Fairy tale was a popular genre during the Victorian period. The modern fanciful tale, which emerged as a subgenre of the fairy tale, introduced new narrrative techniques, more detailed descriptions, while a deserved reward or punishment is often missing. The target audience of modern fanciful tales were children as well as adults. The study incorporates the cognitions of Lubomír Doležel´s theory of ”possible” worlds, which supports the notion that an infinite number of alternate fictional worlds exist parallel to the actual world. Fictional worlds (each fairy tale represents a fictional world by itself) are ruled by principles which are, in most cases, different from those that shape the actual world. The study also aims to show an interrelation of the concepts of space and time and for that purpose refers to Mikhail Bakhtin´s theory of chronotope, which he defines as ˝intrinsic 306 connectedness of temporal and spatial relationships that are artistically expressed in literature˝ (Bakhtin, 1994: 84). The studied fairy tales by Ruskin, MacDonald and Wilde address issues that concerned the Victorians and especially criticized attitudes that produced negative connotations amongst contemporary critics. The fairy tale can be understood as a medium for social criticism. The attitudes that Wilde attacks most harshly in his fairy tales include dogmatism, hypocrisy, insensitivity to the needs of the poor, deprived or disabled/deformed and the pragmatism of the Utilitarian philosophy. Ruskin, on the other hand, criticizes greed and preoccupation with material things, while MacDonald addresses the problem of subversive forces in the society. I have taken a cultural and historical approach to litarary study and only briefly referred to biographical and reader response approaches. Metaphors that we resort to when conceptualizing space and time proved to be a good medium for a subtle criticism of the vices that marred the Victorian period. These are based on the PATH, UP and DOWN, CENTRE and ALTERITY and CONTAINER image schemas and include basic metaphors such as LIFE IS A JOURNEY; CONTROL IS UP; EMOTIONS ARE CONTAINERS; POWER IS UP; BIG IS UP, as well as novel metaphors TRAVEL/LIFE IS A MENTAL JOURNEY; CENTRAL CONTROL IS UP, ALTERNATE CONTROL IS DOWN; SMALL IS DOWN; BOUNDEDNESS IS A SIGN OF CLASS, MOVEMENT IS VITALITY; DEFORMITY IS CONTAINMENT and other metaphors. I also focused on metaphors that conceptualize time as a moving agent, The Time Moving Metaphor, or a goal to be reached, the Observer Moving metaphor. Related to these metaphors are the personifications of life and death, which are marked in conceptual metaphors LIFETIME IS A 307 YEAR (DEATH IS WINTER, LIFE IS SPRING); LIFE IS A JOURNEY; DEATH IS SLEEP; DEATH IS A MOVER AND MANIPULATOR. The metaphors via which we conceptualize time and events related to the passage of time such as life and death are related to the Positivist notion of cyclic time and the cultural models of collective time, as proposed by Bakhtin. On the other hand, spatial metaphors correspond to the cultural models of the self and the Great Chain of Being and fit with Yuri Lotman´s notion of a plot gene, a narrative device which enables us to understand a sequence or a whole text in terms of an image by which we remember the narrative the best. Similarly, certain sequences and, in some cases, the whole texts, can be understood in terms of a megametaphor, as proposed by Paul Werth or as a summary image, as elaborated by Michael Kimmel.