The Princess and the Goblin

The Princess and the Goblin was published in 1872, during the Victorian era and at the peak of the English mining industry. While other novels of the time used literary realism to examine the class divisions that the Industrial Revolution had given rise to, MacDonald created a fantasy work that explores not only Faith in the Mystical but also very tangible societal concerns. MacDonald’s miners generally keep to themselves and are seen as lesser-than by those of higher status—the royals and those associated with them. Mining was a difficult, dangerous, and vital job in 19th-century England, as demand for coal skyrocketed with industrialization. Curdie and his family are miners who combat the stereotypes associated with this profession at the time; they are courageous, kind, and wily, able to keep the goblins at bay as they work their way into the mountains.

The goblins themselves suggest a more shapeless anxiety about the lower (quite literally, in this case) classes. MacDonald’s goblins were once human; they have been dehumanized through a combination of oppression and their own response to it, which was to sequester themselves underground. They somewhat anticipate the Morlocks of H. G. Wells’s The Time Machine (published a couple of decades later), who similarly evolved into a vicious subterranean species as a result of exploitation by the wealthy elite. However, MacDonald frames the goblins’ situation as at least partly their own fault, reflecting Victorian concerns about the potential for working-class rebellion.

The Princess and the Goblin also shows evidence of MacDonald’s Christian beliefs. The novel’s central guiding figure, Grandmother, is a character who exhibits godly qualities, sees the future, and manipulates objects and birds. During the Victorian era, Christianity was the primary religion in Europe, and the idea of eternal punishment was prominent in English culture. MacDonald, however, was a Christian “universalist,” believing that all humans would eventually be brought into “right” relationship with God and saved. Hints of this view appear in Grandmother’s character, who consistently acts as a figure of love, understanding, and patience—traits she attempts to impart to Irene.

Other elements of the work are more generically Christian; for example, Irene’s submersion in her grandmother’s bath evokes the rite of baptism. Most notably, the work’s emphasis on faith speaks to the Victorian era’s rising skepticism—in part the result of scientific developments like Darwin’s theory of evolution. MacDonald writes against a materialist worldview, urging readers to believe even in the absence of proof.