News: Backstory on "The Light Princess"

A few weeks ago, we reported that the much-rumored stage production Tori might be working on is a theater adaptation of “The Light Princess,” as reported in the UK Daily Mail. However, some of you might be asking, “What the heck is the ‘Light Princess?’” Richard Handal sent us a bunch of goodies that begin to answer that question.

By way of introduction, an essay by Sarah A. Conn titled “Protest and Thrive: The Relationship between Global Responsibility and Personal Empowerment,” from the “Women and Economic Empowerment” issue of New England Public Policy, describes the story in this very Tori-esque way:

“The Light Princess” is deprived at birth of her gravity. Because her parents ignored one of the forces of darkness that existed in their kingdom, their child paid the consequences. This poor girl grew into womanhood with no connection to the earth. She floated through the air unless tied down and could only laugh at everything, no matter how serious. As a woman she got her gravity back through entering into a relationship with another. She was able to develop empathy in this relationship and finally regained her connection to the earth when she learned to cry for the other’s pain. Thereafter she herself was able to confront the forces of darkness in the land.

You can check out the entire text online, although if you do that, you deprive yourself of the Maurice Sendak illustrations.

Once you’ve let that sink in a little bit, you can check out an essay on “The Light Princess” and other tales called Antigravity: Matter and the Imagination in George MacDonald and Early Science Fiction.

Hey, nobody said being a Tori fan didn’t sometimes involve a little homework, right?