Undermining Body and Mind? The Impact of the Underground 191
through Curdie, the young miner who does not fear but rather mocks
the goblins, they are frequently absurd and ridiculous rather than terrifying. But they nevertheless remain a tangible and potent threat to the
princess and her people.
It is not just the goblins themselves who have been affected by
life underground but also their household animals known as the cobs
creatures. The ancestors of these creatures were domestic animals or
tamed wild animals taken by the ancestors of the goblins into the underground centuries before. The “unnatural” subterranean conditions
have wrought even greater changes on the animals than on their masters (p. 101). Having moved from “the upper regions of light into the
lower regions of darkness”, their bodies have undergone “the most
abnormal developments”, namely, they have become more human in
their appearance (pp. 100, 101). This by no means constitutes an improvement, but instead renders them “horrible”, “ludicrous”, “grotesque”, “hideous”, and “subnaturally” ugly (pp. 99-101).
Throughout the text, then, the detrimental effects of subterranean existence are made clear: for humans, to go down is to go back
towards the animal, to regress, while for animals, descent generates an
unnatural, overly-rapid evolution. The underground is, in other words,
a place of topsy-turvy and inversion. That MacDonald is consciously
engaging with contemporary theories of evolution is made clear, albeit
in a rather ambivalent manner, in the text itself:
[Curdie] had heard it said that they had no toes […] he had not been able even to
satisfy himself as to whether they had no fingers, although that also was commonly said to be the fact. One of the miners, indeed, who had had more schooling than the rest, was wont to argue that such must have been the primordial
condition of humanity, and that education and handicraft had developed both
toes and fingers – with which proposition Curdie had once heard his father sarcastically agree, alleging in support of it the probability that babies’ gloves were
a traditional remnant of the old state of things; while the stockings of all ages, no
regard being paid in them to the toes, pointed in the same direction. (p. 58)
12
___________________________
reading, the underground enables the same kind of critique of contemporary society
that is found in traditional katabatic narratives. In this context, see Clark, who refers
to katabasis as an “instrument of national aspiration and social criticism” (Raymond J.
Clark, Catabasis: Vergil and the Wisdom-Tradition (Amsterdam: Grüner, 1979), p.
14).
12 MacDonald’s awareness of, and participation in, the Darwinian debate is discussed
in John Pennington, “Solar Mythology in George MacDonald’s ‘Little Daylight’ and
through Curdie, the young miner who does not fear but rather mocks
the goblins, they are frequently absurd and ridiculous rather than terrifying. But they nevertheless remain a tangible and potent threat to the
princess and her people.
It is not just the goblins themselves who have been affected by
life underground but also their household animals known as the cobs
creatures. The ancestors of these creatures were domestic animals or
tamed wild animals taken by the ancestors of the goblins into the underground centuries before. The “unnatural” subterranean conditions
have wrought even greater changes on the animals than on their masters (p. 101). Having moved from “the upper regions of light into the
lower regions of darkness”, their bodies have undergone “the most
abnormal developments”, namely, they have become more human in
their appearance (pp. 100, 101). This by no means constitutes an improvement, but instead renders them “horrible”, “ludicrous”, “grotesque”, “hideous”, and “subnaturally” ugly (pp. 99-101).
Throughout the text, then, the detrimental effects of subterranean existence are made clear: for humans, to go down is to go back
towards the animal, to regress, while for animals, descent generates an
unnatural, overly-rapid evolution. The underground is, in other words,
a place of topsy-turvy and inversion. That MacDonald is consciously
engaging with contemporary theories of evolution is made clear, albeit
in a rather ambivalent manner, in the text itself:
[Curdie] had heard it said that they had no toes […] he had not been able even to
satisfy himself as to whether they had no fingers, although that also was commonly said to be the fact. One of the miners, indeed, who had had more schooling than the rest, was wont to argue that such must have been the primordial
condition of humanity, and that education and handicraft had developed both
toes and fingers – with which proposition Curdie had once heard his father sarcastically agree, alleging in support of it the probability that babies’ gloves were
a traditional remnant of the old state of things; while the stockings of all ages, no
regard being paid in them to the toes, pointed in the same direction. (p. 58)
12
___________________________
reading, the underground enables the same kind of critique of contemporary society
that is found in traditional katabatic narratives. In this context, see Clark, who refers
to katabasis as an “instrument of national aspiration and social criticism” (Raymond J.
Clark, Catabasis: Vergil and the Wisdom-Tradition (Amsterdam: Grüner, 1979), p.
14).
12 MacDonald’s awareness of, and participation in, the Darwinian debate is discussed
in John Pennington, “Solar Mythology in George MacDonald’s ‘Little Daylight’ and