Telling Fairy Tales In The Great War: Ethel May Gate And The Allies' Tale Collections [introduction]

Fairy tales, regarded by F. Andre Favat in his comprehensive study Child and Tale as 'literary research reservoirs' for the cultural history and social psyche of cultures, have maintains their popularity and intriguing energy across centuries (xi). In First Adventures in Reading, May L. Becker also recognises the 'omnivorous quality of children's fairy tale hunger' (48), stating that most children 'listen to [.] fairy stories as soon as they will listen to anything' (50). For generation after generation, it is evident that children are inevitably spellbound by the magic of fairy tales. Jack Zipes points out, in the preface to Fairy Tales and the Art of Subversion, that the influence of fairy tales over the complex history of western civilization should not be underestimated. He asserts that the fairy tale is 'a genre that has wide ramifications for the civilising of children and adults' and should be considered as 'a subversive alternative to [the civilising] process that has lost its touch with humanity' (Zipes xi, xii). Every child and ex-child must know by heart the ubiquitous once-upon-a-time opening and happily-ever-after ending. The genre's familiarity creates a predictable narrative framework to reassure readers while offering room for exploration and manipulation at the same time. Denis Escarpit, cited in agreement by Zipes, suggests that the prime power of tales lies in their room for manipulation. As she proposes in her study of the origins of European literary fairy tale: There was a threefold manipulation by the author - a manipulation that served a cultural and personal politics, a manipulation of a social kind that presented a certain image of society, and a moralistic manipulation that adhered to the code of bourgeois moralism at the end of the seventeenth century. (ibid. 9) As a treasure trove of history, tales that drift along the course of culture and tradition inevitably take on new meaning and responsibility adjusted to each reconfiguration of social order. It is all too natural that manipulation is taken to another level during wartime. While tales, of the seventeenth-century France in particular, are endowed with a moralising purpose, they are politicised with elements of national consensus to cultivate patriotic tenor during wartime, most notably exemplified by the infamous example of the Third Reich. A Nazi party official, quoted by Christa Kamenetsky in her examination of the relation between fairy tales and the cleansing policy, announced in 1935 that 'The German folktale shall become a most valuable means for [them] in the racial and political education of the young' (Kamenetsky 170). This propagandist function of tales during wartime, that cultural discourse is subjected to the exploitation of legitimised politicisation, also applies to the Great War, the most cataclysmic event of modernity, takes place twenty years before this official announcement. Randall Stevenson says in Literature and the Great War, his recent study of the relation between language, literature and the war, that 'It had certainly recognized, by that early stage of the war, the value of stories, imagination, and myth' (30). He recounts, '[the Propaganda Bureau] began on 2 September an extensive recruitment of imaginative writers to assist in the propagation of war ideals' (ibid.). Philip Waller confirms in Writers, Readers and Reputation that among the twenty five writers who have attended the secret meeting, J. M. Barrie is one of them (932). In contrast to the political usage of literature, Wilfred Owen insists that art should speak the truth of the war. He asserts, 'Above all [an artist] not concerned with Poetry. [His] subject is War, and the pity of War [.] all a poet can do today is warn. That is why the true Poets must be truthful' (Owen 31). Writers for children may not necessarily be as committed as Owen and other soldier-poets in this revelatory mission, but it is, however, undeniable that fairy tales are, to a lesser or greater degree, pedagogical. In light of the interwoven relation between war and literature, the age level of reading fairy tales is central to the genre's social and political impact on children in times of war. Joan Cass notes in Literature and the Young Child that 'children of five or so are reading and eager for the enrichment that the fairy story, folk tale, or simple myth can provide' (28). Children of the Great War and the interwar period grow up to become the active participants of the Second World War. After twenty-one years of peace, the horn is blown once again and those who have been indoctrinated with jingoistic ideals since their childhood rise in good faith to guard the nation and throw themselves on the enemy. The influence generated by fairy tales is therefore of paramount importance to their conception of the world and their national identity. Despite the gasping devastation and torn family caused by the Great War, the puff of self-assuring heroism and romanticised patriotism created by wartime fairy tales remains as an obstinate residue in the cultural discourse for children. Boy soldiers are not uncommon during the Second World War. As the British Broadcast Corporation (BBC) reports, 'Fourteen-year-old Reginald Earnshaw has been confirmed as the UK`s youngest known service member to have been killed in WWII after lying about his age to join the merchant navy as a cabin boy' ('Youngsters who Lied'). This child combatant did not survive the war and died in 1941 ('Casualty Details: Earnshaw, Reginald.'). It is, therefore, the aim of this project to present an inquiry into how fairy tales, published around the years of the Great War, are invested with new meanings and ideologies to shape and refashion the representation of the war and its aftermath. Remote from the front-line, children are often, like women, overlooked in the accounts of wars; however, the heavy toll of citizens, killed, maimed or starved, speaks their sufferings which are often underestimated as unmatched to that encountered by combatants. Helena M. Swanwick, a veteran pacifist, notes in The Roots of Peace that in the Great War, 'it was estimated that, while the deaths of soldiers in all countries might have reached ten millions, those of civilians, by pestilence, famine and homelessness, in addition to direct deaths by bombardment and massacre, reached between two and three times that number' (Swanwick 126). Additionally, the tragic news of the dead or missing husband and lover, father and son, strikes women, and sometimes children too, with most profound grief and psychological distress. The representation of children and women, the two groups that have maintained a close relation with the fairy tale genre since the start of its oral traditions centuries ago, and their position in war will form the focus of this project. To give a more comprehensive account of the fairy tale genre in the war, this dissertation will first examine traditional fairy tales selected and reprinted in the middle of the Great War, before moving onto tales written by Ethel May Gate, a much neglected female writer, shortly before and after the war. Slaying villain and pursuing glory are big war themes in tales, as in national propaganda of the Allies. The first chapter will study two tale collections published in the heat of the Great War, The Allies' Fairy Book (1916) and Edmund Dulac's Fairy-Book: Fairy Tales of the Allied Nations (1916). These two fairy books, compiled exclusively of tales of the Allied nations, do not simply introduce different national characters, more importantly, they serve as a compelling political propaganda in disguise. The Allies Fairy Book, illustrated by Arthur Rackham, puts together stories from eleven Allied nations during the Great War with colour and monotone images provided by renowned English illustrator Arthur Rackham. French book illustrator, Edmund Dulac also selects a range of fifteen Allied folklores. It is worth noting that illustrations in these two gift books play a large part in distinguishing these wartime editions from other ones. Myth, Magic and Mystery: One Hundred Years of American Children's Book Illustration, an encyclopaedia of prominent children's book illustrators, recognises Arthur Rackham and Edmund Dulac as the masters in the early twentieth-century (21). Offering a distinctive and new interpretation of the selected age-old tales, Rackham and Dulac's illustrations will be examined closely alongside the enchanting literary texts. This chapter will examine how traditional tales are brought back to carry out the politicalising mission under such turbulent historical circumstances. Despite her dedication to writing for children, Ethel May Gate (1882-1942), an English female author who survived the First World War, has received surprisingly limited, if any, critical attention. Besides a lack of critical reception, very limited biographical details can be found. Gate's gravestone in Surrey shows her maiden name, suggesting that she might not have married and did not have any child of her own . Her keen interest in children's literature is also noted by her correspondences with J. M. Barrie and Joan Luxton who owned a children's theatre company. In her early thirties, Gate introduces her first fairy tales collection The Broom Fairies and Other Stories in 1912. While it is not surprising that Gate writes her first tales collection during the Edwardian period, a time of fairy frenzy following J. M. Barrie's phenomenal Peter Pan, The Broom Fairies has been reprinted, in both Britain and the States, in 1917 and 1922, and with the addition of illustrations in 1922, 1923 and 1929 in the States. This record of publication undoubtedly hints at the popularity of her tales even during the interwar period, a time regarded by Randall Stevenson as 'ten years of relative silence [.] followed by the production of war narratives in sudden profusion in the late 1920s and early 1930s' (88). During these 'ten years of relative silence,' Gates continues to draw on the rich potential of the fairy tale genre and publishes another four collections, namely Tales from the Secret Kingdom (1919), The Fortunate Days (1922), Punch & Robinetta (1923) and Tales from the Enchanted Isles (1926). Other than her short tales collections, All the King's Trumpets, a novella for children, is published in 1929 and she also complies a biography Roland Philipps Boy Scout in 1920. Although the production files or other information pertaining to the publication history of these collections were destroyed during the Second World War, the fact that she has such a substantial amount of stories published during that period reflects on the market's demand for her writings and post-war fairy tales. Drawing on the cultural energy of the fairy tale genre, Gate notes the international suspicion and pre-war tension in The Broom Fairies by incorporating, subtly but substantially, elements of war and militarism. Similar to the two Allies' fairy books, she features a number of children protagonists in war. Chapter Two will consider how Gate's pre-war short stories sanction an over-idealised expression of war seeking to nurture young children's longing for it. While both the two Allies' fairy books and her pre-war collection address young children explicitly, Gate's post-war short tales seem to answer the need of the adult storytellers even more so than that of her young readers. In her four collections of short stories published from 1919 onwards, children combatants fade out. Furthermore, in her post-war stories, Gate's optimistic attitude remains consistent, likely due to the fact, as Herbert Read explains in In Retreat, that 'the state of the public mind as localized in the minds of publishers and editors, refused anything so bleak [.] that it was not yet time for the simple facts' (7). However, by revising some of the conventions of the genre, Gate captures the regressive tendency and consensual nostalgia felt by both homecoming combatants and surviving civilians amid the dissipated resignation of the devastated barren land. More importantly, Gate's own brand of feminist chauvinism, having started to evolve in her pre-war stories, is consolidated in her later collections to respond to the post-war trauma, which will be discussed in Chapter Three. In light of stories' capacity to shape and be shaped by historical moment, this dissertation will explore the intriguing interactions between the fairy tale genre and the Great War and their almost contradictory effect on the two audience groups, the child and adult reader.