The Wishing Tree

Position in the vault

This note is backed by a local extracted source and remains part of the vault's crosslinked book layer.

Core concepts

Moral Economy: the story turns wishes into claims on others, then teaches Dulcie, Dicky, Alice, and Maurice that desire becomes legitimate only when it accepts care, reciprocity, and limits.
Religion and Legitimacy: Father Francis gives the wishing world its sacred authority by converting colored leaves into birds and making care for living creatures the test of rightful wanting.
Knowledge Preservation: the Publisher's Note preserves the story as a physical gift-book, editorial object, and trace of Faulkner's early craft rather than only as a fairy tale.
Language and Ideology: dialect spellings, naming games, and the Publisher's Note show how edition, voice, and authority shape the reader's access to the handmade fable.
Legibility: the color-coded leaves, named birds, birthday rules, and editorial provenance turn magic into a readable system of claims, limits, and proof.

Detailed overview

The Wishing Tree is a birthday fable William Faulkner made for Victoria, the eight-year-old child named in the dedication, and the extracted source preserves that private-gift setting before the story begins. The book moves from the typed inscription to Dulcie's bedroom, where a red-haired boy named Maurice tells her that birthdays can open into another order of experience if the child has gone to bed left foot first and turned the pillow over. The first magic is precise and domestic: the rain and bare trees remain visible through the upper window sash, while the open sash gives Dulcie a warm, wistaria-scented mist and the voices of Alice, Dicky, and George calling from below.

The story turns wishing into a rule-bound substance rather than loose enchantment. Maurice's empty-looking satchel produces a toy ladder, Shetland ponies, a cart, food, weapons, and later more dangerous objects; wishes become real only for the wisher, and they vanish when someone else seizes them. That rule explains why Dicky's candy disappears in Alice's hand, why a gun appears when Dicky says he wants one, and why the party's ponies vanish when everyone wishes to run from George's lion. Faulkner makes the mechanism comic, but he keeps returning to custody, appetite, and responsibility: Alice tries to keep Dulcie and Dicky from forbidden horses, Dicky's careless wish cuts Egbert's gillypus in two, and the children's bodies shrink after a wish harms a helpless thing.

The middle of the tale is a chain of encounters that keeps testing who can be trusted with desire. Mr. Egbert, the ninety-two-year-old man who remembers the Wishing Tree badly if at all, joins the children after hiding his wife's flatiron, rollingpin, and alarm clock in the fence corner. A white-leaved mellomax tree shows each person's wishes by color; George asks for too much cake and strawberries and becomes sick; Alice's former husband Exodus appears as Dicky's wished-for soldier; Egbert boasts about wars, Seven Pines, lions, and swords until the actual lion exposes the emptiness of the boasting. The children's fantasy country is not a simple reward for Dulcie's birthday. It is a place where spoken desire instantly creates social trouble.

The closing encounter with Father Francis explains the moral grammar without erasing the dreamlike texture. The supposed Wishing Tree reveals itself first as a tree covered with leaves of many colors, then as Saint Francis with colored birds on his shoulders, head, and arms. He tells Dulcie, Maurice, Alice, Dicky, and Exodus that the earlier leaf-taking was selfish because a thousand children could strip the tree bare, and he replaces the leaves with birds: a bluebird for Dulcie, an oriole for Maurice, a red-bird for Alice, and a white bird with pale blue feather-tips for Dicky. The lesson is not that wishes are impossible, but that caring for helpless creatures changes what a person is able to want.

Faulkner closes the circle by returning Dulcie through the standing river of mist into the same waking sensation that opened the story: a bowl of sleep, a rising motion, and the peppermint-like tingle of birthday expectation. Dicky is jumping on her bed, her mother holds a wicker cage with a bluebird, and Dulcie can treat the adventure as a dream without losing the bird's reality. The Publisher's Note then fixes the tale in Faulkner's own archive: a single typed and bound copy, varicolored paper, Oxford, Mississippi, February 5, 1927, and later editorial decisions about inconsistent dialect spellings. That final bibliographic material matters because it frames the story as both a private handmade object and a posthumously edited published text.

Source links

Extracted text

Section-by-section notes

First Page

Summary: Dulcie wakes on her birthday inside an image of sleep as a goldfish bowl and a balloon rising toward the surface, then finds Maurice, a strange red-haired boy with a black velvet suit, red stockings, golden-flecked eyes, and a huge empty booksatchel beside her bed. She discovers she is already wearing shoes, stockings, and a new lavender dress, while the window holds two realities at once: rain, black trees, and bare branches through the glass, but warm wistaria mist and far voices when Maurice raises the sash. Maurice explains the birthday rule about going to bed left foot first and turning the pillow over, and he identifies the callers below as Alice, Dicky, and George. He blows a six-inch toy ladder into a full ladder so Dulcie can climb from the bedroom to the lawn, then shrinks it again with a shiny button and leads the group toward the street. Source anchors: Dulcie, Maurice, lavender dress, wistaria mist, toy ladder, Alice.

Analysis: Dulcie's birthday is made physically credible through the lavender dress, the bed, the window sash, and Alice waiting below, so the story's magic begins inside ordinary household arrangements instead of in a remote fairyland. Maurice controls the passage because he knows the pillow rule, carries the toy ladder, and understands how the wistaria mist can coexist with the rainy room; he functions less as a narrator than as the practical operator of the birthday world. Alice's presence from the first descent is important because she brings adult caution into Dulcie's adventure before the ponies, food, weapons, and Saint Francis appear. The section also gives the story its circular shape: the rising bowl-of-sleep image that starts Dulcie's day will return at the end when she crosses back through the mist and wakes with the bluebird.

"Oh, Alice!"

Summary: The road adventure begins when Maurice asks whether the group should walk, ride in a motorcar, or use ponies, and he inflates tiny Shetland ponies and a wicker cart from his satchel while Alice warns that Dulcie's mother does not allow horses. Past the mist, the children meet Mr. Egbert at a gray cottage, watch Maggie throw a flatiron, rollingpin, shoe, and alarm clock at him, and then take him along after he hides the missiles in the fence corner. Egbert names his carved creature a gillypus, guides the group badly past a castle and a white-leaved mellomax tree, and watches the wishing rule produce George's sandwich, Dicky's Something, rice and gravy, strawberries, chocolate cake, apple pie, ice cream, gingerbread, and dangerous mistakes. Dicky's wished-for gun, Dicky's wished-for soldier Exodus, Egbert's memories of Seven Pines, George's lion, Dicky's attack on the gillypus, the shrinking punishment, the jaybird, the mole, and the giant hat all follow from spoken wants becoming immediate fact. Source anchors: Shetland ponies, Mr. Egbert, gillypus, mellomax tree, Exodus, Seven Pines, George's lion, jaybird.

Analysis: The Shetland ponies make Maurice's satchel delightful, but the same wishing process soon produces the gun, Exodus, George's lion, and the shrinking punishment, so the section tests the exact cost of letting children and adults speak desire without delay. Mr. Egbert matters because he looks like a guide to the Wishing Tree and actually supplies confusion: his gillypus is comic craft, his directions circle back to the mellomax tree, and his memories of Seven Pines and earlier wars blur boasting, aging, and forgetfulness. Alice's quarrels with Exodus and her fear of the jaybird are not detachable jokes; they keep attaching magical events to rent, army desertion, child care, and bodily danger. The episode with Dicky cutting the gillypus in two changes the rules from comic abundance to moral economy, because the children shrink only after a wish violates the obligation not to harm something weak.

"Yes, Father Francis."

Summary: After Dulcie loses the others by wishing herself into bed and then back to Egbert's gray cottage, the ninety-two-year-old man gives her the recovered leaf, calls it perhaps a dragon's scale or roc's feather, and she uses it to rejoin Alice, Dicky, Maurice, and Exodus. The group reaches a valley, sees what looks like the Wishing Tree covered with leaves of a thousand colors, and then discovers that the tree is Father Francis, a tall old man with a long shining silver beard and colored birds on his shoulders, head, and arms. Father Francis tells them that the earlier tree was the Wishing Tree, that taking leaves would leave none for later boys and girls, and that such wishing is selfish. He takes back the leaves and gives Dulcie a bluebird, Maurice an oriole, Alice a red-bird, and Dicky a little white bird with pale blue feather-tips, while saying George should not receive one and Egbert has outlived wishes. Source anchors: Father Francis, Wishing Tree, bluebird, oriole, red-bird, selfish wish, George, Egbert.

Analysis: Father Francis converts the Wishing Tree from a source of private acquisition into a test of care, and he does it by replacing colored leaves with living birds that must be fed and protected. Dulcie's bluebird, Maurice's oriole, Alice's red-bird, and Dicky's pale-tipped white bird make each child's earlier color of desire into a creature with needs, so Father Francis supplies sacred legitimacy for the new rule: a wish counts only when it accepts responsibility for life outside the self. George is named as the example of appetite without loyalty because he overate, conjured the lion, and wished himself home while the others were in trouble. Egbert is treated differently: his age, his recovered gillypus, and his lack of remaining wishes make him comic and melancholy rather than morally dangerous in the way George is.

Publisher's Note

Summary: The Publisher's Note explains that before this edition there was only a single copy of The Wishing Tree, a small 5 1/4 by 6 1/4 inch book typed and bound by William Faulkner in varicolored paper. The typed page facing the dedicatory verse reads "single mss. impression," "oxford-mississippi-," and "5-february-i927," placing the handmade object in Oxford, Mississippi just after Faulkner's first novel and before his second. The note says a slightly longer version also exists, apparently an earlier draft, with several typed copies, but the Random House edition follows the unique copy. It also records that inconsistent dialect spellings in the typed book were edited toward simpler or normal spellings, because Faulkner was not present to prepare the script for 1967 publication. Source anchors: single copy, varicolored paper, Oxford, Mississippi, 5-february-i927, Random House edition, dialect spellings.

Analysis: The Publisher's Note changes how the story should be read as an artifact: the single copy, varicolored paper, and Oxford, Mississippi date make the dedication to Victoria part of the book's original occasion rather than ornamental front matter. The 5-february-i927 line places the fable near Faulkner's earliest published career, which helps explain why its fairy-tale devices, dialect speech, and handmade-book format sit beside material that looks unlike the later Yoknapatawpha novels. The Random House edition's statement about dialect spellings is also consequential, because Alice, Exodus, and Egbert are carried by spoken idiom throughout the narrative; the printed wording is therefore both Faulkner's typed copy and an edited version of that copy, making language part of the edition's authority. The note keeps the reader from treating the bluebird ending as only an abstract moral by preserving the text through knowledge preservation as a physical gift-book made for a child.