This chapter explores the settings of fantasy world and real world with regard to their influences on the plot and literary characters in Coraline. Setting plays an important role in Coraline in providing protagonist Coraline with the worlds to which she can travel back and forth, and in determining both contents and characters that appear in the story. In this chapter, portal-quest motif is discussed with reference to its significant meanings and functions, as well as its relevance with the representation of coming of age in Coraline. Also, the uncanny effect is examined regarding its psychological influences on the setting, plot and characters of the story. Finally, this chapter aims to investigate Gaiman’s attempt to create a dystopia for Coraline to visit.
The questions addressed in the chapter are: (1) what is the fantasy world set in the story of Coraline? (2) What are the differences between the fantasy world set in Coraline and the secondary world set in other children’s fantasy stories? (3) What is
portal-quest and what is its relation with the representation of coming of age as exemplified by Coraline? (4) Does portal-quest symbolize a ritual for Coraline to get through over the course of her adventures? (5) What is the uncanny effect, and how does it work and affect both the protagonist and the reader? (6) What is Gaiman’s attempt to teach children a moral story by creating a utopia that turns out to be a dystopia as a cautionary tale for both the protagonist and the reader?
The Worlds of Imagination
Children’s fantasy novels are, by definition, fantasy stories written specifically
for young readers. What stimulates the invention of fantasy worlds in the stories?
Perhaps it is a human need to escape a dreary and depressed reality, by creating fantastic mirages in the form of the real world, but with different, and more favorable outcomes. As mentioned in the previous chapter, the fantasy world waiting for Coraline to explore is set within the real world, but many children’s fantasy stories, such as The Lord of the Rings Trilogy and Diana Wynne Jones’ Howl’s Moving Castle, are explicitly set in a secondary world, an alternative and entirely fictional world that exists independently.
In his well-known essay, “On Fairy-Stories,” Tolkien asserts that “creative fantasy is founded upon the hard recognition that things are so in the world as it appears under the sun; on a recognition of fact, but not a slavery to it” (55). In Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings Trilogy, the Middle Earth teems with mysterious creatures, which exist alongside human beings. The works skillfully create powerful images of an entirely believable secondary world with its laws of supernature, theory, language, people, culture, and history that are employed and implied in the particular settings of story.
Also Howl’s Moving Castle clearly embodies some of these characteristics Tolkien asserts in the way that setting is defined at the beginning of the novel as a space in which magical objects, such as “seven-league boots” and “cloaks of invisibility,” really do exist: “In the land of Ingary, where such things as seven-league boots and cloaks of invisibility really exist” (1). It is worth noting that the alternative world with its own rules invented by the fantasy writer can be said “to be the kind of fantasy at the greatest remove from our reality” (Colin Manlove 4).
In fantasy novels, setting determines both contents and characters. Therefore, in Howl’s Moving Castle, it comes as little surprise that wizards and witches perform
supernatural activities, and magical creatures appear as commonly as ordinary people do in daily life. In addition, the fantasy setting can either empower or disempower a child. In the secondary world, magic makes everything possible in the lives of the characters. The secondary world is so remarkable that it stands on its own and it is self-sustained and ruled by its own fantastic mechanism, providing “the highest expression of imaginative creation in this genre” (Swinfen 10). Hence, the existence of anything supernatural is taken for granted. Moreover, the secondary world is independent from the real world. The supernatural essence of the realm of magic establishes its existence as a system independent from the real world.
While some children’s fantasy novels are set in a secondary world, many are situated within conspicuously conventional and realistic environments, a real world identical with our own, in which people talk and think like we do, rather than as extraterrestrial beings that converse in weird languages, or behave distinctively differently from humankind. This created world, although ostensibly “real,” obeys its own laws; it is, after all, a world of imagination. Coraline fits into this category, known as the children’s portal-quest fantasy genre. Such novels often set the magical world within the real world. The setting also plays an important role in Coraline for describing Coraline’s travels from real world to fantasy world, an ordinary realm to a magical realm, and the setting of the magical world within an ordinary world is central to the plot setting of children’s portal-quest fantasy fiction.
In children’s portal-quest fantasies, the illustration of the real world has to be realistic enough so when children read or hear the stories they can associate them with familiar issues, environments or characters. The illustration of the fantasy world, likewise, has to be imaginative and, moreover, provocative to stir reader’s imagination as Tolkien states:
[T]he story-maker proves a successful “sub-creator.” He makes a Secondary World which your mind can enter. Inside it, what he relates is “true”: it accords with the laws of that world. You therefore believe it, while you are, as it were, inside. (37)
Ann Swinfen also suggests that “our normal experience of the primary world thus leads us to give primary belief to primary realism, while successful sub-creation induces secondary belief in the secondary realism of a secondary world” (5). Through Gaiman’s fantasy creation readers have the chance to see the magical world through the story. The strength of the fantastic dwells in his invention of something original, and its purpose is to provoke fear of death, thrill of some unexpected outcomes, and to stir the imagination of both the protagonist and the reader. The story of Coraline begins within the real world, whereupon the protagonist is brought into the magic world through the small door as a portal.
Fantasy, by its nature, stresses the difference between life and fiction, real and unreal. Traditionally, a magical world, as the Middle Earth created by Tolkien in The Lord of the Rings Trilogy, is geographically isolated from the rest of the world. In the
story of Coraline, the real world, however, is grounded in contemporary England and the fantasy world is set within it. The real world and the other (fantasy) world are not in sharp contrast but strangely alike.
Coraline presents an opposition between two worlds: the real world, associated
with the ordinary, and the fantasy world, associated with the supernatural. The fantasy world is not independent from the real world with its own laws and nature; instead, it’s set within the real world and the two worlds maintain a close connection through a
portal (a small door that leads to a murky passage that connects between two worlds), through which the child protagonist can travel or be transported from one world to another.
The magic world created by the other mother seems to reflect Coraline’s desires and to manipulate her into loving the other parents and staying with them there forever. Coraline doesn’t know it until the other father reveals the truth: “This is all she made: the house, the grounds, and the people in the house. She made it and she waited” (Coraline 71). The other mother knows what Coraline wants and hence creates everything to please her. Although the fantasy setting provides Coraline with everything she dreams for, it’s not natural to have a place with everything that is very similar to her home. This produces a sense of fear and anxiety in her. To some extent, the fantasy world in Coraline is in fact only an illusory reflection or a copy of the real world, with magical beings and supernatural forces that stand in contrast to the natural laws.
The other world is nothing but a trap the other mother creates to capture Coraline and other children. It’s also relatively small when compared to the real world. When Coraline and the black cat walk away from the other mother’s house, they somehow walk back to the same house:
“But how can you walk away from something and still come back to it?”
“Easy,” said the cat. “Think of somebody walking around the world. You start out walking away from something and end up coming back to it.”
(Coraline 74)
This passage conveys a symbolic meaning and corresponds to the home/away/home quest-story pattern. One of the essential features of Coraline’s journey is that it ends where it begins like a cycle, meaning that Coraline will eventually return to her point of departure which is her home. That is to say, instead of running away, Coraline eventually has to solve problems and go back home again. Gaiman is trying to present the world as the one that even a child might be able to understand.
Numerous discussions in theoretical works about children’s fantasy fiction use setting as an abstract concept to demarcate a world where plots and settings are designed and developed according to its definitions in stories. There’s no doubt that the setting is an effective device to support the story and propel the plot in Coraline and Gaiman facilitates and amplifies Coraline’s maturing process by placing her into the other world. As Nikolajeva suggests that
By placing the character in an ‘extreme’ setting, […] a writer can initiate and amplify a maturation process, which would be less plausible in a normal setting. […] Thus setting can function as a catalyst for character evolution. (Aesthetic 133)
Child readers are not asked to imagine a place they know or some place from their history or even from their knowledge. It’s about finding an imaginary world beyond their imagination, and embarking on a quest through a portal. Portal and quest together form an affinity in the story of Coraline. The next section examines the affinity with reference to its functions and meanings on the protagonist.
Portal-Quest
As discussed earlier in the previous chapter that children’s fantasy stories are not just a bunch of exciting stories that appeal only to child readers. Some literary scholars point out, the fantasy stories can actually help the youths deal with their own fear, anxiety or other problems in real life. Children’s fantasy story is one of the sub-genres among children’s literature that employs fantasy elements such as magic, supernature, Gothic setting and grotesque elements as its primary appeal, and to excite wonder, curiosity and imagination in child readers.
Children’s portal-quest fantasy is usually children’s fantasy story of a child protagonist’s growth and maturation that involve both portal and quest as a literary device and journey archetype to propel the plot and make the story more intriguing and appealing to readers. Quest is a prevalent motif in children’s fantasy stories. A quest is a journey towards a goal to obtain something valuable or to solve problems.
The difference between children’s portal-quest fantasy story and other children’s fantasy story is that the former employs portal, a threshold that connects different places, worlds or even times. It is also a metonym that contains symbolic meaning and psychological sophistication. Portal and quest together make a symbolic code in making sense of plot and functions in children’s portal-quest fantasy. The term
“portal-quest,” according to Farah Mendlesohn, is an ostensible combination of “the portal fantasy” and “the quest fantasy,” and “the protagonist in portal and quest fantasies is always an explorer of an unknown land, and this shapes the way in which the world and the story are told” ( XXXI).
Gaiman employs both “portal” and “quest” and combines them skillfully in Coraline to embody his childhood imagination. In his interview, Gaiamn indicated
that the idea of the strange old house and portal in Coraline comes from his childhood experience:
When I was growing up we lived in a house that was divided into two. We had the servant quarters of an old manor house, and another family had the important part, but we had the one front room and the front room had two doors. One of which obviously was the servant’s door that was the one we came in and out of and the other one on the far end was bricked up, and I opened up the door sometimes. The big old door and I stared the brick whether there should be a doorway, and I would wonder and think there had to be a way to get through that, if only I knew how to get through. (Q n.pag.)
Aside from being a threshold that connects two different places or times, portal can be expanded into a broader meaning as a stage in one’s developmental process.
For example, the three parts of the quest-story pattern, in a sense, can be seen as three portals that connect one another, and each of them symbolizes a stage in the child protagonist’s psychological and moral developments. Furthermore, portal also has a symbolic meaning that represents what Joseph Campbell calls “the entrance to the zone of magnified power” in a hero’s journey (77). In the story of Coraline, through crossing portal (the small door) that connects between Coraline’s world and the other mother’s world, the canny and the uncanny, the familiar and the unfamiliar, Coraline is able to step into the uncharted land and begins her quest.
Children’s portal-quest fantasies use portals as the primary method of moving their protagonists between worlds, and as a literary device to propel the plot. They
first lead child protagonists through a series of adventures, in order to perform a set task or fulfill a quest for self-fulfillment. When the mission is accomplished, they’re transported back to the real world. These stories generally comprise a round-trip from home to the fantasy world: discovery of the portal, crossing of the portal, confrontation with mythical beings, supernatural assistance, battle with the evil powers, and finally the return home. One common theme in children’s portal-quest fantasy stories is the conflict of humans against mythical beings, which originate from folklore and mythological literature. The person-against-mythical-being conflicts can be seen in the story of Coraline, when Coraline confronts the beldam and other supernatural characters or objects that prevent her from reaching her goals and force her to struggle for survival. The story focuses not only on the adversaries and external obstacles that Coraline encounters, but also on her psychological and moral developments. Her portal-quest, in both its internal and external aspects, is thus an essential component of the story of Coraline, contributing to the psychological and moral growth of the protagonist and the reader alike. What’s more, the child reader can identify with Coraline and concentrate on the psychological and moral angles of the story.
Coraline establishes a portal-quest for the eponymous heroine. A small door
functions as the essential and fateful portal that lures the child protagonist into a magical domain, from which she later tries desperately to escape. It chronicles Coraline’s psychological transition and moral maturation that involve struggles in her journeys to a dystopia. In Coraline, the fantasy world is set within the real world. The story of Coraline, in a way, is the discovery of the unreal within the real, the incredible within the credible, and the unbelievable within the believable. Egoff maintains similarly:
The writer of fantasy goes beyond realism to disclose that we do not live entirely in a world of the perceived senses, that we also inhabit an inner world of the mind and spirit where the creative imagination is permanently struggling to expand vision and perception. (19)
Gaiman reinterprets and refabricates some spooky folk myths into a terrifying children’s portal-quest fantasy story by cleverly making use of the features of the ghost story genre (e.g., strange old house, child missing, confronting and battling with the evil powers). Though the materials are not original, he recombines them into a nontraditional children’s portal-quest fantasy. Through employing a portal in the plot, he enables Coraline and reader to explore beyond realism and disturb the sense people usually perceive in the ordinary world.
Like Lewis Carroll’s Alice, Gaiman’s Coraline departs from the real world into the fantasy world, but unlike the world Alice explores which is totally different and strange from her own, the mystical world that Coraline visits is only a replica of her world. The story is based on the contrast between home and the other home, real world and the other world. Home is supposed to be a safe place that provides security and comfort, but ironically it’s also a dangerous place for Coraline. David Rudd states that “Coraline echoes many fairy tales (Bluebeard especially coming to mind, with its forbidden chamber accessible by a large key),” and explores “the problematic nature of knowing one’s place in the world” (167). Humphrey Carpenter suggests that “adult fiction sets out to portray and explain the world as it really is; books for children present it as it should be” (qtd. in Nikolajeva, Mythic, 3). It can be argued that Carpenter’s comments are true to most of the children’s stories in the past. Tracing back to the origin of children’s literature, many cultural historians and scholars would
agree with M. O. Grenby’s statement that “children’s literature began in the mid eighteenth century and took hold first in Britain. With its mixture of pictures, rhymes, riddles, stories, alphabets and lessons on moral conduct” (4). Andrea Immel also writes, “Western constructs of childhood, infused with adult projections, expectations and anxieties about individual fulfillment and society’s future, usually point to foundational principles” (21). However, since the nineteenth century onward, some children’s portal-quest fantasy novels, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, for instance, had broken the concept that children’s literature was supposed to serve didactic purpose only and portrayed the innocence and purity of childhood as the way adult perceived (Lynne Vallone 175). As Nikolajeva argues that “the notion of childhood and the ideas about growing, procreation and death which we meet in children’s fiction reflect adults’ views, which may or may not correspond to the real status of children and childhood in any given society” (Mythic 259).
It appears that Coraline challenges the concept assumed by adults since romanticism that in children’s literature the child’s image is supposed to be pure and innocent because adult writers maintained an idyllic world of harmony and joy in
It appears that Coraline challenges the concept assumed by adults since romanticism that in children’s literature the child’s image is supposed to be pure and innocent because adult writers maintained an idyllic world of harmony and joy in