The Light Princess

A forgotten invitation gives Princess Makemnoit the chance to curse her infant niece in George MacDonald's The Light Princess. The child loses gravity: a gust can carry her away, and attendants must pull her back to earth. Her weightlessness is emotional as well as physical, because she cannot cry or take anything seriously.

Neither the king and queen nor their court philosophers can devise an acceptable cure. Water alone changes the princess's condition. In the lake her gravity returns, giving her the freedom of movement unavailable on land. A foreign prince, searching unsuccessfully for a wife, becomes lost in a forest and sees her swimming. Mistaking the scene for an emergency, he tries to rescue her and instead finds himself lifted into the air with a princess who has no wish to be saved.

Published in 1864, MacDonald's Scottish fairy tale draws on the pattern of Sleeping Beauty but turns its enchantment into a sustained play on the meanings of lightness, seriousness, and attachment. Physical comedy keeps the curse visible, and the princess's inability to grieve gives the magic an inward dimension. The lake and the unexpected meeting create a path toward change without reducing the story to a simple lesson about behaving properly.