What If the Prince Never Comes

It is quite relaxing to read the fairy tales, knowing that the salvation rope will be extended sooner or later and it will not be an unseen higher authority doing this. It will either be a couple of turtle doves, or three balls of yarn, or a black cow. Mostly, though, it is a prince who is valiant enough to risk his life to save the poor, or imprisoned or tormented girl. It is still a crazy world despite that its inhabitants look to get used to its surprises for long. They brace the hardships as naturally and good naturedly as we brace the upcoming debt on mortgage or a looming foreclosure.

It is a complex world we are living now. The world in the fairy tales is not less complicated. There might be numerous surprises hidden behind a dying mother or worsening economic situation or the cravings of a pregnant lady or a lustful father gone astray. Surprises vary. So do the solutions. Rapunzel or Angiola might be traded for a bunch of lettuce and a few jujubes. Dying mother might force the husband to marry her own daughter by extremely narrowing his prospects for a successful search for a suitable candidate. At the age of twelve, the little girl might be given away to a sorceress to be locked in a tower. Anything might happen.

Bizarrely, solutions are often less believable than surprises. Cinderella is badly treated by her step mother and step sisters. Catskin falls prey to her father’s wrath. Petrosinella becomes the victim of her mother’s greed for a little vegetable. All these causes are believable enough as they all make sense. However, when it comes to sorting out the problem, fairy tales become fairy tales. They behave as if they were out of creative arsenal. A dead fish assists Yeh-hsien. Brahman’s son enjoys the Black Cow’s miraculous help. A magical gullnut saves Petrosinella and her lover from the ogress’s wrath. None of these are logically believable. This discrepancy might point out the fact that ways going to the vice are multiple. Man has the chance and capacity to easily find a means to commit a crime or do something more or less horrible whereas virtue is reachable through very few ways and to discover these ways one has to be brave, smart and strong willed. By the same token, we can interpret this fact by simply looking at the nature of things. The essence of things which is innately good is one while the ultimate incidence of the body of things is bound by a great number of contingencies.