Long Live the Fairytale - Lucy Coats

I have lately been engaged in a debate about Professor Richard Dawkins’ stated intent to research the ‘insidious’ and ‘pernicious’ effects of fairytales on young minds, and it set me thinking about imagination and its rôle in our lives. Why are many of those who blog here—and thousands of others—writers of fiction? Why do we find it a necessary compulsion to ‘make things up’ instead of sticking to facts with a proven scientific and evidential basis, as the Professor, I think, would prefer us to do?

I, personally, do not think that science and imagination have to be antithetical to one another. Surely the great scientists and inventors—the ones who put forward new and, to their peers, simply absurd theories were and are men and women with an immense capacity to dream the unthinkable? To predicate the laws of gravity from a falling apple took, in my opinion, a tremendous leap of the imagination from Isaac Newton.

But writers of fiction use their imaginations in a different way to scientists. We are inventors too—but some of us are inventors of new imaginary worlds, where the laws of science may be circumvented, ignored, or turned on their heads. In our heads, anything is possible—magic of many kinds, machines which defy earthly edicts as to how they should behave, talking animals, enchanted beings—the list is as endless as the words in a thousand Thesauri. Professor Dawkins wonders whether the fact that so many of the stories about frogs turning into princes, which he read as a child, allowed the possiblity of a sort of insidious effect on rationality. Perhaps—though not, I feel, in his case! But the million dollar question is: would it have been a bad thing? I don’t think so.

We, if we are to grow up to be truly balanced human beings, need the world of the imagination which writers and storytellers have been providing since man first acknowledged ‘wizardry’ in those long ago cave paintings which show a stag-headed shaman. Stories about magic, fairies and otherworlds can hugely enrich the inner lives of child readers and listeners alike—can transport their minds to places they never even dreamed about. They can teach important lessons as well. As G.K. Chesterton said, ‘Fairy tales do not tell children the dragons exist. Children already know that dragons exist. Fairy tales tell children the dragons can be killed.’ Myths, too, are not ‘true’ in a quantifiable sense, but they also teach children about many of the great lessons in life, about taboos, about courage, cowardice, love, hubris, the danger of strangers, not judging by appearances and so on.

Our intellectual world, whether Professor Dawkins accepts it or not, is filled with the non-scientific and non-rational. Our individual and collective imaginations cannot be pinned down, quantified, examined under a microscope. Our imaginations are what makes each of us unique, and so we should carry on reading fairytales to our children regardless of any deleterious effects. As Philip Pullman so rightly says: ‘It takes “Once upon a time” to reach the heart.’ What the Professor must realise is this: a child’s mind is absolutely capable of containing many ‘once upon a times’ and evidential scientific formulae all at the same time—and what’s more, distinguishing entirely successfully between the two without any harmful effects whatsoever. Vivat Fabula!