This chapter takes a decided turn into Fairy Tale and it makes me feel quite cross with Gobbolino!
I think that Fairy Tales are probably a good way to explore our shadows, or at least they are a traditional one. Part of my understanding of the disciples of Sacred Reading and Close Reading has been noticing how my response to Fairy Tales has changed as I have gotten older and noticed how things I took for granted when I first heard the story (shoe size is a good way of identifying a partner or that it’s OK for hero/Ines to break into people’s houses) are actually problematic. I do enjoy how this chapter subverts the typical romantic quest plot but I really don’t like how Gobbolino buys into the storyline of being a Witch’s Cat means it’s OK or even normal) to do bad things... It makes me wonder what sort of (problematised) Fairy Tale Gobbolino needs to be reading?

9 Sentence Recap
Gobbolino meets a sad knight.
The Knight gives him to a Fair Lady in a Tower.
The Knight and and his rival the Black Baron have to give her a gift the other can’t guess.
But they always “guess” because the maid always tells them what the other has brought.
Gobbolino threatens the maid so that his friend the Knight can win.
But Lady Alice doesn’t want to be “won”.
She runs off with her true love as the Knight and Baron fight each other.
The fighting wakes up the dragon sleeping under the tower.
The dragon destroys the tower leaving Gobbolino, the Knight and Baron in the ruins.

3 Sentence Recap
Gobbolino becomes part of a completion to win Lady Alice.
He tries to influence things so his friend, the Sad Knight, can marry her.
Before that can happen Lady Alice’s true love returns and she goes off with him.

The first example of Shadow that I see in this chapter is Gobbolino’s shadow-people pleasing - he starts off with the positive desire to cheer up the obviously sad Knight he has just met and to amuse the “Fair Lady” that the Knight tells them about. He offers to amuse her with stories and make her laugh with his Witch’s Cat tricks - which is a very compassionate response (though maybe a little unreflective - at that point he really doesn’t know anything about why the Knight or Lady Alice are unhappy or what they actually need). But then the Knight asks if Gobbolino can “make” her fall in love with him

”Could you make her fall in love with a humble knight?” the knight asked very sadly.
“I could put her under a spell,” said Gobbolino, remembering the magic he had learned in the witch’s cave. He wished with all his heart to help this kind knight with the sad eyes, who spoke to him so gently.

Perhaps Gobbolino doesn’t realise how unethical a love spell like that would be (Grimalkin and the Witch definitely had very different to the mainstream ideas about right and wrong and Gobbolino hasn’t really thought or leaned much about (Romantic) love or long term behaviour-altering spells In his adventures since?). But even without the really disturbing ethical considerations that’s a incredibly big and long-term thing to promise to someone you have only just met. Particularly when he hasn’t even met the Fair Lady and has no sense of what she might want. Why is Gobbolino so ready to “help” the Sad Knight - is it just because he likes to make people he knows happy (while not even thinking about others involved) or does he see it as a way to “earn” his place in a new home?
Gobbolino keeps this emotional loyalty to the Sad Knight even after he has met Lady Alice and the rival suitor the Black Baron. He stays loyal to the Knight even after he has seen him bribe the Little Maid, Rosabel. He becomes friends with Lady Alice almost immediately but doesn’t think to ask her what outcome she wants. And although we are primed to see the Black Baron as a bady because he is the Sad Knight’s rival he doesn’t actually seem very different. The worst we see of him before the final confrontation is him being bad tempered when he can’t get news of the Knight’s latest gift out of his usual source Rosabel and his fear that Gobbolino will cast a spell on them all (and for once in this book that prejudiced assumption is pretty justified!). Even at the end when he responds to the Sad Knight violently it’s pretty clear that they are both as bad as each other. But nothing makes Gobbolino reconsider until Lady Alice finally breaks down while playing her harp.
When Lady Alice finally explains that although the Knight is pleasant enough she finds both of her suitors stupid, that she has no wish to marry either of them and explains that she is still in love with the noble young lord she fell for when she was younger Gobbolino finall regrets his actions on behalf of the Sad Knight.

Gobbolino was terribly distressed when he remembered how he had helped to bring about his mistress’s downfall.
“It comes of being born a witch’s cat,” he told himself. “Bad will out, I see. Now if I had not threatened Rosabel, and let things take their course, the Knight and the baron might have gone on guessing till the end of their days, and my fair lady would not have to marry either of them.”

After that he does hatch a plan to semi-covertly reveal himself to the Baron so that the “guessing” game can continue - but he doesn’t fully take responsibility for what he has done and doesn’t try to explain or apologise. I’ve come to expect better from Gobbolino he’s usually so honest and open. I find it sad that he can’t bring himself a apologise or try to find a solution through communication rather than continuing to try to manipulate the situation. Maybe it’s good to have a reminder that our hero is flawed? And I wonder how much his previous bad experiences and not having his explanations listened to or believed have shaped his behaviour now?
I do recognise, in myself, the tendency to take on a person I-care-about’s model of a situation and not to initially recognise that there might be complexities that they can’t “see”. I hope I can try to keep in mind that things are pretty much always more complicated and be prepared to listen to multiple opinions and perspectives.

In a lot of stories the Dragon would be a much more obvious symbol of the Shadow. Here he is really just a part of the Fairy Tale environment. He guards the Tower because magical Fairy Tale Towers with Fair Ladies inside are always guarded by something like a dragon. He looks terrifying but he’s actually mostly asleep and never stops anyone going to or leaving the Tower. He is only finally woken up by the Shadow Toxic Masculinity of the Knight and the Baron fighting over Lady Alice when they haven’t even noticed she has already left! When he roars that finally brings the Tower crashing down but it doesn’t seem like a particularly deliberate act of destruction. The collapse of the Tower does finally stop the fight and

By the time they had picked themselves up, the dragon was crawling away to some peaceful cavern of his own in the forest

I’m glad that the dragon gets to do his own thing - it seems that in Gobbolino’s world Dragons are just as misunderstood as Witch’s Cats

The way that Gobbolino treats, the Little Maid, Rosabel also seems to come from Shadow. It’s very disappointing - Gobbolino usually tries to be kind even when he’s makes mistakes doing it. He seems to turn against her when she first tells the Sad Kight what the Black Baron’s last present was - even though that helps the Sad Knight, who Gobbolino is in favour of. Or perhaps it’s when she takes the Sad Knight’s bribe not to tell, when Gobbolino (and we as readers) are sure that she will just as she has always done? When Lady Alice instructs her not to let ieach suitor what the other’s gift was it’s not even clear that she means it or if it’s actually a coded instruction to tell. But Gobbolino takes the instruction at face value and tries to forward “his” Knight’s interest but threatening Rosabel.

“If you tell the Baron about me, Rosabel, I will turn you into a gingerbread doll, and the Dragon will eat you up!“
“Oh, my! Oh, my!” shrieked the little made in terror, running down the stairs.
Gobbolino had never threatened anyone before and he did not know if he could read if he really could turn anyone in to a gingerbread doll if he tried. He felt very ashamed of himself is he trotted back to his faiir mistress and kept under her couch.
“I didn’t mean it,” he said to himself. “I wouldn’t hurt her for the world. Bad will out, I suppose. It comes of being born a witch’s cat.

Rosabel is clearly terrified and even when he has had time to reflect that threatening her is wrong Gobbolino keeps up with it day after day. He even tries to justify his behaviour by blaming Rosabel she is very heedless, I fell, and after all, I owe this kind home to the Knight. He obviously doesn’t see a Rosabel as part of this kind home even though she is presumably feeding him and keeping the Tower clean and comfortable. Why does Gobbolino continue with threatening this vulnerable young person even when he acknowledges it’s wrong? Does he not see her a a person with her own thoughts and feelings? Even when he realises he has been doing the wrong thing altogether and it would be better for the Baron to know about him he doesn’t apologise to Rosabel or do anything to make her less frightened. Ultimate her fear makes her reveal the “secret” because she is too terrified to answer the Baron’s questions more cunningly. (It’s quite satisfying that Gobbolino’s bad behaviour is the seed of it’s own destruction). Rosabel is still afraid when she finally leaves the Tower after Lady Alice’s departure. We’ll meet her again in the next chapter and unsurprisingly she’s still terrified of Gobbolino.

At several points during this chapter Gobbolino can obviously see the Shadow within himself. Each time he blames it on having been born a Witch’s Cat saying Bad will out, I suppose”. Why after 12 chapters of trying to prove that he is not the stereotype of a Witch’s Cat does he suddenly assume he is unable to move beyond his upbringing and heritage? Have the hurtful words and prejudices he has encountered on his travels become an internalised self-hatred? Was Granny Dobbin’s “truth bomb” In the previous chapter finally too much for him (assuming that she is a Witch herself then maybe her words and experiences had more weight for him than a non-magical humans)? Or is it a toxic defence mechanism that helps him avoid taking responsibility for his actions? I can’t fully make sense of it but it does bring to mind W H Aduen’s lines from the poem September 1, 1939

I and the public know
What all schoolchildren learn,
Those to whom evil is done
Do evil in return.

It’s a poem I come back to again and again in these Troubled Times...

If Auden couldn’t reach a conclusion I’m certainly not going to! So I’ll end my analysis of this chapter here. We’re moving on to the Sacred Practice of Havruta so I’ll try to do that and the Blessings for this chapter soon. Then we’ll be looking at Chapter 14 Gobbolino the Woodcutter through the theme of deception.
Please let me know what you think of this chapter, what I’ve said and/or of the theme of Shadow in the comments