# The death sentence becomes a hundred-year sleep

Commentary on Orthodoxy by G. K. Chesterton.

On [CH04.P008](https://glosses.org/orthodoxy/pg16769-r1/CH04.P008/#char=815,861): "death also may perhaps be softened to a sleep."

The softening is an actual event in the tale, before Chesterton makes it an allegory of human mortality. In Lang's ‘The Sleeping Beauty in the Wood’ (*Blue Fairy Book*, 1889; Gutenberg transcription), gifts at the christening are followed by a fatal spindle curse; a younger fairy commutes death to a hundred-year sleep. [Opening scene](https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/503/pg503-images.html). Chesterton's ‘birthday gifts’ is thus a loose compression of the christening scene. The application to humanity is his interpretive step. Christian language supplies a suggestive parallel: in the Douay-Rheims John 11:11–14, Jesus calls Lazarus's death sleep and then explicitly explains that Lazarus is dead. [John 11](https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/8300). That parallel illuminates the hope of awakening, but Chesterton does not identify a particular biblical verse here.

## Sources

- [Andrew Lang, editor, The Blue Fairy Book](https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/503/pg503-images.html), ‘The Sleeping Beauty in the Wood,’ opening christening, fairy gifts, curse and mitigation; collection first published 1889; Project Gutenberg #503 transcription
- [Douay-Rheims Bible, Project Gutenberg electronic text](https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/8300), John 11:11–14; inspected Gutenberg #8300 witness, not an identified copy used by Chesterton

Revision 1 · 2026-11-07 · https://glosses.org/a/a_lorpmkt3/