Stephanie Hatz: "High and Low Fantasy - More Similar than Different"

High and Low Fantasy—More Similar than Different

By Stephanie Hatz

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While we clearly distinguish high fantasy from low fantasy, we may not always realize how this distinction plays out in what we read.  I recently tackled both C.S. Lewis’s Till We Have Faces and Neil Gaiman’s Neverwhere with the intent to clarify differences between the two genres and came to an interesting conclusion.

            Till We Have Faces is a high fantasy novel about the nature of the love and relationship between Orual, an ugly princess and the narrator, and her sister Psyche, a beautiful princess.  Its setting in the fantasy city of Glome reminds me of a somewhat medieval kingdom.  When Psyche is sacrificed to the gods and found by Orual, however, Psyche has actually become exposed to a god’s world that Orual cannot enter.

            Neverwhere, on the other hand, establishes itself as low fantasy with its setting in modern-day London.  Richard Mayhew is a normal guy that encounters a helpless girl, Door, who is from London Below.  At first glance London Below appeared to be a real place, but after further reading, I realized its detachment from reality.

            Notice that I titled this post “Differences are Second to Similarities.”  Upon examining the methods that these authors use in describing their characters and world-building, I noticed but one difference between high and low fantasy.

            For the most part, Lewis and Gaiman describe the appearances of their characters in a very straightforward and objective manner.  In Till We Have Faces, I was surprised at the clear description that Orual provides of the god Ungit.  Her exact nature may be a mystery, but we find out that “she is a black stone without head or hands or face, and a very strong goddess” (4).  Similarly, in describing her sister Psyche, Orual informs us that “it was beauty that did not astonish you till afterwards when you had gone out of sight of her and reflected on it” (22).  Descriptions like this allowed me to understand the context from which Orual was coming, sort of like someone who describes the whole of a situation before getting to their real point of concer.  Gaiman was not all that different in this regard.  Especially when mentioning characters of London Below, Gaiman leaves little to the imagination.  Richard looks at Old Bailey and sees that “the body beneath the face, where it was not covered with feathers, was wound round and about with ropes” (550).  Both types of fantasy describe characters in easy to understand ways, allowing even the most hurried reader to visualize their appearances.  Authors may view such description as necessary in order to allow us to develop closer connections to the characters, because I know that I cannot relate very well to mysterious characters.

            The primary difference I noticed between the high and low fantasy novels, however, lies in how they deal with world-building.  It seems like the authors want the world of their protagonist to be well-understood, such as Lewis’s city of Glome and Gaiman’s London Above.  I didn’t see much variance in the way Lewis handled his characters and world-building.  Even when Psyche describes her world that Orual cannot see, she says that “it is in the most delicate pillared court open to the sky, and the water is like crystal and smells as sweet as…as sweet as this whole valley” (114).  The gods’ world is still a part of her world, so she tells Orual like it is.  Neverwhere is a bit different, however, because we aren’t really sure what London Below is, coming from Richard’s perspective.  On one of our first journeys down there, “the girl called Door walked down the court…there were a hundred other little courts…just like this one, tiny spurs of old-time, unchanged for three hundred years” (78).  I think Gaiman wants our discovery of London Below to be just as mysterious as Richard’s experiences.  We receive pieces of information that our inspired by action, such as the vision of Door walking.  This is where the fundamental difference lies, in the method of world-building.

            High and low fantasy are similar, but low fantasy takes on the extra challenge of noting differences between the normal and fantasy worlds.  Action-based world-building is a more interesting way to contrast the two without getting repetitive.  It puts us as readers in the characters’ shoes because we can really see how they interact in the new and different environment.  The world of high fantasy acts only as a backdrop to a story that takes advantage of the world’s fantastical features.