A Wrinkle in Time and The High King : Two Couples, Two Perspectives (1981)

A Wrinkle in Time and The High King:Two Couples, Two Perspectives Rona Glass (bio) In the 1960s, two of the Newbery winners were fantasies involving the familiar pattern of a hero(ine) who chooses willingly to undergo a dangerous task/quest on which the outcome of the story depends. In both Madeleine L'Engle's A Wrinkle in Time (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1962; 1963 winner) and Lloyd Alexander's The High King (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1968; 1969 winner), the main character is involved throughout with a close beloved friend of the opposite sex, L'Engle's Meg Murry with Calvin O'Keefe, Alexander's Taran with Princess Eilownwy. Here for the first time in this decade are important female characters in Newbery-winning fantasies. These relationships are certainly not the only factors which influence Meg's and Taran's decisions to take on their quests. However, they are important enough to justify examining the books solely in terms of how much influence these relationships exert on that key decision, and then whether this in turn influences the success of the books themselves. Some attention needs to be given to the differences in the backgrounds and dynamics of these relationships before these pairs can be examined, however. For one thing, A Wrinkle in Time is the first book in a trilogy (completed later by A Wind in the Door and A Swiftly Tilting Planet), while The High King is the final volume in a series of five (The Book of Three, The Black Cauldron, The Castle of Llyr, and Taran Wanderer all predate it). Meg and Calvin first meet in Wrinkle, when they are both in their early teens. In the final book Meg is married to Calvin, but in Wrinkle his influence is very recent. Taran and Eilonwy, on the other hand, have known each other for quite a long time, have undergone many common experiences, and have, in effect grown up together. In King Taran is in love with Eilonwy and marries her at the end of the book. It would be logical to assume that the longer-standing relationship is the one which would make more of an impact on the hero(ine)'s actions, but this is not the case. (It should be noted that this is a minor flaw in an excellent series of books. Since Eilonwy is such a real, likable, strong character, her lack of impact is a very frustrating one for the engrossed reader, on whom she makes a very great impact.) In addition to this key difference, there is the simple fact that in Wrinkle the lead character is a female interacting with a secondary male, while in King the roles are reversed. Traditionally, the female has been encouraged to rely on the male for advice and assistance, and this orientation may play a role in the two books. While it may be somewhat understandable and acceptable for Meg to rely on Calvin, it is less appropriate for Taran to depend on Eilonwy. This is particularly true given The High King's framework of mythology and traditional literature. Although the characters in the Prydain chronicles are not stereotypes, there are still certain limits within which the story moves. One of these is the questing hero and the clearly secondary love/ideal for whose sake, less than with whose help, the hero acts. Given these important qualifications, though, the relationships can still be compared. Although Meg and Calvin have just met in Wrinkle, the influence he has on her is quite strong. She starts out with an extremely low opinion of herself. The daughter of a brilliant physicist father and a beautiful, but equally brilliant, mother, Meg feels both unattractive and unintelligent. This leads to a healthy dose of self-pity; in fact, as the book opens, Meg is feeling that absolutely everything in her life is wrong. From the beginning, Calvin makes it clear that he both likes and is concerned for her. Just after they meet, Calvin, Meg and Charles Wallace, Meg's younger brother, go into a "haunted" house. Meg is scared, but the caring both Calvin and Charles Wallace show for her...