‘Though for the moment K. was wretched and looked down on, yet in an almost unimaginable and distant future he would excel everybody.’
Franz Kafka, The Castle
Again and again in the storytelling of the world we come across a certain image which seems to hold a peculiar fascination for us. We see an ordinary, insignificant person, dismissed by everyone as of little account, who suddenly steps to the centre of the stage, revealed to be someone quite exceptional.
An obscure little squire accompanies his master up to London for the solemn ceremonies surrounding the choice of a new king. A mighty stone has appeared in St Paul’s churchyard, with a sword fixed in it and the inscription that anyone who can pull out the sword shall be king. All the great men of the nation try and fail. But to everyone’s astonishment the unknown young squire steps forward and removes the sword effortlessly. He becomes King Arthur, the greatest king his country has ever known.
A little ungainly duckling, quite different in appearance from all his brothers and sisters, miserable at being ridiculed for his size and clumsiness, sets out into the world where he sees a sight which takes his breath away – some great white birds, more beautiful than anything he has ever known. They are swans, but they fly away for the winter, leaving the duckling more miserable than ever. Finally spring comes, and he see three swans on a lake. He swims towards the ‘kingly’ birds, fearing that, like everyone else, they will only mock him for his ugliness. He lowers his head in apprehension and catches sight of his reflection in the water. To his astonishment and joy, he sees that, without knowing it, he has become a swan himself – in the words of an onlooker, ‘the most beautiful of all’.
A dirty, ragged little Cockney flower-seller, treated by passers-by almost as refuse, is picked up in the streets by a distinguished professor of phonetics. Hidden away from the world, she is scrubbed clean, given fine clothes and her tortured vowels are gradually moulded into the accents of the aristocracy. A few months later, she is brought into public for the first time, when she is taken to a grand ball, attended by the cream of London’s fashionable society. As she enters, there are gasps of astonishment at her beauty and bearing, and she is taken by many present to be a princess.
Few images in the popular storytelling of our time have fixed themselves more vividly in the mind than the moment when Clark Kent, the weedy, bespectacled newspaper reporter, is suddenly transformed into ‘Superman’, the all-powerful righter of the world’s wrongs’; or when Popeye, the shambling, ineffectual sailor-man, swallows his tin of spinach and swells up into a bulging-muscled hero, effortlessly despatching the bully who has been forcing his attentions on Popeye’s helpless girlfriend. Few clichés of old pre-feminist Hollywood were so well-tried as the moment when the handsome hero removed the plain, bespectacled girl’s glasses, let down her tightly-coiled hair, gazed at her with awe and exclaimed ‘Gee ... but you’re beautiful’.
In all these scenes, someone who has seemed to the world quite commonplace is dramatically shown to have been hiding the potential for a second, much more exceptional, self within. Somehow the moment of transformation when this other greater self emerges has a strange power to move us. And we begin with this transformation because it lies at the heart of our second plot, ‘Rags to Riches’.
Early in our lives, most of us became familiar with a story which ran something like this.
Once upon a time there was a young hero or heroine, not yet embarked on adult life, living in lowly and very difficult circumstances. This humble little figure, almost certainly an orphan, was regarded as of little worth by most people around, and may even have been actively maltreated. But one day something happened to send our hero or heroine out into the world where they met with a series of adventures which eventually brought about a miraculous transformation in their fortunes. Emerging from the shadows of their wretched former state, they were raised to a position of dazzling splendour, winning the admiration of all who beheld them. The hero won the hand in marriage of a beautiful Princess; the heroine won the love of a handsome Prince. They succeeded to rule over a kingdom. And from that day forth they lived ‘happily ever after’.
So familiar did this plot become to us in childhood that we take its almost unvarying regularity for granted. It is of course the story of how the little orphan Cinderella, dressed in rags and forced to sit in the ashes by her cruel stepmother and vain stepsisters, is enabled by her fairy godmother to go out to the the ball – which eventually wins her the hand in marriage of her Prince. It is the story of how the little orphan Aladdin is led out of the city by his wicked ‘uncle’, the Sorcerer, to retrieve the magic lamp, thus embarking on the strange series of adventures which transform him into a rich and admired national hero, winning the hand of the Princess and finally succeeding to the kingdom of her father, the Sultan. It is the story of how the unhappy little orphan hero of Puss in Boots, left with nothing in the world but his cat, is transformed by the cat’s ingenious tricks into the magnificent Marquis of Carabas, complete with a great castle and estates – fit to win the hand of the King’s daughter. It is the story of how the little orphan Dick Whittington comes up to London to live in poverty but, again with the aid of his cat, wins a fabulous fortune, marries a rich merchant’s beautiful daughter and becomes ‘thrice Lord Mayor of London’.
Most of the variations on this Rags to Riches story we met in childhood were adapted from folk tales, and it is perhaps not until we begin reading through folk stories from many different countries and cultures that we come to appreciate how universal this type of story is. The basic outline of the story we know as Cinderella is reckoned by the students of folklore to have given rise to well over a thousand different versions, found in every corner of Europe, in Africa, in Asia (the earliest known version dates back to ninth-century China) and among the indigenous peoples of North America. Other permutations on the Rags to Riches theme appear so often in folklore that on this score alone it must be regarded as one of the most basic stories in the world.
But the story of the humble, disregarded little hero or heroine who is lifted out of the shadows to a glorious destiny is by no means, of course, confined only to folk tales. We have already touched on such familiar examples as the opening episodes in the mediaeval story of King Arthur; or the modern fairy-tale transformation of the ragged little flower-girl Eliza Doolittle into a grand and beautiful lady which made one of the most popular stage and film musicals of our time, My Fair Lady (although without Shaw’s original happy ending in Pygmalion, where Eliza finally marries and lives happily ever after).
We can find the Rags to Riches theme in almost every form in which stories have been told. It is as ancient as the biblical story of Joseph, the little dreamer so despised by his brothers that they want to kill him, who eventually rises to a position as the Pharaoh’s chief minister, ruler over the mighty kingdom of Egypt. It is as modern as the countless versions produced in our own time by Hollywood, so that the very phrase ‘rags to riches story’ is these days likely to conjure up for many people the type of film which shows how a poor, obscure chorus girl dances her way to stardom or a poor boy from the slums battles his way to the top to become a world boxing champion.
Indeed there are certain categories of popular storytelling which seem so naturally drawn to the Rags to Riches plot, that we often think of this kind of story, with its ‘fairy tale happy endings’, as being essentially rather simple and sentimental, the stuff of wish-fulfilment rather than great literature. The Rags to Riches theme has, for instance, traditionally been associated with that type of romantic fiction which was mainly written by and for women, telling of how some poor and beautiful (or plain and disregarded, but secretly admirable) heroine rises from obscurity to win the heart of a prince, dashing duke or millionaire. Quite apart from the well-known adaptations of folk tales, stories specially written for children have always relied heavily on the Rags to Riches theme: we may think, for instance, of those Victorian school stories which told of how a new boy survived the initial ordeals of bullying and maltreatment to become Captain of the School; or those twentieth-century tales for girls which showed a little heroine eventually fulfilling her dream of dancing with a famous ballet company.
But equally the Rags to Riches plot has inspired some of the most serious and admired novels in Western literature. An obvious example is David Copperfield, in which we see how an unhappy, persecuted little orphan goes out into the world and eventually rises, after many adventures, to become a rich and famous writer, at last happily united in the closing pages to his ‘true angel’, Agnes Woodward. In Jane Eyre we again follow the fortunes of an unhappy, persecuted little Cinderella-like orphan as she goes out into the world, where she eventually becomes an heiress and, against all odds, marries her adored ‘Prince’ Mr Rochester. In each of these novels the fundamental plot shaping the story is precisely that of those childhood fairy tales: that of the unhappy and disregarded little child at the beginning gradually developing and maturing through the vicissitudes of life to the point at the end where he or she is raised up to a state of glorious happiness and fulfilment, united at last with a beloved ‘other half’.
In general terms, such a story obviously makes some profound appeal to the human imagination. But when we come to look more closely at a wide cross-section of such stories, we find that they have much more in common than just a vague, generalised outline. Wherever we find the Rags to Riches theme in storytelling, we may be struck by how constantly certain of its features recur.
First of these is that, more consistently than in any other type of plot, the Rags to Riches story first introduces us to its hero or heroine in childhood, or at least at a very young age before they have ventured out on the stage of the world. As yet they are not fully formed, and we are aware that in some essential way the story is concerned with the process of growing up.
When we first see them in this initial state, it is always emphasised how the little hero or heroine are at the bottom of the heap, seemingly inferior to everyone around them. Often they are the youngest child, and disregarded for being so. They thus begin in the shadows cast by more dominant figures around them, who not only can see no merit in them but are usually deeply antagonistic to them.
These ‘dark’ figures who overshadow the hero or heroine in the early stages of the story fall into two main categories. Firstly they may be adult figures, often acting in the place of a parent, such as Cinderella’s wicked stepmother, who replaces her loving real mother; or David Copperfield’s cruel stepfather Mr Murdstone, and his grim sister Miss Murdstone, who replace his real parents when they die; or Jane Eyre’s guardian Aunt Reed, and the fearsome Mr Brocklehurst, who takes her away to an orphanage. Secondly there are those figures nearer to the hero or heroine in age and status: Cinderella’s vain, scornful stepsisters; Joseph’s hostile older brothers, who want to kill him; the Ugly Duckling’s fellow ducklings who, along with the other animals of the farmyard, jeer at him for his awkwardness and ugliness.
Whichever of these categories they fall into, these dark figures are always presented in the same light. In their scornful attitude to the hero or heroine, they are both hard-hearted and blind: they can neither feel for them nor perceive their true qualities. They are also, like Cinderella’s stepsisters, wholly self-centred: vain, puffed-up, short-tempered, deceitful, concerned only with furthering their own interests. Later in the story, other ‘dark’ figures may emerge to stand between the hero or heroine and their ultimate goal: as we see in David Copperfield’s rival for the hand of Agnes, the treacherous Uriah Heep; or in Jane Eyre’s egregious suitor St John Rivers. But these characters are typified by precisely the same negative qualities; they are defined by their egocentricity, their blinkered vision, their in-capacity for true, selfless love.
What we see in the ‘dark’ figures of Rags to Riches stories is thus a combination of characteristics already familiar from our first plot, Overcoming the Monster. Psychologically, they share the same essential attributes as the monster, And against this we see the hero or the heroine themselves set in complete contrast. The hero or heroine begin the story largely unformed, in the shadows cast by the more dominant figures around them. But it is central to the story, as they gradually emerge from these shadows towards the light, that the hero or heroine are not marked by these same hard, self-centred characteristics. We always see them as a positive against the overshadowing negative; and in this sense, as the story unfolds, they do not change their essential character. All that happens is that they develop or reveal qualities which have been in them, at least potentially, all the time: to the point where, by the end of the story, two things have happened. Firstly, all the dark figures have either been discomfited or have just faded away. And secondly, the hero or heroine have at last emerged fully into the light, so that everyone can at last recognise how exceptional they are. It is this which has essentially been happening in the story, and the fact that their material circumstances may also have gone through such a transformation – e.g., that they have exchanged their original poverty and rags for riches and fine clothes – is only an outward reflection of what has inwardly happened to them, lending it dramatic emphasis.
Even in the simplest folk-tale versions of the Rags to Riches plot, we can see how carefully this point is brought out. By the end of the story, no one ever doubts that the originally derided and humble little hero or heroine should be worthy of their final glorious destiny, however improbable it might have seemed from their circumstances at the beginning that they should eventually rise to such an elevated state, because they have already revealed along the way qualities which show their true inner worth. When Cinderella goes to the ball and meets her Prince for the first time, it is not just the magnificent clothes in which she has been dressed by her fairy godmother which catch every eye: it is her innate beauty and obvious sweetness of nature, which fine clothes have only helped to ‘bring out’ (it is a telling detail at the end that when the Prince finally sees her in her rags, he at once recognises her as the girl he loves; she does not need external trappings to be seen as beautiful in the eyes of the right person). Similarly, when Aladdin is decked out by the genie of the lamp in all sorts of splendour for his wedding to the Princess, the formerly scorned little urchin win all hearts by his generosity and noble bearing, and astonishes his prospective father-in-law the Sultan by his ‘eloquence and cultured speech’, ‘his gallantry and wit’.1 Even the hero of Puss in Boots, though it might be thought that he owed his elevation entirely to the ingenuity of his cat, has no sooner been dressed in fine clothes (which ‘set off his good mien’) than he impresses his future father-in-law the king by his ‘fine qualities’. even though the ‘well-made and very handsome young man’ was originally only the son of a poor miller.2 Likewise, Dick Whittington, who similarly owes everything to his cat, has no sooner become rich and put on his finery than he is revealed to all the world (as the narrator is careful to point out) as ‘a thoroughly genteel young fellow’.3
Yet obviously these dazzling young heroes and heroines are not exactly the same people that we saw, unhappy, confused and rejected, in the earlier scenes of their stories. What has happened to them is that they have at last revealed or developed what was potentially in them all the time. They have matured. They have grown up. They have fully realised everything that was in them to become. In the best and highest sense, they have become themselves.
An example of a Rags to Riches story which makes this point particularly clearly – because, stripped down to this essence, the story consists of very little else – is Hans Christian Andersen’s The Ugly Duckling. Being a duckling, the hero can hardly make the journey from literal rags to literal riches. But he is certainly looked down on by everyone at the beginning, and almost our entire interest in the tale centres round the contrast between that long initial period of misery and confusion when he suffers because he does not know who he really is, and that final moment of joyful self-realisation when he flowers into his true self as a beautiful swan.
In the majority of Rags to Riches tales, however, the joy and perfection of the central figure’s final state are also expressed by those two other ingredients which equally have nothing to do with literal riches, but which are so fundamental to the world’s storytelling that they are almost synonymous with our notion of a ‘happy ending’.
The first is that, somewhere along the way, the hero should have met the girl of his dreams, a beautiful maiden or ‘Princess’. The heroine has met her handsome ‘Prince’. Nothing more profoundly conveys our sense of resolution at the end of a story that they should at last be united, a man and a woman brought together in perfect love.
The second is that the hero, or the newly united pair, should then succeed to some kind of a kingdom, inheritance or domain, over which they can rule. There we can leave them, with the sense that, after a long period when it seems that dark forces and uncertainty ruled the day, everything has at last been brought or restored to where it should be. We may at this point be told that ‘they lived happily ever after’, and we do not necessarily need to know anything more about them: because we have reached that mysterious central goal in storytelling, where everything seems at last to be perfect and complete.
At first sight it might seem that the process whereby the hero or heroine of a Rags to Riches story eventually reaches this goal is fairly simple. But the more systematically we examine such stories, the more we may be struck by the way the hero or heroine’s emergence from the shadows is rarely presented as a simple, unbroken climb. In fact there is usually a particular moment in the story when, after an initial improvement in the hero or heroine’s fortunes (sometimes so great that it might in itself seem the cue for a happy ending), they suddenly hit a new point of crisis, when all hopes of a happy ending seem to have been snatched away forever.
For a familiar example, let us go back to that classic English version of the Rags to Riches theme first recorded in 1605 under the title The History of Richard Whittington, Of His Low Byrthe, His Great Fortune. There is no more celebrated episode in this story that that when, about halfway through, the hero sets out to leave London, and is only called back by the sound of distant church bells proclaiming ‘Turn again Whittington, Lord Mayor of London’.
At this point in the story, Dick is at his lowest ebb. He had arrived in the great city from the countryside, hoping to find the streets ‘paved with gold’. He had initially met with terrible disillusionment and nearly died of hunger. But then his fortunes had begun to look up. A rich merchant, Alderman Fitzwarren, had taken pity on him and given Dick employment in his kitchens. He had even found at last a real friend and inseparable companion, his cat. It is only when he is forced to send his cat (as his only possession in the world) on one of his master’s overseas trading ventures, and thus finds himself again, more than ever, alone and friendless, that Dick is finally overwhelmed by complete despair.
He decides to abandon London and all his dreams forever. It is, as we might put it, the worst crisis of Dick’s life. But it is at precisely this moment, far away in the dark continent of Africa, that his fortunes are in fact being transformed. His cat has rid a kingdom of a terrible plague of rats and mice, and the king of that country has given an immense reward. Although Dick knows none of this, he is given by Bow bells a strange premonition of the almost unthinkable glories which life might still have in store for him. He returns to London to discover that he has become enormously rich. He marries his rich employer’s beautiful daughter Alice (the person who had most obviously shown sympathy for him in his former lowly state) and becomes, as foretold by the bells, Lord Mayor of London, his equivalent of succeeding to a ‘kingdom’.
Such a central moment of crisis and despair as Dick faced when he was separated from his cat is in fact so natural to the pattern of the Rags to Riches story that there are few examples where in some form or another it does not appear. Even in The Ugly Duckling there is no moment when the hero’s spirits are at a lower ebb than after his first glimpse of the ‘kingly’ swans: a prevision of the unthinkable glories life might hold. But then the swans disappear, leaving the duckling alone to face the hardships of a long, terrible winter. He has never been so cold, short of food or miserable. It is only when he has been through this last, greatest ordeal that at last spring arrives, bringing with it the miraculous moment of his transformation into a ‘kingly’ swan himself, ‘the most beautiful of all’.
Similarly in Cinderella, there is no moment when everything seems more hopeless for the heroine than after her third visit to the ball. Three times she has left her rags and ashes to dance with the Prince, winning universal admiration and catching a glimpse of the unthinkable happiness life might hold for her. Now, as she returns to her miserable, imprisoned life as a maid-of-all-work, with no prospect of ever seeing the Prince again, all seems blacker than ever. But of course, in her headlong flight from the palace on the third visit, she has left behind her dainty slipper; and, quite unknown to her, the Prince has found it, and sent out far and wide across the kingdom to see whose foot the slipper will fit. As with Arthur and the sword in the stone, the trying on of the slipper is a version of that motif familiar from many of the world’s myths, legends and folk tales, ‘the test which only the true hero, or heroine, can pass’. Cinderalla comes through her ordeal triumphantly (finally discomfiting on the way her two ‘dark rivals’, the Ugly Sisters). The Prince at once recognises her in her rags, and they proceed to the traditional happy ending.
In each of these examples we see the same essential structure to the story, as it falls into two distinct stages, separated in the middle by ‘the central crisis’. First there is the initial rise in the hero or heroine’s fortunes, as they are taken out of their original state of helpless misery, and may have a glimpse of the glorious state they might one day attain. Then comes the terrible crisis, when all seems lost again. Then comes the second half of the story, which shows them being prepared unwittingly for their final reversal of fortune, their final emergence into the light and the glorious state of completeness at which they arrive at the end.
We can already see this pattern at work in by far the earliest example of a Rags to Riches story of which we have record, the story of Joseph from the biblical book of Genesis. When young Joseph’s jealous brothers, after first planning to leave him to die in the desert, then sell him into slavery in Egypt, he eventually rises to rule as an overseer over the household of Potiphar, the captain of the king’s guard. This is an important position, and considering Joseph’s earlier plight, when he faced death in the desert, it might seem like a miraculous happy ending to the story. But just then Joseph is falsely accused by Potiphar’s temptress wife of attempting to seduce her. He is thrown into prison and his life seems irrevocably in ruins. Only after a long time of utter despair is Joseph’s talent for interpreting dreams (the very thing for which he had nearly been murdered by his brothers) quite unexpectedly brought to the attention of Phaoroah himself. Through this he is eventually raised up to infinitely greater heights as chief minister, the second most powerful man in the kingdom. But even then, as Joseph enjoys his position of immense wealth and splendour, there is a crucial piece of unfinished business remaining before the story can come to a completely happy conclusion: Joseph’s rift with his brothers. As famine stalks the land of Israel, they come to Egypt, pleading with this mighty, powerful figure to be given enough corn to survive. At first Joseph rejects them, until he is so moved by the sight of his youngest brother, ‘little Benjamin’, who had not been party to his earlier persecution, and by the thought of his aged father Jacob starving back in Israel, that he relents. He gives them the food they need. Only when he has passed this final test, and been reunited with his family in a state of love and forgiveness, can the story end on an image of complete resolution.
Equally it is by no means just in the older and more traditional forms of the Rags to Riches tale that we see this pattern of the story’s division into two ‘halves’ interrupted by a ‘central crisis’. We are just as likely to find it in versions as far removed from the world of the traditional folk tale or biblical legend as could be imagined.
An early instance of the fondness of Hollywood for the Rags to Riches theme was Charlie Chaplin’s silent classic The Gold Rush (1921). The first half of the story shows Chaplin, in his familiar ‘tramp’ role, as an unsuccessful little Alaskan gold prospector, whose dreams of happiness centre on Georgia, a dance hall hostess he has met in a nearby town, and with whom he has fallen in love. He invites her to a New Year’s Eve dinner in his shack, and all might seem set fair for a happy ending to his years of loneliness. But she had only accepted the invitation as a joke and fails to turn up. The central crisis has arrived. He has not discovered any gold; he has lost the girl who had become the dearest thing to him in the world; his life is in ruins. But then comes the second half of the story, when he helps his friend Big Jim to discover a lost gold mine and is rewarded with a share which makes him fabulously rich. We see him embarking on a ship back to San Francisco as a multi-millionaire, posing on the deck for photographers in his tramp’s clothes. He slips and falls down onto a lower deck, where who should be first to see him but Georgia, travelling steerage on the same boat. From his clothes she imagines he must be a stowaway and offers to pay his fare. But, revealing his good fortune, he invites her to join him in first-class and the film ends with the couple in joyful embrace.
Another form of the Rags to Riches theme particularly beloved by Hollywood has been the story of the poor, struggling artist, inventor or scientist who for long is scorned by an uncomprehending world – but who is eventually recognised as a genius and ends in a blaze of universal acclaim (usually in fond embrace with the wife or girl he loves, who alone has stood by him during the years of rejection and apparent failure).
Typical of this genre was The Benny Goodman Story, made in 1956 about the life of the 1930s bandleader. And although the film was based, as they say, on ‘a true story’, it is fascinating to see how the scriptwriters chose to arrange their material to make it into a satisfactory story for the screen.
A poor Jewish boy, born into the Chicago slums in the early years of the twentieth century, takes up the clarinet and is early spotted by his wise old white-haired teacher to have remarkable talent. Growing up in the ‘Jazz Age’ of the 1920s, he is drawn to the unconventional new music and eventually, after various struggles and rebuffs, becomes leader of his own band. He enjoys initial success, rather as Cinderella enjoys her initial moments of success at the ball. But then comes the crisis. The band’s new brand of ‘swing music’ has developed beyond the point where public taste seems ready to follow. As the musicians travel on a make-or-break tour across America, audiences dwindle, bookings fall off, money runs out and it seems the orchestra will have to disband. Failure stares Goodman in the face. When they reach California, they have just one last engagement left, at the Palomar ballroom in Los Angeles. A huge crowd of dancers has turned up, but when the band begins to play straight dance music, they seem bored. It seems like the final moment of rejection, until in a final gesture of defiance, Goodman decides to go down fighting, by switching to the hottest music his musicians can play. The dancers break off from dancing and cluster round the bandstand, simply to listen. Suddenly cheering breaks out. It is clear that ‘swing’ is just what America has been waiting for. Headlines pour across the screen recording the band’s success, until the film ends with Goodman winning the hand of his ‘Princess’, his rich young impresario’s beautiful upper-class sister, while the band faces its final test, a concert in Carnegie Hall, the first time a mere jazz orchestra has ever been permitted into the hallowed citadel of America’s classical music. A close-up shows the feet of the heroine’s elderly, conventional, rich parents surreptitiously beginning to tap to the rhythm of the music. The entire audience rises to give Goodman an ovation. The slum-born hero has triumphantly won his way into the ‘kingdom’.4
We are now in a position to see how, as it unfolds in the mind of the storyteller, a story based on the Rags to Riches plot tends to take on a certain, quite specific shape. The longer and more fully developed such a story becomes, the more apparent this is likely to be, and this may be illustrated in some detail by way of two last examples. On the face of it, these stories could scarcely seem more dissimilar: one is the ancient Middle Eastern folk tale of Aladdin; the other a well-known nineteenth-century English novel, Jane Eyre. But as we follow the essence of what is happening to the central figure in each of these stories, we begin to see clearly what this structure of the Rags to Riches plot is really about.
The story of Aladdin and His Enchanted Lamp supposedly comes from that famous collection of Middle Eastern tales The Thousand and One Nights dating back to the eighth century (although it has recently been suggested that this story might have been written much later).5
The story begins with Aladdin as an unruly little good-for-nothing orphan, living alone with his mother in a great city. His father is dead and nothing can be done to control him. But one day a mysterious ‘Sorcerer’ appears, claiming to be the dead father’s long-lost brother. Aladdin’s new ‘uncle’ makes a great show of taking a fatherly interest in the boy, and leads the young hero out of the city to a remote spot in the shadow of a great mountain. Here a mysterious hole appears in the ground. The Sorcerer gives Aladdin a magic ring to protect him in case of trouble, and the boy is sent down into the underground cave where he finds three rooms containing a fabulous treasure, jewels and finely worked gold and silver, shining in the darkness. But Aladdin has been instructed on no account to touch any of this. He must venture right to the back of the caves, where in a niche he will see an unprepossessing-looking old lamp. This he must bring back to the surface. When he does so, the Sorcerer turns out to be a wicked trickster. He asks Aladdin to hand the lamp up to him, but when the boy refuses, a rock closes over the entrance and the hero finds himself trapped. After three days of imprisonment in the darkness, he is just about to give up all hope when, in the nick of time, he inadvertently rubs the ring. A genie appears, who has the power to free him. Aladdin returns home, where he eventually discovers the much greater powers of the genie of the lamp. Thanks to the genie’s help, he and his mother are now able to live in comfort for some years, while Aladdin, now in his teens, is quite transformed from the feckless child he was at the start of the story, spending time in earnest conversation with travellers from afar, learning about the world.
Such is the first part of the story, which shows the hero, with the aid of newly-discovered and mysterious powers, being turned from an unformed and unruly child into a serious young man on the verge of adult life.
The second stage of the story shows Aladdin falling in love, from a distance, with the most beautiful woman in the city, the Princess Badr-al-Budr, the daughter of the city’s ruler. He hardly dares think he could ever be fortunate enough to win her, and indeed for a long time it seems certain that she will marry someone else – the arrogant son of the king’s chief vizier. But eventually, with the aid of the genie of the lamp, Aladdin succeeds against all the odds in outwitting his dark rival, and wins the Princess’s hand. He is transformed by the genie into a splendid and wealthy young man, whose qualities, including his good-hearted generosity, win universal admiration. The wedding takes place; the genie constructs for Aladdin a palace even more magnificent than the king’s own; and, as general in charge of the king’s army, he wins a great victory over the country’s enemies. He has become a national hero.
Outwardly, by this point in the story, the young man seems to have the world at his feet. He has gone out onto the stage of the world, he has won the hand in marriage of the woman he has come to desire more than anything else, he is the most admired man in the kingdom. All might seem set for a happy, if somewhat straightforward ending to his story. But the storyteller is careful to emphasise just how much Aladdin’s success is outward. He owes everything to the genies. And for the first time there is an ominous hint of impending trouble when Aladdin boasts to his father-in-law about the magnificence of his palace. He is getting carried away by the success that has come to him too easily, and we realise that a great deal more has to happen before his story can be properly and completely resolved.
Indeed it is now that the ‘central crisis’ arrives. While Aladdin is away from the city hunting, his attention all turned on the outside world, the shadowy Sorcerer creeps back into the city in disguise, offering ‘new lamps for old’. The Princess falls for the trick and gives away the old lamp which has been the source of all her husband’s success. In the twinkling of an eye, the Sorcerer has spirited Princess and palace away to darkest Africa. Aladdin returns to the city to find his world in ruins. Not only has he lost everything that was most dear to him, but the king is in a towering rage, threatening that unless Aladdin can return everything to where it was within forty days he will be put to death.
Faced with this unprecedented crisis, not knowing where to begin, Aladdin wanders out into the desert in suicidal despair. Resigning himself to death, he inadvertently rubs the ring, still on his finger, and the lesser genie appears. Aladdin appeals to him for help, and the genie says he can transport Aladdin to the place in Africa where the Princess and the palace have been taken. But beyond that he cannot help, because the powers of the genie of the lamp are too strong. From then on, it will be up to Aladdin alone.
This highly significant moment marks the beginning of the second half of the story. Just when all seems lost, Aladdin is rescued: but only on the crucial condition that, from now on, he must, in some entirely new way, learn to rely on himself and bring his own powers into play.
This new phase begins with Aladdin being carried to Africa, where he finds the Princess guarded day and night in the Palace by the dark powers of the Sorcerer. Disguising himself as a beggar (returning to the humble state in which he had begun), he enters the Palace and manages to reach the Princess, whom he supplies with a drug which she is to administer to the Sorcerer. When the Sorcerer has fallen into a state of unconsciousness, Aladdin breaks in and kills him. The monster is overcome. With the aid of the lamp, the hero then joyfully returns the Princess, himself and the palace back to China where they all belong.
Again this might seem to have all the makings of a happy ending (indeed it is here that many modern adaptations, such as pantomime versions, terminate the story). But in the full, original version, Aladdin now has to face a last testing ordeal, more nearly deadly than anything he has been through before, which provides the real climax to the story.
There arrives in the city the Sorcerer’s brother, bent on revenge. The dark power represented by the Sorcerer has still not been finally overthrown. Originally we saw him, eager to obtain the lamp, in the role of Predator. We then saw him, defending his ill-gotten gains in Africa, as Holdfast. We now see him, transmuted as his ‘brother’ but otherwise identical, as Avenger.
The new Sorcerer secretly kills a famous ‘Holy Woman’ of the city and, putting on her disguise, inveigles himself into the Princess’ confidence. Everyone is taken in, even Aladdin, who, at the false Holy Woman’s suggestion, asks the genie of the lamp for the one thing necessary to make the palace perfect: the egg of the roc, a fabulous bird. The genie flies into a rage, saying that this is the one thing in the world it is not in his power to provide, because the roc is his mother. There is no way he can help Aladdin, apart from revealing to him that the Holy Woman is the Sorcerer in disguise. Aladdin realises the terrible danger they are all in, and that he is now completely on his own. Only by his own wits and courage can he overcome the dark power which has been arraigned against him since the beginning of the story. In a final climactic confrontation, he manages to outwit and kill the Sorcerer. Only when the dark power has thus been overthrown forever, does the awed and grateful Princess finally recognise his true worth (‘I confess I have never done justice to our love’). They are at last truly and fully united, the king eventually dies, and Aladdin succeeds to the kingdom.
We can now see what the whole story was really about: the journey of a human being from unformed childhood to a final state of complete personal maturity. In the first half we see Aladdin, as he grows up from boyhood to adulthood, discovering that he has immense powers at his command, which bring him a dazzling marriage and glorious outward success on the stage of the world. But in no sense is he yet fully developed and mature; and this is symbolised in the way he has owed everything to the genies. He becomes forgetful of this and begins to behave hubris-tically, showing how immature he still is. Then the great crisis erupts and he loses everything, falling into total despair. We realise that, to become a true hero, he must cease to rely unthinkingly on these mysterious powers. He must go back to the beginning again and learn consciously how to stand on his own feet, and to become master of his own fate, his own character. Only when he has thus grown fully in inner stature, and become completely ‘his own man’ can the dark power which in one way or another has dogged him throughout the story be finally seen through and thrown off. Only now is he liberated to become completely united with his ‘other half’, the Princess, symbolising the state of personal wholeness he has reached: and only now is he truly fitted to succeed to rule wisely and justly over the kingdom. He has reached the end of his journey.
Let us now compare this fully-developed version of the Rags to Riches plot with our second, outwardly very different example, Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre (1847).
The story begins with the heroine as an unruly and miserable little orphan living with her mother’s sister, Aunt Reed. Nothing can be done to control Jane when she is in one of her rages and one day the fearsome pillar of evangelical rectitude Mr Brocklehurst appears, making a show of only wanting to serve Jane’s best interests, to take her off to the orphanage at Lowood. Her introduction to this strange new world is a terrifying ordeal, but when Jane has come through it she eventually settles down to several years of steady progress, blossoming into a serious-minded and accomplished girl in her late teens. This corresponds to the first phase of Aladdin’s story, as it shows Jane being transformed from an unruly child into a serious young woman on the verge of adult life.
The second part of her story shows her going out into the wider world in a new way, when she takes up her first employment at the great house of Thornfield, as governess to the daughter of the rich and mysterious Mr Rochester. She conceives a deep but seemingly hopeless love for Rochester. She can hardly dare think she would ever be fortunate enough to marry him. Indeed for a long time it seems certain that he will marry someone else, a well-born, arrogant neighbour Blanche Ingram. But eventually, to Jane’s astonishment, Rochester declares his love for his ‘plain little governess’, and asks her to marry him. It might seem an unthinkable happy ending was imminent, except that there are now abundant ominous signs that, behind the scenes, all is not well. The truth is that, even as preparations are going ahead for the wedding and Rochester is buying fine clothes to deck out his bride, she is inwardly not yet ready for this over-hasty transformation in her life and status. She is still an immature, undeveloped girl, who knows little of the dark side of life and the world: and then, even as she approaches the altar to be married, the central crisis of the story erupts.
A voice calls out from the back of the church that the wedding cannot take place because Rochester is already married. It turns out that for years he has been concealing his crazed first wife in an upstairs room at Thornfield Hall. Just as with Aladdin, at the moment when the Sorcerer snatches his Princess, palace and lamp away to Africa, Jane’s seemingly glorious new world is in ruins. In despair she runs away from Thornfield, to wander distractedly over the bleak, inhospitable moors. After three days, cold, weak and starving, she falls down on a cottage doorstep to die – when, in the nick of time, she is rescued, by the seemingly kindly clergyman St John Rivers. Under the care of Rivers’s sisters, Jane gradually recovers her strength: and we then see, as in Aladdin, a very significant new phase in her story. We see Jane setting up house on her own, opening a successful little school, and for the first time in her life learning to stand on her own feet, developing an inner strength and independence of spirit she has never known before: until, as a mark of her newly-won autonomy, she learns that she has mysteriously inherited a modest fortune, making her outwardly as well as inwardly independent.
But even now, like Aladdin when through his own efforts he has been able to recover the lamp and return home from Africa, Jane has to face one last terrifying ordeal, more nearly deadly than anything she has had to contend with before. The iron-willed, evangelical and hypocritical St John Rivers – a ‘false Holy Man’ – uses all his powers to force her to marry him, and to accompany him as a missionary to India, which Jane knows would certainly be fatal to her health. Although she tries to resist, she feels her powers of resistance slipping away and is on the verge of succumbing, when she hears a distant, mysterious voice calling her name, as if from half across the world. It is the voice of Rochester. An extraordinary new strength wells up in her (at last, as she puts it, ‘my powers were in play’). She flees the house in the middle of the night and rushes across the countryside to Thornfield, where she finds that the house has recently burned down. The shadowy first Mrs Rochester has died in the fire. Her dark rival has gone. Jane finds Rochester, alone and blind, in the middle of a forest. She lovingly nurses him back to health and sight. They are at last married and completely united. They end up presiding over their little kingdom and, as nearly as a novel will allow, living ‘happily ever after’.
What we thus see in Jane Eyre is a fundamental structure to the story strikingly similar to that of Aladdin: the process whereby a young central figure emerges step by step from an initial state of dependent, unformed childhood to a final state of complete self-realisation and wholeness. Obviously one of the most significant features of this type of story is the way it divides into two ‘halves’, punctuated by the ‘central crisis’. In the first half we see the hero or heroine emerging from childhood to a state where they may seem outwardly successful, except that they are by no means yet fully mature. They then encounter a crisis which leads them on to the harder task of becoming much more fully-developed and self-reliant. This leads up to the ordeal which provides the story’s climax, where they have a final confrontation with the dark figures and powers who, in one way or another, have overshadowed them through the story. Only when they have come through this test are they finally liberated to enjoy the state of wholeness and fulfilment which marks the conclusion of the tale.
The longer and more fully-developed a Rags to Riches story becomes, the more likely we are to see these steps to the ultimate goal spelled out in detail; as we do in the many other novels based on this plot such as Moll Flanders, Great Expectations or David Copperfield.
In the first half of David Copperfield, we see the little orphan hero going through essentially all the basic stages of development we have seen in Aladdin and Jane Eyre, up to the point where he marries his first wife, Dora. But from her selfish, infantile nature and the sentimental nature of their marriage, it is clear that the hero has not reached his true goal, because he himself has not yet developed to full maturity, and when his child-wife sickens and dies after a miscarriage, he faces his central crisis. Then begins the second part of his story, where he becomes much more fully developed as a man, as he builds up his career as a successful writer. In this phase we see that his true ‘other half’, corresponding to his new depth and maturity, is the selfless, inspiring Agnes Woodward. But she is under the shadow of Copperfield’s ‘dark rival’, the insinuating Uriah Heep, who is scheming to marry her (as a kind of cross between the Sorcerer and St John Rivers). Only when Heep’s scheming is exposed and his power overthrown at the climax of the story are hero and heroine at last freed to come together in complete, loving union.
Even in simpler versions of the theme, however, we still see much the same essential structure, with the story dividing into two parts, separated by the central crisis, emphasising that the real task facing the hero or heroine is never a simple one. And in general the Rags to Riches plot can be summed up along the following lines:
A second way in which a story naturally takes shape in the human imagination is that which shows how some young, unrecognised hero or heroine is eventually lifted out of obscurity, poverty and misery to a state of great splendour and happiness. But their upward progress is unlikely to be a continuous unbroken climb, and most Rags to Riches stories, except the very simplest versions, may well unfold through a recognisable series of stages like this:
1. Initial wretchedness at home and the ‘Call’: We are first introduced to the young hero or heroine in their original lowly and unhappy state, usually at home. The most obvious reason for their misery is that they are overshadowed by malevolent ‘dark’ figures around them, who scorn or maltreat them. This phase ends when something happens to call or send them out into a wider world.
2. Out into the world, initial success: Although this new phase may be marked by new ordeals, the hero or heroine are here rewarded with their first, limited success, and may have some prevision of their eventual glorious destiny. They may make a first encounter with their ‘Princess’ or ‘Prince’, and may even outstrip ‘dark rivals’; but only in some incomplete fashion, and it is made clear that they are not yet ready for their final state of complete fulfilment.
3. The central crisis: Everything suddenly goes wrong. The shadows cast by the dark figures return. Hero or heroine are separated from that which has become more important to them than anything in the world, and they are overwhelmed with despair. Because of the earlier lift in their fortunes, and because they are so powerless, this is their worst moment in the story.
4. Independence and the final ordeal: As they emerge from the crisis, we gradually come to see the hero or heroine in a new light. Although still unfulfilled, they are discovering in themselves a new independent strength. As this develops, it must at last be put to a final test, again usually involving a battle with some powerful dark figure who stands, as a dark rival, between them and their goal; and this forms the climax to the whole story. Only when this has been successfully resolved, and the shadow over their lives wholly removed, are they at last liberated to move to the final stage.
5. Final union, completion and fulfilment: Their reward is usually a state of complete, loving union with the ‘Princess’ or ‘Prince’. They may also finally succeed to some kind of ‘kingdom’, the nature of which is not spelled out but which, from their mature and developed state, implies a domain over which they will rule wisely and well. The story thus resolves on an image which signifies a perfect state of wholeness, lasting indefinitely into the future (‘they lived happily ever after’).
As in the Overcoming the Monster plot, we see that, at its deepest level, the Rags to Riches story unfolds through alternating phases of constriction and expansion. We begin with the hero or heroine weighed down by the contempt and even persecution to which they are exposed in the opening scenes. This is followed by the sense of a gradual opening out and lifting of their hopes as they go out into the world and meet with their modest early successes. But this is abruptly ended by the shock of the central crisis, imposing a new sense of constriction. Again there is a gradual opening out, as they develop a deeper maturity, until this is put to a climactic test, when the sense of constriction is at its most severe. Only then can we see the final act of liberation which enables them to emerge triumphant at the end of the story, having won the prize which gives them a sense of complete fulfilment and a hold on life which will continue indefinitely into the future.
Once we are familiar with the essential outlines of this type of story we can recognise a variation on the theme which may be called the ‘dark’ version of the Rags to Riches plot. This is the sort of tale which shows a hero or heroine who attempts to follow the general pattern of the climb from rags to riches, but in some way fails to arrive at its fully rewarding conclusion.
An example of what may be regarded as the full ‘dark’ version of the Rags to Riches story is Stendhal’s novel Le Rouge et Le Noir (1831). This introduces us to a little hero of humble origins living in an obscure provincial town in France in the years after the fall of Napoleon. Julien Sorel, a clever boy who enjoys reading books, is scorned by his practical, down-to-earth father and older brothers (we hear nothing of his mother, who appears to be absent). In this sense he starts off much like the heroes of many Rags to Riches folk tales, the little dreamer, his head apparently in the clouds, who is scorned and rejected by his unimaginative family. But Sorel is not like the traditional folk tale hero. He is profoundly ambitious. His dreams are of winning earthly glory, like his hero Napoleon, and in general his attitude towards the rest of the world is one of contempt. As he nears adult life, he goes out from home in a first, limited way, by having an affair with an older married woman in the town where they live, but eventually he contemptuously rejects her. He then goes off to a seminary for prospective priests, but only because he has calculated that the Church is the best stepping stone for a poor boy to further his worldly ambitions. Again his attitude towards his fellow students is one of heartless scorn. Eventually Sorel travels to the centre of all his ambitions, the great city of Paris, where he wins the post of private secretary to the magnificent Marquis de la Mole, the most powerful man in France. He unscrupulously worms his way into the heart of his employer’s beautiful daughter Mathilde (whom he enjoys humiliating sexually) and seems on the verge of marrying her and succeeding to the ‘kingdom’ of immense power and riches. But at the last moment, disaster strikes. The unhappy mistress he had discarded years before comes back into his life, obsessed with her desire for revenge. In a desperate bid to hold onto his new prospects, he attempts to murder her – and ends up, not at the altar with his ‘Princess’, but disgraced and on the guillotine.
Obviously there is a huge difference between the heartless, self-seeking Sorel and the essentially good-hearted heroes and heroines of the Rags to Riches stories we have been looking at (who are so specifically contrasted with the self-seeking dark figures who are their main antagonists and rivals). When Sorel comes into any kind of opposition to others in his story, it is they who become victims of his egotism rather than the other way around. He himself is indeed a kind of ‘monster’. Yet, outwardly, the ultimate goal he is seeking is remarkably similar to that central symbolic goal we see in more conventional Rags to Riches stories. What he aspires to is union with ‘the beloved other’ and succession to a position of great power: except that he is after these things only as a means to egotistical gratification, as expressions of his desire for power over others. And in the end his drive for that goal is not just frustrated; it brings about his complete destruction.
Another lesser ‘dark’ version of the Rags to Riches plot can be seen in the kind of story where the hero may actually achieve these goals, but only in a way which is hollow and brings frustration, because again he has sought them only in an outward and egocentric fashion. Budd Schulberg’s Hollywood novel What Makes Sammy Run? (1940) shows its hero Sammy Glick as a ruthlessly egocentric little orphan from the New York slums pushing his way up the ladder of worldly success, first in the newspaper world, then in Hollywood. He ends up seemingly rewarded with the perfect traditional happy ending. He wins the hand of the beautiful, upper-class daughter of the all-powerful owner of a major film studio; and when his prospective father-in-law appoints him head of the studio (in place of the kindly father-figure who had consistently helped him on, and whom he had broken and humiliated), the hero ‘succeeds to the kingdom’. But then comes the sting in the tail. No sooner has his glittering Hollywood wedding taken place, and the fashionable throng of celebrities returned to his mansion for the celebratory party, than the hero discovers his ‘Princess’ upstairs, making love to one of the studio’s handsome young stars. She is as heartless and self-seeking as Glick himself, and has only married him to serve her own ambitions. He may outwardly have married the ‘Princess’ and ‘succeeded to the kingdom’. But in no way has he reached that state of glorious completion and inner fulfilment which is the proper goal of the Rags to Riches story. The novel’s whole point is to show its heartless little hero acting out the archetypal climb from Rags to Riches, yet in a way which leaves him at the end staring at a black hole of total emptiness; precisely because he has done it in a fashion which can lead to no other outcome.
We shall later see that the Rags to Riches plot is by no means the only type of story which can give rise to ‘dark’ versions like this. Yet what is significant is how these unfold to their self-destructive endings by precisely the same rules which govern the way in which the ‘light’ versions proceed to their happy endings. In coming to understand just how subtly and consistently this principle operates all through storytelling we shall uncover one of the most important secrets stories have to offer.