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Recent Reading: The Day Boy and the Night Girl, by George MacDonald

The Day Boy and the Night Girl: The Romance of Photogen and Nycteris

This is the sixth story by George MacDonald my daughter and I have read together this year. And to think it all started with stumbling upon two used copies of the Curdie books in a good will. It was perhaps the best 50 cents I have ever spent.

SUMMARY
The Day Boy and the Night Girl is the story of a boy and a girl who are, for some reason or another, which MacDonald doesn’t disclose, groomed by a witch named Watho to only see day and night respectively. The boy, aptly named Photogen, is only allowed to be out and about during the day. He is trained to go to bed before the sun sets and is never allowed to see darkness. Conversely, the girl, also aptly named, Nycteris, is taught the routine of sleeping during the day so that she might never see light. He is the Day Boy, she is the Night Girl.

I don’t want to give the story away, that’s not my purpose, so let me say by way of summary that these two cross paths. How could a brave, valiant, handsome young man not cross paths with a dark haired damsel? How can something so trivial as day and night keep them apart? Or something so trivial as a witch?

IMPRESSIONS AND EFFECT
As for my impressions, which is what I like to state on the blog, Nycteris is quite the engaging character. Watho the witch is on a mad, raving quest for knowledge. She lavishes her wisdom upon Photogen, but the night girl is quite neglected. Yet despite this Nycteris comes to grip with her situation much more easily than Photogen, and certainly easier than Watho. It’s hard to say more without giving away the story.

There seems to be some subtle things going on in the story. I haven’t taken the time to look at other reviews and analysis, but I have a couple of hunches. I already implied that MacDonald seems to take a jab at those who think intelligence, really wisdom, comes simply from book learning. The wisdom of Nycteris comes in her ability to deal with her situation.

There also seems to be a bit of a dig at some sort of dualism. How can you think of day and night in a fairy story without dualism coming into play? Day and night are strictly separated. Though the day boy and the night girl live in the very same castle, yet they live in different worlds. It is only as they come together, trust one another, rely upon one another, help one another that they are able to deal with their common foe (though they deal with her by accident, incidentally). The Day Boy grows to love the night more than the day, for his lover is of the night. The Night Girl grows to love the day for the same reason. Dualism is overcome. Unity is achieved. Day and night not only coexist, but they fall in love, and a happy blending (and a happy ending) occur.

George MacDonald was asking, ‘Why can’t we all just get along?’ before it was cool – and a lot more imaginatively

The main thing I want to record however is this: I took the time a couple of days ago to post some quotes by C.S. Lewis and G.K. Chesterton. Those quotes now come into play. Both pertained to fairy stories, though in far different contexts, and used the phrase, ‘mental health.’ Lewis’ quotation is apropos. He remarked of Edmund Spenser, poet, author of The Faerie Queen, that to read him ‘is to grow in mental health’ (see the link for the reference).

I don’t know if Lewis would have said that about MacDonald, but I certainly would. In fact I am grateful to have come across that Lewis quote for precisely this reason: it gives me a way to describe what my experience with George MacDonald (and others) has been like. I am not claiming that MacDonald is the greatest writer in history (he’s not) or the greatest author I’ve ever read (ditto). But his writing does something to my mood and imagination that I hardly get elsewhere (though I do get it elsewhere).

He has this effect on my six year old daughter as well. One of my favorite experiences in reading with her was her stick-horse riding simulation of the battle scene in The Princess and Curdie as we read that book. I will never forget that moment. She was lost in the story. This time she drew detailed, and very good, pictures of Photogen and Nycteris without any aid of pictures she had seen. It was purely out of her imagination. It’s the first time she had done this. And I think it is due to the forceful imaginativeness of MacDonald as a story teller.

MacDonald is a story teller par excellance. His words roll around in your imagination and do things. Good things.

It has surprised me that I have enjoyed MacDonald’s shorter fairy stories more than than the long ones. The Day Boy and the Night Girl falls among the former. It is quite short. But it is packed with imagination – as much imagination per square inch as anything I’ve encountered. It may not be the prototypical fairy story in some ways, but it has all the necessary elements. The witch’s character isn’t expounded enough, but he makes up for it in other areas – above all, he invites good reading.

I enjoyed this book more than the Curdie books (and I did enjoy them quite a bit), but it’s not quite up there with The Light Princess. But it’s close. I also enjoyed The Giant’s Heart tremendously, but I think this one might be a bit better. Who cares? The story is great, my mental health was temporarily improved (who knows how long that will last?), and who wouldn’t love a story that provokes him to use the phrase, ‘happy blending?’

APPLICATIONS
With MacDonald it’s also hard not to draw Christian applications from a book. Let me give just two. What can separate us from our true love? – Day or Night? A wicked witch?

  • Romans 8:38 For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, 39 nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

And who can construct dualisms that can separate those knit together in love?

  •  Galatians 3:28 There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.

Even those as different as night and day can have unity, as they mutually depend on one another, and take their eyes off themselves and put them on another.