The Wise Woman (A Double Story)

Summary

The Wise Woman is George MacDonald's fairy-tale parable of two spoiled little girls in an odd country where everyone wants what he has not got. Princess Rosamond, whose name means Rose of the World, has been given everything she cried for, including a silver disc to stand in for the moon, and has grown into a raging, greedy child who beats her pets and has nearly killed her nurse. Far to the north, Agnes, a shepherd's only child, has been praised for every word she says until she is quietly and completely sure that she is Somebody. A tall woman in a black cloak, the wise woman, is called to the palace, tells the king and queen they have treated their daughter badly, and carries Rosamond off under her cloak. On the heath she leaves the princess to her terrors until she knocks at a cottage that seems to have no door. Inside, Rosamond must sweep, dust, keep the fire and water the heather bed; she sulks, lets the fire die, hears the beast-birds at night, and smashes the little mirror that shows her ugliness. Only hunger drives her to work. Then she steps through a picture of a green hillside and finds herself in the very country of the shepherd's family. Meanwhile the wise woman, disguised as a beggar, takes Agnes, who drinks up the milk her mother gave the visitor, and shuts her in a bluish sphere where her only companion is a pale, simpering double of herself. Agnes is shamed, but soon grows conceited again, and steps through a picture of the king's city, where a proclamation promises a welcome to every stray child. The two girls have changed places. The shepherdess takes in Rosamond, and the sheepdog Prince becomes her stern tutor, while Agnes is sent to the palace scullery. Rosamond improves, falls back after Prince is taken away, refuses the help of a poor woman carrying heather, and is lost in a black bog until that woman, the wise woman again, carries her out. Back at the cottage she fails two trials in the mood-chambers, one in her old nursery and one in a garden where she drowns a little boy in a vision, then succeeds in a third, in a forest where a child makes flowers grow. Sent home in rags, she finds her foster-parents brought as prisoners before the throne on Agnes's information, defends them, and is at last recognized by her parents. The wise woman strikes the king and queen blind until their better eyes are opened, sends the shepherdess home with Agnes, and leads the shepherd away. The story ran as A Double Story in the magazine Good Things in 1874-75 and appeared as a book, The Wise Woman: A Parable, from Strahan & Co. in London in 1875; the library text is the American edition titled A Double Story.

Top Lessons

• A mood is not a change of heart

  Rosamond feels good for an hour by the cottage fire and decides she has become good. MacDonald shows that real change is proved in doing the next task when one does not feel like it, and that a passing mood can leave the self exactly as it was.

• Two kinds of selfishness

  The princess is selfish loudly, with rages and broken toys; the shepherd's daughter is selfish quietly, with a smile of satisfaction. MacDonald calls the story double because both girls need the same cure, and he warns that the quiet kind can be the harder to heal.

• Hard love

  The wise woman leaves Rosamond alone on the heath, lets her go hungry, and sends a dog to knock her down, yet she also kills the wolf, carries her through the bog, and nurses Agnes at night without her knowing. The book teaches that punishment given in love aims at healing, not revenge.

• A princess over herself

  Before the trials the wise woman explains that a real princess is one who makes herself do right in a bad mood. Rosamond fails twice, but passes when she blesses the flower-child's pony instead of envying it. Self-rule, not birth or clothes, makes a person royal.

Verified Quotes

Medical Lens

This is a moral fairy tale, not a medical one, but it is unusually observant about children's tempers and moods. Rosamond's early rages end in fits, she has nearly killed her nurse and all but hanged herself before her parents act, and the queen goes into hysterics when the child vanishes; these are Victorian household words, used without clinical intent. The narrator's real interest is in mood: Rosamond is called the puppet of her moods, Agnes's self-conceit is called a disease that eats away the good in her, and the wise woman builds mood-chambers in which each mood must be mastered. MacDonald also treats the face as the surface of the mind, so that the girls' faces change as their hearts do. Care is shown in bodily ways: the wise woman feeds the sleeping Agnes with milk each night, the shepherdess bathes and feeds the starving princess, and the poor woman with the heather kneads a sprained ankle until it is sound. A modern reader may think of temper tantrums, emotional regulation or the effects of indulgent parenting, but those are readings brought to a parable.

• Chapter I

  Rosamond's rages, the fit after she loses her silver moon, and the narrator's note that she had nearly killed her nurse and all but hanged herself.

• Chapter III

  Rosamond's dream that she is the old cold woman in the sky, wandering forever over blue sand.

• Chapter VII

  Agnes in the bluish sphere loses all sense of time and is nursed and fed by the wise woman each night while she sleeps.

• Chapter XI

  The poor woman feels Rosamond's joints, finds the sprain, and strokes and presses the ankle until the girl can walk.