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Magic Well
Lured to the fairy world by the promise of a playmate, a young girl soon tires of her new life and tries to find a way to escape the fairies' power and return home to her mother.
- GenresChildrens
Hardcover
First published October 1, 1989
13 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
October 2, 2024
This is undoubtedly the worst Tam Lin retelling I've ever read.
Is this even a Tam Lin retelling? Some will ask. But, yes, it indeed is. But so changed and warped that it simply doesn't make sense why Maida Silverman would even bother borrowing the ballad's template for her own story. Aren't there enough good children's stories already? What was the need to take what isn't and never was a children's story and warp it so atrociously?
The original ballad of Tam Lin is about Janet, an enterprising and feisty girl who is warned to never go to Carterhaugh woods, because there she could find the fae, an encounter she should avoid. But she goes, picks a rose (symbolic) by a well (symbolic) and is instantly confronted by a fairy knight. She falls for him, eventually getting pregnant by him, but he must heed the call of the Queen of the Fairies and return to the faerie realm, upon which return he'll be sacrificed on Hallowe'en. Determined to save him, Janet follows his instructions and resists the Queen's magic transformations of Tam Lin, until the dawn's light forces the fae to leave and the Queen gives up. Thus, Janet saves her man.
It's one of the few stories with a strong woman, and it's also one of the very few Beauty & Beast variants that don't have the girl being helpless and lacking agency.
What does Maida Silverman do with such a lovely and epic ballad? Turn it into a children's story about a small girl abducted by the Queen of Faerie whilst she's out collecting wood and picking roses (the author has no idea what the rose stands for, obviously, giving this symbolism to a non-menstruating pre-puberty child), the Queen lures her into the faerie realm through the well (again, the author has no idea what the well stands for) with the promise of playing with her kid. Her distraught mother realises what has happened but does NOTHING until the child appears to her as a dove and tells her to do the same Janet did with Tam, cling tightly to her through her beastly transformations, so as to wiggle her out of the Queen's grasp. Done, the little girl is rescued by her mom and goes on to live happily ever after.
Honestly, why? I'm perplexed. What was Silverman thinking? Being charitable, I'd like to think it's because she isn't familiar with the Scottish ballad, because she's American, and doesn't understand its metaphors and symbols since she's Jewish and wouldn't get either the Celtic or the Christian symbolism in the tale. But that would be a laughable excuse, because Jane Yolen, who is also American and Jewish, did a superb retelling of Tam Lin (my favourite to date). So I'll ascribe it to Maida Silverman's metaphor illiteracy and cultural ignorance, plain and simple.
I'm still shaking my head at it and trying to grasp how someone would even think of a romantic and heavily sexual tale with detectable Celtic and Christian imagery could be turned into some squeaky clean tale of a helpless child being rescued by a supposedly loving mother who isn't even proactive enough to do the questing and rescuing on her own without convenient plot-armour devices.
The artwork is nice enough, but what a waste of space of a story. It bothers me that a proactive adult woman who takes charge of her sexuality and her life is turned into an innocent helpless child for no discernible reason at all. Enough with the infantilising of women already.
Is this even a Tam Lin retelling? Some will ask. But, yes, it indeed is. But so changed and warped that it simply doesn't make sense why Maida Silverman would even bother borrowing the ballad's template for her own story. Aren't there enough good children's stories already? What was the need to take what isn't and never was a children's story and warp it so atrociously?
The original ballad of Tam Lin is about Janet, an enterprising and feisty girl who is warned to never go to Carterhaugh woods, because there she could find the fae, an encounter she should avoid. But she goes, picks a rose (symbolic) by a well (symbolic) and is instantly confronted by a fairy knight. She falls for him, eventually getting pregnant by him, but he must heed the call of the Queen of the Fairies and return to the faerie realm, upon which return he'll be sacrificed on Hallowe'en. Determined to save him, Janet follows his instructions and resists the Queen's magic transformations of Tam Lin, until the dawn's light forces the fae to leave and the Queen gives up. Thus, Janet saves her man.
It's one of the few stories with a strong woman, and it's also one of the very few Beauty & Beast variants that don't have the girl being helpless and lacking agency.
What does Maida Silverman do with such a lovely and epic ballad? Turn it into a children's story about a small girl abducted by the Queen of Faerie whilst she's out collecting wood and picking roses (the author has no idea what the rose stands for, obviously, giving this symbolism to a non-menstruating pre-puberty child), the Queen lures her into the faerie realm through the well (again, the author has no idea what the well stands for) with the promise of playing with her kid. Her distraught mother realises what has happened but does NOTHING until the child appears to her as a dove and tells her to do the same Janet did with Tam, cling tightly to her through her beastly transformations, so as to wiggle her out of the Queen's grasp. Done, the little girl is rescued by her mom and goes on to live happily ever after.
Honestly, why? I'm perplexed. What was Silverman thinking? Being charitable, I'd like to think it's because she isn't familiar with the Scottish ballad, because she's American, and doesn't understand its metaphors and symbols since she's Jewish and wouldn't get either the Celtic or the Christian symbolism in the tale. But that would be a laughable excuse, because Jane Yolen, who is also American and Jewish, did a superb retelling of Tam Lin (my favourite to date). So I'll ascribe it to Maida Silverman's metaphor illiteracy and cultural ignorance, plain and simple.
I'm still shaking my head at it and trying to grasp how someone would even think of a romantic and heavily sexual tale with detectable Celtic and Christian imagery could be turned into some squeaky clean tale of a helpless child being rescued by a supposedly loving mother who isn't even proactive enough to do the questing and rescuing on her own without convenient plot-armour devices.
The artwork is nice enough, but what a waste of space of a story. It bothers me that a proactive adult woman who takes charge of her sexuality and her life is turned into an innocent helpless child for no discernible reason at all. Enough with the infantilising of women already.
Want to read
September 28, 2016Haven't read the book yet but I'm sure I'm going to love it..
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews