives them absolutely nuts.)

When I was a child I responded to the bizarre adventures, the cheerful feats of endurance, the unstoppable can-do attitude of those privileged, yet beleaguered, young women. As I grew up the stories grew with me. I realised that the princess complex is a trap, it’s pure social propaganda. But I still loved the princesses, and the princes themselves, and honoured their traditions when I started writing my own fantasy stories, published, long afterwards, as Seven Tales And A Fable. I honoured the stories and I still do. I saw that they were more than lessons in docility, more than comforting, greedy daydreams. They were beautiful, ancient vessels, full of buried treasure. It was a very old, profound and lovely princess-story, re-written as a fantasy novel by a modern writer —'Till We Have Faces', C.S. Lewis— that inspired me to write 'Snakehead', my own re-imagining of the story of Perseus and Andromeda.

Perseus and Andromeda - a wall painting from Pompei.  The dignified classical take.

'Till We Have Faces' is based on Eros and Psyche, one of the greatest of the Greek myths, and yet the story is familiar from many fairy tales. A princess finds her prince and loses him. She fights her way back to his side by overcoming the fiendish magical  challenges devised by a spiteful royal mother-in-law—

Seven long years I served for thee
The glassy hill I clamb for thee
The bluidy shirt I wrang for thee
Wilt thou not wake and turn to me?

(The Black Bull Of  Norroway)

Perseus and Andromeda is another myth, perhaps the greatest of them all, with instant popular appeal. The hero-tale of Perseus fits in anywhere! There’s this kid, you see, brought up by his single mother, goes to High School or whatever, and then one day some supernatural beings come along. They tell him his father was a Greek God, they give him a magic sword and flying sandals, they send him off to kill a terrifying monster. He’s tall, strong and handsome! He has superpowers! He’s a teen with a mission! Oh, hey, and there’s a flying horse—

Unexpectedly, things get even better if you’re looking to write a novel rather than a comic book. The story of Perseus has complexity, it has texture. There’s the grim soap-opera of his parentage —why Danae of the shower of gold was locked up; how Zeus, the ruthless, randy chief of the Olympians, just couldn’t resist a challenge; how  Perseus’s charming grandfather put both mother and child in a box and had them thrown into the sea. There’s the unconventional little family group on the island of Seriphos: Danae and her son, washed up on the shore, living under the protection of Dictys the fisherman. Whose brother is the island’s tyrant king. 

Imagine this boy, knowing he’s different, but with nothing to show for it, no rank, no riches. Imagine him finding out that his biological father (he’s not impressed by divine status, of course; he’s family himself) is a ruthless Mr Big who raped his mother. He knows he’s been protected at least once from certain death. He must be wondering, as he grows up, what his selfish brute of a Divine Father saved him for.  Nothing good, you can bet...  And then there’s Dictys. Imagine the boy’s relationship with the fisherman, who has brought him up, and never (not in any of the accounts) put a disrespectful move on Danae. He’s been a true father. Dictys seems to be a man of peace, since he’s able to live and let live, with his wicked brother on the throne. How is his adopted son really going to feel, when the Messenger of the Gods, and the Goddess Athini waylay him on the road, and tell him he has to chop off the Gorgon’s Head? This Gorgon who was once a woman, too  beautiful for her own good, like Danae. Who was turned into a monster, to punish her for having been raped...

So it goes on, a wonderful story: the work of many hands, over thousands of years, and yet still alive, still growing, still inviting new storytellers to weave new patterns into the web. There’s only one weak point, and that’s the traditional centrepiece, where our hero finds his true princess, and has to win her by beating a string of awful vindictive challenges, thrown down by the malign Gods—

It’s weak because it doesn’t happen.

Andromeda and Perseus - by Ingres.  The prurient neoclassical take.

Andromeda isn’t a character. She’s not even as much of a character as the prince in 'The Black Bull Of Norroway'. She’s a name, and a predicament. Perseus doesn’t struggle to win her. He just passes by, on the way home from his questing work, swinging the Gorgon’s Head by the hair (not very safe! But that’s how it looks in all the pictures), and picks up a half-naked princess; like a pizza or a sandwich.

In my opinion, this just won't do!

Perseus and Andromeda - by Burne-Jones.  The OTT macho Pre-Raphaelite take.

In 'Till We Have Faces' C.S. Lewis keeps his distance from the two principals who represent, without much disguise, the human soul and the God of Love. His characters are the lesser figures. His protagonist is one of Psyche’s jealous sisters —a woman who barely exists in the original narrative. In 'Snakehead', I took the liberty of inventing the character of Andromeda, a weaver and a scholar (her name means Ruler of Men, or else Thinker) and switched things around so that she and Perseus have some previous history, before Andromeda is chained to the rock; before Perseus wanders along to slay the dragon. It just makes more sense, if Perseus knows he’s coming to the rescue of a princess; if he intends to claim her hand in marriage. It makes more sense to me personally, too. A generation ago, great writers and editors like Jane Yolen, Ellen Datlow reclaimed the traditional heritage: dismissing soft-focus, Disneyfied Snow White and Cinderella, rediscovering grim truths and quick-witted, resourceful heroines. That’s fine, that’s excellent work. But what I’ve wanted to do is to reclaim the relationships. To bring the prince and the princess together, instead of sending them off on segregated initiation trials. To let them meet as human beings, as friends, and fight side by side.

The story on record says Andromeda had to be sacrificed to punish her mother, queen Cassiopeia —who had boasted that her daughter was more lovely than a sea-nymph, and thus offended Poseidon, the God of Ocean and of Earthquakes. I don’t believe it. Child sacrifice was absolutely rife, around the shores of the Ancient Mediterranean. (Take a closer look at your Old Testament if you don’t believe me). I’ll bet you anything it wasn’t a one-off occasion. I bet there was a lottery, and the children of the rich were usually spared, but then the queen’s political opponents decided Andromeda’s number was up. A powerful woman like Cassiopeia could have been an annoying relic of the old ways, in the days of the original story —when the Mediterranean World was leaving female-ordered civilisation behind, and patriarchal tribal rule was taking over.What would a princess do, if she found out she’d been drafted? Run for it, of course. And then what would she do, if she was a real princess; and knew some other poor girl would have to die in her place? She’d run back, of course. No matter who tried to stop her, no matter if she’d fallen in love.

Leaving Perseus with his repellent, murderous quest: a terrible choice, and just the inklings of a desperate plan—

The story of Perseus and Andromeda is the story of the founders of Homer’s Mycenae: well built Mycenae, rich in gold... way back in the Bronze Age. And from Mycenae, the baton was handed on to Athens, the cradle of western civilisation; making them a fairly significant couple, in the scheme of human history. (And by the way, Perseus and Andromeda did live happily ever after, which makes them unique among pairs of lovers featured in the Greek Myths) But is that all? The deeper I looked into the history of the Medusa, terrible to look upon, snake-haired monster - and into the history of the mighty Goddess Athini, whose name means Mind, the more they seemed to reflect each other. As if Medusa and Mind were the two faces of one truth—

Did I catch a glimpse of the original, brilliant storyteller, telling me something timeless and profound? About that mysterious birthright gift, first freely given and then painfully earned, that lies at the heart of fairy tale? Maybe, maybe not. I don’t know. I’m just a storyteller, seeing pictures in the fire. Pictures that, now as then, sometimes seem playful, sometimes serious, and sometimes seem to tell me eternal things.


Gwyneth Jones is a brilliant writer of adult science fiction. ‘Bold As Love’ which won the Arthur C Clarke Award in 2002, is the first of a series of five books about a near-future Britain where society is in meltdown. There’s a violent environmental movement, an Islamist uprising in the north, a subtle but nasty dose of black magic and a complex relationship between the main characters – three charismatic, damaged and idealistic young rock stars who become the country’s reluctant saviours and leaders of a new government, the 'Rock and Roll Reich'.  The books are rich in romance, horror, and a deeply felt version of British landscape, history and myth.  

Under the name Ann Halam, Gwyneth has also written YA fantasy, science fiction and horror.  I’ve talked on this blog about ‘King Death’s Garden’, a ghost story which is funny as well as very frightening. Siberia’ is a haunting, beautiful book about a girl who journeys across a frozen  repressive land carrying a ‘nut’ full of mysterious secret seeds. And  Snakehead’ is an absolutely womderful retelling of the legend of Perseus and Andromeda.

Picture credits:

Princess on Rock with Dragon: Arthur Rackham, Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm. 1909 
Perseus and Andromeda: a wall painting from Pompei, The National Museum of Naples.
Perseus and Andromeda: by Ingres 
Perseus and Andromeda by Edward Burne-Jones

The Grasshopper's Child by Gwyneth Jones

“You’re a recovered asset, hired out by the loan company to work off your dad’s debts.”

“You mean I’m a slave,” said Heidi.

This excellent YA novel is set in the same world as Gwyneth Jones’ Arthur C Clarke Award winning, five book cycle ‘Bold As Love’ – set, that is to say, ‘fifteen minutes into the future’ of a United Kingdom in the process of economic and political collapse, when a trio of rock musicians – lovers and friends – find themselves thrust to charismatic leadership of a Barmy Army battling for England’s soul against the forces of a new Dark Age. (The Arthurian echoes are deliberate.) If you haven’t read them, and if you enjoy character-driven, audaciously imagined, beautifully-written novels with a breath of sci-fi and a hint of magic, you can start rubbing your hands now.

Although fans of the adult series will enjoy picking up references to the earlier books, The Grasshopper’s Child is a stand-alone novel well pitched for young adults (for whom Gwyneth Jones has written for years under the pen name Ann Halam).  

Before she did the terrible thing, Heidi Ryan had been a teen with adult dependents, exempt from Ag. Camp because Mum and Dad couldn’t manage without her.  Her Mum had schizophrenia – which, as Immy their social worker kept telling Heidi isn’t a disease, it’s a name for a bunch of distressing mental health symptoms. … Dad’s issues weren’t so obvious. … Basically, Immy said, he was a lovely man and a good dad, but he’d taken too many drugs when he was young and … now he just couldn’t make decisions. Or pay bills. Or generally look after himself, never mind anyone else. But that was okay because Heidi was in charge. Or so she thought.

For years, Heidi has been her parents’ carer.  But coming home one day to find her father dying in a pool of blood and her mother brandishing a knife, she does the ‘terrible thing’: she calls the police. Her mother is taken away, and Heidi is sent to the remote coastal village of Mehilhoc to become an Indentured Teen – or, as she bluntly points out to the Old Wreck she works for, a slave.  (In a society which routinely demonises and commodifies people on benefits; the Dept. of Work and Pensions recently demanded a man work six months without pay for the company which had sacked him - this seems chillingly possible.)

As she explores the overgrown garden of the dilapidated mansion whose owners now own her, Heidi’s mission is to prove that her mother didn’t kill her father. But there are further mysteries. Why has the suitcase containing all her worldly goods gone missing? What is the secret of the bitter, decrepit brother and sister whom she serves?  Who or what comes creeping up the attic stairs at night?  Why does everyone defer to the Carron-Knowells, effectively feudal lords of the village? 

Heidi is a wonderful heroine, tough and sensitive, a poet who puts her fears and joys into genuinely good verse. As she makes friends with other teenagers in the village, The Grasshopper’s Child explores the dynamics of this group of young people: their strengths and weaknesses, the things they can say to one another and the things that are left unspoken. It explores friendship and responsibility, and the difference between sexual attraction and real liking: when Heidi finds herself reacting to her friend Challon’s off-and-on boyfriend Gorgeous George Carron-Knowell, she deals with it in a manner that preserves self-respect. Heidi has bags of self-respect. She is a delightful and formidable character – oh, one who happens also to be black.

As ever with Gwyneth Jones, the writing is a joy to read: beautiful, vivid and tactile, as here: 'red velvet curtains, worn to rust in the folds, silently coughed out dust when she touched them...'  I can almost taste that acrid dust in my throat. With ghosts, with technological wizardry, with mystery, modern pirates and murder, and references to The Secret Garden as well as many a children’s adventure story (secret tunnels, anyone?) The Grasshopper’s Child is a feast. Do buy it, and curl up with it for Christmas.

Visit Gwyneth Jones' website here: http://homepage.ntlworld.com/gwynethann/

Buy The Grasshopper's Child as an ebook on Amazon


The cover picture above is that on the proof of the paperback edition. I will add a link when I know it is available.

Fairytale Reflections (23) Gwyneth Jones

As a long-term writer of brilliant adult science fiction, Gwyneth Jones is a force to be reckoned with.  ‘Bold As Love’, which won the Arthur C Clarke Award in 2002 (and was nominated for many others) is the first of a series of five books about a near-future Britain where society is in meltdown.  There’s a violent environmental movement, an Islamic uprising in the north, a subtle but nasty dose of black magic, and a complex relationship between the main characters – three charismatic, damaged and idealistic young rock stars who become the country’s reluctant saviours and leaders of a new government, the 'Rock and Roll Reich'.  The books are rich in wars, rock festivals, romance, horror, and a deeply felt version of the British landscape, history and myth.  Do read them - if you haven't already!

However, Gwyneth also writes YA fiction under the name Ann Halam.  The earliest of her books I ever read was ‘Ally Ally Aster’, Allen & Unwin, 1981, in which a couple of conniving villains manage to imprison an ice spirit for their own nefarious ends.  (As you might guess, things turn out badly for them.)  After that I was hooked and have read nearly everything she’s written since: science fiction, horror and fantasy.  I’ve already talked on this blog about ‘King Death’s Garden’, a ghost story which is seriously funny as well as very frightening, as the self-pitying hero Maurice (characterised by the girl he fancies as a filthy, leprous little brute) sets out to discover the true secret of the large Victorian cemetery beside his great-aunt’s house. Then there’s ‘The N.I.M.R.O.D. Conspiracy’, a blend of horror and thriller, in which a boy, haunted by the little sister who drowned while in his care, begins to think – with reason – that she may still be alive. And ‘Siberia’, a haunting and beautiful book about a girl who journeys across a frozen and repressive land carrying a ‘nut’ full of mysterious secret seeds:

I knew the nutshell was magic.  There was a thin dark line around the middle of it.  Mama ran her fingertips around there: the nut came open in two halves and inside, snuggled in a nest of silky stuff, I saw tiny, furry living creatures.  They looked at me, with eyes no bigger than pin-heads. 

…They were called Lindquists, another strange word I must remember.  They would live, snuggled up together, and they would die, and curl up in their dishes again and turn into cocoons (I knew furry animals didn’t do that, caterpillars turning into butterflies did that, but this was magic).  Then you had to crumble the cocoons into powder, and put the powder into a new seed tube, with the right-coloured cap.

“Once there were Lindquists for all eight orders,” said Mama.  “The two missing ones are Cetacea and Pinnipedia.  But the marine mammals were lost.”

Her most recent book for young adults, ‘Snakehead’, Orion 2007, is a marvellous retelling of the legend of Perseus, written with wit, liveliness and passion.  And here is Gwyneth herself to talk about:



The Princess As Role Model

I’ve always been attracted to fairytales. I knew I was a storyteller long before I knew I’d be a writer: I took on my father’s mantle, and told epic bedtime stories to my brother and sister, at an early age, and my father’s stories (also epic, endless episodes from the same saga, about the same characters) were all based on a traditional tale, the one about a girl who finds out that she once had seven brothers, who were banished and turned into crows when she was born. It has many variants, but from internal evidence the original must be the Moroccan one (The Girl Who Banished Seven). Naturally, she sets off to find them and rescue them from the enchantment. That’s typical of a fairytale princess (she’s one of those who becomes a princess by marriage, but it’s all the same to me). They do the right thing. They stand up to evil step-mothers, and no task is impossible...

As a child I was small, podgy, clumsy and, worst of all, I was obviously going to pass that dreaded public exam called “The 11 Plus”, and go to Grammar School. I felt for the princesses in the fairytales. First they tell you you’ve been awarded fairy gifts (which you never asked for) and then wham, you’re plunged into bizarre vindictive hardship. Your mother dies, you end up sleeping in the ashes, washing bloody linen in a cave, knitting nettle shirts on a bonfire, wearing out your iron boots over razor sharp glass mountains. But I admired them too, and found them a tremendous comfort. They were so tough, so resourceful, and so decent. When everyone (not least the other little girls I knew) was telling me you are second-rate, they made me proud to be a girl. As I nursed my little bullied self home from school, by the most unobtrusive route, I thought about Cinderella. Elle s’estoit bien, says Perrault, and I wanted to be that person. To behave well, to stand up and be proud. (I knew it worked, too. The best way to frustrate a bully is to stay cheerful; be nice. It drives them absolutely nuts.)

When I was a child I responded to the bizarre adventures, the cheerful feats of endurance, the unstoppable can-do attitude of those privileged, yet beleaguered, young women. As I grew up the stories grew with me. I realised that the princess complex is a trap, it’s pure social propaganda. But I still loved the princesses, and the princes, themselves, and honoured their traditions when I started writing my own fantasy stories (published, long afterwards, as Seven Tales And A Fable). I honoured the stories, and I still do. I saw that they were more than lessons in docility, more than comforting, greedy daydreams. They were beautiful, ancient vessels, full of buried treasure. It was a very old, profound and lovely princess-story, re-written as a fantasy novel by a modern writer —'Till We Have Faces', C.S.Lewis—, that inspired me to write 'Snakehead', my own re-imagining of the story of Perseus and Andromeda.

'Till We Have Faces' is based on Eros and Psyche, one of the greatest of the Greek myths, and yet the story is familiar from many fairytales. A princess finds her prince and loses him. She fights her way back to his side by overcoming the fiendish magical  challenges devised by a spiteful royal mother-in-law—

Seven long years I served for thee
The glassy hill I clamb for thee
The bluidy shirt I wrang for thee
Wilt thou not wake and turn to me?

(The Black Bull Of  Norroway)

Perseus and Andromeda is another myth, perhaps the greatest of them all, with instant popular appeal. The hero-tale of Perseus fits in anywhere! There’s this kid, you see, brought up by his single mother, goes to High School or whatever, and then one day some supernatural beings come along. They tell him his father was a Greek God, they give him a magic sword and flying sandals, they send him off to kill a terrifying monster. He’s tall, strong and handsome! He has superpowers! He’s a teen with a mission! Oh, hey, and there’s a flying horse—

Unexpectedly, things get even better if you’re looking to write a novel rather than a comic book. The story of Perseus has complexity, it has texture. There’s the grim soap-opera of his parentage —why Danae of the shower of gold was locked up; how Zeus, the ruthless, randy chief of the Olympians, just couldn’t resist a challenge; how  Perseus’s charming grandfather put both mother and child in a box and had them thrown into the sea. There’s the unconventional little family group on the island of Seriphos: Danae and her son, washed up on the shore, living under the protection of Dictys the fisherman. Whose brother is the island’s tyrant king. Imagine this boy, knowing he’s different, but with nothing to show for it, no rank, no riches. Imagine him finding out that his biological father (he’s not impressed by divine status, of course; he’s family himself) is a ruthless Mr Big who raped his mother. He knows he’s been protected at least once from certain death. He must be wondering, as he grows up, what his selfish brute of a Divine Father saved him for.  Nothing good, you can bet...  And then there’s Dictys. Imagine the boy’s relationship with the fisherman, who has brought him up, and never (not in any of the accounts) put a disrespectful move on Danae. He’s been a true father. Dictys seems to be a man of peace, since he’s able to live and let live, with his wicked brother on the throne. How is his adopted son really going to feel, when the Messenger of the Gods, and the Goddess Athini waylay him on the road, and tell him he has to chop off the Gorgon’s Head? This Gorgon who was once a woman, too  beautiful for her own good, like Danae. Who was turned into a monster, to punish her for having been raped...

So it goes on, a wonderful story: the work of many hands, over thousands of years, and yet still alive, still growing, still inviting new storytellers to weave new patterns into the web. There’s only one weak point, and that’s the traditional centrepiece, where our hero finds his true princess, and has to win her by beating a string of awful vindictive challenges, thrown down by the malign Gods—

It’s weak because it doesn’t happen.

Andromeda isn’t a character. She’s not even as much of a character as the prince in 'The Black Bull Of Norroway'. She’s a name, and a predicament. Perseus doesn’t struggle to win her. He just passes by, on the way home from his questing work, swinging the Gorgon’s Head by the hair (not very safe! But that’s how it looks in all the pictures), and picks up a half-naked princess; like a pizza or a sandwich.

In my opinion, this just won’t do!

In 'Till We Have Faces' C.S.Lewis keeps his distance from the two principals, who represent, without much disguise, the human soul and the God of Love. His characters are the lesser figures. His protagonist is one of Psyche’s jealous sisters —a woman who barely exists in the original narrative. In 'Snakehead', I took the liberty of inventing the character of Andromeda, a weaver and a scholar (her name means Ruler of Men, or else Thinker) and switched things around so that she and Perseus have some previous history, before Andromeda is chained to the rock; before Perseus wanders along to slay the dragon. It just makes more sense, if Perseus knows he’s coming to the rescue of a princess; if he intends to claim her hand in marriage. It makes more sense to me personally, too. A generation ago, great writers and editors like Jane Yolen, Ellen Datlow reclaimed the traditional heritage: dismissing soft-focus, Disneyfied Snow White and Cinderella, rediscovering grim truths and quick-witted, resourceful heroines. That’s fine, that’s excellent work. But what I’ve wanted to do is to reclaim the relationships. To bring the prince and the princess together, instead of sending them off on segregated initiation trials. To let them meet as human beings, as friends, and fight side by side.

The story on record says Andromeda had to be sacrificed to punish her mother, queen Cassiopeia —who had boasted that her daughter was more lovely than a sea-nymph, and thus offended Poseidon, the God of Ocean and of Earthquakes. I don’t believe it. Child sacrifice was absolutely rife, around the shores of the Ancient Mediterranean. (Take a closer look at your Old Testament, if you don’t believe me). I’ll bet you anything it wasn’t a one-off occasion. I bet there was a lottery, and the children of the rich were usually spared, but then the queen’s political opponents decided Andromeda’s number was up. A powerful woman like Cassiopeia could have been an annoying relic of the old ways, in the days of the original story —when the Mediterranean World was leaving female-ordered civilisation behind, and patriarchal tribal rule was taking over.What would a princess do, if she found out she’d been drafted? Run for it, of course. And then what would she do, if she was a real princess; and knew some other poor girl would have to die in her place? She’d run back, of course. No matter who tried to stop her, no matter if she’d fallen in love.

Leaving Perseus with his repellent, murderous quest: a terrible choice, and just the inklings of a desperate plan—

The story of Perseus and Andromeda is the story of the founders of Homer’s Mycenae: well built Mycenae, rich in gold... way back in the Bronze Age. And from Mycenae, the baton was handed on to Athens, the cradle of western civilisation; making them a fairly significant couple, in the scheme of human history. (And by the way, Perseus and Andromeda did live happily ever after, which makes them unique among pairs of lovers featured in the Greek Myths) But is that all? The deeper I looked into the history of the  Medusa, terrible to look upon, snakehaired monster, and into the history of the mighty Goddess Athini, whose name means Mind, the more they seemed to reflect each other. As if Medusa and Mind were the two faces of one truth—

Did I catch a glimpse of the original, brilliant storyteller, telling me something timeless and profound? About that mysterious birthright gift, first freely given and then painfully earned, that lies at the heart of fairytale? Maybe, maybe not. I don’t know. I’m just a storyteller, seeing pictures in the fire. Pictures that, now as then, sometimes seem playful, sometimes serious, and sometimes seem to tell me eternal things.

Here’s some writing on fairytales, and some free stories:
And here’s the Snakehead page


Photo credits:
Gwyneth Jones 
Perseus and Andromeda: a wall painting from Pompei, The National Museum of Naples.
Perseus and Andromeda: by Ingres

Ghost stories for children

There is a vast range of ghosts in children’s fiction.  I’m going to leave out all the comic ones, on the assumption that a comic ghost story is hardly a ghost story at all.  Even Oscar Wilde’s ‘The Canterville Ghost’ doesn’t become spooky until the end – when the comedy vanishes into pathos.  Such stories, one presumes, work mainly to stop young children being frightened of ghosts – rather as the brilliant Ahlberg ‘Funnybones’ picturebook series helped prevent my kids being frightened of skeletons: (“In a dark dark room in a dark dark house on a dark dark street – three skeletons lived…”)

That ghost stories can be spooky without being truly frightening is proved by the beautiful Green Knowe series by Lucy Boston, the first of which, ‘The Children of Green Knowe’ was published by Faber and Faber in 1954.  I grew up with these books, buying the last, ‘The Stones of Green Knowe’ as a teenager in the late 1970’s. A lonely little boy, Tolly, goes to stay with his grandmother Mrs Oldknowe in her ancient house (modelled on the author’s own beloved twelfth century manor house at Hemingford Grey, Cambridgeshire) and slowly comes to meet the other children who have lived in the house down the centuries.  Lucy Boston wrote pure, elegant prose, with a light but sure touch.  Here, Tolly and his grandmother have finished decorating their Christmas tree:

As they rested there, tired and dreamy and content, he thought he heard the rocking horse gently moving, but the sound came from Mrs Oldknowe’s room… A woman’s voice began to sing very softly a cradle song that Tolly had learned and dearly loved:

“Lully lulla, thou little tiny child,

By by Lully lullay…”

“Who is it?” he whispered. 

“It’s the grandmother rocking the cradle,” said Mrs Oldknowe, and her eyes were full of tears.

“Why are you crying, Granny?  It’s lovely.”

“It is lovely, only it is such a long time ago.  I don’t know why that should be sad, but it sometimes seems so.”

The singing began again.  It was queer to hear the baby’s sleepy whimper only in the next room, now, and so long ago. 

Scary things do happen in the Green Knowe stories, but always with a background of reassurance that goodness is greater than evil.  Tolly never time-travels – he meets the ghosts in his own ‘now’, although at the very end of the series the Norman boy Roger, whose father built the house, does briefly travel forward into his future: our twentieth century. The theme of the books is that of TS Eliot’s Four Quartets: ‘Time past and time present/Are both perhaps present in time future/And time future contained in time past.’ Lucy Boston’s books echo with the voices of children: ‘hidden excitedly, containing laughter’.

Plenty of other books do take the child hero or heroine back into the past to share in other lives.  In fact, the little Victorian ghost in smock or pinafore, looking out of the windows of the big house, whose history the modern child gradually uncovers, is almost a cliché. A constant theme in children’s ghost stories is that of loneliness.  A solitary child feels a misfit, or has no friends, and finds ghostly companionship. Tolly is just one example, although he develops a strong relationship with his delightful grandmother; another is Anna, the lonely little girl in Joan G. Robinson’s ‘When Marnie was There’ (1967).  Anna has never had a friend: her relationship with the strange child Marnie gradually prepares her for real live friends when Marnie goes away.  This book is one of many where the reader can decide for him or herself whether the ghost is ‘real’ or some kind of dream playmate. And of course there is Tom in Philippa Pearce's classic, 'Tom's Midnight Garden', who finds his way into a garden of the past, and a playmate in the little girl there. 

Penelope, the heroine of Alison Uttley’s classic ‘A Traveller in Time’ (Faber 1939) is another shy, quiet, imaginative child, who sees ghosts or visions of the past almost without trying.  On being sent to fetch a rug,

“Upstairs I went again, but when I got to the landing I looked at the closed doors and did not know which was Aunt Tissie’s, for there was something strange and unfamiliar about them.  I hesitated and opened a door, and then stopped short, for in the room before me, down a couple of steps, were four ladies playing a game with ivory counters.  They sat round a table and a bright fire was burning in an open hearth. They were young and pretty, except an older woman whose expression was cold and forbidding… All this I saw in the moment I stood transfixed at the door.  Then a little spaniel rushed across the room and they turned and stared at me with startled eyes.  They were as amazed as I, and sprang to their feet, yet there was never a sound…

“I beg your pardon,” I muttered, and quickly I shut the door, my heart pounding and my hands trembling.   

Penelope soon grows as intimate with the 16^th century inhabitants of the old Derbyshire farmhouse ‘Thackers’ as with its 20^th century inhabitants.  She becomes an anxious yet powerless witness to the ill-fated Babington plot to free Mary Queen of Scots; and the book is also a poignant love story.  

All of these are ghost stories which explore the transience of time, rather than the finality of death.  They are typically sensitive and beautiful: eerie rather than scary. And perhaps it's a theme that children on the cusp of growing up are particularly fascinated by: the realisation that old people were once young, and that children like themselves will one day be old

Another time-slip ghost story, with a slightly harder edge and bags of atmosphere, is ‘Playing Beatie Bow’ by the Australian writer Ruth Park, in which the prickly Abigail, resentful of her parents’ divorce and being made to move to a high-rise area of Sydney, witnesses children playing a creepy game:

‘Oh Mudda what’s that, what can it be?’

‘The wind in the chimney, that’s all, that’s all.’

There was a clatter of stones being dropped.  Some of the younger children squawked and were hushed.

‘Oh Mudda what’s that, what’s that, can you see?’

‘It’s the cow in the byre, the horse in the stall.’

Natalie …put her hands over her eyes.  ‘Don’t look, Abigail, it’s worse than awful things on TV!’

And the climax of the game comes with the cry:  ‘It’s Beatie Bow…risen from the dead!’  Into this book too comes a desperate love story – for how can love span the centuries?

Like all of us, children - older ones especially - enjoy a good scare.  Moving on from the beautiful and the poignant, we come to more malevolent ghosts.  There’s an extremely sinister one in Katharine Briggs’ famous ‘Hobberdy Dick’ (1955) – the appearance of a ghostly child, informed by the evil spirit of the woman who killed it.  One of the characters, Anne, wakes in the night:

She sat up in bed with a beating heart, aware of a wicked thing in the room. There seemed a faint light at the end of the bed; more she could not see, but the room was icily cold, and cruelty and remorse and pain pressed on her like a weight, so that she could not move.

Help comes, but at the cost of the death of the good woman who exorcises the spirit.  This book is a brilliant exploration of the folklore and customs of the seventeenth century, by an expert who knew and loved the stories better than anyone else. 

Peter Dickinson’s “Annerton Pit” (1977) is the story of a blind boy, Jake, whose grandfather, a ghost hunter/debunker, has disappeared near Annerton Mine, site of a dreadful mining disaster a hundred years ago.  Entwined with an adventure story, is the creepy build-up of supernatural tension, as, trapped with his brother and grandfather at the bottom of the mine, Jake becomes aware of a strange presence in Annerton Pit:

There was another noise, even fainter than the sea.  Jake couldn’t decide if it was real, or was only an effect of the fall – a low, continuous, throbbing hoot. Sometimes it seemed to be coming from further up the tunnel, sometimes from all around him, and sometimes from inside his head.  Once he’d noticed it, it bothered him.

Low key, but spine chilling.  Less is often more with a good ghost story. 

Ann Halam, whose books for children range from fantasy to ghosts to sci-fi to horror, actually managed to break the rule I mentioned at the beginning of this piece by writing a totally brilliant ghost story for children which is funny as well as terrifying.  “King Death’s Garden” (Orchard, 1986) is the story of the impossible and self-pitying Maurice, obsessed with his asthma and allergies and with the vain hope of attracting the attention of elegant Jasmin Kapoor.  Maurice has refused to relocate with his parents to the Gulf, and is boarding with an elderly aunt until the end of term.  He is of course another loner – and ends up spending far too much of his time in the Victorian cemetery beside his aunt’s house… Here he is, reading the tombstones:

The Best Mum and Dad in the World… Never a Cross Word….And in the morn the angel faces smile, That I have loved long since and lost awhile…Love’s last gift, remembrance…

Suddenly he realised that someone was watching him.  It made him jump, because just then he was well off the path and actually standing on a grave.  He was only putting back some plastic flowers that had pathetically fallen out of their urn, but he knew it wouldn’t look good.  A big elderly man was standing by a bench just a few yards away.  He was glaring like someone in authority – maybe a gardener.

And maybe not...

I’d recommend any book by Ann Halam, but another of hers’ with a creepy ghost is ‘The Nimrod Conspiracy’ (Orion 1999). Completely different, just as good.  And I have to mention Robert Westall, whose taste ran to more Gothic ghosts and horror, always rooted in his beloved North East: ‘The Scarecrows’, ‘The Stones of Muncaster Cathedral’; ‘The Watch House.’  Definitely for older children, and not for the faint-hearted.  And speaking of Gothic, how about Leon Garfield, whose novella 'Mister Corbett's Ghost' ought to be better known?  

A windy night, and the old year dying of an ague.  ... In the apothecary's shop in Gospel Oak, the boy Partridge looked up through the window to a moon that stared fitfully back through the reflections of big-bellied flasks, beakers and retorts.  Very soon now he'd be off to his friends and his home to drink and cheer the death of the old year - and pray that the new one would be better.  And maybe slip in a prayer for his master, Mister Corbett, the apothecary himself. Such a prayer!

"May you be like this year that's gone, sir, and take the same shivering ague!  For your seasons weren't no better."

Having wished his master dead, poor Benjamin Partridge soon has cause to wish him alive again, as he has to accompany the poor phantom over Hampstead Heath - on a journey through guilt, terror and pity to eventual 

redemption.

An exception to the rule that ghost stories for children always have solitary heroes or heroines is Catherine Sefton’s charming ‘The Back House Ghosts’ (Puffin, 1978).  Ellen’s mother, who runs a seaside boarding house, accidentally overbooks.  The enormous Mooney clan arrive (eleven children!) and, to make space, Ellen moves out into the ‘Back House’ – a disused cottage at the bottom of the garden.  That night:

Ellen lay back in her lumpy bed. She liked the back house.  She would make it live again.

She went to sleep watching the sky through the window.  The stars were stabs of light against a dark blue cloth, and the moon was yellow and round…

***

When Ellen woke up in the morning, the first thing she saw was the window. 

            Through it she could see the back wall of Bon Vista, and the window of the back bedroom… and nothing else.

            No sky.

            Just the grey wall and the rose which grew across the window.

All the books I’ve discussed so far have been full length novels (although the Green Knowe books are fairly slim.)  To write a really good novel-length ghost story is a fantastic achievement, because stringing out the tension for so long is really difficult.  Most literary ghosts – for adults at least – tend to arrive in the form of short stories, and many of the children's writers I've talked about in this post also wrote brilliant - and often dark - short ghost stories.  Philippa Pearce could weave terrifying tales about inanimate objects: an old wooden tallboy; a Christmas pudding ('A Christmas Pudding Improves With Keeping', from 'Who's Afraid, and Other Strange Stories' 1986).  A master of the form was the late great Jan Mark.  Perhaps her best collection is ‘In Black and White’ (Viking, 1991).  Every story in this book is so wonderful, it’s hard to pick just one, but one of Jan’s own favourites was the story called ‘Nule’ - in which Martin’s little sister Libby makes a character out of the newel post at the bottom of the stairs. She calls it ‘Nule, and dresses it up with a pointed hat.

The hat definitely did something for Nule.  When Martin came in later by the front door, he thought at first that it was a person standing at the foot of the stairs.  He had to look twice…

Entering into the spirit of the thing, he helps Libby to dress it up more, with an old coat and gloves, and a pair of football boots at the bottom.  Not a great idea, as it turns out…

(Illustration copyright Neil Reed, 1991)

There are ghosts in two of my own books: an Icelandic-style vengeful corpse in ‘Troll Blood’, and a harmless but still rather unnerving White Lady in ‘Dark Angels’ (US title: ‘The Shadow Hunt’.)  As you can see I love ghosts – one day, maybe, I’ll try and write a novel length ghost story of my own.  In the meantime, I’ll leave you with Peer and Hilde, beginning to wonder about an empty house on the shores of Vinland.

The sun had sunk below the hills, and the wooded slopes looked dark and mysterious.  Down by the ship, the men had lit a fire on the shore.  Around the flames, the evening turned a deeper blue.

“We should go and help,” said Hilde.  “Look, they’re bringing things up already.”  Someone was coming slowly up the path, as if stiff from weeks at sea.  His face was indistinct in the dusk. He turned aside, heading for the other house.  Hilde called out, “Hello!  Is that one ours?”

Whoever it was made no reply, but turned in to the porch of the second house.  Hilde shrugged.  “He didn’t hear me.  It must be that one.”

They walked across.  Flat stones made a short path outside the door, which was shut.  Peer lifted the latch. The Nis darted between his feet – and sprang back like a startled cat, all arched spine and splayed limbs. Peer saved himself by clutching at the doorpost.

“What are you doing?” he cried.

The Nis was creeping backwards, bristling.  “Not nice,” it squeaked.  “Not a nice house at all, Peer Ulfsson.  The other one is better!”  It shook itself and shot decisively away. 

With an odd feeling under his ribs, Peer shoved the door wide open and looked in.  He didn’t step over the threshold.  Hilde craned over his shoulder.

It was just like the first house.  Same long fire pit, same smoke holes, same dusty-looking benches and line of dim posts leading to a doorway at the far end. 

This house was colder than the first.  The air felt disturbed, as though someone had recently passed through.

But it was completely empty…