George MacDonald’s ‘The Princess and the Goblin’ is a fairy tale about the meeting of Princess Irene and the miner Curdie and how they save one another from tunnel dwelling goblins who threaten to establish themselves among human royalty. The characters weren’t quite as ‘stocky’ as usual in Fairy Tales, Curdie had a bit of personality to him but Irene was just an unflawed princess. She does cry at absolutely everything for no reason though of which got very tiring. 

I read this to look at Victorian common ideas on goblins in order to have a basis for my essay on Tolkien and did find that much of Tolkien’s goblins are reciprocal of the goblins of fairy tale. MacDonald’s story does however have a very basic plot and no real motivations behind the aims of both the goblins and ‘heroes’. I preferred it to ‘The Golden Key’ also by MacDonald as it was much more coherent, aside from the inclusion of the mysterious grandmother as her existence and position in reality remains unclear and unresolved. In the nature of fairy tale I must just sit back and expect this, being a children’s story at the end of the day, though with a surprisingly harrowing ending image.