Hope and Fear

These emotions are what often fill Golden Walter: the words that William Morris repeats several times in The Wood Beyond the World. Just like in Phantastes, the longing for adventure is vital to Morris's story. I would argue that it is adventure that creates and drives fantasy literature.

The story begins in a setting already removed in time and place -- during a medieval time frame and in a "city by the sea which had to name Langton on Holm" (Morris 47). It would seem that we are already in a secondary world. Walter, however, is driven by a longing to escape that. He has married a woman who does not love him and is overtly unfaithful. He tells his father that he cannot stay and boards a ship within two days to go exploring.

Before he leaves, however, he sees three creatures that he feels an overpowering attraction to. They disappear but he strives for some time to not dwell on them any longer. It is this desire to find their land that is Walter's motive behind almost every action he takes. Their land is the secondary world. He is deeply dissatisfied with his own and must find something richer.

When he at last does find their land, Walter is constantly filled with hope and fear. Our narrator tells us this -- first when Walter travels beyond the Shard in the Rock-wall and again when he has spoken to the fair maiden about the Mistress: "So he departed through the fair land, and his heart was full with hope and fear as he went" (85).

Despite this fear, however, Walter is never seen regretting his decision to come beyond the Shard and to the Wood beyond the World. Walter does not miss his unfaithful wife, nor does he long to return to his own land to avenge his beloved father. That world is forgotten and the secondary is made primary. Hope and fear drive and sustain the protagonist as he journeys through the Perilous Realm.

Those in search for the Perilous Realm are longing for peril and uncertainty, because therein is hope. And the greater fear that exists, the greater promise of hope.

This is adventure. This is fantasy literature.