Children's Literature Association Quarterly

The Harmony Within analyzes the relationship between George MacDonald's theology and the literary symbolism he used to express his spiritual vision. Focusing mainly upon MacDonald's fantasies, Hein develops the concept that "MacDonald's intention was by symbolic suggestion to penetrate eternal reality." While Hein does not focus on MacDonald's works for children, he does discuss them.

Hein's study provides both a good introduction to MacDonald and insights of interest to those well acquainted with MacDonald's work. An introductory chapter supplies a biographical sketch and outlines several important influences which shaped MacDonald's thought: his parents' Calvinism, much of which he eventually rejected or modified; his exposure to German Romanticism during his university years, his reading of Coleridge, and his attraction to Christian mysticism. MacDonald was also fascinated by evolutionary theory, which he found compatible with his own belief that every individual has the potential to "evolve" or to regress spiritually. Hein's closing chapter, aptly titled "Showing the Unshowable," summarizes his assessment of MacDonald's achievement, particularly his theory of the imagination. Influenced by Novalis, MacDonald sought to reflect both the apparent incoherence and the underlying meaning he perceived both in the external world and within the human mind. While his fantasies may be superficially dream-like and incoherent, their themes and symbols make the underlying harmony evident.

Hein demonstrates how this theory applies to MacDonald's two major fantasies, Phantastes (1858) and Lilith (1895). The former, subtitled "A Faerie Romance for Men and Women," deals with the apparent conflict between the natural need to satisfy human desires and the spiritually destructive self-centeredness which can result from it. Depicting a young man's adventures in a fantasy realm, Phantastes suggests that genuine fulfillment and satisfaction are achieved not through repression or asceticism, but through serving others. Lilith symbolically develops the idea that one's "inferior selves" must "die" if one is to progress spiritually. Although MacDonald intended Lilith as a summation of his convictions, Hein considers it on the whole inferior to Phantastes, primarily because the theology becomes obtrusive.

MacDonald's works for children also reveal his spiritual beliefs. What Heins terms MacDonald's "doctrine of becoming"-the concept of growth toward the godlike versus regression into sin and alienation-is central to the Curdie books. In The Princess and Curdie (1883), the mysterious queen/grandmother warns the children, "all men, if they do not take care, go downhill to the animals' country . . . many men are actually, all their lives, going to be beasts." Purified by a fire of roses which painfully cleanses him, Curdie is left with the gift of discerning a person's true nature by touching his or her hand; one who has chosen to reject the moral imperative of growth will have the paw of

an animal even though the external human form may remain unchanged. While Hein recognizes these stories as expressions of MacDonald's convictions, he praises their literary quality and lack of heavy-handed didacticism: "In the manner of true art, these symbols do more than describe or illustrate these ideas: they present themselves imaginatively in a way that makes us feel their plausibility and power"(his emphasis).

Hein finds At the Back of the North Wind (1871) somewhat less successful in its blending of theology and literature, mainly because it also attempts to combine fantasy with realistic fiction. Through his travels with the North Wind, the boy Diamond learns that seemingly adverse events, such as a shipwreck, may be sacramental, that is, serve as external signs of spiritual grace and ultimately result in good. In his "real" life in working-class London, Diamond attempts to exercise his spiritual growth by helping the poor, but as a model child, he is not entirely convincing or appealing. Hein's comment that "it is MacDonald's stories and fairy tales that are most affected by the social organization and manners of the times, so that the average child of today may hardly understand them," is...