The Wise Woman

MP3 Audio CD. The Wise Woman is a wonderful, educative and entertaining story by George MacDonald, one of the most notable fiction writers of the second half of the 19th century.

The complete title of the book is The Wise Woman: A Parable, and parable it is, while also being a fairy tale written not for children, but for the child-like, as MacDonald himself characterized his work.

The parable features two characters, Agnes, a shepherd?s daughter and Rosamond, a princess. None of the girls is happy ? one of them suffers from her overpowering vanity, while the other is selfish and bad-tempered, always demanding something from her parents and making them satisfy her whims. Fortunately, they get help from the Wise Woman who rescues them from their own self and their own vices, showing to parents how to help their children overcome character faults.

The Wise Woman is well-written and it offers plenty of opportunities to the reader to identify with one character or the other. This great parable has been considered by many to be the best book ever about parenting. The two young characters learn a lot while they receive the subtle and sympathetic help from the Wise Woman, quality that makes this Victorian fable a psychological novel with an exciting plot and great complexity.

It is interesting to see how the two girls start envying each other?s life, how the shepherd?s daughter wants to be a princess and the princess wants to be the shepherd?s daughter ? the wish to be someone else might seem like a very common trope, but it is also one that we encounter day by day. Parents, more than adults with no children, need a way to be able to handle this kind of emotions when they see it in their children, and George MacDonald?s book provides excellent help with that.