Goblin-ology: Eugenics and Hysterisation in George MacDonald’s The Princess and the Goblin (1872)

Considered “one [of] the forefathers of fantasy literature” (Macineanu, 2019:69), George MacDonald’s works have influenced some of the most popular and significant fantasy writers, from C. S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien (Fisher, 2006; Macineanu, 2019), to Ursula K. Le Guin (Swank, 2021:152). His children’s fantasies, particularly The Princess and the Goblin (1872), have generated a large amount of academic and creative interest. The fantastical elements of the novel have inspired different readings in relation to gender politics (Thacker, 2001; Jenkins, 2004; Wing Bo Tso, 2007; Jarrar, 2009), class politics (Jarrar, 2011), and faith (Merglesky, 2010; Long, 2013; Plourde, 2021). The novel is the story of Princess Irene’s battle with the goblins who live underneath her kingdom and attempt to kidnap her to marry their prince. Through conspiring with Curdie, a young miner, and her magical great-grandmother, they defeat the goblins, and a peace is established with them. Under its fantastic veneer the novel can be read as reflective of contemporaneous eugenics discourses, with a focus on degeneration and miscegenation. Through its depiction of the goblins as dysgenic objects, and through the text’s anxieties about Irene’s sexuality, MacDonald’s novel engages broader discourses of disability. Fiona McCulloch (2006) explores the significance of eugenics in relation to MacDonald’s novel, arguing that “MacDonald’s goblins can themselves be regarded as a foreign ‘strange race of beings’, highlighting the Victorian eugenic terror of degenerative races and social classes” (55). Geoffrey Reiter likewise examines the novel in relation to degeneration, arguing that while MacDonald draws on degeneration theory, his “Christian worldview prevents his work from falling prey to some of the more problematic aspects of degenerationist thought” (2008:225). While both McCulloch and Reiter demonstrate how degeneration theory is central to the construction of the goblins, neither consider how this “supernatural hyperbole” (Reiter, 2008:225) might relate to disabled populations. Through its use of fantastic elements, the novel explores the ramifications of the government of disability, and the disciplinary and biopolitical techniques employed through eugenics and the hysterisation of women. As concepts like eugenics, degeneration, and hysteria have had immense negative impact on disabled populations, it is possible to read the novel as dis-topian.