Lilith (novel)
- For other uses of the name Lilith, see Lilith (disambiguation).
Lilith, written by the father of fantasy literature, George MacDonald, was first published in 1895. In contrast with his usual fairy tale writings, Lilith is considered among the darkest of MacDonald's works, and among the most profound, a myth concerning the nature of evil and life after death.
Plot Synopsis
Mr. Vane, the main protagonist of Lilith, owns a library that seems to be haunted by the former librarian, who looks much like a raven from the brief glimpses he catches of the wraith. After finally encountering the supposed ghost, Mr. Raven, Vane learns that Raven had known his father; indeed, Vane's father had visited the strange parallel universe from which Raven comes and goes and now resides therein. Vane follows Raven into the world through a mirror (the world is described as a different dimension of sorts). Inside the world, Vane learns of a house of beds where the dreamers sleep until the end of the world in death: a good death, in which life is found. Vane's father sleeps there. He meets the Little Ones, miniature children who never grow up and are cared for by the oldest woman-child, Lona. Mr. Raven turns out to be Adam; he and Eve look over the house of the sleeping dead. Vane's mission is to help the Little Ones to grow up and protect them from the Princess of Bulika, a city of stupified people under a reign of terror. The Princess, none other than Lilith, Adam's first wife (in the Talmud, Zohar and other texts; she does not feature prominently in the Bible), seeks to kill all children because of the prophesy that her child, long missing, would be her doom. Lilith can take the form of a spotted leopardess, but she is more than matched by the daughter of Adam and Eve, Mara, who takes the form of a pure white leopardess. Vane, although nearly blinded by Lilith's beauty and charms, leads the Little Ones in a battle against Bulika. Lona, Vane's love, turns out to be Lilith's daughter, and is killed by her own mother. Lilith, however, is captured and brought to Adam and Eve at the house of death, where they struggle to make her open her hand, fused shut, in which she holds something that does not belong to her. Only when she gives it up can Lilith join the sleepers in blissful dreams, free of sin. After a long struggle Lilith bids Adam cut her hand from her body; it is done, Lilith sleeps, and Vane is sent to bury the hand; water flows from the hole and washes the land over. Vane is then allowed to join the Little Ones, already asleep, in their dreaming. He takes his bed, next to Lona's, and finds true life in death.
ReferencesMacDonald, George. Lilith. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2000.
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