The Shadow

We've probably all experienced the sensation: somewhere, somehow, we saw a new possibility open up before us, or felt a strange impulse to follow a desire that we could hardly name. We were wise, or so we thought, to resist the temptation, to stay on the path of our sober-minded, plan-in-advance selves. And then, perhaps years later, we wondered why, and what things might have been like if we hadn't.

Hans Christian Andersen's "The Shadow" takes up this question -- decidedly one that haunts adults rather than children -- in a strange allegory that reads like a fairy tale but burns at the soul like some mad tale of Poe. And like Poe (and Shelley, Gogol, Dostoyevsky, and many others), Andersen hit upon the folk legend of a double, or doppelgänger, as a metaphor for this desire deferred. With roots deep in popular folklore, these tales of someone with an uncanny resemblance to one's self are chilling enough as far as they go -- for it seems that there's only room in the universe for one of them: either the double or the self must die.

In Andersen's tale, the "learned man" (perhaps "scholar" would be a more apt English translation) permits his shadow to do pursue a course of action he himself was too timid to attempt, and initially counts himself fortunate. The lack of a shadow, after all, was but a minor inconvenience -- what of it? The twist here is that this decision precipitates the birth of a separate entity, one that eventually comes to possess all of the boldness and sense of purpose that the student lacked. The student, gradually and inexorably, is fated to become the shadow's shadow, and eventually even less than that.

Many people assume that fairy tales ought to teach some moral lesson. They forget that, in their original forms, most folktales had no such lesson; it was moralizers such as Perrault (who published the most popular versions of "Cinderella" and "Little Red Riding Hood") who attached morals to them, in part to make them safe for family reading, to harness their wild imaginings in the name of civilizing influence.

But although "The Shadow," like many of Andersen's tales, has a sort of moral in it, there's also a strong contravening force: if we are to avoid the fate of the unfortunate scholar, we must in fact act on our desires, must sometimes step outside the moral and personal codes that bind us. And indeed, anyone who creates -- whether a writer of fictions, a visual artist, or a filmmaker -- is already engaged in the shadow business.

The poet William Blake, in his diabolical Proverbs of Hell, perhaps put it most bluntly: "Better murder an infant in its cradle than nurse an unacted desire."

A Mermaid and a Girl

"The Little Mermaid" may be one of the best-known fairy tales of all time, but it took its time to get there. Although written in 1837, it wasn't translated into English until 1872, and although Andersen considered it one of his fairy tales "for children," there seems to have been some shyness about handing a tale to little girls that clearly seems to take as its underlying theme the subject of sexual maturity. Andersen himself sealed the ending of the story with what may be one of the most moralistic morals ever penned:

"For every day on which we find a good child who pleases his parents and deserves their love, God shortens our days of trial. The child does not know when we float through his room, but when we smile at him in approval one year is taken from our three hundred. But if we see a naughty, mischievous child we must shed tears of sorrow, and each tear adds a day to the time of our trial."

As P.L. Travers (Mary Poppins) said, "A year taken off when a child behaves and a tear shed and a day added whenever a child is naughty? Andersen, this is blackmail. And the children know it and say nothing. There's magnanimity for you."

Disney, in converting Andersen's antique moralizing into modern family fare, actually did a remarkable job of holding on to the charged understory of a girl coming of age with desire, not just for the human world, but for a human prince. They discretely applied two scallop shells, along with water-bound as well as air-bound sidekicks, and made the sisters into the same sort of annoying wannabes as those of Cinderella. But it was with the Sea Witch that they worked the best magic; by having her, with Ariel's stolen voice (thankfully not her actual tongue) embody Ariel's rival they considerably upped the ante on the final climax. And of course, the little mermaid -- who doesn't die -- gets both legs and man. 

In contrast, "The Girl Who Trod on a Loaf" takes us on a moralistic tale about a very bad girl -- stepping on a loaf of bread meant for her parents is an act that loses most readers' sympathy -- though here it's once again compounded by Andersen's making the vanity of a beloved pair of shoes clean the cause -- and it seems that things must go from bad to worse to worser. The angel that visits here does not bring a sword -- but tears -- but even those fail to fully redeem the lost girl. She is only able to find salvation after being reincarnated as a bird and sharing out as much grain as it must have taken to make the loaf upon which she trod so many years before. Even then, it's not quite to heaven that Inger ascends -- though perhaps that's a more satisfying end -- at least she's alive.

Welcome!

We live in an age of categorization, one which imagines that connecting a piece of writing to its proper imagined audience is essential, whether one is an educator or a publicist. The history of literature, it seems, has always had its categories, both formal (fiction, poetry, drama) and generic (science fiction, detective novels, ghost stories). And, for each of these genres, there’s a presumed audience, as the forms and subjects of written matter follow their readers from a baby’s first board-book on through every stage of life and human interests, on up to the scuffed hardcovers scattered on table-tops in an assisted-living facility.

The genres of literature often take on the added purpose both of representing these varied stages in our reading, and catering to them. Children are supposed to read fairy-tales and books of wonder; teenagers crave adventure and romance, while young adults may seek solace for their sense of alienation. In the robust middle of life, our shared social reality and the issues of the day can predominate, along with the challenges of pursuing a career and balancing a budget. In later years, reflections – both bitter and sweet – loom suddenly larger, and at the end of (or, in some writings, after) life, we go to our graves with scores unsettled.

 

This course will take us through several of these “ages” of literature: for childhood, the tales of Hans Christian Andersen; for coming-of-age, the wild adventures of Nigerian writer Amos Tutuola’s Palm-Wine Drinkard, along with the fearful fundamentalism of the mother in Jeanette Winterson’s Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit. In young adulthood, we’ll wander the streets of Dublin with Catriona Lally, seeking signs of entrances to the otherworld. For mid-life, we’ll explore social realism and life’s struggles with Upton Sinclair’s muckraking classic The Jungle, followed by Colson Whitehead’s vibrant Harlem Shuffle. For old age, we’ll have the good company of Irish poet William Butler Yeats in his older years, which in their turn spurred some of the wry essays of Joan Didion. In the end, we’ll join in the ghostly colloquies from a country churchyard and a sleeping populace in Dylan Thomas’s play for voices, Under Milk Wood.

 

Throughout our journey, like all good adventurers, we’ll be asking questions, beginning with the most fundamental: what is “literature,” anyway? Why is it supposed to be “good” for us? And what difference does it make when the voices who speak come from experiences and times different from our own, whether in nation (Nigeria, England, Ireland, Wales), cultural identity (gay, Black, working-class, evangelical), gender or age. Is there more strength to be gained by reading of experiences like our own, or those of others? Does identity confer authority upon the author? And are those fairy-tales really for children, after all? And what does the purported genre of a book – fantasy, folktale, semi-autobiographical novel, poem, or play – tell us about how we might read it, or (perhaps) read against its form?