A Fairy Tale for Our Time

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Illustration: Raymond Beisinger, from 100 Black on White Illustrations (Belgravian Press, 2008)

Fairy tales have a way of sur­rep­ti­tiously explain­ing much of what is dark and fright­en­ing in our world. Our skep­ti­cal nature has lent them the con­no­ta­tion of false­hoods, wish­ful and illu­sory, but some­thing deeper than incredulity won’t allow us to for­get that the rem­edy to a curse may be a hun­dred years’ sleep and that some­thing vicious and toothy may be lying expec­tantly in our granny’s bed. During the recent panic pro­voked by the announce­ment of the (all too real) world eco­nomic cri­sis, there stirred in the back of my mind the vague mem­ory of a Grimm’s fairy tale called “Clever Elsie,” read far away and long ago. I looked it up to see why it was nudg­ing its way to the foreground.

“Clever Elsie” tells the story of a girl promised to be mar­ried if she proves to be not only clever but also care­ful. During the meal to which her par­ents have invited Hans, her husband-to-be, Elsie goes down into the cel­lar to draw some beer. She notices a pick­axe stuck in the ceil­ing beam just above her head and thinks: “If I marry and have a child, and it grows up, and I send him into the cel­lar to draw beer, that pick­axe might fall on his head and kill him!” Panic-stricken, Elsie bursts into tears. In the mean­time, her par­ents, wor­ried that Elsie is tak­ing so long to return to the table, send the maid down to see what has hap­pened. Elsie tells the maid about her fears and the maid joins her mis­tress in the weep­ing and wail­ing. A ser­vant boy is then sent down to inquire about the maid, the mother fol­lows the boy, the father fol­lows the mother, and they all lament most piti­fully the fate of the son who might one day be born. Finally, Hans joins the fam­ily in the cel­lar and announces that Elsie is indeed “clever and care­ful,” and the mar­riage is arranged. The ques­tion of the beer is entirely forgotten.

We too have been called into the cel­lar to bear wit­ness to some­thing immi­nent and to bemoan a tragedy that has not yet taken place — instead of, for instance, remov­ing the pick­axe that seems to threaten the life of a non­existent child. There is a dif­fer­ence between grave con­cern about the state of things caused by a cor­rupt and greedy eco­nomic sys­tem, and the imposed sense of impend­ing doom for which no one is held crim­i­nally respon­si­ble. Terrible things have indeed hap­pened. Around the world, count­less peo­ple have lost their jobs, their homes, their sus­te­nance in this cri­sis. But these things have occurred not because of a pick­axe that might one day fall, but because of the deeds of a num­ber of immoral men and women, and because of the panic cre­ated by irre­spon­si­ble politi­cians and journalists. 

The panic has proven, for some (includ­ing those guilty of caus­ing the ­cri­sis), extremely use­ful. Thanks to the grow­ing fear, com­pa­nies with huge prof­its have been able to fire their employ­ees, banks with gar­gan­tuan cap­i­tal to fore­close mort­gages, fac­to­ries led by mil­lion­aires to shut down branches, and gov­ern­ments that nor­mally allow minus­cule bud­gets for edu­ca­tion, health and hous­ing, to pour vast sums into the cor­rupt finan­cial sys­tem. Fear is an excel­lent instru­ment of power, as we are told in another fairy tale, “The Youth Who Couldn’t Shiver or Shake”: it allows our lead­ers to take mea­sures that would never be allowed to pass in more serene times.

“Why did no econ­o­mist fore­see this dis­as­ter?” is the ques­tion most ordi­nary peo­ple ask. The truth laid out by polit­i­cal econ­o­mists has always seemed to me (a believer in the truth of fic­tion) a fic­tional truth; that is to say, a force­ful procla­ma­tion of wish­ful think­ing meant to encour­age stock-market gam­bling. The motto of polit­i­cal econ­o­mists is I believe because it’s impos­si­ble; that of fic­tion read­ers, I believe because it’s true. I mar­vel at the faith of those who, like read­ers of tea leaves in a cup, scru­ti­nize the strip of num­bers run­ning below the tv announcer and make out in it our future. I pre­fer to fol­low the avatars of Hansel and Gretel (a warn­ing to indis­crim­i­nate con­sumers) and Clever Elsie, and to see in them our present. Not one but innu­mer­able pick­axes loom on the beam above our head, and we have options other than panic.

But what will hap­pen if, like Elsie, we per­sist in this so-called clev­er­ness? What will hap­pen to us, respon­si­ble cit­i­zens, if we give up on sane reflec­tion and allow our­selves to be drawn into a mind-washing state of panic, no longer able to act as indi­vid­u­als? The fairy tale offers a cau­tion­ary end­ing. After mar­ry­ing Elsie, Hans sends her into the field to work. But Clever Elsie decides first to eat and then to nap, so that when her hus­band goes to fetch her, he finds her fast asleep amidst the uncut corn. To pun­ish her, he cov­ers her with a bird-net decked with lit­tle bells, and leaves her to her slum­bers. Elsie wakes, sees that it has grown dark, hears the bells tin­kling and begins to won­der whether she is really her­self. Bewildered, she returns to her house and knocks on the win­dow. “Is Elsie home?” she calls out. “Yes,” answers her ruth­less hus­band. “She is in.” Then a great panic comes over Elsie. “O dear, so I am not I,” she cries, and runs away, far beyond her vil­lage. And no one has seen her since.