The Enchanted Castle by E. Nesbit

First published: 1907 (serial form, The Strand Magazine, January-November, 1906)

Subjects: Coming-of-age, family, friendship, and love and romance

Type of work: Novel

Type of plot: Fantasy

Time of work: The early twentieth century

Recommended Ages: 10-13

Locale: A country village in western England

Principal Characters:

• Gerald, the oldest of the children, who masterminds their summertime adventures
• Kathleen, a pupil at the school where she and her brothers are spending the holidays
• Jimmy, Gerald and Kathleen’s younger brother
• Mabel, the niece of the housekeeper at Yalding Towers and the discoverer of the magic ring
• Mademoiselle, the French mistress at Kathleen’s school, who is nominally in charge of Kathleen and her brothers
• Lord Yalding, the owner of Yalding Towers and Mademoiselle’s long-lost lover

Form and Content

The Enchanted Castle shares its episodic structure with many of Edith Nesbit’s other fantasies; here, as is typical of this author’s works, a group of children discovers a magic that leads them into a series of more or less self-contained adventures. These adventures are narrated with Nesbit’s customary lighthearted charm, although occasionally a more serious tone takes over.

The story begins when an outbreak of measles prevents Gerald, Kathleen, and Jimmy from spending their summer holidays at home. Instead, they are marooned at Kathleen’s school, supervised only by Mademoiselle, the French mistress—who, as Gerald observes, is unexpectedly young, pretty, and tolerant. Gerald, a well-spoken boy with a shrewd sense of what pleases adults, is able to win from her considerable freedom for himself and his brother and sister, so that the three may spend their days exploring the countryside. On their first hike, they discover the local showplace, Yalding Towers, which they decide to interpret (correctly, as readers shall see) as an “enchanted castle.” At the center of a maze on the estate, they encounter the housekeeper’s niece, Mabel, who is reenacting the story of Sleeping Beauty. Mabel attempts to persuade them that the magic in which they are pretending to believe really exists; she takes them to the castle’s treasure room, declares that a ring displayed there is a ring of invisibility, and puts it on. Much to Mabel’s astonishment, she does indeed disappear, and the stage is set for a summer of enchantment.

The children embark upon several adventures involving invisibility: They take the unseen Mabel to the fair so that Gerald can earn money as a “conjurer” with an invisible assistant; Gerald himself puts on the ring and becomes a detective to thwart a band of burglars; and the school housemaid, Eliza, nearly loses her fiancé when she unexpectedly participates in the magic. As the children gradually learn, however, the ring is not, strictly speaking, a ring of invisibility. The ring performs whatever function its wearer has claimed for it. Thus, readers next see it metamorphose into a wishing ring—whereupon it inconveniently gives life to some dummies that the children have constructed to augment the audience for their home theatricals and, still worse, turns Jimmy into a city magnate and Kathleen into a statue. It subsequently turns into a ring that makes the wearer twelve feet tall. By this point, the four children have befriended the castle’s new owner, Lord Yalding, who turns out to be Mademoiselle’s erstwhile beloved. He does not believe in magic and knows nothing about the castle’s many secrets, from the treasure room to the living statues of gods and dinosaurs that gather every moonlit night. In attempting to end his skepticism, reunite the lovers, and restore Lord Yalding’s fortunes, the children learn that the enchantment that makes childhood glorious is incompatible with adult romance: The magic must be sacrificed so that the love of Lord Yalding and Mademoiselle may come to fruition.

Critical Context

Perhaps the preeminent Edwardian fantasist and also an important domestic novelist for children, Edith Nesbit was influenced by authors such as F. Anstey and became a major influence on such contemporary figures as Edward Eager; all three achieve comedy through juxtaposing the prosaic and the fantastic, and Nesbit’s placement of ordinary characters in extraordinary circumstances contributes substantially to her continuing appeal.

The Enchanted Castle appeared toward the end of Nesbit’s career, as she served an apprenticeship in hack work before producing The Story of the Treasure Seekers (1899) and after 1913 wrote, if at all, primarily for adults. Like its immediate predecessors, The Story of the Amulet and The Railway Children, both published in 1906, and like the fantasies that would follow, The Enchanted Castle hints at more serious issues than do certain other of Nesbit’s works. Hence, it has elicited differing responses from her fans, some deeming it inferior to the more purely comic works, and others considering it as marking a maturity in her vision. Among those preferring Nesbit in her graver mode was C. S. Lewis, who favored The Story of the Amulet. The Enchanted Castle shares that work’s concern with the seriousness of achieving one’s heart’s desire and the pleasure of mingling myth (here, the Greek gods) with modernity—tropes that resurface in Lewis’ Narnia. That Nesbit continues to delight discerning readers testifies to the importance of her achievement.