Qnce upon a time, not so long ago, I lived for a year or two on the fairy-tale island of Funen, in Denmark, the world’s oldest kingdom. On an autumn day, 1 rode my rickety bicycle down the country road that led from our brick farmhouse through rolling wheat fields. With a gasp—ahh——behind a stand of beech trees I saw a turreted castle with all the trimmings, as if in miniature, but every bit a royal residence of ages past. A mote filled with water and embroidered with slender nodding reeds and wispy cattails circled the worn structure.
What history might have been written in the Jo rest between our homes? I wondered. The tight growth of trees looked as if it might be hiding the likes of Robin Hood or Maid Marian. Perhaps there I would find the wild swans, the charmed princes of Hans Christian Andersen’s tale. Or maybe the princes’ sister, Elisa, might still be wandering in these woods, knitting shirts of nettle she had crushed with bare feet. Tales of castle lore came tumbling across my mind.
What is it about a palace that tugs at our romantic fantasies? Defining one of four females archetypes as that of queen, Carl Jung recognized this as profoundly embedded in our psyche. A castle motif, in which royalty reigns benevolently, looms powerfully over the peasant context of our daily lives. Teresa of Avila drew upon this theme in her sixteenth-century devotional book The Castle Within. At the time she wrote it, many castles were crumbling, their proud service as citadel and fortress coming to an end. Yet, to inspire ordinary people, this Spanish mystic tapped into the mystique they held. Describing the journey of the soul toward God, she led readers on an exploration through a castle’s many rooms, each different and significant, rendering lessons of virtue, love, and grace.
In actuality the medieval castle was not the posh residence that Teresa of Avila, you, or I may have fancied. Although impressive as symbols of power and wealth, castles were user-unfriendly to the minutest detail. Little did they resemble the whitewashed tower with high-flying banners where Cinderella happily-ever aftered. Castle walls were built to withstand attack, not provide comfortable living space. With no central heat source, interiors stayed damp, and windows were narrow slits through which sunlight—when it did appear—penetrated very little. Blustery winds and rain, however, did invade at every opportunity. Heat and light from fireplace or candles were minimal and dim. Broad stairs going up and down from one level to another required incredible amounts of time and energy. The not-so-private “throne rooms,” then, deserve hardly a mention as cold, putrefying experiences. Fortunate was the queen who had a chamber pot under her bed and a chamber maid to empty it each morning.
The purpose of castles, built primarily in the early centuries of the second millennium, was to protect a kingdom from enemies. They were also meant to flaunt the monarch’s position. To further establish territory, knights were permitted to build their own castles in surrounding territory. First made of wood and surrounded by a fence called a palisade, the walls were eventually built of stone—taller, broader, and stronger. The castles we romanticize were typified by crenellations along the wafls.These offered defensive positions for archers. Round towers at the corners deflected cannonballs from their curved surfaces and prevented undermining of foundations by attackers. But by the fifteenth century, as firearms were developed, castles were no longer impregnable barricades. Most were abandoned for more comfortable abodes.
Hundreds of castles built during the time of the Crusades still survive in Europe and the Middle East. They are trademarks of legend and myth. The stories that grew out of them and their eras of origin still inform our experience. The tale of a young knight named Parzival, written in 1200, is one of these. Parzival is a naive, fatherless child who ends up making too long of a journey in too heavy armor. In search of godliness and chivalry, he embarks on a quest for the Holy Grail, the chalice from which Jesus drank at the Last Supper.
Some years forward, Parzival finds himself in a kingdom where the crops are dying, the waters poisoned, and the king ill. Yet, in the castle, the nobility dances and feasts in merriment. Out of courtesy, Parzival does not question this quizzical paradox. He also realizes too late that it was there he saw the Holy Grail. When years later he sets off to find the castle again, he searches and searches mile after mile, battle after bloody battle, gathering clues to its whereabouts. Finally, its towers loom on the horizon.
Now Parzival discovers the king is on his deathbed. The crops are withered in the field. Dead fish cover the riverbanks and lakes. Still the nobility dance under an enchanted spell with smiles plastered on their faces. Older and wiser, Parzival asks at last, “What’s wrong here?” His question—the right question—breaks the enchantment. Immediately the nobility become real. The waters are purified, the crops are renewed, and the king is restored to health. Parzival drinks at last from the holy chalice.’
Aren’t we, one thousand years later, still seekers of the castle that holds the Holy Grail? Like Parzival, we are on a long journey, looking for its towers. Our quest is to find the chalice from which we may drink deeply of God. The losses along the way are clues given us to identify the daring and honest questions that will break the enchantment of human suffering.
A fortyish woman in my aerobics class recently complained to me of sagging breasts. I thought, Thank heavens for that, then mumbled something to her about making peace with time, circumstance, and the losses. I’ve recognized with a few more years that things like sagging anything are opportunity to break the illusions of the “good life.”
Some of us get to practice with superficial losses first—like sagging breasts or the loss of a friend. Others seem to start out in life being forced to deal with the trauma of woundedness, things like childhood abuse, divorce of parents, or loss of a limb or a loved one. I wonder if such young people, forced to fight valiantly onward in spite of despair, are the Parzivals of humankind. They bear the pain of battle and somehow must find the courage to ask the right questions. In that way the enchantment under which the rest of us live, naive and unaware, may be broken. Barely into his teens, Mattie Stepanek, author of Heart songs, is one of these people. He suffers from a rare form of muscular dystrophy and has lost three siblings to the same disease. He admits that not being healed is disappointing. “But you know what?” he asks. “I’ve had the best time! Because of my attitude.”
In the tale of Bluebeard, a woman who has been brought up to avoid asking questions marries the prince. She is given a set of keys to the castle and is invited to use any of the keys except the smallest. Bluebeard is gone on a trip, and the bride’s older sisters come to visit and make a game of finding which door is opened by the smallest key.
“Where do you think that door is?” they ask, trying the smallest key in each one.
The question might well have been “What is wrong with this picture?”
It is the right question, for although their younger sister is supposed to become a queen, in fact her murder is being planned. After trying all the other doors, the smallest key is put into the lock of the last. It opens, but to the shocking carnage of many women’s corpses—all the corpses of Bluebeard’s past wives. The sisters slam the door. The key begins to bleed all over their sister’s clothing and body. Her shattered innocence cannot be hidden from Bluebeard when he returns. No longer can she hide behind a smiling façade or censor the pain. It is exactly at that point that she is able to do what she must to escape and rejoin her older sisters.
Who wouldn’t want the aura of a romanticized castle to characterize her life? But at what cost? Surely not that of toxic wells beneath an exterior that communicates, “Everything is just fine, thank you.”
For years I waited for a fairy godmother to arrive and dress me in crinoline, put wheels under me for the road of life, and put a castle in my ftiture. I was polite, courteous, and dared not ask rude questions. Eventually, life—my metaphorical sisters—pushed mc