Given a blog post title like “There’s Always a Moral,” it will surprise no one to know that I write faerie tales.
In fact, I have spent an inordinate amount of time reading, adoring, deconstructing, and feeling frustrated with faerie tales in turn. Because they are so simple, they give us a straightforward idea of the things which their storytellers valued.
One of my favourite faerie tales, The Snow Queen, follows a young girl of such a pure and innocent heart that God and all His angels protect her from harm. It’s easy to imagine why a parent might tell this story to their children. It is, in fact, a somewhat more fanciful way of saying: If you are good and sweet to me and always eat your dinner without complaint, then God will protect you from bad things.
Look, I’m pretty sure parents have always been parents, even hundreds of years ago.
That said, many of these faerie tales don’t seem to have a moral at all. Some of them simply recount grand, fantastic adventures as a form of entertainment. Jack and the Beanstalk might well be the very first heist story—and I’m sure most parents don’t want their children to grow up to become thieves.
But the human brain delights in patterns. Even the simplest, most amoral story possible will prod its listeners to try and learn something from it. A child who hears about Jack stealing a golden goose and tricking a giant will almost certainly take away the moral that cleverness will get you far in life.
It’s here, in the simplest of stories, that we discover an unalterable truth: human beings learn from the stories they ingest. That is, after all, exactly why we evolved the ability to tell each other stories. And if the story’s author does not consciously choose their moral, then their audience will surely choose it for them.
Themes and morals.
There is a thin but important distinction between themes and morals.
A theme, for our purposes, is a hypothesis which a story makes about the way the world works: for instance, “people are inherently good.”
A moral recommends a way in which a reader should modify their behaviour, based on one of the story’s themes: for instance, “since people are inherently good, you should be kind to them—in which case, they will surely be kind to you in return.” As a rule, if a statement contains the word should, then it is probably a moral and not a theme.
But let us focus for a moment on themes. Because themes are a function of the author’s understanding of the way their story’s world works, they are similarly baked into the story. An author cannot simply forego themes entirely, because they are a part of the story’s internal consistency. In the same way that a fantasy world must have a working magic system with rules and consequences (however loose), it must also have moral and emotional systems of cause and effect. These systems can be kind, cruel, ambivalent, or even completely arbitrary and unpredictable—but they must exist, because the story itself creates them.
None of this is to say that themes must be obvious or directly-stated. A world in which a character is first rewarded for their kindness and then punished for it simply implies the theme of “kindness is a toss-up.” The author is surely aware on some level that they have exercised this rule in their story, though they may not have written it out for themselves; similarly, the reader is likely to pick up on this rule, given enough time in the setting.
In the same way that magic systems can be poorly-written, however, themes—accidental or otherwise—can also be poorly-written. An author who writes a setting with the rule “kindness is a toss-up” might introduce a favourite, plot-armoured main character who somehow always benefits from their kindnesses, while other characters run the normal coin-toss risks. Readers are generally good at spotting this sort of deviation from the world’s rules… and they are less forgiving of thematic deviations than they are of magical deviations. A powerful main character can often get away with being a special snowflake that breaks all of the established magical rules, because most readers don’t believe in magic in the first place—but a character who defies thematic cause-and-effect just feels like a smug authorial self-insert.
Dark morals.
Sometimes, when people talk about “stories without a moral”, what they really mean to convey is that they prefer stories which reject the classical faerie tale order of things—they are tired of stories which imply that “good will always triumph” or “people will be kind to you when given the chance.” These readers are understandably jaded by a reality which does not match up to their childhood faerie tales; they are searching for a story which reflects the world that they believe they actually live in.
But a good deconstruction of stories like this will reveal a different set of themes and morals, depending on the author’s choices. A few of these are below:
- Evil sometimes triumphs.
- Naivete leads to suffering.
- Human nature is inherently cruel.
But because there truly is nothing new under the sun, we can find even these morals in old faerie tales.
Little Red Riding Hood is effectively a story which warns against strangers and punishes friendliness and curiosity. Because Red Riding Hood stops to talk to the wolf, she is later ambushed and eaten. Some versions of the story end with Red Riding Hood being saved at the last moment… but some of them don’t. Either way, the faerie tale is certainly centred around the idea that the world at large is not friendly to innocent people. The theme here is that “friendliness without caution is punished.” The moral would be that “children shouldn’t talk to strangers.”
Bluebeard begins with a young woman marrying a rich man. He leaves for a time and gives her the keys to his house, cautioning her only that she must not open the door to the basement. Her curiosity overcomes her, however, and she goes into the basement—where she discovers the corpses of Bluebeard’s previous, murdered wives. When Bluebeard returns, the protagonist and her sisters kill him, and she lives happily ever after. Most people would read this as a story which cautions women against blind obedience—for if the protagonist had not disobeyed her husband, she too would have ended up on a meat hook. The theme here is that “blind obedience can put you in danger.” The moral is that “people should follow their instincts and question requests for blind faith, for the sake of their survival.”
It is a bit arrogant to assume that dark morals are a new invention. Nor should we assume that dark morals are so transcendent as to be the default—that they are “real,” and therefore do not count as moral statements. A dark moral is still a moral statement which the author is attempting to sell to the reader. Some authors make their pitch better than others, but all authors are selling something—even if that something is simply the suggestion that “there is no inherent moral structure to the universe.”
Know what you’re selling, and then sell it better.
It is generally a good maxim that you cannot sell a product if you do not know what it is you’re selling.
An author who decides they want to write an “amoral” story might really intend to write a story with the theme that “there are no happy endings.” But since the author in question has decided that they are capable of doing without morals, they might well be tempted to give their favourite character a happy ending—at which point, readers who have followed the subtext are going to want an explanation.
Moreover, most readers are going to want a point—i.e. a moral—even in a dark story. Part of them will ask: what are you suggesting I do with this information? An author who doesn’t want to get crucified in reviews needs to pre-empt this question with an answer. In a story where the moral is “naivete gets you killed,” the obvious answer is “don’t be naive.” In a story where the moral is “people are inherently cruel,” it’s especially important to suggest a course of action—because otherwise, the author is just bullying their reader’s psyche and laughing as they flail around searching for meaning. The answer which the author chooses will, in this case, utterly define their story. Do they indeed tell the reader that they’re on their own in a cruel, meaningless world, and there’s nothing they can do about it? Do they tell the reader to focus on creating their own meaning, in defiance of the darkness? Or do they tell the reader to find a few close friends and hold them close while they huddle against the world?
Whatever the answer, the very last thing an author should do is actively attempt to tell their readers nothing. In this case, readers will either assume that the author flubbed their own writing, or else they will try to derive a course of action that the author truly didn’t intend. Regardless of which it is, that way lies postmodernism, and very confused readers.
The moral of the story.
I should probably state, as a matter of course, that I personally attack my readers with a two-by-four made of pure, painfully-obvious morality. This is a side-effect of consciously constructing my stories as faerie tales, though it is not a side-effect which I have ever felt inclined to remedy.
I am sure that there are readers who roll their eyes at it. But I have stopped trying to convince myself that having a moral is some sort of literary taboo. Rather, I have focussed myself on making sure that the story I outline and write is ultimately supportive of whatever moral I have chosen. And at the end of the day, I can’t help but feel that this awareness leads to a tighter, more well-constructed story.
Intend your morals, authors. I think you’ll find that your writing is all the better for it once you do.
The author: Olivia Atwater writes whimsical historical fantasy with a hint of satire. She lives in Montreal, Quebec with her fantastic, prose-inspiring husband and her two cats. When she told her second-grade history teacher that she wanted to work with history someday, she is fairly certain this isn’t what either party had in mind. She has been, at various times, a historical re-enactor, a professional witch at a metaphysical supply store, a web developer, and a vending machine repairperson.
Her first novel, Half a Soul, is on sale for $0.99 until January 10th, 2021.
(and you can get it here: https://books2read.com/half-a-soul )
Contact:
Website:https://oliviaatwater.com
Facebook:https://www.facebook.com/oliviaatwaterauthor
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Humans have always codified lessons in stories, I think, because stories are more memorable.
I remember a university lecturer pointing out that just as the danger of AIDS was starting to permeate the public consciousness, you had a whole bunch of horror movies come out where the first person to get killed is generally the girl with the loosest morals. The moral of the story: sleeping around may cost you your life.