God’s grace flows through many channels and vessels. It comes through God’s words in Holy Scripture, through the teachings of the Magisterium and Sacraments of the Church, through the consecrated matter of bread, wine, water, and oil, through the prayers of holy people and saints, and through the charity and care of human beings who act as agents of Divine Providence. The child too comes into the world as a source of grace and as a sign of God’s love to bless marriages and families. The child comes as a messenger from Heaven as the famous poem from At the Back of the North Wind reveals:
Where did you come from, baby dear?
Out of the everywhere into the here.
Where did you get your eyes so blue?
Out of the sky as I came through.
The child that comes from the “everywhere” into the “here” and brings into the human world the blue eyes that come from the azure blue of Heaven compares to a window that lets light in and transmits hints of a divine world. A window mediates between the world outside and a room indoors, both letting the sunshine and the fresh air into the house through the open window and also providing a view of the outdoors and the heavens by allowing spectators to look beyond the confines of the house. Without the window the world outside cannot enter the indoors, and they who live in the house have no means of seeing the sun, moon, or stars. In George Macdonald’s The Princess and the Goblin, a young child, Princess Irene, like a window, lets a light from above shine through her to the people around her. She communicates messages from a world above to the house below. By visiting her queenly great-great grandmother in the uppermost room of the castle and bringing news about her to her father and nurse on the first floor, she goes up to the third level and down to the first floor. The child links the two parts of the castle, the upstairs and the downstairs, and serves as a messenger.
After discovering her grandmother in one of the upper rooms of the castle, Princess Irene offers to introduce the beautiful queenly woman with luxurious long hair that “shone like silver” to her father and nurse and lead them to the Grandmother’s room, only to be accused of “nonsense” and make-believe by her nurse Lootie or taken lightly by her father who pretends he needs an invitation to make a visit. The child—a source of grace and a messenger from above—brings heavenly messages from a regal woman above who radiates light and communicates goodness but is ignored and not taken seriously by the adults who assume a child is imagining everything. Because Princess Irene is an innocent child with a pure heart who cannot tell a lie, the Grandmother sends her to transmit spiritual blessings to all around her. But a jaded world does not take the child seriously or have any idea of the heavenly nature of the Grandmother’s providential love and care. The nurse, assuming Irene has been dreaming, responds “What nonsense you are talking, princess!” The existence of a Divine Providence who speaks through children goes unnoticed by a preoccupied mundane world with no time or interest in children.
In the story, the castle where the princess resides is located half-way up a mountain. It is situated in between the sky above and the earth below. Her room’s middle position in the castle allows her to go up and go down, to play the role of messenger between the Grandmother’s rooms above and the places below. Because Princess Irene plays in her bedroom of toys in the second story, her father and nurse assume her references to the Grandmother originate in her imagination. The Nurse who prepares meals in the kitchen and King Papa who rules his kingdom never go above or have any interest in Irene’s messages. They do not believe in the Grandmother who lives on the third story whom the Princess visits and knows. No matter what Irene says about the grandmother, the reaction of the other adults in the castle is disbelief. Because Irene’s middle position on the second story separates the Grandmother’s apartment above her from the rooms below, she is the only character in the story who visits all three places—the image of the child as a window, a mediator, and a messenger. However, no matter what Irene says about the Grandmother’s beauty, goodness, and kindness, the Princess’ messages, meaning, and truthfulness carry no weight for the busy, serious people on the first story. Because they do not see, they think that Irene also does not see. Because they do not go upstairs, they assume that the Grandmother is not there. In their eyes Irene is making up stories.
For the insensible adults in the story the thought of the child as a source of grace that links the heavenly and human world is as inconceivable as the report of an unknown mysterious great-great grandmother discovered by a child climbing the stairs and looking in a half-open door. The King, the Nurse, and Curdie, the young miner boy who befriends Irene, have no interest in Irene’s relationship with her Grandmother because they have no connection to the heavenly realm she represents. They all hold to the doctrine that “seeing is believing” and fail to see the distinction which the Grandmother explains to Irene: “Seeing is only seeing” while believing is knowing without seeing. They all doubt Irene’s stories and reports about the Grandmother because they have not only never seen the noble queen but also do not believe the truthful accounts of Princess Irene who never lies, who embodies innocence, and who is purity itself. They fail to see the child as a source of grace.
They cannot conceive of the idea that the child is a truthful messenger from a heavenly world—that Princess Irene is a reliable reporter because she is without guile, because she sees with clear vision and simple understanding the Grandmother’s providential care and loving tenderness. Every time Irene visits her Grandmother, she receives gentle kindness, warm affection, delightful pleasure, healing comfort, or special gifts. In one of these visits the Grandmother gives Irene a ring with a ball of thread under it with the instruction of always following the thread when she feels its tug. The thread that is spun from the Grandmother’s wheel and attached to the finger of the Princess prevents Irene from losing her way because she remains always in relationship to her Grandmother. This thread that extends from the Grandmother to Irene then leads from Irene to others in distress. The Grandmother through Irene communicates to Curdie. With her ring and thread Irene brings the light of the Grandmother’s room to the darkness of the cave where Curdie has lost his way and leads him to experience the divine reality of the Grandmother’s existence, love, and providence.
When Curdie finds himself trapped in the labyrinth of dark mines threatened by the Goblins, he is amazed to see Irene find him in the blackness of the caves and direct him out of a maze: “I can’t think how you got here, though.” He has no idea of her meaning when Irene answers “My grandmother sent me after her thread.” He marvels in wonder as she ignores his directions and follows her own indirect path out of the confusion, explaining, “I must follow my thread . . . whatever I do.” Doubtful that Irene knows her way out of a mine or has any sense of direction, Curdie hesitates to trust the child who insists, “We have only to follow my thread. I am sure that it’s going to take us out now.” Instead of trusting Irene, believing in the Grandmother, and letting Irene follow the thread, Curdie can only react like the King and the nurse: “I can’t understand it.” He does not understand that the child is a source of grace, a messenger who brings Good News, a link to a higher world, a beacon of truth who brings a beam of its brightness through a thread joining her and her Grandmother—a thread given to a child in a ring to follow and rescue the lost, give light in dark places, and to teach unbelievers to look above and see the lamp from the Grandmother’s window illuminating the sky in a dangerous world inhabited by Goblins. The Grandmother speaks to the whole world through the light of a child—a source of grace who mediates as a window linking the “here” to the “everywhere” and communicating the glory of a higher world through the simplicity and purity of an innocent girl.
Mitchell Kalpakgian, Ph.D. has completed fifty years of teaching beginning as a teaching assistant at the University of Kansas, continuing as a professor of English at Simpson College in Iowa for thirty-one years, and recently teaching part-time at various schools and college in New Hampshire. As well as contributing to a number of publications, he has published seven books: The Marvelous in Fielding’s Novels, The Mysteries of Life in Children’s Literature, The Lost Arts of Modern Civilization, An Armenian Family Reunion (a collection of short stories), Modern Manners: The Poetry of Conduct and The Virtue of Civility, and The Virtues We Need Again. He has designed homeschooling literature courses for Seton Home School, and he also teaches online courses for Queen of Heaven Academy and part-time for Northeast Catholic College.
