vuEJYUfr

1Marc Aramini
2# *CASTLEVIEW*: ROMANCE ISN’T WHAT IT USED TO BE 
3
4“This, then, was why she had wept in childhood, although she had not known it. Then there had been only the unfocused sense of loss – the unplumbed knowledge that in the end the world would take away everything, even the worst things, so that at the end, when she had nothing left, she would miss them; and surely it would take all the good things, all the best things, the good things first of all. That her most beautiful dresses would turn ugly, hideous and foolish, merely by hanging in the closet; and that all the people, all the most beautiful people, the ones she loved best, would fall to rags.” (Wolfe 87-8)
5
6Usually I eschew the history of literary criticism in favor of close reading and an analysis of that surprisingly controversial concept, Wolfe’s actual intention (or at least, an attempt at presenting a logical approximation of it). In the case of *Castleview*, the direct portrayal of the survival of myth and (more importantly) romance into the contemporary, mundane world has a fairly close relationship with Northrop Frye’s exploration of the modes of fiction in his *Anatomy of Criticism*. Unlike many fantasists, Wolfe never quite leaves behind at least the semblance of mimesis, or “representation,” of the real world in his fiction. If escapism is present in his work, it usually has a kind of sophisticated interaction with reality. In Wolfe, sometimes the escape his characters most desire is one from an incomprehensible and unbelievable destiny, rather than from the dull monotony of everyday life, made banal by its exhaustion in the realistic and naturalistic novels which dominated the mainstream literary scene of the 20th century. In *Castleview*, the “matter of Britain” gains an urban fantasy spin that creates a temporal dissonance, leaving readers with the sense that perhaps this novel came simultaneously too early and too late for the time in which it was published. It exists in close dialogue with the romantic tradition in literature, confronting in almost playful fashion all of the disparate connotations of “romance.”
7
8In “A Second View of Castleview,” Joe R. Christopher observes that “Wolfe seems to structure [*Castleview*] on the pattern of medieval French Arthurian romances: that is, he is interweaving a series of related stories; this interlacement (to echo the French term) means that most of his chapters have several discrete episodes” (66). He notes that the novel lacks the standard transitions typical of this genre: “Instead, Wolfe has built up many of the sections to a surprise twist of some sort. This is a later tradition of structure” (67). I will defer to Christopher’s superior knowledge of Arthurian romance, but take this observation one step further in claiming that *Castleview* chronicles the evolution of once magical romantic ideals and their strangled survival in the modern world. While “romance” loses much of its traditional weight in contemporary society, it can never be vanquished entirely, for it rests at the heart of fulfillment as an individual, for better or for worse. For once, the subjective nature of individual self-fulfillment and realization finally becomes a theme almost devoid of irony in a Wolfe novel, though the yearning for a golden and magical past still seems to operate as an innate ideal.
9
10The novel shares a very strange feature with both *Free Live Free* and *There Are Doors* in illustrating metaphors through allegorical characters and situations. In *Free Live Free*, Ben Free’s allegiances and shifting identities make figurative sense when we view him as a kind of avatar for America, tracing its ideological shifts and philosophies in his own person: newer trends like “McCarthyism” are features of his younger self, while the older Free goes back in time to explore the forging of America’s frontier with Lewis and Clark, eventually becoming an antiquated ideal besieged by the modern world. *Castleview* shares many of the features of what I have called “urban allegory,” but this time Wolfe has created a literal exploration of romance rather than of America or even Britain 
11
12By the end of the novel we get the sense that King Arthur’s descendants are lurking everywhere, his influence and blood diffused across the boundaries of time and arbitrary national borders. According to “A Second View of Castleview,” “the essential fact is that King Arthur in this novel is William Shields, the owner of a car dealership, who does not know he is Arthur, although the beings of the Isle of Glass know him” (69). Christopher’s article does not seem to stress the universal nature of Arthur’s gene pool here: all of these characters could *potentially* pick up Excalibur and serve as humanity’s champion. While destiny might not be concentrated in one unique individual, it does rely upon the expression of certain characteristics. Many of these characters consider themselves ordinary, but any of them could answer the call to fight in the final conflict, for Arthur's descendants proliferate across the breadth and depth of the modern world. This dispersal of Arthur’s descendants into many individuals is contrasted with Viviane Morgan’s amalgamation from several sources and figures, acting at times as the Lady of the Lake, at others as the incestuous Morgause from other Arthurian legends. In the call to the final battle, Morgan's voice calls out to a multitude: “My brothers! We have summoned you, your lemen, your knights and ladies to battle, for we will take you fairly if we can. Choose your champion. Who is the bravest you breed? The strongest and most skilled?” (Wolfe 271) Shields answers that call, but he is not the only “brother” to Morgan.
13
14Christopher also criticizes Wolfe’s decision to have Morgan use a prose version of Tennyson’s account of Arthur’s death and the return of Excalibur to the Lady of the Lake at the culmination of the novel, asking, “[W]hy does Morgan quote a nineteenth-century rendition? … [S]urely Tennyson is not superior to Malory simply as *narrative*. Perhaps Morgan thinks Judy will not understand an earlier version. But [it] does seem odd. No one, I fancy, has claimed that Tennyson was elvishly inspired to produce the most accurate account in history of Arthur’s death” (Christopher 75). Wolfe has always been interested in syncretism and how stories can change over time, while still remaining at their essence identifiable and distinct, and in combining a variety of different sources and stories, *Castleview* traces a *tradition* of romance; Wolfe is not interested in sticking with the original source when how these legends change over time also illuminates their application in a constantly transforming world. If the “Matter of Britain” actually survives in the modern world at all, then Malory is only a fraction of that evolving and possibly cyclical story. In addition, Tennyson offers a more modern romantic yearning for a time long vanished in the segment quoted by Wolfe, stating one of the themes lurking behind the novel quite clearly: “*I think that we shall never more, at any future time, delight our souls with talk of knightly deeds, walking about the gardens and the halls of Camelot, as in the days that were*” (Wolfe 246). 
15
16Beyond its Arthurian particulars, *Castleview* attempts a holistic echo of “Romance Literature,” which was originally named for the influence of French tradition in the mid-12th century. Anglo-Norman was one of the dominant literary languages of England during this time, and the catch-all term also attempted to describe the translation of Latin into the everyday language of speech. The Romantic Tradition extended across Europe and had a wide-ranging effect on self-expression, the concept of individuality divorced from the status of birth, and on art as a whole. *Castleview* is no different in its eclectic group of characters and references, from “Puss in Boots” and the character of Lucie D’Carabas with her French pretensions to the ironically chivalrous and ineffectual Brazilian José Alvarez Martim Basilio Bonifacio Balanco, bent on avenging his sister’s injury. [One of Wolfe's references is lost in the middle of that string of names: Martim means kingfisher, and of course we expect the Fisher King to show up in Arthurian myth. The Fisher King is the last keeper of the grail, suffering from a debilitating or emasculating wound. Balanco’s chivalry is twisted to sterile and easily manipulated ends as he enacts this role, but rather than being healed, he is summarily destroyed by a character to whom the concept means less than nothing; chivalry no longer seems to function as it once did.]
17
18Returning to romance in general, the most prominent medieval romances involved King Arthur and his court, and as always Wolfe seeds the text with obscure references in this vein. For example, the undertaker in the novel is named Fouque. At one point, the mysterious Dr. Rex von Madadh mishears his name as *Fuchs*, which prompts him to expound upon his dislike of foxes. However, Baron Fouqué was a prominent German romance writer of fantasies in the late 18th to the early 19th century. He also versified 16th century tales of medieval chivalry and translated the Nibelung legends; giving the undertaker this name is yet another jibe at the death of the romantic tradition in the modern world. [Of course, some of the characters in the morgue refuse to stay dead, such as Balanco’s sister, who seems to recover from a temporary case of spiritual vampirism and return to life at the culmination of the story.] Baron Fouqué also wrote a fairy-tale novel called *Undine*, in which a water spirit attempts to gain a soul in the most natural way – by marrying a knight. As we shall see at the conclusion of the novel, Morgan calls herself the daughter of a sea fairy, and she finally gets the fraternal knight she desires in the final pages. Wolfe continues this pattern in other minor character names. The real physician at the trauma center, De Falla, shares the name of one of the most influential Spanish composers of the 20th century, though the bulk of his work is considered Neo-classical rather than romantic. In the novel, the romantic figure of von Madadh seems to take his place, literally stealing his patients away. Of course, beneath the complex treatment of the romantic tradition, *Castleview* overtly emphasizes in its plot and tone the importance of establishing and maintaining familial relationships, geared toward the continuation of a family into the future.
19
20## “Coronation? This is Bad Comedy …”
21
22After an opening quote from Sir Thomas Malory in which Merlin berates Arthur for preferring the sword, (“*[F]or the scabbard is worth ten of the swords, for whiles ye have the scabbard upon you, ye shall never lose no blood be ye never so sore wounded, therefor keep well the scabbard always with you*”),*Castleview* begins with the death of Tom Howard. He has considered selling his house, located, according to Chapter One's title, “at the edge of the fields.” Meanwhile, Will Shields and his family are determined to integrate into the small community at Castleview after he purchases a car dealership there. His wife is a writer of niche cookbooks. Their daughter Mercedes quickly becomes interested in Tom Howard’s son Seth, though Tom perishes even before they can make an offer on the house.
23
24Much of the rest of the story occurs along the road which runs through the city of Castleview. Seth takes Mercedes out to try and see the mysterious castle which gives the city its name, which Shields glimpsed from the attic window of the Howard’s residence. Those who see the ghostly castle always view it differently in terms of color, shape, and location, and some have never seen it at all. The movements of Will Shields and his wife Ann Schindler control much of the rest of the narrative. After visiting a museum filled with Arthurian decor built by Sally Howard’s ancestor, Doc Dunstan, Will is surprised when one of his older employees (Tom Howard’s father-in-law) disappears. Ann winds up exploring a summer camp for girls called Meadow Grass, which has been besieged by mysterious malcontents, especially when the weather is bad. (Later it is heavily implied that one of the girls is responsible for much of the disturbance, especially in inviting external forces in by opening the camp's gates.) The camp currently houses three girls and twenty-one horses under the care of Lisa Solomon and Arthur Dunstan. As Ann is driving away, she finds one of the girls, Lucie d’Carabas, stowed away in her back seat. She also locates the wounded Arthur Dunstan in the woods, getting him medical attention. Lucie says she hopes to meet with a man she identifies as a “friend” in town.
25
26Meanwhile, Sally Howard deals with the loss of her husband at her house, visited in turn by her mother, sister, niece, a shadowy figure named Liam Fee, a deputy, Lucie d’Carabas (who at first speaks without her French accent) as she seeks to “report” to Fee, an elderly neighbor named Almah Cosgriff, the almost ghostly return of her dead dog Rex, and Dr. Rex von Madadh, who will quickly capture her imagination. During that time, her kitchen window is broken and Fee gains entrance under the pretense of searching for an intruder. He also breaks a mirror upstairs and offers to buy the house with a check he refuses to take back. Sally also catches a glimpse of a large hairy figure outside with glowing eyes. The deputy shoots at it, later describing it as being accompanied by a large dog or hound.
27
28After a brief interlude between Will Shields and Ann Schindler at the Golden Dragon Chinese restaurant, in which Shield's questions about the castle disturb their waiter, a bad wreck involving Seth and Mercedes moves the action to the local hospital. One of the local legends involves a mysterious woman in white who is frequently spotted along the highway, supposedly being followed by a dark rider. Seeing the dark rider's eyes means death. Before their accident, Seth and Mercedes meet her and her companion, the tall and thin Jim Long, who attentive readers learned quite early in the novel was killed by a hit-and-run driver almost a decade before the action started. The accident occurs in Long's rusty car. The paramedics and medical staff treating Seth, Mercedes, and the other people involved are for the most part unable to perceive the woman in white, who goes by the name Viviane Morgan, and her skeletal companion, even though the fay figures continue to interact with Mercedes during her treatment at the hospital.
29
30Strange illusions proliferate as the Chinese waiter, Hwan Lee, tries to assassinate Arthur Dunstan in the hospital, under some compulsion which grants him the appearance of Seth Howard (at least, as Mercedes sees him). Mercedes foils the attempt. Meanwhile, one of the girls at Meadow Grass is shot by a mysterious long-distance assailant, seemingly fatally. The other two girls also vanish, as does Sally Howard's niece Judy, who flees Liam Fee into the turret room of the Victorian Howard residence and somehow escapes through its window to find herself in the floating castle so many have seen.
31
32The text makes great effort to establish that most of its characters are related through the character of Doc Dunstan, who originally built the museum and left his journal behind. Even the previous owner of Meadow Grass, Silvia Baxter (whose name literally means “Baker from the forest”), left her camp for girls to Arthur Dunstan because of an implied familial relationship. Much of the story hints that King Arthur's descendants might be found amongst the Dunstans, Howards, or Roberts in the story, and as the forces gather for a final confrontation between the fairy court and the ordinary town of car dealerships and highways, Dr. Rex von Madadh prepares those left behind to face Viviane Morgan. Claiming to be a member of the Daoine Institute, founded by Michael Daoine (a contractor and builder who moved to the United States in the closing years of the 19th century) Rex von Madadh is eventually revealed to be the champion of the fairy forces, representing their best qualities. Sally Howard grows increasingly attracted to him. [Readers should keep in mind that the Daoine Sidhe or the Deeny Shee were the remnants of the divine folk of Irish folklore, who remained in Ireland and dwell in the fairy mounds of legend.]
33
34Amidst an increasingly fantastic narrative in which one of the girls from Meadow Grass introduces Sally's nephew Judy to the Winter King Geimhreadh and a gargoyle transforms into a sentient, gun toting feline who calls itself G. Gordon Kitty, Shields and the others drive into fairy land through a shortcut off the highway (which shouldn't exist) and engage with the ape-like and bizarre forces who serve Viviane Morgan. Shields, to his own surprise, finds himself the champion, and is defeated by Rex von Madadh. The rest escape after the legendary Green Man, who seems to be a cognate of Odin mounted upon Sleipnir, engaged in the pursuit of Morgan during his Wild Hunt, bows before Geimhreadh and is beheaded. Most of the characters return home to resume their relationships or form new ones, following the traditional ending of stories which are deemed Comedies: Arthur Dunstan proposes to Lisa Solomon, Mercedes and Seth seem to have entered into a relationship, and Sally Howard has found comfort in the arms of the possibly dog-like Rex von Madadh. The epilogue shows Will Shields awaken underwater with Viviane Morgan, who advises him to sleep and recover, calling him brother and lover. This is all well and good, but one gets the sense that the surface narrative is the least of what Wolfe is doing in this novel.
35
36## A Troll, a Ghost, Some Teens, King Arthur, an Alien, a Single Mother, Puss-in-Boots, and a Hen-Pecked Car Salesman Walk into a Fairy Forest and Almost Get Hit by a Rusty Ford: A Romance
37
38In his *Anatomy of Criticism*, Northrop Frye explores many different motifs, archetypes, and modes which help create a structured approach to literary analysis and criticism. His overall classification of fiction based on the qualities of the characters depicted in it actually illuminates the otherwise haphazard assortment of characters and stories crammed into Wolfe’s novel. We will not concern ourselves with every tragic, comic, and thematic distinction Frye discusses, but the categories he identifies for myth, high mimesis, low mimesis, and irony are immensely useful in thinking about Wolfe’s purpose. [Frye also has something to say about symbols and motifs which could be illuminating for many works of genre fiction, though his rather old-fashioned approach seems to be currently lumped in with New Criticism and Formalism (which he was actually, in part, reacting against) as a somewhat antiquated ideology for literary criticism – for those acquainted with the history of literary criticism, it should be obvious that I prefer these methods over any and all [post-]modern/post-structural approaches to Wolfe’s work. In these more traditional modes, objects are imbued with universal, catholic, or archetypal qualities whether they are accurately perceived or not. My primary disagreement with these older schools of criticism lies primarily in my stubborn insistence on the primacy of authorial intent: once upon a time, the only person on Earth who knew the solutions to many of Wolfe’s riddles, puzzles, and narrative contradictions was Wolfe himself, though the author function clearly decays over time.]
39
40In light of Frye’s presentation of the width and depth of literary romance, *Castleview* really begins to make structural sense. We start with the assertion that fiction may be classified by the hero’s power of action. If his or her power is superior in kind to other people and he exercises that authority over the environment, the story is mythic. We already know that Wolfe loves myths and presenting characters with extraordinary destinies or supernatural abilities, and the presence of the Green Man and Odin’s horse Sleipnir in *Castleview* is enough to clue us in on the mythical backdrop of this novel. The constant synthesis of myths allows the fertility rituals involving the Green Man, the divine power of Odin, and the appropriation of the Wild Hunt to King Arthur and his hounds to all be simultaneously invoked in *Castleview*. Below myth, we find heroes of renown and might who are still identifiably human in Frye’s classification system:
41
42>If superior in *degree* to other men and to his environment, the hero is the typical hero of *romance*, whose actions are marvelous but who is himself identified as a human being. The hero of romance moves in a world in which the ordinary laws of nature are slightly suspended: prodigies of courage and endurance, unnatural to us, are natural to him, and enchanted weapons, talking animals, terrifying ogres and witches, and talismans of miraculous power violate no rule of probability once the postulates of romance have been established. Here we have moved from myth, properly so called, into legend, folk tale, *marchen*, and their literary affiliates and derivatives. (33)
43
44If Puss-in-Boots in the form of G. Gordon Kitty doesn’t quite convince us, then perhaps the woman in white and the undead Jim Long will: these folk stories are part and parcel of *Castleview*.
45
46Frye goes on to differentiate between the high and low mimetic modes, in which the hero is in the first case a leader or, in the second, a quite ordinary man, and then takes it one step further by introducing the concept of the ironic mode: “If inferior in power or intelligence to ourselves, so that we have the sense of looking down on a scene of bondage, frustration, or absurdity, the hero belongs to the *ironic* mode” (34). The car dealership owner Will Shields, at times tyrannized by his wife’s desires, seems to resemble the low mimetic hero rather than the high: he used to race cars, but having a daughter (whom he also names after a car, transforming a pass-time into a responsibility) quite convinced him it was too dangerous (and also seems to have changed Ann Schindler into a distinctly non-romantic person, at least as concerns her husband and their intimacy). Rather than race cars, he now sells them, further transforming that passion into a means of making ends meet. The ironic characters in *Castleview* include the self-deluding and suicidal Kate (Sally Howard’s sister) and perhaps even Liam Fee, who seems to be set up as a creature of darkness and the priest of an eldritch pagan god, but who winds up looking pathetic and incompetent. We find him inebriated in one scene, crying helplessly at Tom Howard’s viewing, and finally easily beaten by a diminutive Chinese waiter while being exposed as a generic, tubular, and many-eyed alien, even though Fee entered the scene with every advantage and the waiter was incarcerated and unarmed.
47
48Frye claims that “European fiction, during the last fifteen centuries, has steadily moved its center of gravity down the list” from mythic to ironic representations (34). In the most traditional of literary categories, there are two broad stories: the tragedy and the comedy. It is a rather trite aphorism that traditional tragedies end in death and mourning, while comedies end in marriage and celebration. *Castleview* is no different: the various couples seem to solidify their domestic partnerships, but Will Shields finds a way to escape his marriage in a conceivably non-permanent death. The Green Man dies at the hands of King Geimhreadh, whose name implies winter, but the cycle continues, and one day winter will in turn fall to spring and burgeoning life. Of tragedies, Frye says:
49
50>Tragic stories, when they apply to divine beings, may be called Dionysiac. … The association of a god’s death with autumn or sunset does not, in literature, necessarily mean that he is a god “of” vegetation or the sun, but only that he is a god capable of dying, whatever his department. … The same associations with sunset and the fall of the leaf linger in romance, where the hero is still half a god. In romance the suspension of natural law and the individualizing of the hero’s exploits reduce nature largely to the animal and vegetable world. Much of the hero’s life is spent with animals, or at any rate the animals that are incurable romantics, such as horses, dogs, and falcons, and the typical setting of romance is the forest. (36)
51
52The forest which leads to the castle in *Castleview* is of course part of standard fairy tale traditions, but the provenance of horses, meadows, stables, and fortresses have somehow transformed into cars, roads, and car dealerships in the modern world. This illustrates the ever-changing nature of the human environment, leaving behind these romantic images in theory while still predicating so many desires and wants on the same primal yearning. (The widowed Sally Howard clearly displays her burgeoning desires for comfort and security even before the return of her dog Rex. Dr. Rex von Madadh, whose name means “King of the Dogs,” is a being so surrounded by those romantic associations that she cannot be presumed to perceive him accurately through the veil of hopeful illusions blinding her to reality, even if they have something of a mercenary quality to them, especially given the extremely recent death of her husband. We should keep in mind that most of the novel occurs in one day, and Tom Howard dies in the first chapter.) When the young girl Judy Youngberg attempts to escape the tower at the end of the novel, she imagines that her escape will be aided by ivy growing along its edges. Ivy's most obvious association is of course with Dionysus, and the symbolic sacrifice necessary for the coming of winter (which might be seen as a kind of maturity) allows all of the children who have been taken to the fairy land to be reunited with their parents and older companions at the conclusion of the story.
53
54The novel is not without its tragic strains, as can be illustrated in the suicidal fate of Judy's depressed mother and the figure of Lucie d'Carabas, so desperate to appear exotic and foreign that she seems willing to make dark bargains. Frye goes on to assert that in low mimesis, tragedy is expressed in pathos: “Pathos presents its hero as isolated by a weakness which appeals to our sympathy because it is on our own level of experience. I speak of a hero, but the central figure of pathos is often a woman or a child …. And we have a whole procession of pathetic female sacrifices in English low mimetic fiction” (38). One of those characters is certainly Sally’s sister, the abandoned Kate, who pretends not to care that her daughter and ex-husband are gone, and plays with a pistol until the shock of the Wild Hunt catches up to her, sending her to the Fay Lands where her torn spirit yearns to be reunited with her daughter.
55
56While there are many examples of irony throughout *Castleview*, Frye emphasizes that “the central principle of tragic irony is that whatever exceptional happens to the hero should be causally out of line with his character” (41). The actions of Ann Schindler, Will Shields, and even the waiter Hwan Lee are almost certainly developed out of this ironic sense, especially when it is Will Shields who steps forward as the descendant of King Arthur, after so much time was spent in building up that Bob Roberts, Arthur Dunstan, and Tom Howard were all probably related to the Arthurian lineage and were actively being sought out by the forces of Morgan le Fay. After all, “There's many more that bear the king's blood” (Wolfe 247). Frye stresses that tragedy usually involves a victim, which he calls a *Pharmakos* or scapegoat, whose sacrifice is belied by their accrual of an almost symbolic innocence. This innocence represents a strange progression through the modes we have discussed: “Irony descends from the low mimetic: it begins in realism and dispassionate observation. But as it does so, it moves steadily towards myth, and the dim outlines of sacrificial rituals and dying gods begin to reappear in it. Our five modes evidently go around in a circle” (Frye 42).
57
58The denouement of *Castleview*, in which the child Judy brushes Morgan’s hair and sees her childhood companion G. Gordon Kitty brought to life, reveals a kind of playful comic relief to an otherwise bleak conclusion. According to Frye, “the element of *play* is the barrier that separates art from savagery, and playing at human sacrifice seems to be an important theme of ironic comedy” (46). This fake sacrifice is implicit both in the surrender of the Green Man and in the “death” of Will Shields, for he will someday awaken to another role, when winter is past and spring comes again. While we have quoted Frye extensively, there are several more points he makes in his discussion concerning genre which help rationalize two other odd features of Wolfe’s text:
59
60>The fact that we are now in an ironic phase of literature largely accounts for the popularity of the detective story, the formula of how a man-hunter locates a *Pharmakos* and gets rid of him. … But as we move further away … we move toward a ritual drama around a corpse in which a wavering finger of social condemnation passes over a group of “suspects” and finally settles on one. The sense of a victim chosen by lot is very strong, for the case against him is only plausibly manipulated. (46)
61
62Our story opens with the probable murder of Tom Howard, a corpse doomed to be replaced by Rex von Madadh, with his most lachrymose mourner possibly the “man” accused of killing him, Liam Fee (unless Fee is actually mourning his uselessness as Sally Howard's suitor, where von Madadh seems to have succeeded). The manhunt for Tom Howard's death is never truly undertaken, and the Wild Hunt itself has an extremely nebulous aim. As Ann Schindler recounts to Hwan Lee at the end, “We were chasing a man on a horse – shooting at him, even. Then we found out *he* was chasing that woman who whistled – she was the one who got Mercedes into so much trouble, we think, so we started chasing *her*” (Wolfe 270-1). The arbitrary and confused nature of this hunt and the absolute absence of any true guilt confound both the characters and the reader. The kidnappers of Bob Roberts and the shooters of Sancha Balanka are described only in vague terms; presumably the fairy creatures who serve Morgan are guilty rather than bored kids from the town, though it is also heavily implied that Lucie is the vulnerable factor from inside the camp who allows them entrance, according to Sissy’s suspicions. The manner in which these occurrences are left to an assumed common culprit, especially when Rex von Madadh comes across so sympathetically, highlights that the body in question as a symbol of a dead king not truly and forever dead is far more important than whoever attempted to destroy him. The murder mystery never really takes off, stagnating in a genre stew that culminates in a plot twist that many readers are not even sure to take seriously: it is hinted that Excalibur is made from meteoric materials, and that a planet beyond Mars, now destroyed, once housed an advanced civilization whose remnants survive only in fragmentary form in the shadows of Earth.
63 
64These science fictional trappings are almost randomly introduced, and Fee’s alien appearance in his final scene might also be a commentary on Hwan Lee’s foreign point of view: chivalry and the European fairy tales are alien to him, so he cannot be swayed in the same fashion that Sancha’s brother can by the vestiges of chivalry in being confounded a second time by Viviane Morgan. Hinting that Fee is alien in nature may serve both a metaphorical and literal function, as the perceptions of the fay, which we shall call, for lack of a better word, a manifestation of romantic yearning, is highly individualized and subjective. Hwan Lee is characterized briefly as a resourceful, resilient, but quintessentially Chinese man, and the traditional gender roles in China forge a quite distinctive response to both Morgan and Fee, even as he is suggested to be an alien. Finally, Frye is once again able to shed some light on the strange shift from myth and fairy stories to implied science fiction in *Castleview*:
65
66>What we have said about the return of irony to myth in tragic modes thus holds equally well for comic ones. Even popular literature appears to be slowly shifting its center of gravity from murder stories to science fiction – or at any rate a rapid growth of science fiction is certainly a fact about contemporary popular literature. … [Science Fiction is] a mode of romance with a strong inherent tendency to myth. (49)
67
68As Wolfe explores the modernization of romance, subconsciously or, as I would argue, quite deliberately, he includes all of these romantic tropes in his novel, from Romantic poetry to fairy tales to modern science fiction, glossing over the immense changes in theme and mode over time while still stressing the universal need for idealization and desire on both a personal and societal level: King Arthur and what he represents are still timeless figures – we have but to change the setting and the surroundings and see romance and heroism spring to life once again.
69
70## Broken Glass, Guns, Models, and Candles
71
72While the actual cosmology of the floating fairy island appears simple, there still seems to be something odd going on with time and space throughout the novel. At several points, we are treated with a pattern in which two distinct pieces of glass are shattered, a character searches with a flashlight or for a light switch, and a firearm discharges. The first two breakages occur when Will Shields investigates the museum on Willow Street and his employee disappears. First an upstairs window is broken, separating the men, then a journal in a display case is stolen. Later, Sally Howard experiences a similar situation: her kitchen window downstairs is mysteriously broken (and she notices a “putrid stench ... had drifted in the hole in the window,” which dissipates (106)), and Liam Fee breaks a mirror in her house upstairs at roughly the same time as the deputy fires twice at a strange, hairy apparition with glowing eyes that Sally sees through her broken window (78). Still later, two shots are fired at Meadow Grass, one penetrating the girl Sancha's chest, the other shattering the windshield of Lisa Solomon's Cherokee (which she had to trade in when Lucie d'Carabas's payment was rejected – the vehicle is reintroduced into the story when Will Shields has to take another car from his dealership to explore the museum). During the car accident, Seth Howard actually goes through the windshield of the strange rusty vehicle which also seems to be a recurring symbol - a vehicle worn by the influence of rain and time. We never see who fires the gun which so injures Sancha, but we do see events at Sally's house presented out of order: Lucie appears there after her final disappearance from Ann Schindler's back seat, though she had already mentioned visiting the friend for whom she came into town. If space and time are truly being distorted, it is even possible that the bullets fired at the ape-like being outside (probably the creature which grabs Will Shields in the stable) might reach Meadow Grass, though by the end of the story everyone and their brothers (and cats) have guns, and Viviane Morgan is certainly capable of supplying her followers with firearms. More importantly, we should try to determine the implication of all this broken glass.
73
74At the conclusion of the novel, the true state of Jim Long frightens the vampiric remnants of Sancha away. He insists:
75
76>“[A] livin' man has got a soul, a spirit in him. One anyhow, an' maybe two or three.  … What you seen wasn't [Sancha], or anyhow not all of her, just the part that wants to stay alive no matter what. … It wants to think it's the whole girl, see? So it'll ride a horse if it can, or maybe drive a car, and act like it was the real person, the body and everythin'. Only if somebody holds up a mirror to it, that makes it face up to what it is, and it'll skedaddle.” (252-3) 
77
78This broken glass might very well represent either the shattering of a mirror which reveals the truth, or the breaking of a barrier between the world of romance, idealization, and magic and the normal waking world. In one way, the romantic spirit involves the exploration of the individual and his or her self-definitions and desires, even positing a kind of self-invention. Whether the breaking of that glass is a denial or an acceptance of that inner state remains unclear, but it is in either case fraught with danger. We shall return to this imagery when we discuss the primary name of the mystical fay land given by King Geimhreadh: the Isle of Glass.
79
80When Shields first explores the museum, he finds that one of the larger rooms was used by Dunstan’s daughters to paint, featuring many large windows facing different directions. He looks at their handiwork, noting that each is distinct, and believes that the girls might have “perhaps received callers here.” He also wonders if their artistic impressions of the castle indicate that they were “all seeing something nobody has ever seen anyplace but here, a unique thing” (33). In trying to rationalize the varying appearance of the castle, different in the number of towers and in color, he creates a model of its turrets and has Bob Roberts look at it from different points of view, eventually concluding that it must be moving. His model has six turrets, and there are six windows in the sitting room of Dunstan's daughters. At one point, Robert hears a scraping, assuming it is “Probably just a car going by” (35). When they examine the paper cylinders used to emulate the castle from different directions, “Somewhere nearby, glass broke with a crash as precipitate as an explosion” (36). Looking at a representation of the castle from multiple points of view precedes the first instance of shattered glass in the novel, and perhaps this is suggestive.
81
82Shields’s attempt to create a model of the castle is not the only miniature representation in the museum. He soon comes upon a model of the city of Castleview itself:
83
84>When he pressed the switch, the floodlights in the ceiling revealed a model town: red brick and shiny black asphalt streets, tiny red and white houses flanked by bright green trees, a town as charming as a child’s drawing. Castleview, of course. He chuckled softly at his own fears as he crouched to look beneath the big table that held the model. The shadowy space was empty of all but dust; and yet something stealthily walked, and there was a pervasive animal reek, faint but distinct, throughout this upper floor. (55)
85
86Even though it has the charm of a child’s drawing, just as the fairy land brings to life such flights of the imagination as G. Gordon Kitty, that ominous reek certainly resembles the stench accompanying the muddy apes sighted throughout the text, at Sally Howard's house wafting through her broken kitchen window, and again when Shields is attacked in the stables at Meadow Grass. Even in the museum, he later describes that he “wasn’t actually alone, there was somebody in there with me, maybe more than one. Did I mention the carved wood? There were carved heads over the fireplaces in a lot of the rooms – tough-looking men, and women with smooth oval faces. It felt as though they were trying to talk, trying to warn me about something that was creeping up on me” (84). He describes the carvings as “all Malory. The sword in the stone was carved over the fireplace in the parlor, downstairs” (85). The foul stench he encountered in the upper floor is associated with the breaking glass: when Bob goes to investigate the broken window on the upper floor, he disappears, and only later will the glass display case downstairs be broken. Just as Shields convinces himself that he will find Bob dead, that second glass explosion occurs on the floor below, and later we learn that the journal of Bob's ancestor was taken (55).
87
88This is not the only room which seems to have a mysterious connection with the events in the novel. Fleeing from Fee much later in the novel, the young Judy somehow escapes the turret window at her aunt’s house (the room in which Mercedes imagined herself as a princess, in fact) and finds herself in another castle. She sees the Victorian house her aunt owns float “off like the bright toy boat she used to sail on the lake in the park. Between Aunt Sally’s tower and this one were black waves, more waves and more water than Judy had ever seen” (172). In the room in which she finds herself, she sees something which she believes to be candles:
89
90>At least they looked like candles when she looked right at them, tall candles with wax the color of skin, some thick, some thinner, and some very thin, all of them tall; but if she looked at something else – at the floor or the old rug with its bounding lions and sad unicorns – they were not candles at all, but ladies crowned with fire, ladies who stood and burned as quietly as if they were thinking, with eyes and faces shut like little stores that have turned against you, locking up their doors while their lights are still on inside and the people who seemed so friendly walk around moving things and pretending not to see you. (171)
91
92Soon enough Judy will be taken away by Morgan and separated from the others, but the outcome of her interference in this strange candle-lit room is never truly explored – she begins kicking at the door and noticing that the wind feeds and alters the flames, and the noise she makes disturbs the room: “At the sound, all of the people she could not hear stirred without making any noise, though the bees did not seem to care. The stirring made her stop kicking” (173). The arrival of fairies is often accompanied with the buzzing of bees in folklore, but the significance of the bees in this scene is further complicated by the production of mead and honey. At the very least, honey proves vital in the almost transcendent communion of Mercedes and Seth which occurs while they are held captive in the tower (though they receive that food from a hairy dwarf). On Judy's descent from the room of candles, she encounters the figure of winter, King Geimhreadh, and a gargoyle transforms into an anthropomorphic manifestation of her cat, G. Gordon Kitty. If the castle truly is a *Morgana Fata*, then all of these struggles are encapsulated in the mysterious and feminine figure of Viviane Morgan, both nemesis and ally, who threatens death and promises resurrection, a true figure of idealized romance who teaches women to mature and to desire and serves as a kind of idealized object for the wild hunt of men.
93
94## A Dangerous Road: Viviane Morgan, Winter, and the Rusty Car
95
96At one point Will Shields receives a prophetic message from a fortune cookie advising him to be careful near water. His wife's cookie tells her that she will save a king (100). The terrible weather in Castleview makes Will's task difficult, and the figure of Viviane Morgan is also intimately associated with both the rain and the bodies of water which seem to surround the mystical isle bizarrely intersecting the real world. When the idea of individuals seeing an oddly shifting castle first comes up, the real estate agent Joy Beggs calls it a *Fata Morgana*, or “Morgana the Fairy,” as Shields translates (7). This association between the moving castle, the fairy figure of Arthurian myth, and the woman in white all synthesize into Viviane Morgan, both the complex character of legend and a symbol of whimsical romance in her own right. Much as in the development of Arthurian traditions, Morgan is an ambiguous figure. In myth and legend, she was originally simply a sorcerous figure before attaining a kind of moral indeterminacy, at times assisting Arthur and at other times actively working for his destruction. In some legends, she is conflated with the Lady of the Lake and even the queens who take the wounded Arthur to the Island of Avalon to recover. In Malory, Arthur's sister Queen Morgan sets up the almost heroic figure of Accolon to kill Arthur, actually giving him Excalibur to wield against the king (though Malory distinguishes between the Lady of the Lake, called Nyneve, and Morgan, and in this encounter Nyneve saves Arthur from certain defeat.) When Arthur is wounded, Morgan Le Fay travels far on horseback to take Excalibur once again, but finding it tight in his grasp, she only succeeds in stealing the scabbard – which reappears in the final scenes of *Castleview*. Indeed, the figures of women on horseback traveling through the Isle of Glass at the conclusion of the novel might directly echo Queen Morgan's legendary ride. In “Castleview,” it seems that all of these different roles have been synthesized into the ghostly woman in white, whose highway presence is more akin to an urban legend.
97
98When we first meet Viviane Morgan in the novel, she is mourning the death of a raccoon and her kitten on the road. Though she is bent on Arthur's destruction, when she tries to teach Judy about the ongoing events, she is not shy in declaring her feelings for her brother: “I [loved him]! … Don't you know the legend of the three queens? Or the lady in the lake? Or the sword in the stone? … Our father was merely a vulgar petty chieftain, one of those half-Christian Celts the Romans left in their wake like candy wrappers. His mother was a common duchess, but mine was a merrow. … We are the Oceanids, descended of Tethys and Oceanus, and we live under the sea” (244). This descent from a mermaid utilizes the meaning of her original name in legend, Morgen, which means “sea-born.” The Oceanids, conceived of the incestuous union of Tethys and Oceanus, both deities of the sea, often served as the patron spirits of bodies of water, and Viviane Morgan also shares these qualities. Even older myths are invoked when she tells Judy that “to explain I would have to tell you much more – how three brothers drew lots for the four quarters of this world from a helmet, and all that” (244). Here she is referring to the revolt of Zeus, Poseidon, and Hades against the Titans and Cronus and the manner in which they determined dominion over the heavens, the underworld, and the sea. [Determined to never be supplanted by his son, Cronus ate his older children, which included Demeter, Hestia, Hera, Hades, and Poseidon. Later, Ann Schindler asks if there was a saint or god for cooks, and Shields mentions Martha and Hestia, the goddess of the hearth (216).] Quite interestingly, there is a kind of synthesis between Cronus's fate and the destiny of King Arthur; in ancient Britain, Plutarch notes a myth about a god over the water, which seems to be Cronus, imprisoned on an island guarded by the giant Briareus while he sleeps, surrounded by his attendants. While the triumph of winter in the form of King Geimhreadh is Morgan's desired outcome, she is often described with spring-like and lively features: her “breath held the pensive sweetness of a spring morning” (58). During a strangely intimate and suggestive scene with Mercedes, her breath is commented on again as being “perfumed, as a garden ... after a warm rain. … Ms. Morgan’s hand was on her thigh, stroking its soft flesh through the threadbare blue denim. A seam had given way for an inch or so; burning fingers found the spot and crept through” (62). It is at this point that their vehicle turns off the established road and enters the path to the fay lands, clearly equating this fecund passion with a world beyond the ordinary, reinforcing Viviane Morgan's cyclical function, facilitating both death and lust. By the end of the novel, she has clearly restated her role as the Lady of the Lake: “[W]hen [King Arthur] had lost his last battle, in drowned Leonnese where he was born, he sent [Excalibur] to me for safekeeping” (245).
99
100At one point, she also proclaims herself still a creature of the sea and reaffirms the science fictional aspects of the tale:
101
102>I have many homes; some are under the sea, others beneath lakes. But I meant to tell you that when my brother was a babe, a meteorite with a sword through it fell white-hot to earth. As you probably know, there used to be another world beyond the one your people have named for your god of defence [*sic*]. She died long ago, and her people perished with her, most of them. This sword was their work. It had become partially encased in molten rock, I imagine. (245)
103
104This suggestion of alien forces at work seems to be confirmed when Liam Fee is struck by Hwan Lee: “As night vanishes with the raising of a blind, Mr. Fee was gone. His clothing remained, but in that clothing was a large-headed being with three pairs of eyes and pipe-stem limbs” (262). Even before this, at the museum filled with the imagery from Malory, Shields noted that the largest carving was, “The sword in the stone, of course – the sword Arthur had drawn when no one else could, the sword that had made Arthur King of Britain. … [S]urely there was - some connection he was not making” (113). Given the imagery of the black anvil, he wonders if it had fallen from the sky as “a sign of some sort from God” (113). He dismisses it as a meteorite, “clearly the gussied up history of a king in the Dark Ages who had gotten his throne by learning to extract meteoritic iron, from which weapons could be forged. Thus Arthur had in a very real sense drawn a sword from a stone that had fallen from the heavens” (113). The family name Dunstan, he imagines, is similarly based on this origin and a perceived lineage reaching towards King Arthur, implying “*dun-stone*, dark stone or black stone, as those things had been said in Scotland and in the borderlands along the northern edge of England” (114). 
105
106The ambivalent relationship Queen Morgan has with her brother continues in her attempt on the life of Arthur Dunstan. In the hospital, Mercedes sees Viviane whispering to Wrangler: “[I]t seemed to Mercedes that they were taunts at times, and at others words of love” (156). This corrosive aspect of her personality is perhaps personified in the wild weather that occurs when the fairy land is directly overhead, as the water surrounding it falls below. In bad weather, perhaps the castle is not seen as often because it is directly above, exerting its influence on the town below. The rusty sedan which continually reappears on the road, with its one headlight and its sinister association with the undead Jim Long, has perhaps rusted from the influence of the fay weather. It is not, however, the only rusty object. When Judy is trapped in the tower in the room of strange, feminine candles, she notes that the bar across the door has rusted shut, and that the door's “big hinges were rusty too, rotting into a rough powder that blackened her thumb and stained her fingers orange, green, crimson, and violet” (173). This could very well denote the danger and trap-like nature of many romantic or magical allures. In this particular novel, the foul weather seems to represent that risk.
107
108From the very opening chapter, when Tom Howard walks out into the nasty storm to his death, we are treated to a motif which never truly relents. “[T]he rain pounded him as well, drummed upon the shoulders of his yellow slicker, drove hard against the brim of his rubberized hat” (1). The prominent description of the jackets and hats which the characters use to defend themselves from the gathering storm stand out as an intentional pattern. When Seth sees Shields and his family, he insists that they leave their umbrellas in the hallway, but Joy Begg says they will be quite safe if they are left on the porch. The miscellaneous rain coats and plastic hoods almost seem to serve as a shield or perhaps even like the scabbard of Excalibur, insulating those who own them against the perilous forces represented by the terrible weather.
109
110Shield’s initial view of the castle through the grimy glass of the attic window occurs as “Rain drummed unceasingly on the roof.” The sudden death of Tom Howard defeats their plans, and as they leave on the road, they encounter a sinister apparition: “The dark figure of a horseman appeared on the road before them as though it had fallen with the rain” (10). The text immediately cuts to the real estate agent Joy Begg abandoning her soaking raincoat. Soon afterwards, Liam Fee will show up at her door offering to purchase the Howard estate for his growing congregation. (Her motive in every action is to sell a house to the highest bidder so that she can make a profit – clearly, she has no defense against the forces of Liam Fee, who knows exactly how to appeal to her. He is far less successful in dealing with others throughout the novel). When Shields gets back to the hotel, he can’t wait to return to his dealership (and get away from his wife, certainly, who believes they “ought to have” hit the man on the horse (13)). He leaves his raincoat in the closet when he goes. “A raincoat that had soaked through was not much protection, and the rain was letting up a little now, anyway” (11). Freed from his family, he begins to sing. Certainly the soaked raincoat is tied to the condition of his marriage and perhaps even reflects on Ann Schindler and her abandonment of traditional roles. Later, when he and Bob Roberts intend to go to the museum, Roberts retrieves Lisa Solomon’s Cherokee for them to use. Roberts goes out to get the car, “[Will], [s]ince you haven’t got a coat … maybe you could just tell me which one you want. I’ll get the keys and drive it around.” Roberts wears the black oilskin of farmers as protection against the rain (20). We will not examine every case, but meticulous attention is paid to the defense each character has against the rain, and this culminates in the heavily insulated Phyllis Sun, who actually survives seeing the “single, blazing eye” of the huntsman in one of the book's final scenes, though her purse and hat are torn from her and she is left soaked by the fierce storm.
111
112Certainly, much of the rain must be falling from the water which surrounds the mysterious castle floating above, but what does it actually do?  “Rain makes the road slick” (12). In addition, whenever the weather is bad, it seems that Arthur “Wrangler” Dunstan has much more to fear for the property he oversees at Meadow Grass. The inhabitants of Castleview, especially the young ones, are prone to “ride in the rain – do any crazy thing” (13). When Seth comes to pick up Mercedes, who has been left unsupervised at the hotel, his football jacket is emphasized, and he is “standing outside in the rain” (23). He asserts, “They come in a lot closer in weather like this, right? They think we won’t see them. … The people in the castle. There have to be people, right? It figures. They’re watching us” (43). Ann also receives a warning about the water before she finds the injured Arthur Dunstan, but she drives over it without fear. We will return to the relationship of Mercedes and Seth below, but clearly one of the dangers represented by the rain is to be lost in romantic abandon and to forget reason and self-control.
113
114On her way to Meadow Grass for the first time, the radio warns Ann of flash floods on Old Penton Road, and a rusted sedan without lights passes her by (22). A buck steps in front of her path, and “for a fleeting instant the graceful buck had seemed an object of supernatural dread” (21). It could very well be that this buck is yet another manifestation of Viviane Morgan, perhaps the object of the hunt. When Rex von Madadh takes the widowed Sarah Howard to the hospital, he stops and smells the air, saying, “Rain has cleansed the air. … Old smells are gone, and none but the new remain: your perfume, that dirty car, which has left its traces on our clothing; and these trees, weary for their winter sleep” (146). The traces of the old world are removed and the seasonal theme of the novel is stated. The associations of winter as a senescent but still kindly old man belie the early despair voiced by one of Will's salesman: “Winter’s the worst season there is” (18).
115
116King Geimhreadh’s name means winter, and it could very well be that his triumph signifies the dormancy of the god king (as we have already mentioned in passing, like the Phrygian stories of Cronus fleeing for rest to the Island of the Blessed). Ann is certain in her drive that the natural world reacts according to need, and that “Nature reacts not only to physical disease, but to moral weakness: when danger increases, she gives courage” (22). However, she immediately turns this speculation into the plans for a cookbook which she will call *Cooking with Goethe* or *Cooking for Nature*, even as “an infant waterfall appeared out of the darkness far above her, tumbling down onto the already-drowned asphalt” (22). We will explore the possibly passionate and sexual metaphor of the weather and the cars on the highway soon, but the road is also characterized as a modern intruder onto a mystical and more natural past: “the road they drove was an intruder in the same way that the blade of a saw would have been an intruder, vulgarly revealing the secret, almost silent life of the trees” (43). [While it is never clear, some of the imagery associated with the old rusted sedan which might have been Jim Long's car also mirrors the description of the giant atop Sleipnir: “A car was coming down from the scenic view, a silent old sedan with a single headlight, though at that moment that headlight seemed like the sun” (61). It is Phyllis Sun who survives the sight of the Green Man's single eye, after all, but this association is never truly clarified or developed in any obvious way.] In any case, the rusty car becomes something of a trap to Mercedes and Seth, and they are involved in an accident which injures both of them, with Seth actually being thrown through the car's window.
117
118Will Shields will also fall victim to a trap while they are being besieged by unseen forces at Meadow Grass. He frees a boy (who fears his flashlight) from an iron trap and is then immediately grabbed by a huge ape-like beast which reeks of death. His wife fulfills her fortune cookie for the second time by running over the beast (and her husband, though he seems to escape serious injury). The image of the child with his leg in a trap seems to actually be a snare for Shields. In the world of magic and illusion, perhaps the senses cannot be trusted very far at all. However, von Madadh stresses that quite the opposite occurs when people are confronted with credible stories of the supernatural and refuse to believe them, concluding that “most of the safety and sanity of our safe and sane little world depends upon our disbelieving anyone who doesn’t speak English” (196). He further challenges the rational and humanist tradition by stating, “only one [species] has developed sufficient intelligence to make tools and use fire. Do you find that plausible?” (199) Though Dr. von Madadh appears to be a distinguished and leonine man, the muddy paw print he leaves on Mercedes's hospital bed hints that he is something different than he appears to be. Bob Roberts still concludes that in the final battle, he was not an evil creature without virtue: “You don't send the worst at a time like that, Sally. You pick out your best, and von Madadh was the one they picked” (274-5). Many of the best things in life are necessarily colored by romantic impressions, and the loss of that childlike ability to imbue objects with a special and lasting significance is tragic, especially if that loss only hastens one into the stultifying and responsibility-filled world of modern adulthood.
119
120## The Romantic and Pragmatic Metaphors Brought to Life
121
122Many of the relationships in *Castleview* highlight the struggle between the ideal and the real, and this same battle is writ large in the pursuit of the woman in white, Viviane Morgan, and the manifestation of the Wild Hunt and the Green Man, a symbol of fertility transformed into both foe and friend in Arthurian myth. When Mercedes first comes to the Howard house with her parents, Seth shows her the turret room, and, in true princess fashion, she imagines herself living there. Shields thinks about joking that she can have the room: “If you’re still a virgin, Merc” (8). Soon afterwards, Seth takes her on a ride and then slows the car before a low wall, which seems to rise from the almost ubiquitous rain.
123
124>The Olds crept toward the wall. Mercedes wondered how fast they would have to hit it to go right through and over the cliff she felt sure was on the other side. Hadn’t anybody ever done that? Seth wouldn’t, Seth was being careful – though not really as careful as she would have liked – but what if she came up here sometime with somebody else? Maybe with somebody who was drunk or something. She pictured herself in another car, the old dark car she had seen beside the road, plunging over the cliff, down, down, down, until at last it hit the rocks and burst into flame. Some guy was in that car right now making out with some chick, Mercedes thought. Bet on it. (44)
125
126Given that the road features the woman in white as a numinous threat to those who pick her up, like Jim Long, that Rex von Madadh, the champion of the Fay, soon becomes involved with the widowed Sarah Howard, that Lisa Solomon and Arthur “Wrangler” Dunstan are engaged to be married at the end of the novel, and that Will Shields winds up with Morgan, who refers to him as brother and lover, leaving the liberated Ann Schindler (who refused to give up her name) to her own devices, the metaphor in this scene springs rather vividly to life. The wall, which Mercedes considers being smashed through in carelessness, seems to resonate with a hymen, with the car attaining a kind of Ballardian virility (or rapacity). As someone not yet sexually active, she wonders if others abandon themselves so easily and carelessly and plunge over a cliff from which there is no return. Almost all of the early action occurs on this road, and there is little reason to believe that its symbolic association would change. Meadow Grass, the camp for girls (featuring exotic ones from France, Brazil, and … Cleveland) has two gates, and it is under assault. When Ann Schindler shows up, Wrangler draws his gun on her in defense, forcing her to lock the gate. While she is not a true threat to the camp, many of her modern attitudes, presented routinely as selfish and almost petulantly childish by the text, indicate that her philosophy is antithetical to traditional gender roles for boys and girls (though she, too, thinks in binary terms about Mercedes’s behavior, remembering how she behaved as a young girl, suggesting that “girls will be girls”). In a final ironic twist, it seems that many girls are sent to Meadow Grass when single parents find a new romance, to temporarily get the unwanted child out of their hair, as Sissy tells Judy: “[S]uppose when you’re a little older your mother gets a new boyfriend. She might send you to Meadow Grass” (221).
127
128While there are many potential couples in the story, the budding relationship between Mercedes and Seth is the most prominent one explored in the text, and their narrative arc involves a protracted drive down the highway followed by a crash which leaves them in the hospital. The prominence of traditional wisdom and the magic of love and the life cycle handed down through fairy stories is made explicit in several key scenes, including the kiss between Mercedes and Seth:
129
130>They kissed, and it was not (as Mercedes had always heard it was supposed to be) before she knew what was happening. She knew perfectly well what was happening – that a whole world, new and strange, terrible yet wonderful, was unfolding for her. She understood, when their lips touched, exactly why Snow White and Sleeping Beauty had been awakened by a kiss, knew what those old grandmothers of eight hundred years ago had been trying to tell her, and knew that they *had* told her, their coded message coming clearly across the years, and that those dear old grandmothers – the bent crones at the firesides – had triumphed, their words not lost with the crackling of the sticks in their fires. That she and Seth or some other like Seth would someday ride on one white horse, laughing in the sunshine. (45-46)
131
132This introduces another image, of the horse as domestic security and bliss. Later, as they are locked in a cell (before being released by G. Gordon Kitty), they share a meal together that is so idealized as to become almost sexual in nature:
133
134>[T]he wine was like a meadow in springtime. Every wildflower flourished there – buttercups and daisies, violets white or blue … She knew them all. A wren trilled in her ears, and a wind from the south ruffled her hair. … The cell spun about her; Seth was a bronze giant with eyes torn from a summer sky; the bandages were unworthy of his face ...she had never known how hungry she was, how hungry she had been all her life. She dipped a roll into the honey, and it was nectar and ambrosia. A key turned in the lock, which squeaked in climax. (242-3)
135
136Of course, this imagery matches the atmosphere in Castleview when the rain finally stops for a time: “Like a giant in golden armor, a Canadian high had driven off the wet and stormy low that had dominated the north-central area for nearly a week. Crystalline and visible, it stood guard above it now, so that the new day was born in sunshine” (201). If we go back to their initial encounter in the car, they are interrupted by Long Jim (who we have already learned died over ten years ago after giving the mysterious woman in white a ride.) Mercedes can see him as he truly is when she closes her yes: “He was as old as her father, … and perhaps older; but a perfectly ordinary man until she shut her eyes. She kept them open, wide open, after she discovered that, staring sometimes at him, sometimes at Seth or the rain-wet trees” (47).
137
138These visions are not the only ones she seems to have. At one point she remembers, probably from the influence of Morgan's sad, impossible tune, a man with a black beard with a horn and a boy blowing through a shell: “The shell was broken at the tip and had lost its color – she had not been interested” (129). In the vision, she leaves him, and the sound behind her “filled her with a horrible, forever-unsatisfied longing for something that was not woman, the bugling of a beast whose mates all were dead, whose consorts do not yet exist” (129). This masculine longing for the unattained is directly mirrored in the needs of Sally Howard and her sister Kate Roberts, and might even explain the goal of the Wild Hunt, which seeks so ceaselessly and destructively for its feminine prey.
139
140Sally notices that the ghost of her husband Tom still inhabits her house, either metaphorically as other men temporarily fill some of his roles or perhaps literally, given the other spirits we encounter in the story. Her sister suffers from a more broken relationship that immediately manifests itself when she enters the Howard residence: Kate's purposelessness prompts her to toy with the notion of suicide, and soon enough, when the Wild Hunt finds her, she actually shoots herself in the head, but not before her resentment for her sister surfaces: “Sally had gotten a good man who was crazy about her, or anyway had been while he was alive. … Sally didn’t really understand Seth at all; because Seth was a boy, would be a grown man the next time you looked, and who the hell understood *them*?” (182) Though she has not actually been drinking, she recognizes that her state of mind is actually that of an inebriated person: “I got blasted when Stanley split, and went to bed with that salesman, and now Judy’s gone and I’m thinking drunk again” (182-3). Her concern for her daughter is definitely muted by her other worries: “Judy was gone. … [Kate] thought about that in the same way she thought about Stan. It hadn’t worked out, she and Stan. They had never quite fitted, and now Stan – now Stan’s daughter – was gone. Kate really and sincerely hoped that the two of them would be happier out of her life than they had ever been in it, and it was nice to be able to start fresh” (182). Of course, her resolve to make that fresh start is extremely short-lived. Through the broken window, she sees a “big - … enormous – man peering in. His face was bearded; above the black hairs his skin was a pale green. His eyes met hers, and at the shock her hand tightened convulsively” (185). [While this is almost certainly the Green Man who rides Sleipnir, the description given here and at the conclusion of the story when Phyllis Sun peers into the singular eye of a creature much more like Odin are different enough to make us question why this particular manifestation features *two* eyes (or at least more than one).] Later, Lucie and Boomer will encounter the spirit of Kate Roberts in the Fay lands, her cheeks bleeding and her hands “thorn-torn” as she calls out for her daughter Judy, finally putting a name to the unfulfilled need insider her (204).
141
142Clearly, Kate was not honest with herself about her emotional requirements while she was alive, but that gaping emptiness left in the loss of her daughter reveals her true concern when the other problems of life vanish. Sally is similarly lost throughout the novel, though her dreams are slightly more romantic “[I]t seemed to her that it had been only a year or so ago that [she and Tom] had met in American History. Lost in a waking dream, she recalled how Tom’s smile had lit up his eyes” (182). However, even before these reveries, it is quite clear that her goals are primarily focused in moving on: “She might (she would) find another man, a man who would take care of her and their home, and be a father to Seth” (104). These thoughts are amazingly quick in coming, considering that less than a full day has passed since her husband's demise. [The funeral baked meats do not even have time to coldly furnish forth the marriage tables, and many of Sally's internal monologues seem to want discourse of reason, as Hamlet might say, blinded by romance and hope.] Her casuistry is also on display when her dog Rexy reappears, causing her to drop her key, pistol, and cartridges quite carelessly in the lawn. “Suppose there had been another dog, a dog who looked a great deal like Rexy. *That* was certainly possible: half German shepherd and half Irish setter, Rexy had been born two blocks over, one of a sizable litter” (105). Almost immediately afterward, she finds that “Something lay in the bed, in Tom’s place” (107).
143
144The names of Sally and her mother Sarah (names which are occasionally interchangeable, though not often in modern usage) mean “princess.” Despite this obvious channeling of the fairy tale spirit in her character development, when Rex von Madadh begins speaking of the power of the Fay in the modern world, he notes that those strange beings can often impersonate other human beings, but also stresses that “every human being possesses the ability to change his appearance to a surprising degree” (226). He also notes that in the modern world, strange occurrences and eldritch sightings do not often involve extraordinary or wealthy individuals: “Here are no princesses – the persons are nearly always poor peasants” (226-7). Whether Sally Howard constitutes a genuine princess is up for debate, given Lucie's warning against opening the door to von Madadh (though she seems first and foremost be an ally of Fee, a potential but impotent rival). Sally had deferred to her husband's judgment in business matters, even though she seems to move on very quickly. [The reappearance of her dog Rex, a name which means “king,” also resonates with the stories of Arthur's return as “the once and future king.” However, it does not seem that Rex von Madadh holds any of her husband's old spirit, despite the presence of the ghost she perceives from time to time in the house. Perhaps the ghost of her husband should be considered as a comforting masculine presence to be assumed by anyone who enters the house and acts protectively or possessively, as if they were auditioning for the role. Fee sleeps in her bed and the deputy acts to protect her, both taking up the same space as the supposed ghost without any awareness of it.] Given the extreme rapidity with which Sally moves on, perhaps the most ideal mortal woman in the story is actually Lisa Solomon, who agrees to marry Arthur Dunstan and does not hesitate to leave the safety of her car to fight during the final hunt.
145
146On the other hand, Ann Schindler might be more heroic and assertive than Sally while still being a “bad” wife. When Shields first hears the way that Lisa Solomon speaks to Arthur Dunstan, he is filled with a kind of envy: “Had there ever been a time when Ann had been so anxious to hear his voice? Yes, for a few months before their wedding, and a few months after it. It had ended when Ann found that she was carrying Merc, but he had hoped for a year or three that a certain cadence of Ann’s would eventually return. He knew now that it never would” (210). Though she certainly owns all of the modern kitchen gadgets, Ann collects recipes and creates clever cookbooks (based on the literary tradition which Will actually studied in school) without ever seeming to cook: Will cannot remember the last time that she actually made him a meal with love. Her parenting is also self-absorbed. She seeks to understand Mercedes by thinking about herself: “Mercedes only wanted to come when she knew she was not wanted. Hadn’t she herself been like that at Mercedes’s age? It was necessary, after all – it was precisely the things from which girls were excluded that girls had to learn if they were to become women” (12). One imagines that the didactic position of the novel, situated as it is amidst a chronicle of decaying romantic and traditional ideals and their collision with the modern world, presents Ann's attitude ironically.
147
148We have already mentioned how the wall which protects Mercedes and Seth from a dangerous plunge assumes a kind of metaphorically sexual skein, and several other scenes in the novel also contain allegorical scenes which freely move between heavy-handed and bizarre. Almah Cosgriff brings a casserole over to the mourning Sally Howard which “smells absolutely heavenly” (86). While she gives Sally a hug, she sets the casserole on top of *Good Housekeeping*. Sally is also surprised by the knowledge Mrs. Cosgriff displays of her kitchen. That exact and unfaltering ability to instantly perceive where another woman would keep her tea and teapot can only be attributed to the competent wisdom of age and the universal nature (and “heavenly” import) of such domestic traditions. When Almah embraces Sally, the younger woman is reminded of her Grandma Chattes (87). Sally is also struck with the realization that all of the beautiful things of childhood and youth will fall to rags and perish, but her momentary disorientation, confusing Mrs. Cosgriff for her grandmother, is where the allegory attains weirdness. Despite her age, Almah as a first name implies a young woman or a virgin (and is quite famous for its use in the prophecy of the birth of the Messiah in the Book of Isaiah) and Cosgriff is a Gaelic name meaning “victorious,” while Chattes is of course a French term for cat. Alas, Chattes is easily and commonly used in the vulgar sense for female genitals in both English and French. In this case, Almah stands for an ancient tradition of strict gender roles and propriety, and her home-made food resonates with a mystical familial communion made explicit later in the novel (something denied Will Shields for what seems a long time). Moved by grief and other fantasies, Sally confuses her neighbor with another presence from her childhood, but one that seems to be associated with something far more sexually explicit and vulgar. Her need for material comfort and security is hopelessly entangled with sex and its baser aspects (beneath the charm, after all, Rex von Madadh might be a muddy and smelly dog or ape). Given the facts that Liam Fee also reminds her of a cat, that she thinks of her deceased husband as a “tomcat” who failed to land on his feet, and that Puss-in-Boots as G. Gordon Kitty will manifest anthropomorphic features by the end of this novel, her grandmother's name, just like Michael Daoine's, might actually be enough to speculate that Sally's ancestors could have been fay in nature. Her pull towards comfort and passion in this scene is metaphorically confused with her need for virtuous and maternal affection.
149
150Even characters as ambiguous as Ann Schindler at times manifest a kind of traditional sensibility. When Sancha is wounded, Ann feels that common sense dictates “that the brassiere should have been discarded, too; but that the humiliation of naked breasts might in some way kill the wounded girl – though she would die anyway” (139). Just as each of Doctor Dunstan's daughters paints a different picture in the expression of her creativity (linked to the sitting room where suitors would have been entertained), all of the people in the novel express their romantic urges differently. Creativity cannot be truly killed, but it can be stripped of its magic and more whimsical fancies quite easily. The journalist who writes for *Castleview* is another, ordinary iteration of Viviane Morgan. The castle, identified as a *Morgana Fata*, is itself a kind of mirror. While on the plot level this is difficult to explain, as a symbolic representation of the stripping away of fancy and romance from prose over time it makes perfect sense. The fay Viviane Morgan, the embodiment of a dangerous and powerful magic, is still a reality, but the spare style of the modern world has reduced valid expression to the objective, utilitarian prose and reportage of fact associated with journalism and realism. The journalist's goal is to uncover the true story, and, in this case, that must involve Viviane Morgan. Even when our dreams are quite ordinary and uninspired, hamstrung and crushed by the modern world, they are still real.
151
152## A Misidentified Tune: *Peer Gynt*, the Boyg, Ann Schindler, and *Death*
153
154The play *Peer Gynt* is explicitly and perhaps erroneously mentioned when Shields hears the organ playing at the museum on Willow Street, at a point when his older employee, Bob Roberts, is seemingly abducted and vanishes, only to appear later at Meadow Grass:
155
156>His fingers groped along the wall, feeling only smooth oak paneling. The rain dripped from the eaves as before; but when a second or two had passed, the house was no longer weeping alone in the silence. An instrument with a voice as deep as an organ (though it was not really an organ) sobbed, too, its notes long and throbbing, reedy and infinitely sad. Hearing them, Shields froze. Seconds passed before he identified the melody. It was the “Valse Triste” from *Peer Gynt*. (53)
157
158Ibsen’s play is based on an earlier fairy tale in which the hunter hero saves three dairy maids from a serpentine troll, called the Boyg, which impedes travelers. While the tune Shields perhaps mistakenly identifies as the “Valse Triste” probably refer to a movement from a different opera composed by Sibelius written for his brother-in-law's play *Kuolema* (translated as *Death*), Ibsen’s *Peer Gynt* still bears some relevance to *Castleview*. Klaus Van Der Berg states of Ibsen's work: “its origins are romantic, but the play also anticipates the fragmentations of emerging Modernism” (684). *Castleview* traces the effects of modern attitudes and degenerating traditions on people who are by their very nature still prone to flights of romance and fancy, and the situation at Meadow Grass, with its three young “maids” and the troll-like being which Shields finds as he explores the barn, bears more than a passing resemblance to the plot of *Peer Gynt*.
159
160While the original fairy tale is perhaps more simplistic than Ibsen’s take, he believed that it held basis in fact. His exploration of the theme involves the problem of modern egoism and selfishness. The eponymous hero, with an overactive imagination illustrated in his tale of a reindeer hunt, spoils his chances of a good marriage with the daughter of the richest farmer in his community. At the wedding, he drinks heavily and runs off with the bride. Banished as a consequence, Gynt comes upon three maidens wooed by trolls in the mountains. As a result of his drink, he is rendered unconscious and meets a green woman whose trollish father offers him the chance to become a troll if he will marry the girl, who claims to have conceived a child born of Gynt’s mind. In Ibsen’s version, the Boyg is a selfish voice of egoism, spurring Gynt to avoid direct responsibility. Later, in the waking world, a woman in green arrives with a boy she claims to be Gynt’s child. Gynt escapes to earn his living in many dubious professions as he travels throughout the world. Eventually a wreck strips him of his possessions, and he faces judgment, questioning if he has ever been truly himself or simply acted as a selfish troll throughout his life.
161
162The three girls at Meadow Grass probably resonate with the three maidens courted by trolls in *Peer Gynt*. The description of the camp for girls emphasizes its placement “in a valley that seemed separate from the rest of the world, [with] a big white barn and a red-roofed rambling fieldstone building” (30). The girls more or less abandoned there are the blonde Cecelia Stevenson from Cleveland, the dark Sancha Balanka from Rio, and the raven-haired Lucie d'Carabas (whose check seems to have bounced, putting Lisa Solomon in financial difficulty - she is opening the gate and courting the powers associated with water and rain in the story). Wolfe plays with fairy tales so often that it is worth taking a more critical look at the implications of his source material, from the eyes of another respected SF artist, Samuel R. Delany:
163
164>The specific conventions of various traditional types of fantasy are simply too ethnically located to support, as a basal fantasy structure, the intraenthnocism of much SF tries for: elves and fairies are too specifically Celtic; trolls and goblins too specifically Germanic; vampires, ghouls, and golems are too specifically middle-European. …
165
166>Sword-and-sorcery begins as a specifically male escape from the coming responsibility of marriage, family, and a permanent home: for example, wife, children, job. Its purpose … is to provide the adolescent male audience with a bigger, stronger man to identify with, who rescues the woman, beats up the villain, and who is loved briefly and allowed to leave without hassle.
167
168>Fairy tales – or fairy-tale plots – will simply not suffice for this: They are about nothing *but* the binding alliances formed between worthy young men and wealthy fathers-in-law, with docile daughters acting as the sign of the exchange of the paternal social position. … In the traditional sword-and-sorcery tale, the hero is not the worthy prince, or even (in its Celtic version) the particularly clever proletarian or petit bourgeois seeking to marry into the aristocracy by replacing inherited wealth with brains; he is the barbarian, an outlander, a stranger. His prototype in the fairy tale is *not* the prince, but the troll whom the prince, journeying through the Great Bad Place, slays *en passant* on his way to the castle to receive his tasks. (Delany)
169
170While Ann Schindler is far from the hero of a sword-and-sorcery tale, her yearning for independence from social traditions and conventions, even if she is presented selfishly from Will’s point of view, actually runs close to the more anti-heroic sword-and-sorcery figure (and thus the troll figure) that Delany discusses above: she acts to save her husband when she intuits that the troll-ape is there by running it (and her husband) over. She saves Arthur Dunstan by ignoring Lucie’s warnings. Despite these actions, unromantic descriptions of her character abound, one of which involves Shields lying “in bed beside a snoring Ann” (17). He still harbors some thoughts of a sexual nature about her, but they emphasize her selfish needs: “Sex was always best when Ann had eaten a big dinner and was ready for sleep, impossible when she was dieting. You couldn’t have everything, Shields told himself” (112). When she has the chance, rather than share as Mercedes and Seth do in the tower meal, she pounces on food: “In a trice [the last pot-sticker] was on her plate” (80).
171
172This greed is also coupled with the certainty that she is almost always correct, and that she fully understands the nature of reality. During their conversation at the Golden Dragon, Ann and her husband discuss the vision of the castle, and she quickly questions its validity: “As Mercedes says, get real. You saw the castle?  … [I]t was an illusion” (80-1). Will knows that nothing he says can sway her: “Shields opened his mouth and closed it again. There was no means by which Ann could be made to understand what he wanted to say, ever” (81). Just as he will require saving from the troll when Ann arrives, in this scene, “[Shields] was saved by the arrival of their waiter” (81). Both the waiter and Ann are actually unintentionally dangerous figures, and this is not their only connection. When the waiter attacks Arthur Dunstan in a failed assassination attempt later, he tries to use a boning knife. Mercedes immediately recognizes it because her mother has one: “It’s for taking the bones out of capons – stuff like that” (163). Deboning a castrated rooster has a certain kind of emasculating ring to it. Hwan Lee destroys the incompetently chivalrous brother of Sancha (whom we have already identified as a stand in for the wounded Fisher King of Arthurian myth) because he is not weakened by useless chivalry. Similarly, Will Shields is ineffective against Ann because he simply doesn't mean very much to her in her self-absorption. (The text does make clear that this is something of a two-way street, however: at one point, Ann claims he never notices anything about anyone unless he is trying to sell them a car, and his initial mercenary reaction to the men working for him at the car dealership is to get rid of both of them and hire a woman, with him taking the other man's place on the sales floor.)
173
174Even with these “negative” traits, Ann acts decisively at several key points, though at the finale it is still Will Shields who advances without conscience volition to serve as the champion of humanity. While the plot of *Peer Gynt* may not directly relate to the story, selfishness and egoism are certainly implied in most of her actions. Her love for Shields is only expressed when he does something for her. The assault on Meadow Grass, which would seem to be orchestrated by the amoral fay forces at work, might just as easily be instigated by bored, dissatisfied youths from the town inspired by a longing to do *something*, anything, to break up the monotony of life, and the fairy and elf tradition often highlights that they are merely mischievous rather than eternally malevolent. Shields is quick to assert that the ape-like being that almost crushed him actually *was* a troll: “I met a troll, Mercedes. Met – hell, I wrestled one. Your mother hit us both with an old Jeep Cherokee. The troll had its back to her, so she couldn’t see me, or at least I hope she couldn’t” (199).
175
176Once again, this scene has the hallmark of allegory. Shields falls into the trap of removing a young fearful boy from a trap, and in so doing finds himself caught in the arms of the ape, squeezing the life out of him. Ann manages, using her car, to burst through the stable and free Shields, fulfilling the prophecy of her fortune cookie for perhaps the second time (the first time she found Arthur “Wrangler” Dunstan unconscious in the woods and brought him to medical attention). Even so, she fails to see Will Shields and runs him over, believing herself to be a conquering hero. Yet on a more metaphorical level, the arms that squeeze Shields so tightly, wringing out romance and financial resources with selfishness, belong to Ann Schindler herself. The Boyg in *Peer Gynt* proclaims itself, “myself!” Similarly, Ann Schindler insists that she has a right to what is hers: “I have a right to my own name” (94). When he sends his car to Ann, she says, “I love you very, very much” and hangs up right away (19). She demands the house: “This is my money, Willie – mostly mine, anyway – and I want that house” (10). Sally Howard, by contrast, defers to her husband’s desires, even though he is not present: “It’s not up to me [to accept the offer and sell the house]. Tom will have to decide” (7). Later, when Shields returns his wife to the hotel before going to his dealership, he is anxious to leave Ann behind, and she seems just as eager to be free of her husband: “Mercedes can watch TV just as well with you gone.  And I can readjust as well – better. Did you like that Chinese place where we ate last night?” (11) As Shields leaves, he realizes that he takes slightly too long to “[remember] to add, ‘Darling’” to his farewell. The troll whose arms he must escape is in fact his wife, and perhaps her claim that he does not pay any attention to anyone who does not serve his needs is yet another diagnosis of herself. It is only after he frees the fearful boy (both a diversion of the fay forces and a metaphorical representative of Will himself) and Ann runs him over that Shields finally stands up to her in his resolve to return the Cherokee to Lisa Solomon as soon as possible: “Ann, shut the hell up” (169). The arms of the troll are no longer squeezing the life out of him.
177
178While *Peer Gynt* has more obvious relevance to *Castleview*, the “Valse Triste” is actually famous from the play *Death*. The main character’s mother is ill, and has a dream of dancing, before Death comes to knock on her door in the form of her late husband. The second act features her son coming across the cottage of a witch who gives him a ring which will allow him to see his future bride. Years later, he perishes in a fire, and sees the ghost of his mother holding a scythe, welcoming him to the land of death. While Sally Howards survives the events of *Castleview*, she does perceive the ghostly echo of her scarcely mourned husband in her house at several points.  All those who die, to the living, exist most strongly in the realm of memory and imagination. The “death” Will Shields endures frees him from his marriage, though only Ann could actually release Shields from the trollish grasp squeezing the life from him. At the culmination of the story, he is left to breathe a more rarified, romantic air.
179
180## Cars and Horses: Working for the Bank
181
182At one point, Will Shields jokes that his cars and his dealership are not truly his: they belong to the bank. Once again, the old feudal system has been transformed without actually being destroyed. Robert’s grandfather, Doc Dunstan, built the house which became the museum on Willow Street. He was a Wells Fargo man who believed that the castle “was rocks out in Arizona. A mesa, he called it” (26). Coincidentally or not, a mesa in Spanish is a table, and thus we see the metaphor of King Arthur’s round table brought to life with local color: Will Shields works to put food on his own table by using the tools which the bank permits him to own, and the structure commemorating lofty ideals and knightly, chivalrous behavior was constructed by a man who helped establish the banks that currently own almost everything, making Shields something of a champion for their interests.
183
184When he decides to take Lisa's Cherokee from the lot to find out about the castle, he gets a flash of insight: “[I]nsanely, Shields felt that he had been standing before the gate of a fortress. This gray-haired man – an old squire or a master-at-arms, perhaps a master-of-horse – had just led up the charger he was to ride. And it was not young and elegant, or even very clean, but a big, rough, rust-colored stallion with flashing eyes” (21). If the Cherokee represents the vehicle of those knightly ideals, Will is not the only driver. Leonard Robert Roberts drives it first, leaving the keys in the ignition for Will to pick up later. In addition, when the need for quick action arises, there is “another set [of keys] up in Wrangler’s room” (170). Just as the car embodies the accoutrement and agency of a noble night, there is more than one representative capable of wielding the title, for in this case the power vested in Arthur's descendants is almost universal. Even Tom Howard had a “skeleton” key which his wife attempts to carry with her after his death. Any and perhaps all of them might have served as champion to take up the omnipresent human heritage of mystery and responsibility.
185
186## Dust and Dust of Ashes Close All the Vestal Virgins Care: Food and Its Preparation
187
188Oddly, the transcendent communion Seth and Mercedes share while held captive within the fairy version of the castle involves food and a romanticized description of it. When Dr. Rex von Madadh appears most charming, he is preparing food for Sally Howard, and even Ann Schindler invests cooking with an almost religious significance, couching her “rosary” in terms of a complicated recipe for cheesecake. Similarly, the elderly couple who warn her of the lady in white and the black rider, as well as letting her know about Meadow Grass, are famous for Emily's contest-winning pear jelly. We will assume that this pattern lends some significance to the very process of food preparation, given that the assassin sent to kill Arthur Dunstan is a waiter in the Golden Dragon, where the males are quite protective of the kitchen, refusing to allow Phyllis Sun in.
189
190The symbolism of the Golden Dragon for Chinese culture should at least be glossed over, for while Hwan has seen *something*in Castleview, he is described quite differently than the assimilated Phyllis Sun; she does not know more than a few words of Chinese. Much as the legend of King Arthur (as Wolfe uses it in the novel) suggests that these European characters all share his blood line, the myths of China posit the dragon as a powerful and magical ancestor to other animals. It is an amalgamation of fierce beasts, with parts from deer, tigers, crocodiles, and even the eyes of a demon. Most importantly, they are closely associated with water, including rivers, seas, and waterfalls, as Viviane Morgan is. (Whether a coincidence or not, dragons in Chinese are known as “Long,” and one translation for a golden dragon might be Jīnsè jù lóng, which bears some resemblance to the name of Jim Long.)
191
192Whether her exclusion from the kitchen has anything to do with Phyllis Sun’s luck in surviving the gaze of Sleipnir’s rider, Ann Schindler has some unusual, contradictory uses for her recipes. She recites them as prayers even as she exploits them for profit by tying them to a particular literary or historical tradition. In her everyday life, she never seems to cook for her family and has little use for traditional conventions. Even her random prayers, however, seem to have some relevance. In the chapter entitled “Rosary Cheesecake,” her recipe requires “three tablespoons of White King Arthur flour,” and “two egg *yolks*. You have to throw away the whites, or find something else to do with them” (187). Given Will Shields association with King Arthur, and perhaps the parallel use of the term “white,” while he might once have been necessary to her in engendering a family, after the egg is hatched and the yolk consumed, the protective albumin has no further use, and her treatment of Will after Mercedes is born reflects this. Luckily, Viviane Morgan still has a use for those egg whites. Some of Ann's other food observations might be applied to human beings as well: “the reason California oranges are different, less mess, is the climate; they’re really the same variety” (83). Humans, too, might initially seem very different due to variations in climate, soil, and generation, but under the right conditions the heroism of King Arthur and the nobility he represented can be reborn once again.
193
194Will dwells on food as a lost comfort and pleasure from the past: “Had he really had lunch at some other restaurant with Ann and Merc before driving to the real estate agency?” (79) He remembers pancakes, but realizes that had been “whole centuries before; and the cereals had been served by his mother, quick breakfasts before school. Breakfast? ‘An equal time hath shoveled it / ‘neath the wrack of Greece and Rome. / Neither wait we any more / That worn sail which Argo bore” (79). This verse is from Kipling’s poem, “A Song of Travel,” which asks where all of the ancient myths and legends have gone: “[W]here’s the lamp that Hero lit / Once to call Leander home?” The loss of vitality as time passes proceeds towards nothingness: “Dust and dust of ashes close / All the Vestal Virgin's care; / And the oldest altar shows / But an older darkness there. / Age-encamped Oblivion / Tenteth every light that shone.” However, the poem concludes with the human attempt to fight this obscured, forgotten fate, which all must face alike: “By our Arts do we create / That which Time himself devours - / Such machines as well may run / 'Gainst the Horses of the Sun.” Humanity struggles to forge a new and lasting home immune to the destruction of time, even if it is but a monument from the past. While Ann has allowed her interest in food to become both commercialized and emasculating, the communion which Seth and Mercedes develop through sharing the food in the tower is transcendent. The verbiage there promises a return to lost and, most importantly, *shared* dreams, bringing to fruition the promise of new life and growth.
195
196## The Isle of Glass, the Castle, and the Folk Forces of Morgan le Fay
197
198In “A Second View of *Castleview*,” Joe Christopher notes that the moving castle describes “the traditional Celtic isle of the dead – laid, as is often the case, to the west of the Celtic lands. … The fact that this island lies in an ocean in its supernatural world explains the scene in which a human, Judy, on the island sees waves between her and her home” (68). He also notes that this island, set in fairy, “is a heavily wooded land” when it is most expanded. However, one does not necessarily have to cross over any body of water to get there, even though Lucie's horse certainly drinks from a stream on the way there. Judy Youngberg is able to reach it by leaving the turret window of the Howard residence in her flight from Fee, winding up in the floating castle of the other world. Christopher also notes:
199
200>In the medieval Welsh poem “The Spoils of Annwfn,” which tells of King Arthur’s ship-journey to the supernatural island, the repetition of the name of the island emphasizes the word *caer*, which is used in Welsh for a hill fort, a Roman fort, or a castle. … One of the terms for the dwelling in the poem is Caer Wydr, which translates as the Fortress of Glass. … A character living in the castle [King Geimhreadh, the personification of winter] in Wolfe’s book identifies his locale as “the Isle of Glass,” which is “west of Ireland.” … The identification of the Isle of Glass with the Fortress of Glass, as seems likely, confirms this island and castle as the Celtic realm of the dead. Further, in “The Spoils of Annwfn,” another of the terms used is Caer Siddi, the fortress of the fairies. … As another character in the novel points out, there is a traditional, “confusing connection between [fairies] and the spirits of the dead. (Christopher 68-9)
201
202Most Arthurians will no doubt note the title of the final chapter in *Castleview*, “The Land of Apples,” though Christopher does not mention that this is Avalon, the Island of Apples, where Arthur will be healed for his future return. These apples are granted an even heavier Christian symbolism in Wolfe's hand, as he freely syncretizes even Hestia and Saint Martha, the brother of Lazarus in Ann's recipe-filled thoughts, as she considers an olive tree that “Lazarus had cut down the year before, the old apple. Feeding the harvesters … press the mixture into a spring-form cake pan” (Wolfe 216). The cutting down of this olive tree is mirrored in the final beheading of the Green Man, when “Green-faced beneath – then above – its olive hair, the giant's head tumbled over the stones to rest beside his helm. It had not yet ceased to roll when the first snowflakes fell” (273). Even if harvest and then winter must come, the return to spring is of course the goal of all of these proceedings – Lazarus, too, is a symbol of resurrection. In addition to being both the Isle of Glass and Avalon (and perhaps even a metaphorical form of Morgan Le Fay herself), one more fairy association with the island is almost certainly intended.
203
204We have already noted that von Madadh's employment with the Daoine institute refers to the Daoine Sidhe, the divine folk of Irish lore who supplanted the Tuatha De Danann and live in hollow mounds. (Some legends also attribute three fairy queens to them, further highlighting the close relationship between Arthurian legends and Celtic myth). The Daoine Sidhe hunt, fight, and steal children. However, the Tuatha De Danann, the earlier race of magical gods, traveled to Ireland on a large cloud, defeating the Firbolg and giant Fomorians in their conquest of the islands. Tír na nÓg is another mythical island west of Ireland, and the Sidhe are also reputed to have given their advanced smith skills to mortals in a story which resonates with the legends of Prometheus. The island of Tír na nÓg is the “Land of the Young,” where youth, beauty, and health are everlasting. In the most famous story of Tír na nÓg, the woman Niamh brings the human Oisin to the realm on a magical horse, where he does not age. The floating stronghold on the Isle of Glass, surrounded by water, rain or not, has mixed all of these stories, becoming Avalon, where Arthur goes to recover from his wounds, and Tír na nÓg as well, given its attraction to the young: Lucie, Sissy, Mercedes, Seth, Judy, and Sancha all wind up there in the final scenes, and the adults are forced to come rescue them. Even the stories of Cronus and his healing sleep involve the mystical Islands of the Blessed, completing this synthesis. [The Islands of the Blessed are also mentioned in Wolfe’s more or less contemporary short story, “The Haunted Boardinghouse,” insuring that they were indeed in his sights during the writing of this novel.]
205
206If there is a didactic lesson in the sudden disappearance of all of the younger characters from *Castleview* (whether lured away by the figure of Rex von Madadh or chased by Liam Fee), it probably has something to do with acquired life experience and wisdom. For example, Judy's immature self-recriminations are married to fear. When Fee chases her, she feels she can deal with her problems if her mother is not involved, “knowing that running to her [mother] would only bring more trouble. (Judy had made Daddy leave, she knew she had)” (162). The adults who are completely motivated by reason and modern attitudes, such as the real estate agent Joy Beggs (considering Tom Howard's death purely for its impact on selling a house), are not privy to that kind of youthful fancy: “[T]hey say you can see a castle in the distance, sometimes, just at sunset. I have to admit *I’ve* never seen it, and I’ve lived here seventeen years plus” (6). Joy is an unromantic creature of the modern world motivated primarily by financial gain. Conversely, the old couple who operate the Red Stove Inn have never seen the tempting woman in white, but their mature and nurturing relationship, in which Alfred (whose name means “elf counsel”) pushes Emily's wheelchair indicates that they have probably created a fulfilling life free from temptation in their old age.
207
208The encroachment of the supernatural into the world of the living (beyond the long-standing stories of the woman in white constantly lurking along the highway) involves the arrival of Liam Fee, who is determined to own the Howard house. When he tries to purchase the property by leaving a check for the asking price, we discover that “Tom didn’t want to sell it, not really” (152). This reluctance to sell might have cost him his life. In attempting to rationalize exactly what Liam Fee is (though the breaking of a mirror upon seeing himself might seem a natural precaution for a vampire, it also resonates with the breaking of the glass in the museum, the breaking of the windshield through which Seth plunges in his accident, and the shattered window of the Cherokee during the assault on Meadow Grass), we should also consider his name. Oddly enough, Liam is a shortened version of William, meaning a defender or denoting a helm. As a surname, Fee can be derived from the Irish for “raven.” If Rex von Madadh represents the best that the fairy world has to offer, then Fee would seem to be its more closed and secret part – perhaps even a mirror image of the waking world, set free to instigate a kind of incompetent havoc. Later developments suggest that he and others like him are all that is left of the alien civilization which indirectly led to Arthur’s ascendance. More metaphorically, the old superstitions and beliefs he represents have become completely foreign to the modern world, though unlike von Madadh, Fee seems well-suited to exploit base instincts like greed and fear. The close relationship between the names Will and Liam do not actually suggest a relationship, even if both attempt to gain the Howard residence, but they do suggest that Liam intends to attain dominion as champion and owner of the Howard house. In his first introduction, he declares himself an archdeacon of a faith which does not worship the Jewish God (32). Later, von Madadh discusses the aims of the Daoine Institute and brings up the people who cling to older beliefs, like those “in Ireland who still believe in leprechauns and banshees” (195). He says, “The Fairy Faith was widespread in western Ireland at the time [Michael Daoine] was growing up; his parents had been believers, and several relative had actually had brushes with the fairies, or at least claimed to have had them” (195). The possibility that the two worlds might have interbred also exists, as suggested by Michael’s last name. All of the houses in the story, from the tower of Geimhreadh to the museum on Willow Street, might also be connected, extensions of the supernatural into the ordinary world, part of the magical construction hinted at by the occupation of the contractor Michael Daoine.
209
210In addition to traditional tales of medieval chivalry and flights of fancy, Wolfe also incorporates several folk or urban legends into his story. Many have some basis in real-life stories. When Sally hears her window break and Mr. Fee knocks at her front door, soon enough she sees, through that kitchen window, a great hairy beast. Later, when the sheriff shoots at it, it seems to be followed by a dog. Almost immediately afterwards, she receives a call from the press, looking for confirmation that she has seen something like the Big Muddy Monster. The appearance of that particular monster, whose sightings spread throughout Murphysboro and the Southern Illinois area, involves a theme which runs throughout the novel. In 1973, a young couple whose relationship was not approved of by the girl’s father were parked in a car late at night (much as Seth and Mercedes park). They heard a scream and saw something they estimated to be over seven feet tall, covered in whitish hair and mud, emerging from the nearby river. Their report was given credence by the police because it subjected them to disciplinary consequences. Soon, several others in the area reported seeing a large and pale ape-like form, and a police hunt culminated in a trained dog refusing to enter a barn. Some reports indicated that the beast had an interest in ponies.
211
212The ape-like creature which Will Shields encounters in the barn, smelling of carrion, also seems to have an interest in horses, but whether that troll-like creature is distinct from Rex von Madadh never becomes clear. Lucie warns Sally against opening the door when Rex comes, and he is concerned with his muddy tracks when he first enters, later leaving muddy paw prints on Mercedes’s hospital bed. When he sees the gun in Sally’s hand, he advises her, “If you use it, please make very sure you’re shooting at what you think you are and not at me” (135-6). We should remember that the deputy had just fired at the large apparition Sally had glimpsed through the broken window. Its presence is announced by a dog: “outside but quite close to the house, a dog barked – joyfully, Sally thought. She glanced through the jagged opening that had been her kitchen window. Something much larger than a man was moving out there, its crooked legs outlined against the white fence that separated the yard from the cornfield; its eyes gleamed red as it turned to stare at her” (78). When Rothbell Patterson from the Chicago Sun Times calls Sally, he wants her to confirm that she has seen something like “the Big Muddy Monster – a big, smelly, ape-like thing covered with hair” (93). The deputy also noted that the figure was accompanied by a large dog-like figure. We must assume that Mr. Fee and Dr. von Madadh are distinct entities, though Mr. Fee appears to be larger when it is dark. While both definitely labor on the side of the Fay, von Madadh exhibits compassion, even though he is the one who defeats Shields.
213
214Similarly, the motif of the “white lady” is introduced quite early and appears to be Viviane Morgan’s most common manifestation in the modern world (13). Alfred, proprietor of the Red Stove Inn, indicates that the white lady is simply a ghost who is searching for someone, standing by the road and begging (14). “Then there’s the black rider … The high school kids tell that he’s the one chasin’ the white lady, and if you see his eyes, you die” (16). They also tell Ann that a man named Jim Long once picked her up, and that he himself perished ten years ago: “run over, that's all. Hit-and-run driver” (15). According to what they knew, Long Jim had seen her before in passing cars “when he was walkin’ himself. He recollected that white face at the window” (16). Long Jim remains something of a mystery, though he is doomed to be run down once again in the final scenes.
215
216One of the other mysteries of the text involves Lucie’s seemingly fake French accent. She first appears as one of the girls at Meadow Grass, affecting that accent. Later, she sneaks into the backseat of Ann's car and advises Ann to ignore the fleeing horse that she sees after Arthur Dunstan is wounded. Whether Lucie represents a fallen girl or not, she certainly puts on affectations. Some of her offhand comments indicate that she has attempted to bargain with the watery powers of Morgan Le Fay before: “Once nearly I drowned, when I was a little child – thus I have the fear of waters” (66). Several times, it is mentioned that the Deeny Shee or Daoine Sidhe often steal children, “an ancient tactic of theirs” (224). Her identity is further confused by an early description of her crawling over the back of a seat in Ann’s car “as agilely as a monkey” (66). When she meets Shields, Lucie “h[olds] out her hand as though she expected it to be kissed” (110). Both she and his wife receive the same treatment: “Shields opened the rear door for Lucie, then the door in front for Ann” (110). 
217
218While she expects to be treated with respect, her aspirations go even further, imitating the vampiric qualities Sancha comes to acquire in her hunger for life, perhaps in imitation of Fee: “The one whom I thought dead [Arthur Dunstan] is not so, and I must inform him of this. Also that I tried very hard, very many times filling my mouth, spitting out when I could no longer drink. Of the Master of the Hunt, I have no further news” (120). Even though she succeeds in draining Arthur Wrangler, she fails, and much like everything else about her, this vampirism seems a mere affectation. During this report, she also forgets her French accent. Ignoring her warnings about opening the door to Dr. von Madadh, Sally notes, “[Lucie] was as American as you and I are when she came, then after a while she put on an accent” (135). While it might be tempting to think about the possibility that she has actually been replaced by the forces of Morgan Le Fay, it is probably more thematically apt to see her as someone drawn by nature to the darker attractions of gothic romance, who wants knowledge and worldly experience but ultimately fails to attain it, instead jeopardizing herself and others. As she warns Sally, “You never know what may come when you call, especially on a night like this. I did it once” (120). The horse Boomer recognizes her as an unsavory person, and refuses to think (at least, as the text presents it) of Lucie’s name: “Where was Sissy? Where was Sancha? Where was – for that matter, though he himself had never liked her …” (187). Lucie soon arrives, forcing him to travel into the fairy lands where she seems to meet her end.
219
220The problems which have beset Meadow Grass seem to have been invited inside by Lucie, and it seems likely that when Fee says, “We have several postulants here in your town … We wish to provide them with a suitable place of worship,” Lucie is one of them (32). Her imitation of vampirism becomes ironic, given her fate. Sancha’s terrible hunger seems to destroy her, and Lucie’s imitation of the dangerously exotic fails to preserve her. Just as von Madadh seems to hum the “Valse Triste” after viewing Tom Howard's body, the laughter of Lucie also contains “something frightening, with the soul of a lonely wind,” which Will Shields recognizes from earlier in the night, most probably in the tune he heard in the museum (111). Soon afterwards, she disappears from the back seat, as she will disappear from the narrative, erased by her need to be something which she is not.
221
222It seems that Sissy’s meeting with Geimhreadh somehow flows from observing Lucie to see what she is up to. She reports that Lucie was talking to someone by the creek she had “never seen before” (223). While the identity of this individual is never revealed, the implication is that she must have followed he, she, or it into the Fay lands. Geimhreadh is the only figure there who will even talk to the girl, and once again the ambiguity of these forces is illustrated: the personification of death and winter is a kindly, senile old man, in stark contrast to the murderous gaze of the Green Man in his Wild Hunt.
223
224## Do the Terrible Tomcat and the King of Dogs Live Happily Ever After?
225
226The ambiguity surrounding Viviane Morgan and Rex von Madadh is also present in descriptions of a much more innocuous character. When Seth first mentions his Aunt Kate and her daughter Judy, he notes, “Judy’s rotten tomcat” (45). While his recollection of G. Gordon Kitty is tinged with negativity (“They fight all the time, and they spray the furniture” (230)), a creature going by that name winds up freeing them from their imprisonment in the tower. Even Liam Fee and Tom Howard are at times described as cats. When Sally hears that her father, Bob Roberts, is missing, she thinks of him as “an old cat that always lands on its feet,” then immediately associates it with her deceased husband: “Cat – tomcat. Only Tom had not landed on his feet this time” (102). When Liam Fee shows up at her door, he suggests that the sound of her kitchen window breaking was merely the result of one of her pets: “’Per’aps your cat?’ He reminded her of a cat himself” (72). Given that her Grandma Chattes also had a name meaning quite the same thing, the cat imagery is every bit as prevalent as the focus on dogs brought into focus by von Madadh.
227
228G. Gordon Kitty, at least in his more dexterous and talkative human form, seems to resemble some depictions of “Puss in Boots.” At one point, Roberts tells his daughter that he “used to read you stories about [fairyland]. Remember 'Puss in Boots'? You used to love it. … A lot of people have believed in fairies. That's where those stories came from to begin with” (274). The plot of “Puss in Boots” involves the inheritance the three sons of a miller receive. The youngest gets only a cat, and despairs. The cat asks for a bag and a pair of boots, and assures the young man that he will eventually come off well. The cat plays dead and catches a rabbit, offering it to the king as a gift from his lord, calling him the Marquis of Carabas (this is also obviously where Lucie gets her name). Eventually, the cat advises the young man to bathe in the river naked, knowing that the king will be coming by with his daughter. Claiming that his master’s clothes have been stolen, he convinces the king to lend his owner fine clothing and give “the Marquis” a ride. The cat goes ahead, warning the peasants that they must say the land belongs to the Marquis of Carabas or they will die. Eventually, the cat manages to trick the ogrish master of a huge castle. During his audience with the powerful ogre, he says he has heard that it can change shapes: “You can, for example, transform yourself into a lion, an elephant, or the like” (Lang). We will return to the images in this sentence soon. The cat tricks the ogre into becoming a mouse, expressing incredulity that so powerful a beast could become so small, and eats it. The marvelous castle then becomes the young man's, and he succeeds in making an excellent match in marrying the princess. Yet again, the fairy tale structure emphasizes the manner in which a young man of little means can seek to make a good marriage and advance his place in the world.
229
230Certainly, something of the subterfuge of the cat in presenting his master is also present in Lucie d'Carabas, who pretends to be what she is not. The emerald eyes of G. Gordon Kitty echo the eerie green eyes the shadow on the side of the road displays before it becomes Viviane Morgan the very first time we see her, but that is not quite enough to suppose that they are related. More importantly, the story of “Puss in Boots” might help us rationalize one of the most inexplicable asides in the novel. When Will Shields looks at the journal in the museum, it reads. “- a shock? Why, I would not have gone to the door to see a ghost after that, nor suffered anyone to speak to me of it. To find someone from home out here, homesteading on the Santa Cruz, beat seeing the elephant” (27). It seems that Bob's ancestor might have met with shape-changing fay forces in Arizona, and that perhaps they even took the form of someone from his home. The ogre in the story is not only capable of changing into an elephant, but also into a lion. Leonard Robert Roberts's first name means “lion-strong” or “lion-hearted,” and at one point Mercedes notes that Rex von Madadh, who seems to be able to at least alter his appearance if not his actual shape, looks “like a tame lion” (176). During this exchange, he notes that her name means “the merciful one … But what is mercy toward *this* is so often cruelty toward *that*” (177). When Sally remembers her Grandma Chattes, whose name means “cat,” this might even be enough to suppose that the fairy forces actually mingled with her ancestors, who are ultimately the same as Arthur Dunstan's, from Arizona. The struggle between the Green Man and Geimhreadh might very well be predicated upon von Madadh's observation concerning mercy. When we first see Viviane Morgan, she is mourning the death of a raccoon and her kitten, killed by the careless iron brutes of the highway. In the final scene, though she has called for the death of humanity's champion, Roberts sees a dark figure crossing the road and pauses before deciding it is “only a rabbit” (274). While it could easily be von Madadh himself bounding back to his human lover, the creature is not carelessly run down.
231
232When Geimhreadh sees Judy's cat, who then chooses to stay with him, he says “at night all cats are gray … That’s a fine omen you bring us, friend: good planting, and a harvest. See, child, how he plants the corn” (220). Though the original saying, which is given in John Heywood's 16th century book of proverbs, “When all candles be out, all cats be grey,” implies that in the dark the appearance of a given woman doesn't matter, it also emphasizes the strange ambiguity in the mythical figures running across the pages of *Castleview*. The figures of romance, both good and bad, may at times have selfish motives, but having that glamour and purpose, the novel suggests, fulfills a deep-seated need inside everyone. The ordinary, waking world is never enough if we try to approach it from the point of view of materialistic monism, for each and every thing is composed of much more than its fragile, dying body. The Isle of Glass and its inhabitants are a reflection and a part of Castleview which cannot be kept separate forever. As Roberts learned during his wartime experiences, after hearing so much about Germany, “When I got there, I found out it wasn't Germany at all. They called it *Deutschland*, and they were Deutsch. Germany wasn't any real place. It was just like fairyland” (275). Yet that imaginary world has great power, too, even if everyone who looks at it sees it quite differently, for it still shows observers something about themselves. As Liam Fee says after attacking the mirror upstairs, “[H]e was merely my own reflection. I’ve broken a mirror, I fear, and that means seven years of bad luck” (89).
233
234Even so, we are left wondering if Sally Howard's union with Rex von Madadh is truly the best outcome. When she looks upon her husband's body, before von Madadh walks off singing his doleful tune, she realizes, “If we are but mortal, Tom had been destroyed and was no more; if immortal, he was somewhere else. Those truths were clear to her now as they had never been before” (218). Bob Roberts characterizes those who took him as morally ambiguous children looking for entertainment (“or anyhow they looked like kids”) emphasizing their relative irresponsibility: “They weren’t all of them kids. But they were always sort of messing around, messing with this and that, and showing each other things. … So if they had a gun and saw somebody standing out there, they might try a couple of shots. Or not” (143). Even though Rex von Madadh does not mention the name of Jesus, he is capable of quoting him while he prepares Sally's meal: “[T]he laborer is worthy of his hire, as whoosis says” (202). Perhaps the book which sits beneath Excalibur in Viviane Morgan's cabinet is the same book stolen from the museum. Conceivably, that journal records the intersection and survival of a union between the fay world and the mundane one that is mirrored in the relationship of von Madadh and his princess Sally. Mercedes picks that book up, and the magical way she views Seth during their selfless and transcendent meal, while locked in the tower, might also suggest that one does not have to be a fairy to experience something magical.
235 
236By the conclusion of the novel, the everyday world collapses into the world of romance, and the people of Castleview must hope to navigate the border between two vastly different realities. Even if the attitudes towards fantasy and the paradigms of romance change form beyond recognition, those archetypes are still there and still knowable, calling men and women to action, love, and self-awareness while at the same time denying that what we see is everything that there is to the world. Life and hope continue even in the face of death, and spring follows winter once again.
237
238## Resources
239
240- Christopher, Joe R. “A Second View of Castleview.” *Quondam et Futurus* 3 (Fall 1993). 66-76. Print.
241
242- Delany, Samuel R. *The Jewel Hinged Jaw: Notes on the Language of Science Fiction*. Middletown: Wesleyan University Press, 2009. Print.
243
244- Frye, Northrop. *Anatomy of Criticism*. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1957. Print.
245
246- Kipling, Rudyard. “A Song of Travel.” *Poetry Lovers Page*. 2013. Web. 9 July 2016. http://www.poetryloverspage.com/poets/kipling/song_of_travel.html
247
248- Lang, Andrew. *The Blue Fairy Book* London: Longmans, Green, and Co., ca. 1889. Print.
249
250- Van Den Berg, Klaus. "Peer Gynt." *Theatre Journal* 58.4 (2006). 684–687. Print.
251
252- Wolfe, Gene. *Castleview*. New York City: Tor Books, 1990. Print.