49 pages • 1 hour read
Heather FawcettEmily Wilde's Encyclopaedia of Faeries
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2023A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
Transactional Versus Unconditional Relationships
The novel’s protagonist, Emily, prefers and better understands relationships built on transactions rather than personal connection. Transactional relationships ensure that Emily immediately receives equal benefits in return for what she offers. This is valuable to her not only because of her role in the scientific community but also because of her social awkwardness. She knows herself to misunderstand social cues and fumble conversations, and so she prefers the safety of solitude. Unconditional relationships require trust and patience that mutual benefits may come in the long-term. These relationships require trial and error as both parties navigate how to build a long-lasting partnership. Transactional relationships, on the other hand, are straightforward and fleeting, and make the most sense to Emily in terms of her scientific exploration and study needs.
Emily prefers the Folk over other humans because she “appreciate[s] blunt people” as it “takes the guesswork out of conversations, and as someone who is terrible at guesswork and always putting her feet wrong, this is invaluable” (34). Emily’s lack of experience in connecting with people shows when she immediately offends the village headwoman. Unlike Wendell, she only researched the local fae (extensively) but didn’t consider the need to understand the local human customs before starting her research. Not only is she unable to observe the proper customs to offer respect to the locals, but she treats their assistance as a transaction rather than accepting it as the one-sided offer they intend. She doesn’t have malicious intent, but this behavior is what she understands and what makes sense to her in terms of her research. Emily doesn’t allow them to treat her as a friend, or as family at first, but eventually their persistence wins out. Determinedly kind characters such as Aud, Lilja, and Margret become Emily’s first true friendships, built on kindness without expected reciprocation and genuine conversations about her personal life.
Emily has aloof parents who have never attempted to understand her and the only family she acknowledges is her brother, who is generally too busy with his wife and four children and who doesn’t understand her scientific work. Due to her neglectful childhood, Emily turned toward stories of the Folk, who are “of another world, with its own rules and customs” because “to a child who always felt ill-suited to her own world, the lure was irresistible” (22-23). Emily was unable to connect with her parents growing up, yet the Folk provide a way to do so—one she can easily grasp. Through gift-giving and bargains, Emily is able to form transactional relationships with faeries, however temporary, which offers her short-term companionship to fill the void in her social life.
The narrative situates Emily as a character who simply doesn’t prefer socializing, who rather prefers solitude. However, the narrative is told through Emily’s personal journal entries, and are colored by her personal biases and oversight. This is evidenced after Wendell says Emily “could make life so much easier for [her]self if [she] tried to be liked once in a while” and she journals that “[she] tried and tried—or at least, [she] used to, and nothing had ever come of it” (92). Emily’s anti-social claims are suggested to cover up the fact that she avoids socializing not because she doesn’t like it, but because she fears being rejected and misunderstood.
The Power of Stories
The power of stories is evidenced in every encounter Emily has with the Folk. As she says: “One doesn’t need magic if one knows enough stories” (193). Despite all the research Emily has compiled on the faeries, stories from locals all over the world remain her biggest strength and set her apart from other scholars. Emily understands that stories are everything to the Folk; they are “part of them and their world a fundamental way that mortals have difficulty grasping” (11). Stories of the Folk, as Emily believes, can be vital to understanding repeating faerie behaviors and patterns. In the faerie world, laws don’t exist in the way they do for mortals. Instead, language and stories provide the most order for the Folk.
Emily consistently relies on her knowledge of regional folklore to understand the Folk and survive dangerous encounters. A story about a faerie princess who saves a prince of the Irish Folk by using a token of the world allows her to concoct a tea to save Wendell’s life using a tree native to Ireland. If Emily had not been aware of this story, Wendell would have wasted away into nothing from the iron axe injury. She once again resorts to her knowledge of stories when Wendell fights one of the Hidden Ones in the winter faerie realm. A story of a human woman forging a sword of tears for her faerie king allows Emily to do the same for Wendell, saving their lives.
Stories also provide Emily with confidence and creative thinking skills. The plot lines of Folk tales often remain ambiguous as to whether they’ll end in victory or loss. They’re unpredictable in that nothing is ever certain, “there is always a loophole, a door that you may find, if you are clever enough, to lead you out. To twist the story” (138). The power of storytelling becomes most influential in the novel when it’s employed by Emily to escape the white tree’s enchantment. When she discovers the tree’s enchantment wishes her to take the safest, most efficient path toward it, Emily alters the story she tells herself regarding her safety and the path’s efficiency to delay her arrival. By twisting the story and convincing the enchantment that the forest holds dangerous creatures she must protect herself from, Emily is allowed to pick up the iron axe, which she then uses to cut off her affected finger. The manipulation effectively severs Emily from the enchantment.
The theme also serves as a metanarrative. Despite the fact that the majority of the novel presents Emily’s scientific fieldwork notes, a narrative remains present and unfolds though she has no intention of creating this. Her story permeates her scientific exploration unexpectedly, and she becomes a characters in the Fae folklore. These stories often feature female, human protagonists who fall in love with fae or become entangled in their world. In unearthing these local folktales, she creates her own through her research.
Apathy and Detachment in Academia
Academia is portrayed as both prestigious and as the source of emotional disconnect throughout the novel. The ruthlessness of academia is often seen in the dark academia genre and Emily’s obsession with chasing groundbreaking evidence is no different. Emily admits early on that “there are times when [her] scholarly enthusiasm gets the better of [her]” (37). In these moments, Emily consistently puts herself or those around her in danger.
Emily is more detached from her empathy than every other human character in the novel, often engaging in morally gray behaviors as a way of ensuring objectivity and impartiality in her research. This habit causes her to neglect the proper customs and traditions of various regions, thereby disrespecting its inhabitants. It also prevents her from forming connections which will help keep their safety in mind while potentially provoking dangerous local faeries who will take their ire out on the townsfolk.
Emily regularly chooses “rationality over empathy” and “shut[s] away [her] feelings” without regret (149). She claims she “[is] no monster” but in the same passage, admits that she would not have chased after Lilja and Margret “if there were no scientific discoveries to be had” (150). Her willing admission that she had rescued them for scholarship rather than out of compassion for them evidences the Apathy and Detachment in Academia which has so hindered Emily’s moral compass and sense of empathy for humankind that she is perfectly content with accepting this quality in herself. Emily’s stony-hearted pursuit of knowledge prompts her poor treatment of Mord and Aslaug upon arrival in town, during her first visit with the changeling terrorizing their home. She eagerly takes notes, nearly giddy over the discovery, all while “aware of how hard-hearted [she] must have seemed” but “too caught up in [her] scientific interest to worry over it” (74). It is no wonder why Emily struggles to form genuine relationships with people, when she only uses them as a means to an end for her research.
Wendell even calls Emily his “cold-blooded friend” and is shocked at any hint of her coming to care for the townspeople (149). When she saves Lilja and Margret, he asks: “Have you ever done something like that before? Thought of someone other than yourself and your research” (266). Even though Emily does feel satisfaction at having saved the two mortal women, and forms a tentative friendship with each, her academic ambitions still remain her greatest priority. When Wendell asks her to marry him, her reciprocated feelings for him are second only to “imagining the picture [they] would make back at Cambridge” (230). Emily’s imagination is not the bliss and romance of happy marriage, but the fearsome scholarly team she and Wendell would make, the funding they’d receive for their future fieldwork, and the prestigious conference invitations that would follow.
