The Princess and the Peasant Girl (A dialogue about the relativity of freedom and happiness)

Once upon a time, a pretty young Princess was abducted by an evil magician and locked in a tower for many long, lonely years.

 

But then one day a peasant girl walked by the tower.

 

“Oh Peasant girl”, said the Princess in the tower, calling to her, “Thank goodness. Will you fetch help for me?”.

 

“Why?”, asked the Peasant girl.

 

“Why?”, replied the Princess, startled, “Because I have been locked in this tower against my will by an evil magician; kept as his prisoner”.

 

“Well, everyone’s got problems”, said the Peasant girl.

 

“What?”, said the Princess, “How can you say that? I’ve been locked in a tower. How can you be so selfish?”.

 

“Well whoever is keeping you in your tower, do they keep you well fed and attend to all your needs”, asked the Peasant woman.

 

“Well, yes”, said the Princess, “But that’s not the point. I want to be free, not kept in a prison”.

 

“What is freedom?”, asked the peasant girl, “Would freedom for you be the same as freedom for me?”.

 

“Freedom is the same for everyone surely?”, said the Princess.

 

“No its not”, said the Peasant woman, “You look like a rich woman to me; an aristocrat. Freedom for you would be a life of comfort and ease and security. Freedom for me is a life of uncertainty and hardship and want. You would be more free than me because you have wealth and position”.

 

“But would you like to be kept locked in a tower by a horrible old evil wizard?”, said the Princess.

 

“It depends”, said the Peasant.

 

“What?”, asked the Princess, flabbergasted.

 

“Well there are worse things than being locked in a tower”, said the peasant girl, “And being looked after. It depends how bad the alternative was, at least you’ve got a roof over your head; some people don’t even have that”.

 

The Princess thought that perhaps the peasant girl was mad or just a simpleton.

 

“Well if you’d like to be locked in a tower so much, why don’t you just help me to get free and then switch places with me?”, said the Princess.

 

“But your wizard might not even need to lock me in a tower”, said the peasant girl, “Why has he locked you up?”.

 

“Because I don’t want to marry him”, said the Princess.

 

“Well, you see. I might not really think that being married to an old magician is such hardship, if he was rich and powerful”, said the peasant girl, “At least my children would be rich and powerful”.

 

“You mean you would really marry someone that you didn’t love? What kind of woman are you?”, said the Princess, horrified.

 

“Love isn’t the only thing in life”, said the Peasant girl, “For some it’s a luxury. Some people find it hard enough to live; they can’t afford to worry about love. Besides which; this wizard, is he very cruel to you?”.

 

“He keeps me locked in a tower, isn’t that cruel enough?”, said the Princess.

 

“But does he do anything else to you?”, asked the Peasant girl, “Does he beat you or hurt you in any way?”.

 

“No”, said the Princess.

 

“Well he may be bad”, said the Peasant girl, “But he doesn’t sound as bad as all that; a really evil person wouldn’t just lock you up, they’d mistreat you in other ways”.

 

“That’s not the point”, said the Princess, “He may not be the worst and most cruellest villain in all the world but do I not have a right to freedom; to happiness?”.

 

“Have you?”, asked the Peasant girl, “Do I have a right to freedom and happiness?”.

 

“Well yes, of course”, said the Princess.

 

“What? Equal to yours?”, asked the Peasant girl.

 

“Well no. You’re a poor peasant”, said the Princess.

 

“That’s what I thought”, said the Peasant girl, “I’m only allowed as much freedom and happiness as a poor woman but you can have the freedom and happiness of a Princess. That doesn’t seem very fair? Does it? Why are your rights greater than mine?”.

 

“Well they’re not”, said the Princess, confused.

 

“But they are”, said the Peasant girl, “You said that you have a right to freedom and happiness but you’ll always have more freedom and happiness than me. Why don’t we have an equal right to the same amount of freedom and happiness?”.

 

“Because that’s just how life is”, said the Princess.

 

“Wrong”, said the Peasant girl, “How life is, is that your locked in a tower and I’m not; that’s how life is. If you expect me to accept my life, however unhappy it may be; why shouldn’t you be expected to accept your life”.

 

“You’re an unfeeling person”, said the Princess.

 

“And you’re an unthinking person”, said the Peasant girl, “Which is much worse”.

 

“Look”, said the Princess, “Are you really telling me that you would accept marrying an ugly old wizard and having to – yuk. I can’t think of anything more horrible”.

 

“Well maybe you can’t but that’s because you’ve had a fortunate, priviledged life”, said the Peasant girl, “I can think of many worse fates than what you think is horrible. Is it really more horrible than starving to death or dying of an excruciating sickness or freezing to death in the winter? Is any life with comfort and wealth in it really worse than those things? And those are the kind of fates that may really occur to me and when one is truly faced with so many horrible fates all one can do is weigh them up and pick the least horrible”.

 

The Princess despaired that she was talking to a fool.

 

“And besides”, said the Peasant girl, “I can sympathise with your wizard more easily than I can sympathise with you. I have more in common with him”.

 

“How can you sympathise with a villain who locks up princess’s in towers?”, said the Princess, disgusted.

 

“Well, you say he’s ugly and old”, said the Peasant girl, “He has problems, I can understand that, he’s probably lonely, trapped in his own tower. I have problems too; I’m dirt poor, that is my tower. Everyone’s locked in some kind of tower. That should make us all more sympathetic to each other’s problems but for some reason; you think, because you’re a pretty young Princess who usually has a happier and freer life than most, that your problems are worse than mine and his, that you have more right not to be trapped in a tower of some kind but I can see the commonality between me and him”.

 

“If you can sympathise with him more than with me then that makes you evil like him”, said the Princess.

 

“No”, said The Peasant Girl, “It just means that I can think rationally and with detachment. It’s ridiculous to pretend that everyone’s on a level ground of freedom and happiness; that’s just what you’d like to think. The truth is that I will never be able to be as free and as happy as you and perhaps he won’t but why is your right to happiness, if it exists, superior to my right or his?”

 

“His? How can you even talk about his right to happiness?”, asked the Princess.

 

“Well it is a choice between your happiness and his isn’t it? Either you get what you want or he gets what he wants but why is your right to happiness superior to his? Why do you have more right to be happy and to have what you want than he does?”, asked the Peasant girl.

 

“But he’s trying to force me to marry him? In order for him to be happy I have to be unhappy”, said the Princess.

 

“But doesn’t your happiness rely upon the unhappiness of someone else? Could you be a princess if you did not have peasants to rule over. Could any group be rich and powerful if there weren’t poor people like me. Your happiness itself only exists because of the unhappiness of others and yet though you are happy to be happy at another’s expense you wish none to be happy at yours. You WOULD think that a person can be free and happy and has a natural right to be free and happy because you can afford to, but to someone like me, someone who has less choice, the natural right of someone to freedom and happiness is not so obvious”, said the Peasant girl.

 

“So you think what is being done to me is right?”, said the Princess.

 

“I think that it is no greater crime or hardship than that which I have to endure and if I have to go on living in my tower why should I help you escape from yours”, said the Peasant girl, then she went upon her way.