Anderson Rearick III’s Reviews > Phantastes: A Faerie Romance for Men and Women > Status Update

The narrator’s encounter with a young fairy woman with a globe that emitted music, reminded me of a romantic encounter experienced when one is engaged in only physical delight. Thus his shadow despoils the maiden’s globe. Like a man who dabbles with the precious quality of a girl’s heart. I doubt MacDonald saw it that way.

The old woman’s text describing the omnipresence of darkness is so common in current thought. It is chilling!

The family in which the father is an unbeliever of the fantastic but is good-natured and hearty and the daughter and mother who do believe in fairy and look on him with gentile tolerance is an interesting contrast.

The repeat of the beautiful large woman first in the form of his fairy grandmother and then the tender beach tree seem to come up often. Even here we encounter the breadth of Mother Earth in his consciousness.