Fragile hope... a small tortoiseshell butterfly near Hope in the county of Shropshire. For Dickens, fairytales were the core of a child’s education, delicately crafted over the centuries to mould impressionable minds and hearts in virtues common to us all; they were to be treated as history, and never appropriated for some modish propaganda campaign.
IT would be hard to estimate the amount of gentleness and mercy that has made its way among us through these slight channels. Forbearance, courtesy, consideration for poor and aged, kind treatment of animals, love of nature, abhorrence of tyranny and brute force - many such good things have been first nourished in the child's heart by this powerful aid.
In an utilitarian age, of all other times, it is a matter of grave importance that Fairy tales should be respected. Every one who has considered the subject knows full well that a nation without fancy, without some romance, never did, never can, never will, hold a great place under the sun. To preserve them in their usefulness, they must be as much preserved in their simplicity, and purity, and innocent extravagance, as if they were actual fact. Whosoever alters them to suit his own opinions, whatever they are, is guilty, to our thinking, of an act of presumption, and appropriates to himself what does not belong to him.
Précis
After his friend George Cruikshank took it upon himself to rewrite well-loved fairytales to promote Victorian values, Dickens responded with an essay, warning that such indoctrination would quickly get out of hand if not checked. He believed that myths and legends need to be treated with the same respect as history itself. (52 / 60 words)
