Jason Mills's Reviews > The Charwoman's Shadow

Ramon Alonzo is a young man in Spain whose sister is to be married above her station. Since the family has no riches, Ramon's father sends him to a magician, there to learn the secret of making gold so that he can provide his sister's dowry. However, the magician exacts a high price for his wisdom, as his aged charwoman knows to her cost, having given up her shadow for longevity. Can Ramon save his family's honour and the charwoman's shadow, and still escape damnation?

This is a Faustian fable mingled with romance. The impact of losing one's shadow is cleverly manifested in the hostility of superstitious villagers; and we later learn that Ramon's very soul is imperilled. It's chilling, too, to learn what the magician does with his stolen shadows. But even with such dark matters afoot, the book is suffused with sunlight and wonder, and a deceptive innocence. Dunsany's prose is mannered and elegant, suitable for framing on the parlour wall:

...but as for the fawns he loved, that slipped noiselessly across clearings, and wide-winged herons that came down at evening along a slant of air, foxes, eagles, and roe-deer - he knew not their language.

His mischievous wit, meanwhile, bubbles just under the surface and is only occasionally let out to play:

...neither the wisdom of dogs nor the wisdom of men is as yet entirely understood by the other, though great advances have already been made: one has only to mention such names as Arnold Wilkington, Sir Murray Jenkins, Rover, Fido, and Towser.

The denouement, if largely predictable, is romantic, satisfying and elegaic. It's a decorative, almost twee fantasy of a kind that probably wouldn't now be published, if written in the environment of today's more cynical 'realistic' fantasy genre (though it's not without a 'post-modern' ironic sensibility). It's fortunate then that Dunsany plied his trade a hundred years ago. He knew the secret of making gold.