Phantastes As a Whole

        So we have come to the end of our journey with "Phantastes." I personally enjoyed the book very much and even have become more curious about more of MacDonald's work in the near future. My overall opinion and outlook on MacDonald's book, I feel like it has been just one big metaphor for the journey ones soul takes and the ever-long search for its beauty and place in the world. 
          For myself, reading this piece of work has meant so much more than I thought it would from the start. You see, I am not someone who has an easy understanding with deep and intellectual meanings behind a story like this. I can very easily say that I usually just take a book for what it is without putting much though into it. This book and this class for me has made all the difference and has changed completely my original mindset as a reader.
         To better help explain myself I'll give you my greatest example of what I mean. For instance, I would have never done real research on an author in my past experience with reading a book for a class. I would usually just do my work and then be done with it. In this case I became very curious about the author and went into reading about his life and so on. Well to go off topic a moment, I noticed from an early point that MacDonald's way of portraying women was very strange and for some reason most of the women seem to have this inner beast within them that gets unleashed if you become to close.
          Now back on my original topic of MacDonald's life, I read that he was supposedly happily married and even had eleven children. I cam to find that MacDonald did not start writing his novels until he had been way into his marriage of many many years. It is told that his wife always accompanied him on lecture tours and was always with him in general. After thinking this over my theory of his reasoning to make women have this harsh underlying nature, is that maybe after years upon years of marriage he grows somewhat secretly annoyed and grown a little tolerance for his wife.
           This is really all just in theory but it was something that came to my head when reading. I just feel as if there is always some sort of reason one writes the way they do or about things in the manner they do.