Lord Dunsany – The Charwoman’s Shadow (1926) Review

7/10

The Charwoman’s Shadow (1926) is a dreamy, fairytale-like fantasy novel from the hazy years before Tolkien. Lord Dunsany was in some ways like Tolkien, seemed to long for the days before industry, for a world full of wonder that was to be found in nature, but his style differs a lot from Tolkien’s. Writing neither epic fantasy nor sword and sorcery, Dunsany wrote fairytale-like fantasies, and The Charwoman’s Shadow is one of those and perhaps his most accessible. Telling about a young man taking an apprenticeship at a wizard’s house and of an old woman in that house who traded her shadow for immortality, this novel is a very clear precursor to the kind of fantasies that Patricia McKillip would later write, and feels like a direct ancestor to Diana Wynne Jones’s Howl’s Moving Castle (1986).

The young man, Ramon Alonzo, is sent by his father to a magician to learn alchemy, because the father needs gold. Gold for the dowry of Ramon’s sister Mirandola. But Mirandola isn’t the kind of girl who blithely accepts being told whom to marry. Dunsany makes her into a second protagonist and she is a clever, headstrong girl with plans of her own. Ramon meanwhile has to trade his own shadow to learn the secrets of alchemy, and soon finds out what terrible consequences that holds for him. People keep asking things of Ramon, his father, his sister, the magician, but Ramon learns the hard way that he shouldn’t sell off parts of himself for others. 

Dunsany situates his story in a fantasy version of past Spain; a Spain when the Spaniards had this sickness of longing for gold. He turns the Mediterranean sun into an artist that transforms the sun-drenched hills into places of magic and mystery. The golden hours of morning and afternoon when the sun kisses the spires of Aragona and caresses the rolling hills and the shadows stretch out… these are for Dunsany representations of life and love and all its mysteries and longings. It is what the charwoman has lost and dreams of constantly, and what Ramon is also in danger of losing after selling his shadow. Life and love that the sun brings to the Spanish fields of wonder are not for those without a shadow. Dunsany’s descriptions of the lands under the sun and of young people following their fancies on these lands in evening are achingly beautiful. He writes with such longing and melancholy that it makes me want to cry. 

At the same time, I find Dunsany’s prose quite heavy and hard going for an entire novel’s length. The solution for me was to read this novel slowly in a daily dosage of chapters, as if they are short stories. What we get back for it are some incredibly beautiful moments of wonder and imagination. The descriptions of the magician’s library of magic are a highlight especially. Dunsany has this way of alluding to time and space in his descriptions that is very romantic, and sets your mind adrift to wonder about deep time and far lands and little lost things. For example, he describes how the magician has long ago uttered magic spells from books that have already crumbled into dust, but that the echoes of those spells still reverberate through the library, but so softly that only the spiders can still hear them in their nooks and crannies. It is amazing to me how he can come up with such descriptions.

The story is both predictable and filled with anxiety. Ramon Alonzo is trapped in his situation and has to find a way to get his shadow back from the cunning wizard as his soul is in danger of damnation, and he had taken the chivalrous task upon himself to save the charwoman as well. All sorts of plans go awry and as the reader you often know how chapters will resolve themselves, but with Dunsany’s slow writing I was writhing in my chair because wanted the scenes to be concluded faster. As Dunsany languidly tells his tale, moments of wonder alternated with moments of slight boredom and frustration. It takes a little patience for a modern reader, but the experience is still worth it if you enjoy that Miyazaki feeling of nature and sunny landscapes and wizardry and people turning old and young. I’m glad I’ve read it.