The Seven Basic Plots - Christopher Booker [35]
Indeed there are certain categories of popular storytelling which seem so naturally drawn to the Rags to Riches plot, that we often think of this kind of story, with its `fairy tale happy endings, as being essentially rather simple and sentimental, the stuff of wish-fulfilment rather than great literature. The Rags to Riches theme has, for instance, traditionally been associated with that type of romantic fiction which was mainly written by and for women, telling of how some poor and beautiful (or plain and disregarded, but secretly admirable) heroine rises from obscurity to win the heart of a prince, dashing duke or millionaire. Quite apart from the well-known adaptations of folk tales, stories specially written for children have always relied heavily on the Rags to Riches theme: we may think, for instance, of those Victorian school stories which told of how a new boy survived the initial ordeals of bullying and maltreatment to become Captain of the School; or those twentieth-century tales for girls which showed a little heroine eventually fulfilling her dream of dancing with a famous ballet company.
But equally the Rags to Riches plot has inspired some of the most serious and admired novels in Western literature. An obvious example is David Copperfield, in which we see how an unhappy, persecuted little orphan goes out into the world and eventually rises, after many adventures, to become a rich and famous writer, at last happily united in the closing pages to his `true angel', Agnes Woodward. In Jane Eyre we again follow the fortunes of an unhappy, persecuted little Cinderellalike orphan as she goes out into the world, where she eventually becomes an heiress and, against all odds, marries her adored `Prince' Mr Rochester. In each of these novels the fundamental plot shaping the story is precisely that of those childhood fairy tales: that of the unhappy and disregarded little child at the beginning gradually developing and maturing through the vicissitudes of life to the point at the end where he or she is raised up to a state of glorious happiness and fulfilment, united at last with a beloved `other half'.
In general terms, such a story obviously makes some profound appeal to the human imagination. But when we come to look more closely at a wide crosssection of such stories, we find that they have much more in common than just a vague, generalised outline. Wherever we find the Rags to Riches theme in storytelling, we may be struck by how constantly certain of its features recur.
First of these is that, more consistently than in any other type of plot, the Rags to Riches story first introduces us to its hero or heroine in childhood, or at least at a very young age before they have ventured out on the stage of the world. As yet they are not fully formed, and we are aware that in some essential way the story is concerned with the process of growing up.
When we first see them in this initial state, it is always emphasised how the little hero or heroine are at the bottom of the heap, seemingly inferior to everyone around them. Often they are the youngest child, and disregarded for being so. They thus begin in the shadows cast by more dominant figures around them, who not only can see no merit in them but are usually deeply antagonistic to them.
These `dark' figures who overshadow the hero or heroine in the early stages of the story fall into two main categories. Firstly they may be adult figures, often acting in the place of a parent, such