Chesterton: The Role of Myth & the Fairy Godmother Philosophy

In “the Ethics of Elfland,” Chesterton explains what is called “The Fairy Godmother Philosophy”: the conditions which uphold the gifts, the fantasy, the magic within fairyland. For example, in contemporary reference: when the fairy godmother tells Cinderella she must only remain at the ball until midnight.
Cinderella does not ask why or hesitate, she adheres to the conditions of the magical transformation without question. We may wonder why she does not resist, imposing upon the story our sense of outrage of the ridiculous unjustness, but these questions are arbitrary. Why do we question the midnight deadline but accept the appearance of the fairy godmother in the first place? Or the pumpkin carriage and the mice-turned-horseman. To accept the fantasy is to accept the fantasy in every aspect. “I could not complain of not understanding the limitations of the vision when i did not understand the vision they limited. The frame was no stranger than the picture” (102).
He’s talking about what we accept in fairy tales; the extent of believability as it applies to necessary rules which function in fairy tales.
He notes that “men in spectacles” who accepted reason to the point of losing their imagination, spouting off miracles as if they were common sums, disregarding the fantastical wonders of the world in which we live (91).

Does this vein of thought stem from an irrepressible need to make the non-understandable, understandable? The unimaginable imaginable? As Chesterton explained,“two black riddles make a white answer” (92).

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