The Princess and the Goblin · Chapter
The Princess Lets Well Alone explained
Princess Irene wakes to another rainy day and decides not to ask her nurse to take her to the tower lady, fearing the lady might not want visitors.
What happens
Princess Irene wakes to another rainy day and decides not to ask her nurse to take her to the tower lady, fearing the lady might not want visitors. She sneaks away to find the tower herself but gets lost again. After crying, she remembers she found the stair before after crying, so she wipes her eyes and searches anew. She finds a stair going down instead of up, which leads her to the kitchen. The nurse retrieves her but does not suspect how she got there, and Irene keeps her secret. Her failure to find the old lady makes her thoughtful, and she sometimes wonders if she dreamed the encounter, but she never fully believes that.
Themes in this chapter
Trust and Belief
Irene struggles with whether to believe her own memory of the old lady, sometimes doubting it was real, yet she cannot fully accept the nurse's skeptical view.
Deception and Appearance
Irene keeps her own counsel about how she got to the kitchen and about the tower lady, maintaining a secret that contrasts with the nurse's assumptions.
Characters to notice
- Princess Irene
Resolves to keep her secret about the tower lady; gets lost again but finds her way to the kitchen; becomes thoughtful and doubts her own experience.
- Lootie
The nurse; fetches Irene from the kitchen without suspecting how she got there; remains unaware of the tower lady.
- The Old Lady
Not physically present; Irene thinks about her and wonders if she dreamed of her, but resolves not to bring the nurse without permission.
Key passages
“She resolved to say nothing more to her nurse on the subject, seeing it was so little in her power to prove her words.”
Irene decided to stop talking about the old lady to her nurse because she couldn't prove what she said.
Irene's strategic silence to avoid further disbelief.
“She came to the conclusion that perhaps the lady would not be pleased if she took anyone to see her without first asking leave; especially as it was pretty evident, seeing she lived on pigeons' eggs, and cooked them herself, that she did not want the household to know she was there.”
Irene reasoned that the lady might not want visitors, since she lived secretly on pigeons' eggs.
Irene's consideration for the old lady's privacy.
“Suddenly it occurred to her that it was after having cried before that she had found her grandmother's stair. She got up at once, wiped her eyes, and started upon a fresh quest.”
Irene remembered that crying had helped her find the stair before, so she stopped crying and began searching again.
Irene's practical response to being lost.