Magical Realism vs. Gothic Writing
It’s December. This is the season I wish I could freeze and hold forever, but alas, the winter is always so short, especially where I live. This year I chose a number of books – some Gothic, many not – that I’d like to read before the end of February. First on the list was The Snow Child by Eowyn Ivey. It’s a beautiful tale and, despite it being a retelling, is a unique approach to the Magical Realism genre. Since I’ve already finished it, I thought I’d give you a review of The Snow Child along with a summary of the purpose that Magical Realism serves and how it’s different from the Gothic genre.
Spoiler-Free Summary
The story is a retelling of a Russian fairytale, Snegurka (“The Snow Maiden”). In Ivey’s version, a middle-aged couple moves to Alaska after suffering from the stillbirth of their child. There they hope to build a homestead far from the pain of the past. Instead, they find themselves alone with each other and the memories they had tried to bury. Until one winter evening when the snow begins to fall. In the magic of the moment, they craft a child out of snow. The next day, their snow child is gone, but they begin to see a young girl running through the snowy forest. Before long she enters their lives and brings them a new beginning.
This story is Magical Realism because it’s set in a real-word setting and features a magical element—the snow child—throughout. But what purpose does this serve? Could Ivey have thrown a magical child into any winter story and called it Magical Realism? No.
Magical Realism – The Purpose
In Magical Realism, the magical elements always illustrate an internal reality. They make something readers might struggle to see or understand more accessible. Over a year ago, I wrote an article about the genres of Gothic vs Magical Realism. In the article I stated that:
“…in Magical Realism, the magical elements are symbolic of an internal reality for the protagonist.”
This is certainly true in The Snow Child. The child, Faina, shows readers what the main characters, especially the woman, Mabel, are feeling. Imagine that Ivey had wanted to convey the sadness and sense of loss that comes with both childlessness and the death of a child, but had done so without any fantastical elements.
She would have told us about Mabel and Jack’s backstory, about the silent newborn that he buried and she regrets never holding. The story might have shown their passage of time without the joys of childhood glee at Christmas or the pleasure of having a young one to provide for. But it wouldn’t have been the same.
In Mabel’s interactions with Faina we see Mabel’s inability to touch anyone, her reluctance to hope, her desperate need to be occupied with caring for a child and her stilted approach to life. We see it in those moments that are grasped but lost, or hollow, or filled with fear. Readers follow her journey to trust and find joy in life as we watch Mabel re-learn how to laugh and dance and play in the snow. I could say similar things about Jack.
Without Faina and the magic that she brings to their lives, we would struggle to understand what it feels like to be Jack and Mabel. But with her, their inner reality becomes something tangible that we can experience.
That’s the magic in Magical Realism.
Versus Gothic
This is where Magical Realism and the Gothic genre overlap. Both tend to be set in the real world and both use various elements—magic in Magical Realism and gothic tropes in the Gothic genre—to make an unseen reality more tangible to readers. However, these tend to be used in very different ways and to very different ends.
For example, in Magical Realism the fantastical components of the story usually speak to a political reality. This isn’t the case in The Snow Child, in which the magic illuminates the characters’ internal state. However, notice that whether it’s the lives of a select group of people (childless or grieving parents) or a national/ political situation, the themes in Magical Realism tend to be somewhat localized. They’re important and hard-hitting, but not usually universal.
In contrast, in the Gothic genre the tropes and any fantastical components such as vampires and ghosts serve to make an irrational universal truth—spiritual or psychological—tangible. We can see this in works such as The Turn of the Screw by Henry James in which the ghosts of Miss Jessel and Peter Quint symbolize the corrupting influence that adults, wittingly or not, exert in the lives of children.
The Review…Also Spoiler-Free
But what did I think of The Snow Child???
In short, the story is captivating, filled with wonder and yet deeply emotional. As I suggested earlier, Ivey brings Mabel and Jack’s emotional journey to life through Faina. I took a look at some of the negative reviews on Amazon (there aren’t many; most people loved the book as much as I did) and there seem to be two common complaints:
Animal Deaths
There are the people who disliked the hunting and trapping and corresponding depictions of animal deaths in the story. I get it. I’m an animal lover too. But first, these things are very realistic for those who live in a homestead environment.
And second, the more graphic instances were deeply symbolic and very important to the story purpose. For example, there’s an animal death that triggers an extreme change in the characters. It acts as a bridge between the world of magic and wonder that’s filled with joy and hope but can’t truly be grasped and the cold harsh reality of life that can be held. This event was heartbreaking but absolutely crucial to the book.
Plot Shift Midway
There were a number of readers who didn’t like the events that transpired after the midpoint in the book. They loved the wonder and magic at the beginning but commented on the shift that transpired later in the story. As I implied in number one, this wasn’t an accident. Ivey is bringing Jack and Mabel back to healthy, functioning reality by taking them through a period of wonder in which they have the capacity to heal.
Ultimately though, they have to emerge into the world in which things aren’t as magical. They have to be ready to live with pain and loss without shutting down as they’ve done in the past. That’s what happens in the second half of the book. I understand why some readers wanted the book to remain solidly in the world of wonder, but that’s not the point of Magical Realism. These readers would most likely prefer Fantasy stories instead.
To Summarize
I can empathize with these concerns, but I can also see why Ivey did what she did. In the end, she tells a story about loss and recovery and she tells it well. She doesn’t give us a story about a couple who retreat from reality (even solely when they’re away from others) and remain in a magical world of wonder, as intriguing as that would be. Nor does she remove Jack and Mabel from the harsh truths of life. Faina’s ability to live in the real world came at a cost. It came on the heels of tragedy, as did Jack and Mabel’s.
Ivey writes with such a captivating sense of wonder and beauty, but she also writes about the deep inner world of a person and how loss affects us. This was a shockingly brilliant debut.
I highly recommend it.
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