Hello, my name is Finn, and I'm going to help you understand this book.
Here it is, explained like you are 10:
Long ago, a student named Eustace told stories to a group of children at a big house called Tanglewood. His stories come from very old Greek tales. A brave boy named Perseus fights a monster whose hair is made of snakes. A greedy king turns everything he touches into gold, even his food. A curious girl opens a box she was told to keep shut. Every story is full of magic and surprises.
Hawthorne frames each myth inside the life of Tanglewood, a Berkshire house full of visiting children with flower names, Periwinkle, Cowslip, and Primrose among them. Eustace Bright, their student storyteller, introduces each tale with a walk or a game, tells it, and then faces the children's questions and jokes, so every myth arrives wrapped in a small comedy of its own telling.
The retellings deliberately soften the Greek originals. Hawthorne said he would keep the wonder and drop the cruelty, and the moral weather changes with it: Midas is a warning about greed told with pity, Pandora's box releases troubles but keeps Hope inside, and the gods who visit Baucis and Philemon reward plain kindness. The book argues that old stories can be remade honestly for new listeners.
For many generations this was simply where English speaking children met Greek mythology, and its versions fixed the shapes of Perseus, Midas, and Hercules in the nursery imagination. Writers of children's fantasy have borrowed its frame device ever since. It lasts because the voice is perfect: an older brother telling wonders on a porch, half teasing, wholly sincere.
Nathaniel Hawthorne published A Wonder-Book for Girls and Boys in 1851, fresh from The Scarlet Letter, and in it a college student named Eustace Bright retells six Greek myths to a crowd of children at Tanglewood. Perseus carries a mirror bright shield against the Gorgons, Midas learns the price of his golden touch, and Pandora opens the box she must not open. Hawthorne trades ancient terror for wonder, and the myths have sounded like stories told aloud ever since.
A Wonder-Book for Girls and Boys is Nathaniel Hawthorne in his sunniest mood, published in 1851 between The Scarlet Letter and The House of the Seven Gables. Visiting children at Tanglewood, a rambling estate in the Berkshires, are entertained by Eustace Bright, a Williams College student with a gift for tales, and Hawthorne lets him retell six of the great Greek myths in language a child can follow and a grown reader can savor. Here is Perseus with his mirrored shield and winged sandals; Midas, whose gift starves him; Pandora and the box; Hercules straining at the golden apples of the Hesperides; the miraculous pitcher that never empties for Baucis and Philemon; and Bellerophon with Pegasus against the Chimaera. Between the tales, the frame story bustles with the children's games, quarrels, and critiques, so the book reads as a holiday as much as a mythology. Hawthorne freely admitted he had softened much: his aim was wonder without nightmare, and he achieved a tone that children's literature has imitated ever since. Readers meeting the Greek stories for the first time, at any age, could not start in kinder or more musical company.
Edition: Text: Project Gutenberg ebook 32242.
The first chapter
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A WONDER BOOK FOR GIRLS & BOYS
by
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE
With 60 Designs by Walter Crane
Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company
Copyright, 1851, by Nathaniel Hawthorne
Copyright, 1879, by Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
Copyright, 1883 and 1892, by Houghton, Mifflin & Co.
All Rights Reserved
PREFACE
The author has long been of opinion that many of the classical myths were capable of being rendered into very capital reading for children. In the little volume here offered to the public, he has worked up half a dozen of them, with this end in view. A great freedom of treatment was necessary to his plan; but it will be observed by every one who attempts to render these legends malleable in his intellectual furnace, that they are marvellously independent of all temporary modes and circumstances. They remain essentially the same, after changes that would affect the identity of almost anything else.
He does not, therefore, plead guilty to a sacrilege, in having sometimes shaped anew, as his fancy dictated, the forms that have been hallowed by an antiquity of two or three thousand years. No epoch of time can claim a copyright in these immortal fables. They seem never to have been made; and certainly, so long as man exists, they can never perish; but, by their indestructibility itself, they are legitimate subjects for every age to clothe with its own garniture of manners and sentiment, and to imbue with its own morality. In the present version they may have lost much of their classical aspect (or, at all events, the author has not been careful to preserve it), and have perhaps assumed a Gothic or romantic guise.
In performing this pleasant task,--for it has been really a task fit for hot weather, and one of the most agreeable, of a literary kind, which he ever undertook,--the author has not always thought it necessary to write downward, in order to meet the comprehension of children. He has generally suffered the theme to soar, whenever such was its tendency, and when he himself was buoyant enough to follow without an effort. Children possess an unestimated sensibility to whatever is deep or high, in imagination or feeling, so long as it is simple likewise. It is only the artificial and the complex that bewilder them.
LENOX, _July 15, 1851_.
CONTENTS
PAGE THE GORGON'S HEAD. TANGLEWOOD PORCH.--Introductory to The Gorgon's Head 1 THE GORGON'S HEAD 7 TANGLEWOOD PORCH.--After the Story 39
THE GOLDEN TOUCH. SHADOW BROOK.--Introductory to The Golden Touch 42 THE GOLDEN TOUCH 46 SHADOW BROOK.--After the Story 69
THE PARADISE OF CHILDREN. TANGLEWOOD PLAY-ROOM.--Introductory to The Paradise of Children 73 THE PARADISE OF CHILDREN 78 TANGLEWOOD PLAY-ROOM.--After the Story 100
THE THREE GOLDEN APPLES. TANGLEWOOD FIRESIDE.--Introductory to The Three Golden Apples 102 THE THREE GOLDEN APPLES 109 TANGLEWOOD FIRESIDE.--After the Story 136
THE MIRACULOUS PITCHER. THE HILL-SIDE.--Introductory to The Miraculous Pitcher 140 THE MIRACULOUS PITCHER 144 THE HILL-SIDE.--After the Story 170
THE CHIMÆRA. BALD-SUMMIT.--Introductory to The Chimæra 172 THE CHIMÆRA 176 BALD-SUMMIT.--After the Story 206
LIST OF DESIGNS
Half-Title i Frontispiece--Bellerophon on Pegasus. Title iii Preface v Tailpiece vi Contents vii List of Designs ix Tailpiece x Headpiece--TANGLEWOOD PORCH 1 THE GORGON'S HEAD--Headpiece 7 Perseus and the Graiæ 22 Perseus armed by the Nymphs 26 Perseus and the Gorgons 32 Perseus showing the Gorgon's Head 36 Tailpiece 38 Headpiece--TANGLEWOOD PORCH, After the Story 39 Tailpiece 41 Headpiece--SHADOW BROOK 42 THE GOLDEN TOUCH--Headpiece 46 The Stranger appearing to Midas 50 Midas' Daughter turned to Gold 62 Midas with the Pitcher 66 Tailpiece 68 Headpiece--SHADOW BROOK, After the Story 69 Tailpiece 72 Headpiece--TANGLEWOOD PLAY-ROOM 73 Tailpiece 77 THE PARADISE OF CHILDREN--Headpiece 78 Pandora wonders at the Box 80 Pandora desires to open the Box 86 Pandora opens the Box 92 Tailpiece 96 Headpiece--TANGLEWOOD PLAY-ROOM, After the Story 100 Headpiece--TANGLEWOOD FIRESIDE 102 Tailpiece 108 THE THREE GOLDEN APPLES--Headpiece 109 Hercules and the Nymphs 112 Hercules and the Old Man of the Sea 120 Hercules and Atlas 126 Tailpiece 135 Headpiece--TANGLEWOOD FIRESIDE, After the Story 136 Tailpiece 139 Headpiece--THE HILL-SIDE 140 Tailpiece 143 THE MIRACULOUS PITCHER--Headpiece 144 Philemon and Baucis 144 The Strangers in the Village 148 The Strangers entertained 158 Tailpiece 169 Headpiece--THE HILL-SIDE, After the Story 170 Tailpiece 171 Headpiece--BALD SUMMIT 172 Tailpiece 175 THE CHIMÆRA--Headpiece 176 Bellerophon at the Fountain 180 Bellerophon slays the Chimæra 200 Tailpiece 205 Headpiece--BALD SUMMIT, After the Story 206 Tailpiece 210
Source: Project Gutenberg. Published 1851 (dated 1852). Public domain. Share this book: WhatsApp
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