Well, How Is Your Appetite, Continued The Troll Mother (1915 CE)

A troll mother leans toward the captured princess in a scene charged with tension. John Bauer focuses on the encounter itself: the threatening presence of the troll, the vulnerability of the girl, and the dark, enclosed atmosphere around them. The image draws its force from that contrast, turning a moment of dialogue into something unsettling and immediate.

A Scene from Among Gnomes and Trolls

Created in 1915, this illustration was made for Walter Stenström’s story The Boy and the Trolls, or The Adventure, published in the anthology Among Gnomes and Trolls. As in many of Bauer’s fairy-tale images, the scene is drawn from a narrative in which an ordinary human world gives way to something older, darker, and more unpredictable. Here, the imprisoned princess is visited by the troll mother, who remains unaware that magic is already at work around her. That imbalance of knowledge gives the image much of its tension.

A Fairy Tale Suspended in Fear

The story centers on a boy who enters the forest and is drawn into the realm of trolls and other supernatural beings. This illustration captures one of the tale’s most charged moments, when danger is present not through sudden movement, but through conversation and presence. The troll mother does not need to act violently for the threat to be felt. Bauer makes the encounter unsettling through stillness, expression, and the oppressive closeness of the setting.

The Troll Mother and the Logic of Folklore

Bauer’s troll figures are never simply monsters. They belong to a deeper folklore logic in which the wild, the ancient, and the uncanny take bodily form. The troll mother, with her exaggerated features and unsettling physicality, represents a world that is both grotesque and strangely familiar. She is menacing not only because she is powerful, but because she occupies a twisted version of the domestic sphere. That tension between the familiar and the monstrous is one of Bauer’s great strengths. It allows the image to carry more than one mood at once: fairy-tale wonder, fear, and a sense that innocence has entered a place where ordinary rules no longer apply.

Darkness, Purity, and Confinement

The contrast at the heart of the scene is clear. The princess stands for vulnerability, youth, and purity, while the troll mother embodies corruption, appetite, and the threatening force of the untamed world. Bauer does not treat this opposition as abstract symbolism alone. He builds it into the image itself, using the closed, shadowed chamber and the physical contrast between the figures to intensify the emotional divide between them.

Bauer’s Technique and the Weight of the Room

The illustration measures 27 × 28.6 cm (10.6 × 11.3 inches) and is executed in Bauer’s characteristic style, combining delicate linework with carefully controlled tonal depth. The muted palette and close attention to texture help create the oppressive atmosphere of the troll’s chamber. Rather than relying on dramatic color, Bauer uses shadow, form, and compositional tension to make the scene feel enclosed and psychologically charged.

A Lasting Image from 1915

First published in the 1915 edition of Among Gnomes and Trolls, this illustration has since become one of the more memorable examples of Bauer’s fairy-tale art. It remains powerful because it captures something central to his vision of folklore: the way danger can be made vivid through atmosphere, character, and the uneasy meeting between the human and the uncanny.