“No creature can know another without the help of a body.” (295)*

　　　I’m especially impressed by North Wind’s quoted words to Diamond and the fact that North Wind, who is invisible and intangible to ordinary people as a literal north wind, becomes a beautiful corporeal lady only in the presence of the boy. At the Back of the North Wind can be seen as the book in which MacDonald most earnestly grappled with the theme of death, and by reading it (and going through North Wind’s body) we can reduce our fear of death and have hope for the fuller life after death. However, at the same time, I believe that this work tells us the importance of this life because body is the testimony of our life and we can see the physical intimacy between North Wind and Diamond: the boy feels blissful when he is in contact with her as a bodily being. Through their bodies, we can “know” North Wind. Besides, since she must “consent to be nobody [this can be read as “no body”]” (115) in order to take people to the country at her back, the land after death, Diamond’s earnest desire for her to be his “own real beautiful North Wind” (287), namely, a corporeal lady, can be considered his will to live this life. As North Wind says to Diamond, when he wants to go to that country: “you must walk on as if I were an open door and go right through me” (121). She herself is the door between this life and the afterlife. In At the Back of the North Wind, George MacDonald appreciates both the world at the back of North Wind and the world in front of her.

*Quoted from George MacDonald. At the Back of the North Wind. Edited by Roderick McGillis and John Pennington, Broadview, 2011.