A History Of Wild Places

Throughout the novel, Ernshaw explores the power and darkness of fairy tales. Because Maggie is an author of macabre tales for children, such stories are central to the novel’s plot. Further, Ernshaw explores the potential power of the stories we tell ourselves or are told by others, creating a connection between a cult mentality and dark fairy tales.

First, Levi’s hypnosis creates a type of fairy tale for the characters he manipulates. While Travis arrived in Pastoral only two years before the main events of the novel, Levi told him he was abandoned there as a child: “I don’t remember anything beyond Pastoral—I was only an infant when I was dropped off at the guard hut” (60). The fact that Theo/Travis alludes to his missing memory while repeating the false story emphasizes the power of suggestion and repetition. By later discovering that he actively wanted to forget his past after finding Pastoral, Ernshaw depicts the way that some choose to believe stories to protect themselves emotionally. Calla alludes to fairy tales directly when thinking about the need for her and Theo to pretend “that we each haven’t found things left in our house like breadcrumbs in a gothic fairy tale” (175). Unlike some idealized children’s tales from later centuries, gothic fairy tales are darker, often including mischief and violence. Referencing this shows that while Theo and Calla desire to believe the seemingly perfect story presented to them by Levi, there is a grave truth behind the lies of Pastoral.

Ernshaw also explores cautionary tales told to children to affect their behavior. A community member at the gathering expresses worries about her son getting too close to the boundary, noting that “we even tell him the story of the wheat farmer’s daughter” (90). This is one of the community fables that Levi uses to entrench the lie about the rot. Ernshaw suggests that the well-intentioned use of fairy tales to protect children can be used to cause damage and instill unnecessary fear.

Alternatively, like Travis avoiding the memory of his sister, Ernshaw connects the avoidance of guilt with a fairy tale. When Calla suggests her and Theo’s complicity in Ash and Turk’s deaths, he says there was nothing they could do, but Calla believes that this assertion “feels wrong, a fairy tale told to pacify frightened children” (216). This instance exhibits a fairy tale’s dangerous ability to obviate deserved guilt. Rather than scaring listeners to maintain an illusion of safety, these stories inspire a false sense of peace. Both, however, maintain the status quo of the community.

The interspersed excerpts from Eloise and the Foxtail include the reader in the experience of reading a dark fairy tale. Their tone is ominous and dark. Because they are unexplained for much of the narrative, Ernshaw leaves clues about how they relate to the narrative itself up for interpretation. The excerpts develop themes of a purposeful turn from innocence into monstrosity and the pull of the unknown. When Calla finds the book buried in the garden, she notes that it is a fairy tale, “But a dark one—meant to be read late at night when the wind howls against doorways. Meant to frighten” (158). Similarly, Travis alludes to Alice in Wonderland when thinking about his sister’s depression: “I didn’t know how deep into the hole she had tumbled—headfirst like Alice down the rabbit hole” (31). This recurring motif and its uncommonly grim descriptions reinforce a caution against choosing to believe fiction over fact.