Tolkien's 'Smith of Wootton Major' & George MacDonald's 'Phantastes': A Comparison

[littlemanpoet]

I've just begun rereading George MacDonald's Phantastes.

I apologize in advance to anyone who has not read both stories referenced in the title of this thread, as you will not be able to add to the discussion as well as those who have read them; I encourage you to read both of them!

First, some obvious differences:

• SoWM in 3rd person, Phantastes in 1st person
• SoWM written in 1968, Phantastes written in 1858
• SoWM set in medieval England; Phantastes set in 19th century Scotland (probably; actually, the primary world setting of Phantastes is negligible)

Second, some basic similarities:

• the protagonist enters Fairy
• the protagonist is protected from a storm by a tree that is described as to seem a human female

This last was especially intriguing, and points up some more differences:
In SWoM, the tree is a birch; in Phantastes it's a beech.

In SWoM, after the storm has passed, we read,

When at last the Wind passed on he rose and saw that the birch was naked. It was stripped of every leaf, and it wept, and tears fell from its branches like rain. He set his hand upon its white bark, saying: "Blessed be the birch! What can I do to make amends or give thanks?" He felt the answer of the tree pass up from his hand: "Nothing," it said. "Go away! The Wind is hunting you. You do not belong here. Go away and never return!"

In Phantastes, the beech tree is a woman, and wraps her arms around the protagonist, protecting him from the Ash, an evil hearted tree that wants to bury him at its roots to fill the hole in its heart. They talk at some length. She offers some of her 'hair' to him to cut off and place around him as a means of protection. It hurts her, but she endures it willingly. She sings a 'strange sweet song':

I saw thee ne'er before,
I see thee never more,
But love, and help, and pain, beautiful one,
Have made thee mine, till all my years are done."

When day returns and the storm is over, she is once more a beech tree.

With the sun well risen, I rose, and put my arms as far as they would reach around the beech tree, and kissed it, and said good-bye. A trembling went through the leaves, a few of the last drops of the night's rain fell from off them at my feet, and as I walked slowly away, I seemed to hear in a whisper once more the words, "I may love him, I may love him, for he is a man, and I am only a beech-tree."

When I had first read Phantastes many years ago, I must not have read SWoM by then, for the similarity between the two stories is striking in this one regard.

The differences are even more striking: that which hunts the protagonist; the attitude of the protecting tree toward the protagonist; the sense of the beech tree as being of lesser worth vis-a-vie the human she protected.

Comments?