The Seven Basic Plots - Christopher Booker [34]
In all these scenes, someone who has seemed to the world quite commonplace is dramatically shown to have been hiding the potential for a second, much more exceptional, self within. Somehow the moment of transformation when this other greater self emerges has a strange power to move us. And we begin with this transformation because it lies at the heart of our second plot, `Rags to Riches'.
Early in our lives, most of us became familiar with a story which ran something like this.
Once upon a time there was a young hero or heroine, not yet embarked on adult life, living in lowly and very difficult circumstances. This humble little figure, almost certainly an orphan, was regarded as of little worth by most people around, and may even have been actively maltreated. But one day something happened to send our hero or heroine out into the world where they met with a series of adventures which eventually brought about a miraculous transformation in their fortunes. Emerging from the shadows of their wretched former state, they were raised to a position of dazzling splendour, winning the admiration of all who beheld them. The hero won the hand in marriage of a beautiful Princess; the heroine won the love of a handsome Prince. They succeeded to rule over a kingdom. And from that day forth they lived `happily ever after'.
So familiar did this plot become to us in childhood that we take its almost unvarying regularity for granted. It is of course the story of how the little orphan Cinderella, dressed in rags and forced to sit in the ashes by her cruel stepmother and vain stepsisters, is enabled by her fairy godmother to go out to the the ball - which eventually wins her the hand in marriage of her Prince. It is the story of how the little orphan Aladdin is led out of the city by his wicked `uncle, the Sorcerer, to retrieve the magic lamp, thus embarking on the strange series of adventures which transform him into a rich and admired national hero, winning the hand of the Princess and finally succeeding to the kingdom of her father, the Sultan. It is the story of how the unhappy little orphan hero of Puss in Boots, left with nothing in the world but his cat, is transformed by the cat's ingenious tricks into the magnificent Marquis of Carabas, complete with a great castle and estates - fit to win the hand of the King's daughter. It is the story of how the little orphan Dick Whittington comes up to London to live in poverty but, again with the aid of his cat, wins a fabulous fortune, marries a rich merchant's beautiful daughter and becomes `thrice Lord Mayor of London'.
Most of the variations on this Rags to Riches story we met in childhood were adapted from folk tales, and it is perhaps not until we begin reading through folk stories from many different countries and cultures that we come to appreciate how universal this type of story is. The basic outline of the story we know as Cinderella is reckoned by the students of folklore to have given rise to well over a thousand different versions, found in every corner of Europe, in Africa, in Asia (the earliest known version dates back to ninth-century China) and among the indigenous peoples of North America. Other permutations on the Rags to Riches theme appear so often in folklore that on this score alone it must be regarded as one of the most basic stories in the world.
But the story of the humble, disregarded little hero or heroine who is lifted out of the shadows to a glorious destiny is by no means, of course, confined only to folk tales. We have already touched on such familiar examples as the opening episodes in the mediaeval story of King Arthur; or the modern fairy-tale transformation of the ragged little flower-girl Eliza Doolittle into a grand and beautiful lady which made one of the most popular stage and film musicals of our time, My Fair Lady (although without Shaw's original happy ending in Pygmalion, where Eliza finally marries and lives happily ever after).
We can find the Rags to Riches theme in almost every form in which stories have been told.