History Book: Fairy-tale truths

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JENNY ROUGH, HOST: Today is Monday, November 24th. Good morning! This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Jenny Rough.

NICK EICHER, HOST: And I’m Nick Eicher. Up next, the WORLD History Book.

It’s been ten years since Disney released its live-action remake of the film Cinderella. In a world of revisionist remakes, critics described this film as “refreshingly traditional” and remarkably faithful to the original. The tale is much older than Disney, of course. The story has been a classic for more than three hundred years.

ROUGH: One of the children listening during those years was a boy named Gilbert Keith.

We know Gilbert Keith today as G. K. Chesterton.

So now, his thoughts on fairy tales, faith, and Cinderella. Here’s WORLD correspondent Caleb Welde.

1936 OPENING: Now here’s a theme that never grows cold, always dear to young and old

CALEB WELDE: In G. K. Chesterton’s book Orthodoxy, he writes this of his childhood: “The things I believed most then— the things I believe most now are the things called fairy tales.”

1940 NARRATOR: A long time ago, a lonely little girl named Ella lived with her stepmother and her two stepsisters.

As a boy, Chesterton listened to the story about a girl faced with the facts. Her mother was dead, and her father remarried a cruel woman who treated her terribly.

CHESTERTON: Fairy tales do not give the child the idea of the evil or the ugly; that is in the child already, because it is in the world already.

Jon Gauger as the voice of Chesterton.

2015 DISNEY: ROOSTER, NEW MORNING SOUNDS, UPLIFTING MUSIC

CHESTERTON: What fairy tales give the child is his first clear idea of the possible defeat of evil.

2015 DISNEY: Good morning, Miss Ella! Good morning, Tom!

Ella rejects self-pity and bitterness, and she emerges from a painful childhood beautiful. Her stepmother has her working with the servants.

2015 DISNEY: ELLA HUMMING, CHICKEN SOUNDS: What a lovely Chantecler. Well done. Thanks.

But Ella thanks the chickens for the eggs and endeavors to love her stepmother and sisters.

CHESTERTON: Love is not blind; that is the last thing that it is. Love is bound; and the more it is bound the less it is blind.

She remains strong in the face of many trials. But then her stepsisters begin calling her by a new name: Cinder-Ella the dust and ashes of her existence a metaphor of death. It’s a low point of the story. But not the lowest.

1940 NARRATOR: One day the prince of the realm gave a ball and invited everyone in the Kingdom. How Cinderella did long to go.

But Cinderella wasn’t to go: At least, if her stepmother had any say in the matter. And she did.

Queue the fairy godmother.

1934 CINDERELLA: GODMOTHER: Go fetch me a pumpkin, a large one my dear, six mice and two lizards, and bring them right here.

CHESTERTON: When we are asked why eggs turn to birds or fruits fall in autumn, we must answer exactly as the fairy godmother would answer if Cinderella asked her why mice turned to horses.

2015 DISNEY: MICE TURNING TO HORSES SOUND

ELLA: But how did you?

CHESTERTON: We must answer that it is MAGIC.

For Chesterton, fairy tales take him back to Eden.

CHESTERTON: These tales say that apples were golden only to refresh the forgotten moment when we found that they were green.

Everything in Eden was surprising including the rule. In Cinderella, the rule isn't forbidden fruit it’s a curfew that cannot be broken.

CHESTERTON: Cinderella received a coach out of Wonderland and a coachman out of nowhere, but she received a command. If Cinderella she says, "How is it that I must leave the ball at twelve?" Her godmother might answer, "How is it that you are going there till twelve?"

2015 DISNEY: LIZARD: Miss Ella.

Ashes. exchanged for glory Ella arrives at the Ball and looks up.

CHESTERTON: The chief pleasure is surprise.

Towers that vanish upwards above the loneliest star are the creations of humility. For towers are not tall unless we look up at them.;

2015 DISNEY: ELLA: I’m frightened Mr. Lizard. I’m only a girl– not a princess.

LIZARD: And I’m only a lizard– not a footman. Enjoy it while it lasts!

CHESTERTON: The lesson of Cinderella is the same as that of the Magnificat. EXALTAVIT HUMILES.

For those of us with rusty latin that’s: “He has exalted the humble.”

As for Ella’s stepmother, the proud are cast down.

CHESTERTON: The criminal we must forgive unto seventy times seven. The crime we must not forgive at all.

2015 DISNEY: Ella: “I forgive you.”

CHESTERTON: Christianity divided the crime from the criminal. There was room for wrath and love to run wild.

In Cinderella that love leads to marriage as Ella and the Prince live happily ever after. Modern critics of fairytales decry such tidy happy endings claiming they’re not realistic or that they raise unrealistic expectations. But for G.K. Chesterton, happy endings remind us of ultimate reality our future hope.

CHESTERTON: My ideal was fixed before the foundations of the world. My vision of perfection assuredly cannot be altered; for it is called Eden. You may alter the place to which you are going; but you cannot alter the place from which you have come. In the upper world hell once rebelled against heaven. But in this world heaven is rebelling against hell. At any instant you may strike a blow for the perfection which no man has seen since Adam. No unchanging custom, no changing evolution can make the original good anything but good.

That’s this week’s WORLD History Book. I’m Caleb Welde.

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