Misadventures in the Land of Fables #43
‘The Young Lady and the Looking-Glass‘ by William Wilkie claims to be a metaphor for how fables work. A mother puts a mirror in the corner where her spoiled and willful daughter goes to sulk and thus, by seeing her reflection in these moments, they young lady is confronted by the deformity her behaviour inflicts upon her appearance, and this is enough to get her to change her ways.
The mirror is fable:
“It is a mirror, where we spy
At large our own deformity
And learn of course those faults to mend
Which but to mention would offend.”
Wilkie argues that calling someone on their faults directly doesn’t work: “To bid your friend his errors mend, is almost certain to offend.” They will resist. (Call out culture on social media tends to confirm that observation.) Fable provides an indirect means to make the point instead. But will the subject recognize themselves in the fable?
It can’t offer a direct reflection, nor even a corresponding one. The characters in fables are not typically human, but animals or inanimate objects, and if they are human, they are persons as remote as kings and beggars. How then will this recognition take place?
This reminds me of the problem of satire, and many of these English fables (collected by Cooper) hail from the age of satire. Satire hopes to shame the intended target by means of exaggeration, caricature, reductio ad absurdum. It often fails because the target rarely sees themselves as such. If a bully sees themselves as a victim, they will identify with the victim not the oppressor. If they believe their behaviour justified, it will be someone else who needs reproof, not them, someone less reasonable.
Less a mirror than an unwashed window.
Sure, fables may be inspired by things that happen in the real world, but this response is one of generalization and exemplification. A fable removes the insight from the real life instance and distills it into a tangible narrative form, to which we can assent—this is the way of the world, this is foolish, this is wrong—or dissent, by offering a counter-example.
This is the role it can be seen to play in the Panchatantra. In the framing story, each chapter sees the prince inviting a wise man to illustrate a value or insight. The wise man does this by telling a story and within those stories characters tell other stories, using them as arguments and counter-arguments to advance, change or defend a course of action.
The difference between condemnation and discussion, between morality and ethics.