Joseph Pearce
According to J.R.R. Tolkien, fairy stories offer recovery, escape and consolation from the sickness, confinement and hopelessness of this world of wickedness. They provide not an escape from reality but an escape to reality. It is an escape from the world of false philosophies and fake realities, rooted in Pride.
I believe in fairytales. Take Cinderella, for instance. I believe in her for the simple reason that I saw her in the flesh a few days ago. She was standing right in front of me at a local Catholic high school. She was not more than a few yards from me. There she was. Plain as day. How can I not believe the evidence of my own eyes? How can I not believe in her? Seeing is believing!
It is true, if we must concede a minor point to the pedant, that Cinderella was being played by a student in the school’s production of the Rodgers and Hammerstein version of the story. But this really is a minor point. What I was seeing was the real Cinderella, and the real Prince, and the real wicked stepmother, and the real stepsisters, and the real fairy godmother. They were real because fairy stories are real. In Tolkien’s memorable phrase, fairytales hold up a mirror to man. They show us ourselves. And not merely our physical selves. A plain old physical mirror can do that. They show us our real selves. Our spiritual selves. Not merely our flesh and blood selves, but our body and soul selves. Not merely our material selves but our moral selves. Not merely the shallow surface but the deep psychological depths. Not merely who we are but who we should be, and who we shouldn’t be. In other words, the mirror that the fairytale holds up to us is a magic mirror that shows us much more than any mere material mirror could ever show. » Read More
https://theimaginativeconservative.org/2025/04/cinderella-comes-shire-fairy-tales-joseph-pearce.html