A REALISTIC FAIRY TALE:  THE WYVERN MYSTERY

Sally C. Harris

University of Tennessee

(ISSN 1932-9598)

In studies of Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu’s works, The Wyvern Mystery is usually referred to in passing only. In Sheridan Le Fanu and Victorian Ireland, W. J. McCormack states, “of The Wyvern Mystery (1869) or The Rose and the Key (1871) little may be usefully said” (231). Certainly, The Wyvern Mystery is not as popular as Uncle Silas, “Carmilla,” or “Green Tea.” There are, however, some interesting aspects of that novel which ask for a closer look. In a recent article, Greg Crossan does take a closer look at one aspect. “Proverbs and Proverbial Sayings in J. S. Le Fanu’s The Wyvern Mystery” offers possible sources for the clichés scattered throughout. Unfortunately, Crossan’s article stops there without offering any explanation of how the sayings affect the meaning or reading of the novel. In this study, I look at ways in which fairy tales are referred to, subverted, and revalued in The Wyvern Mystery. Throughout, the narrator refers to fairy tales, but the characters do not act like those of the tales. Thus, it at first seems that in the face of real, three-dimensional characters, fairy tales cannot play out. However, Le Fanu revalues fairy tales at the end of the novel to show that, at times, even in realistic plots, fairy tales can come true. By doing this, Le Fanu avoided making The Wyvern Mystery simply a fairy tale, folk legend, or sensational novel. Instead, the novel becomes a realistic fairy tale.

Thus was old Squire Fairfield unexpectedly transformed, and, much to the horror of pretty Alice Maybell, appeared in the character of a lover, grim, ungainly, and without the least chance of that brighter transformation which ultimately more than reconciles “beauty” to her conjugal relations with the “beast.” (23)

First, the squire is “unexpectedly transformed” as many characters in fairy tales are. Here, though, the narrator undermines the fairy-tale reference by reminding the reader that this “beast” will not change into a prince.

            At the same time as the narrator undermines the fairy tale expectations, the plot undermines the “wise saws” (23) with which the squire comforts himself. After locking Alice and Dulcibella in their wing of his “castle,” Squire Fairfield “would sometimes wag his head shrewdly and wink to himself… ‘Safe bind, safe find,’ ‘Better sure than sorry’…” he would say. We later find out, though, that his safe bind does not bring about a safe find. A few nights later, Alice flees the house in order to marry her “darling, darling Ry” (28). Although the occurrence is a few days after the night with which the proverb is associated in the reader’s mind, the reader is reminded of it when Dulcibella returns from checking the door and informs Alice that it was “locked as usual” (27). The lovely Alice had been locked in her tower but manages to escape with the help of her lover. However, unlike Rapunzel who has to let down her hair to her lover, Alice walks down stairs and lets him in through the window. Just as the proverb and the story of “Beauty and the Beast” have been undermined, so is “Rapunzel” discredited. In one way, it is discredited in the same movement that discredits the squire’s old saws: Alice easily admits her lover by very the very realistic means of the window, not her hair. This action places the characters in the real, physical world, not a world where enchantresses and magic are commonplace. However, by this vary practical action, Alice then flees the “amorous ogre” (27) and his castle.

            Although the Old Squire at first seems to be the ogre, the reader later finds that he has a heart, that his character is more complex than the two-dimensional fairy tale villain he seems to be. Throughout most of the novel, Squire Fairfield maintains a haughty attitude toward Alice and Charles, never condescending to visit them because his pride has been wounded. When he dies, though, Squire Fairfield leaves Alice an annuity. In The European Folktale: form and nature, Max Lüthi indicates that “persons and animals depicted in folktales… lack physical and psychological depth” (12). At first, the squire seems to lack that depth. As the narrator of The Wyvern Mystery notes, even Alice sees him “leering with arid jollity, straight before her like a vivid magic-lantern figure in the dark” (21). As well as being compared to other fairy tale figures, the squire is now compared to a two-dimensional image, projected only by means of glass slides and light. Despite this perception of him, Alice still feels compelled to leave him a note when she escapes because, as she says, “he had been so good to me all my life” (40). At this point, the reader can still see the Old Squire as the villain in a fairy tale story, a two-dimensional character, despite the fact that Alice seems to think he is kind. The reader can believe that Alice is deceived by him because of her innocence and inexperience; she knows no other life.

Later, after Charles has died, there is another instance that begins to challenge the reader’s expectations of the squire’s character. Squire Fairfield does not attend his son’s funeral, as is befitting of the cruel, unfeeling king. However, because he asks Harry,[8] Charles’s brother, so many questions about the funeral, it does seem that he has some emotional interest in his eldest son’s life and death. He asks about the people who were there and derides some for crying, but when he learns that an enemy of Charles’s was present, the squire gets angry. He gets even angrier when he learns that Harry shook hands with Rodney: “Charlie wouldn’t ‘a’ done that; he wouldn’t ‘a’ took his hand over your grave; but you’re not like us—never was….” Shortly after this the squire says, “He was worth ye all… I could ‘a’ liked him, if he had ‘a’ liked me—if he had ‘a’ let me…” (191). His feelings toward Charles are complicated. Unlike the unchanging, two-dimensional fairy tale villain, the squire seems to have psychological depth.

Toward the end of the novel, though, what especially seems contrary to the character of the squire as ogre or cruel king is his response to Harry’s complaint that Wyvern is “charged so heavy” in the will:

“There’s three hundred a year to Alice, that’s what ye mean!” said the old squire.

His son was silent.

“Well, I don’t owe her nothin’, that’s true, but I’ll let it stand, mind. And Harry, lad, the day ye do a good thing there will be seven new moons.” (236)

The ogre from the beginning of the story has just done a good thing. However, in the next breath, he seems to remain cruel by refusing to remit the rent the vicarage paid to Wyvern. Based on descriptions and references at the beginning of the novel, the reader expects the squire to be the villain throughout, just as characters in a fairy tale never change. However, the squire’s actions at the end disrupt this image and paint him as a more complex, realistic character than any from a fairy tale. The fairy tale expectations have again been undermined.

            The hero of the tale, Charles Fairfield—at least early in the story it seems as if he should be the hero—does not act like the typical fairy tale hero. He is the one who will rescue Alice from the clutches of the ogre. After Alice has let him in at the window, he helps her to plan her escape. However, he does not act in the plan; Alice will walk to Draunton, and Dulcibella will follow. The reader, at this point, is not told Alice’s lover is Charles, so some exception might be made for the hero plotting the escape so carefully as to not anger the ogre. What the reader does learn at this point, though, is that the lover was to have been at Carwell Grange earlier when Alice went there on her way home from Lady Wyndale’s, yet he was not. In fairy tales, the hero never breaks his promise to the heroine. Lüthi notes that the “folktale hero acts, and he has neither the time nor the temperament to be puzzled with mysteries” (7). This lover, though, does not act. He fails to be at the appointed place, and he merely helps in the planning of the heroine’s escape. He does not carry her away immediately. Before the reader learns that Charles is the lover, the narrator indicates that Charles is a “lazy man, and reserved….” Although he has “the hot blood of the Fairfields” in him, he has let his father’s “inhospitable language” to him earlier in the day pass, and must make “up his mind…to take steps upon it…” (30). Charles thinks about acting. Unlike the fairy tale hero, he ponders the events and does not act immediately, if ever. Even in this early scene between the Old Squire and Charles, a complex character is drawn because Charles has “hot blood” and is “proud and firey,” yet he is lazy and “indolent” (30), too. In the very description of Charles’s character there are contraries that emphasize the contradiction between the role he assumes, Alice’s hero, and the way he acts—or rather does not act.

When Alice and Charles finally meet on the road to their new abode after their marriage ceremony (Charles must have left her again, although the marriage scene is not included), they both seem to believe there is something of the fairy tale in it. Alice says, “any place you know, with you! But that’s an old story.” Shortly after, Charles says, “we’ll live like the old baron and his daughters in the fairy tale…” (39). They do not live the fairy tale, though, because Charles does not act. In many cases, he asks his brother’s advice. To save money, he resolves to give up smoking and to slowly work through his box of cigars, but as soon as he’s lighted the first cigar, he changes him mind about how to give up smoking: “…the sooner these are out the better” (72). In another instance of Charles’s indecision, when he finally seems to make a decision to tell Alice his secret and take charge of the situation, he fails:

“I will,” he thought, “extract the sting from this miserable mystery. Between me and Alice it shall be secret no longer. I’ll tell her tomorrow….”

….

Here was an opportunity; but if his resolution was still there, presence of mind failed him, and forcing a smile, he instantly answered:—

            “Nothing darling—nothing whatever….”

            And as, reassured, and holding his hand, she prattled and laughed, leading him round by the grass-grown walks to her garden…his sight seemed dazzled; his hearing seemed confused; and he thought to himself:—

“Where am I—what is this—and can it be true that I am so weak or so mad as to be turned from the purpose over which I have been brooding for a day and night….” (94-95)

The man who has chosen to play the part of the hero cannot because he is not two-dimensional; he is a complex character with psychological depth. The ability to read the story as a fairy tale is again undermined by a realistic element.

As the reader learns about the reason for Charles’s secrecy, his or her expectations are again undermined. The character who at first seemed as if he would be the hero now seems as if he is the villain. As many critics have noted, the plot of The Wyvern Mystery has elements of “Bluebeard,” first collected in Perrault’s stories. “Tyrone Family” has elements of this fairy tale, too. In fact, Lord Glenfallen’s possible previous marriage and the wife hidden in a forbidden room are most likely the influences for Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre as many critics note. Written after Jane Eyre, The Wyvern Mystery takes back the mad woman and, as Victor Sage notes in Le Fanu’s Gothic, keeps the name Bertha but makes her, once again, Dutch (20). Many readers, then, would have expected Bertha Velderkaust to act like Bertha Mason if they weren’t already familiar with Flora Van Kemp from Le Fanu’s earlier tale. Here, again, Le Fanu challenges the reader’s expectations. Bertha Velderkaust seems crazy, but she is acutely aware of all that is going on around her. She does attempt to kill Alice just as Bertha Mason attempts to kill Jane and Flora Van Kemp attempts to kill Fanny, but Le Fanu’s Bertha Velderkaust is much more calculating. Although blind, Bertha Velderkaust manipulates discussions with Mildred Tarnley; sneaks into Lilly Dogger’s room and frightens her into telling the truth about Charles’s marriage; and finds her way along a closed passage and through a door that has been sealed with wallpaper. This is no mad, sensational Bertha Mason. Bertha Velderkaust is more frightening to the reader because she has her senses, evil and witch-like though she is. She cannot simply be labeled mad or evil witch because she seems sane and has a reason for her hatred of Alice—Alice is the younger woman for whom she has been dumped. Bertha Velderkaust is a three-dimensional character.

Bertha Velderkaust also undermines expectations by being alive. In “Bluebeard,” the villain’s previous wives have been murdered. Also, Alice, like Jane Eyre and Lady Glanfallen, does not conform to the fairy tale expectations because she does not go into the rooms in which the previous wife is hidden. Charles’s mandate to Alice is not to ask questions about his debts and not to leave Carwell Grange. Although Alice has some curiosity about Charles’s problems and is concerned for his state of mind, she does not violate these commands. In fact, as Sage remarks of “Tyrone Family,” in which Lord Glenfallen actually compares himself to Bluebeard, the moral of Le Fanu’s story is unexpected:

The moral of Charles Perrault’s tale is “Reproof of Curiosity.” This is Propp’s condition for narrative drive in the folktale—transgression. But though we recognise the structure, we are caught by surprise: the twist is that the transgression here comes not from Fanny, who is (unexpectedly) obedient, but from an invasion be her secret, fateful, and monstrous Other…. (19)

Like Fanny, her earlier counterpart, Alice is “unexpectedly” obedient. Le Fanu undermines the “Bluebeard” fairy tale plot.

            Charles, too, undermines “Bluebeard” because he has not killed Bertha and because he seems to have some compassion for her. It is also never clear whether Charles has actually married Bertha. He claims that he never married her although she claims they are married. Harry at times indicates he thinks his brother and Bertha are married. At other times, Harry indicates he believes they never married. This confusion adds to the confusion and the “twist” on the traditional moral of the fairy tale. Charles can be neither villain nor hero because he does not act. He does not kill Bertha although there are times he wishes her dead. Alternately, when Bertha attempts to kill Alice, he does save Alice, but feels remorse for harming Bertha:

And—did he strike her? Good God!—had he struck her! How did she lie there bleeding? For a moment, a dreadful remorse was bursting at his heart—he would have kneeled—he could have killed himself. Oh, manhood! Gratitude! Charity! Could he, even in a moment of frenzy, have struck down any creature so—that had ever stood to him in the relation of that love? What a rush of remembrances and hell of compunction was there!—and for a rival! She the reckless, forlorn, guilty old love cast off, blasted with deformity and privation…. and he felt as if he hated Alice—hated her worse than even himself. (156)

If Charles is the hero in this scene, it is unclear who the victim is. His words imply Bertha is the victim, but Alice is the one who was just attacked and rescued. If Charles is the villain, again it is unclear who the victim is: Is it the woman he just hit and now wishes he had not or the woman he just rescued? In fact, Charles shows qualities of neither villain nor hero. He has too much psychological depth to be either a Bluebeard or a hero of a fairy tale, and he lacks the emotional devotion to be the Byronic hero, such as Rochester, of the sensational novel. Charles’s indecision and inaction throughout keep him from being categorized as any character type from a fairy tale or sensational novel.

            Throughout the majority of the novel, then, Le Fanu has raised the reader’s expectations for character types and plot structures only to undermine them. The reader is on shifting ground and is left uncertain about the status of the story and the characters. When Harry succeeds in hiding Alice’s son and Charles dies, it seems as if the plot should end. The fairy tale has failed: the character who was supposed to be the hero is dead, and the heroine is a childless widow. However, the novel continues. The plot shift at the end of the novel revives the undermined fairy tales. Alice and Charles’s son is living with the kind, old peasant woman who has been given this child to rear. Marjory Trevellian is akin to the woman in the fairy tales who has no child but longs for one (cf. Rapunzel, Rose-Bud, Tom Thumb from the Grimms’ tales). Miraculously, as in fairy tales, Marjory is given one to care for. She is told he is the son of a gentleman and is to be called William Henry. Le Fanu emphasizes their fairy tale existence by having Marjory call the boy “’her ‘Prince’ of her ‘Fairy,’ and he [calls] her ‘Granny’” (239), reminiscent of Edgar Taylor’s Gammer Grethel, who tells the stories in his 1839 volume of the Grimm brothers’ tales. In fact, Marjory has an “inexhaustible collection of fairy tales, received traditionally and recounted viva voce…” (240-41). Emphasizing the connection between fairy tales and Marjory’s world, Tom Orange enters the scene. Much like the strange characters who visit the heroes of the fairy tales in order to give them gifts, Tom Orange visits Marjory and the boy at irregular intervals. These characters seem to fulfill their fairy tale duties.

            Eventually, William Henry finds a door in a wall that leads to a beautiful garden with a young girl who can be his playmate. Appropriately, this chapter is titled “The Enchanted Garden.”[9] In this section, the children are the focus, and, of course, by the time they had been translated to English, fairy tales were considered children’s tales, as Yonge’s comment noted earlier implies. For children, then, fairy tales are possible. When Tom Orange visits William Henry, he entertains him with “Lingo’s song with the rag-tag-merry-derry-perry-wig and hat band” (250) and tells him “there is the tallest mushroom … [that] is counted one of the wonders of the world” (251) growing at Wyvern, a place of which William Henry has never heard. William Henry treats Tom Orange’s stories as if they are true. According to Lüthi, “an actor in a folktale, whether a hero or an ordinary person, a man or a woman, deals with these otherworld beings as though he perceived no difference between them and him….They are important to him as helpers or adversaries…” (6). Although it is clear to the reader that Tom Orange is a vagabond and, most likely, a swindler, to William Henry, Tom Orange has otherworld powers yet is a natural fixture in the physical world. On a more realistic level, William Henry notices no difference between himself, a gentleman’s son, and Tom Orange, a worldly con artist who should exist on the outskirts of society. The fairy tale is successfully integrated into a more realistic setting.

This integration occurs again when William Henry is taken to Mr. Archdale’s house to be educated in the ways of a gentleman—very strictly educated at that. Tom Orange comes to rescue him. In a fairy tale, the otherworldly character appears to the hero only when he is needed to “offer him exactly the advice he needs” (Lüthi 6). Just before the only kind person in his existence at Archdale’s house dies (Archdale’s sickly daughter), Tom Orange appears to help William Henry escape. William Henry is relieved of his sadness at having to leave his friend by her death the night before he leaves. Tom Orange comes to get William Henry, and they begin the journey together. A few miles into the journey, Tom must leave, but he tells the boy what to do: find his way to the George a mile beyond Hatherton. This is the task set to the hero by this figure from the otherworld. Tom Orange’s reasoning for this is that he must avoid being seen. Like the supernatural character in fairy tales, Tom Orange appears and disappears at will and is not seen by all. The reader understands that, realistically, this is because Tom Orange could get arrested. However, William Henry is unaware of this and shows, as Lüthi says of the fairy tale hero, “neither astonishment nor doubt” (6-7) at Tom Orange’s actions. Of course, like the fairy tale hero, William Henry obeys, and although he thinks he gets lost and has a few adventures on the way, he finally arrives at the George. True to his word, Tom Orange is there, too. After this point, the novel draws quickly to a close, and, as fairy tales go, “all live happily ever after.” William Henry, now Henry Fairfield, squire of Wyvern lives with his mother Alice and Amy, the young girl from the Enchanted Garden. Of course “Granny” Trevellian lives there too. The reader is lead to believe that the usurper of William Henry’s rightful place, Harry, is killed by Tom Orange, who disappears again just before the end of the novel. There is a realistic explanation—he goes to Australia—but the disappearance of the seemingly otherworldly character who then goes to live in another world is fairy-tale like.

Here, at the end of The Wyvern Mystery, the fairy tale and reality seem to be able to exist side by side. There are explanations for the events that are very realistic, yet they have elements of the fairy tale in them. What Le Fanu has undermined throughout most of the novel, he restores at the end. Le Fanu has, as Henry Stone says of Dickens, the “ability to fuse the fanciful and the everyday and to achieve thereby a deeper sense of the ...wonder of reality…” (95). Vladimir Propp argues that the folk tale “is an amusing farce. Neither the teller nor the listener treats it as reality” and that “it never passes itself off as reality” (19.) However, Le Fanu does try to pass this last part of The Wyvern Mystery off as a realistic conclusion. If, as Propp argues, readers don’t expect fairy tales to be real, then every time Le Fanu introduces the fairy tale element and undermines it with a realistic character, his reader’s expectations are challenged. Thus, they begin to see how the complexities of the world prohibit the conciseness of the fairy tale. Just when the reader has come to accept this, Le Fanu again turns the tables and introduces a successful fairy tale in realistic terms. Fairy tales can come true.