Who Goes into the Forest?

The Fairy Tale Forest: Part Three

Part One: You Must Become Lost

Part Two: The Hero’s Journey vs The Forest Story

Part Four: Feed the Wolf

Part Five: The Ones We Meet in Darkness

I said before that the protagonists of forest stories are outcasts. They are the youngest sons of both kings and peasants, half-forgotten in the ashes of the hearth. They are simpletons, brave little tailors, and fleeing damsels. They are misfits and runaways and disappointments. They’re not the most impressive lot, and that is the beauty of them.

Their humble beginnings are what make it so easy to identify with them. This is especially true for children (and while I am the first to say that fairy tales are not for children alone, there are few who can appreciate fairy tales the way they do). It is not an easy thing to be a child. Everyone is bigger than you, stronger than you, wiser than you. Everything is a new experience. Every challenge is that much more daunting, every triumph that much harder earned. Oh, yes, most of your challenges are little in comparison to the ones awaiting you in adulthood, but these are your first. The hardest thing you’ve ever had to do is, in fact, the hardest thing you’ve ever had to do, even if it’s nothing to somebody else.

Forest heroes are outcasts for the same reason hobbits are the main protagonists of The Lord of the Rings. They demonstrate how the smallest and weakest of us—even you or I—can bring about great change in the world, how despite all our flaws we have the power to vanquish evil. It is often mentioned in forest stories that many knights and lords and princes have failed whatever challenge is posed to the simpleton. The mighty, confident in their strength and prowess, are so often defeated by dragons, giants, and wicked princesses, but the meek prevail through cunning, daring, and charity.

Those who enter the forest are those who need it, those who are ready and eager to grow and change in the face of the tangled, terrible world which dwells beyond the comfort of their homes. They are the ones who cannot stay where they are, whether they have outgrown their home or they never quite belonged in the first place. They will wither away to nothing if they do not leave. They may be small, weak, and simple, but this only drives them deeper into the trees.

Forest heroes—and, in fact, all true fairy tale heroes—are underdogs. They begin as people we can relate to, lost and alone, and through their journey become aspirational.

This rule is perfectly demonstrated in Diana Wynne Jones’ Howl’s Moving Castle. Sophie Hatter (dear, nosy, practical Sophie Hatter whom we should all take a moment now to appreciate) believes herself to be an inherent failure because she is the eldest of three. As far as she is concerned, this is the root of all her troubles. And, according to traditional fairy tale structure, she does have a point: It is always the youngest of three who is destined for greatness, and the eldest of three who is destined to fail.

Sophie’s mistake, of course, is looking at her situation literally, which I believe I have mentioned is the wrong way to view fairy tales about three hundred and sixty-seven times now. Literally she is the eldest of three, which puts her in the position to inherit the family hat shop and achieve financial success. But of course everyone in her family knows that isn’t real success, not in a world of fairy tale magic.

Her younger sisters, Lettie and Martha, are set up by the girls’ mother for far more exciting futures. Lettie, the beauty of the family and second born, is apprenticed at a pastry shop to catch herself a man. Lovely as she is, it is assumed she will be able to pick someone with status to take her somewhere leagues better than any hat shop. Martha, the youngest, is set on the path of greatness by being apprenticed to a witch.

What all of this means is that Sophie, eldest though she is, has been placed in the traditional role of the youngest child: the outcast. She has been given a life that leads to lonely spinsterhood, spending all her time making hats above the shop with no one to talk to but the hats themselves. So of course it is only natural that she gets herself cursed, goes out to seek her fortune and—It’s not a spoiler if I say she lives happily ever after, is it? Because really, what else could happen to her?

It is mostly young men who enter the forest in these tales, but now and then young women crash through the underbrush and into the mogshade, often clad in an unflattering outfit such as a coat of catskin, and as I said before their motivation is not the same. The forest, for them, is a perilous escape from some cruel fate.

Part of the wonder and beauty of fairy tales is their age. They tell universal truths in the most enchanting of ways while offering the reader a glimpse into the early days of their telling. As a consequence, they communicate the idea that women should only enter the forest as a last resort, and not without reason. The forest has never been safe for anyone, but once upon a time the dangers it posed to women were far more terrible than those it posed to men. Now that we live in a less physical time, without the same restrictions on women, they have more reason to enter the forest unprompted.

Personally, I think we could stand for some more fairy tales where they do just that (which is why I have one half-plotted, waiting in the wings for me to hurry up and write it), and I’m not the first. My favorite reference to this issue comes from my dearly beloved George MacDonald in his spectacular fairy tale, The Light Princess: “One day [the prince] lost sight of his retinue in a great forest. These forests are very useful in delivering princes from their courtiers, like a sieve that keeps back the bran. Then the princes get away to follow their fortunes. In this they have the advantage of the princesses, who are forced to marry before they have had a bit of fun. I wish our princesses got lost in a forest sometimes.”

Dear reader, MacDonald said this in 1864. This man was advocating for women to go out into the world and seek their fortunes in 1864. Because he was awesome.

But the fact of the matter is that “our princesses” do not simply wander off into the forest on their own, and there is no sense in blaming them.

Some, like Catskin and Tattercoats and their ilk, seek other options by cleverly delaying their unwanted suitors (old men, evil wizards, and in one unfortunate case the girl’s own father). They make what they assume to be impossible demands, coats or dresses of beaten gold or the feathers of every sort of bird in the world, and when the suitors deliver on all accounts the princesses put on an unpleasant disguise, pack up their finery, and run for the woods. Once they make it out and find employment, usually as a scullery maid, they catch themselves a prince through their beauty and cunning and live happily ever after.

(It is worthwhile to note their disguises are never subtle things meant for blending in. They are designed to repulse, to forcefully divert dangerous male attention by means of disgust. Of course, my brother informed me that were he ever to see a girl wearing a catskin coat, he’d go up to her and ask what was wrong and if he could help, so I suppose they can’t repulse everyone. But he is also the only person I know to be so unwaveringly, intrinsically kind that he could be an actual fairy tale hero, so I guess that makes sense.)

Others, like our oft-discussed Snow White, are not given time to plan. It is the forest or death. She does not manage half so well as a girl like Tattercoats, either.  While she does care for herself and others for a time, she is still too young and naïve to deal with the Queen, and requires the Prince (her animus, as we have covered before) to come and bring her back to life.

One particularly interesting example of a young woman in the forest is the princess from The Goose Girl, who definitively fails in her journey through the forest. She is sent in by her mother, an exception to the usual rule of the fleeing princess reminiscent of the story of Little Red Riding Hood—a girl unready for the forest sent in against her will.

The princess clings to a symbol of her mother’s protection (the handkerchief stained with three drops of blood) rather than learning to look after herself. She is easily cowed and manipulated by her handmaid, not daring even a harsh word. She leaves the forest weaker than before, cast down from princess to goose girl, but her story doesn’t end there.

As the goose girl, the princess lives in the real world with all its dangers. She engages in physical labor, encounters death in the cruel fate of her dear horse Falada, and comes face to face with the threat of men. Conrad’s attempt to take a hair from her head—literally, a young man trying to take a piece of her for his own pleasure—may be child-friendly in its execution, but there is no denying the underlying threat to something more than her hair. And despite her failure in the forest, the goose girl learns to fight back. She uses her wits (calling on the wind, a clear act of magic, and in fairy tales magic and cleverness are one and the same) to assert her autonomy, and this indirectly leads to her happily ever after.

In this sense, The Goose Girl is one of the most hopeful fairy tales I know. It teaches us that we may in fact break in the forest, but the forest is not the end. It is not too late to take control of your own story, and one failure does not guarantee another. The Goose Girl is the story of a second chance seized, of triumph in the face of greatest ruin.

On the other hand, it is also worthwhile to contrast the downfall of the unwilling and immature forest story protagonist with the success of her counterparts. Happily ever after aside, the fact remains that the goose girl was neither prepared nor willing to enter the forest, and she paid dearly for it. The vast majority of forest story heroes leave the trees stronger, and they are the ones who chose enter. Whether or not they wanted to do so, it was still their choice.

It seems more than reasonable to say that will and maturity are essential to surviving the forest. Maturity is the easy one—we don’t send children off into the world to fend for themselves, as a general rule. Will is more interesting, considering I’ve been making the case that one must go into the forest, and haven’t bothered about the matter of whether or not one wants to go. But will and want are not necessarily the same thing.

Let’s consider, for a moment, exposure therapy. This is a method of therapy used to treat anxiety disorders, OCD, and phobias. The idea is to gradually expose the patient to what they fear, and through that exposure they will conquer their fear. For instance, if someone were afraid of spiders, the treatment might proceed as such:

First, show the patient pictures of spiders. Once comfortable, proceed to videos. From there, bring in realistic toy spiders and bring them gradually closer to the patient. Move on to real spiders, until the patient can touch them and even allow the creatures to crawl over their skin.

Horrible, right? And slightly insane, considering the fact that exposure to spiders has never once made me less afraid of them. This is where will factors in.

In exposure therapy, the patient must be willing. To a certain extent, they set the rules. The therapist must never force them to undergo any of these steps. The patient, who certainly does not want to touch the spider, must will himself to touch it despite his preference.

Unwilling exposure increases fear, but willing exposure decreases it. The unwilling forest-goer, like the goose girl, does not accept what is happening, and so the forest becomes unbearable. The fleeing damsel does not want to go, and has in fact done all she could to avoid it, but she goes willingly and so is able to face whatever it throws her way.

I have framed the forest as inevitable, and I stand by that. You can go into the forest, or the forest can envelop you. You don’t really have a choice in whether or not you end up there. But you do have a choice in how you end up there. And it is better to go willingly, even if you are afraid. It is better to choose than to have things chosen for you.

All you need to bring into the forest, really, is a reason. Because you are ready to seek your fortune. Because you must escape some great terror. Because you are already lost.

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Thank you for reading this, the third post in a short series on the fairy tale forest. At the risk of sounding like a cheesy, insufferable influencer: Please like, subscribe, comment, and share—all of those things that please the dark algorithm entities.

Seek the forest. Feed the wolf. Be brave, be clever, be kind.