Five-minute digest
A Wonder-Book for Girls and Boys
Summary
A Wonder-Book for Girls and Boys is Nathaniel Hawthorne's first book of Greek myths retold for children. Six stories are set inside a frame: Eustace Bright, an eighteen-year-old Williams College student on vacation, tells them to a crowd of children staying at Tanglewood, a country house in the Berkshires, whom Hawthorne gives flower and plant names such as Primrose, Periwinkle, Sweet Fern, Dandelion, Squash-Blossom and Buttercup. Each tale has an introductory scene and an after-the-story scene, and the frame moves through the year from autumn on the Tanglewood porch, to a winter play-room and fireside, to a spring hillside and the bare summit of a hill. In The Gorgon's Head, Perseus is sent by the scheming King Polydectes to fetch the head of Medusa; guided by the merry traveller Quicksilver and his wise unseen sister, he tricks the Three Gray Women, called Scarecrow, Nightmare and Shakejoint, out of their single eye, borrows winged slippers and a helmet of invisibility from the Nymphs, takes the head, and turns the king and his courtiers to stone. In The Golden Touch, King Midas is granted his wish that everything he touches shall become gold, until his breakfast turns to metal and his little daughter Marygold becomes a golden statue when he kisses her; washed in the river, he learns that bread, water and his child are worth more than all the gold on earth. The Paradise of Children tells how the child Pandora, living with the boy Epimetheus in a world without trouble, opens a mysterious box and releases the Troubles, until a small winged spirit called Hope flies out to comfort them. In The Three Golden Apples, Hercules wrestles the shape-changing Old Man of the Sea, sails in a great golden cup, and persuades the giant Atlas to fetch the apples of the Hesperides, then tricks him into taking back the sky. The Miraculous Pitcher tells how the poor old couple Baucis and Philemon welcome two strangers whom their churlish village has mocked; their milk pitcher never empties, the village sinks beneath a lake, and the couple are turned at last into an oak and a linden whose branches embrace. In The Chimæra, Bellerophon waits at the Fountain of Pirene, trusting a child who has seen the winged horse Pegasus, bridles him, and rides to destroy the three-headed Chimæra of Lycia. In the frame, Mr. Pringle, the scholarly owner of Tanglewood, finds Eustace's free handling of the myths too Gothic. Hawthorne's preface is dated Lenox, July 15, 1851, and the book was published that year in Boston by Ticknor, Reed and Fields. The library text is the Houghton Mifflin edition with Walter Crane's designs, which are not reproduced.
Top Lessons
What is truly precious
Midas wins the power to turn everything into gold and nearly starves, then loses his daughter to his own touch. When the stranger asks him to choose between the Golden Touch and a cup of water, a crust of bread or Marygold, he chooses the ordinary things every time. Hawthorne teaches children that the common gifts of daily life are worth more than riches.
Hope after trouble
Pandora's curiosity lets the Troubles out into the world, and Hawthorne does not pretend they ever went back into the box. But Hope flies out last and promises to stay as long as people live, and the storyteller says he is almost glad Pandora peeped in. The tale shows that sorrow is real, and so is the hope that outlasts it.
Welcoming the stranger
The villagers set their dogs and children on two ragged travellers, while Baucis and Philemon give them their best seat and their last bread and milk. The guests turn out to be gods; the village becomes a lake, and the old couple's cottage becomes a palace of welcome. The story honors hospitality to people who seem to have nothing to give back.
Faith and patience
Bellerophon waits day after day at the Fountain of Pirene while grown-ups tell him Pegasus does not exist. Only a small child believes him and keeps watch beside him, and in the end Bellerophon says the child's faith won the victory. Patience and trust are shown as a kind of courage.
Verified Quotes
Frequently cited
“Children possess an unestimated sensibility to whatever is deep or high, in imagination or feeling, so long as it is simple likewise.”
“the commonest things, such as lie within everybody's grasp, are more valuable than the riches which so many mortals sigh and struggle after.”
“glad as my nature is, I am partly made of tears as well as smiles.”
Frequently cited
“Hope spiritualizes the earth; Hope makes it always new; and, even in the earth's best and brightest aspect, Hope shows it to be only the shadow of an infinite bliss hereafter.”
“By the time you have stood there as long as I did, you will begin to learn patience!”
“Providence put me here, I hope, among other reasons, in order that I may make you what amends I can for the inhospitality of my neighbors.”
“But if thy faith had not helped me, I should never have waited for Pegasus, and never have gone up above the clouds, and never have conquered the terrible Chimæra.”
Medical Lens
Medicine is incidental. The Golden Touch is a fable of hunger: Midas cannot eat or drink because every mouthful turns to metal, and the cure is a plunge into the river and a sprinkling of water, a folk-tale purification rather than any medical treatment. The Miraculous Pitcher shows two very old, very poor people sharing scanty food, and the gods renew their age and let them grow old together as trees. The Gray Women, who share one eye between them, are comic figures of old age and blindness rather than portraits of disease. The book offers a psychiatric reader little beyond these images of want, age and restoration.
- The Golden Touch
Midas's breakfast of trout, cakes and coffee turns to gold in his mouth, and he realizes he faces starvation in the midst of riches.
- The Gorgon's Head
The Three Gray Women pass a single eye from hand to hand and are helpless while Perseus holds it.
- The Miraculous Pitcher
Baucis and Philemon share their last bread, honey and milk, and are later given renewed age as an oak and a linden.