I was chatting with a friend online last night, and the subject of favorite fairy tales came up. For some reason I forgot to mention “The Ugly Duckling” by Hans Christian Andersen. Somebody (I forget who) wrote a book a long time ago, saying that our favorite fairy tales reveal a lot about our basic desires and strategies for life. Girls who like “Little Red Riding Hood,” for instance, seem to always own a red coat, and have a tendency to get into relationships with big bad wolves.
“The Ugly Duckling” is actually a pretty uncharacteristic story for Andersen. It has a happy ending, and he didn’t write those often. Sorry to drop a spoiler on you here, but if you only know “The Little Mermaid” from the Disney movie, the original version doesn’t end the same way at all. Not at all
An excerpt (not the conclusion of the story):
The little mermaid could not help thinking of her first rising out of the sea… and she joined in the dance, poised herself in the air as a swallow when he pursues his prey, and all present cheered her with wonder. She had never danced so elegantly before. Her tender feet felt as if cut with sharp knives, but she cared not for it; a sharper pang had pierced through her heart. She knew this was the last evening she should ever see the prince, for whom she had forsaken her kindred and her home; she had given up her beautiful voice, and suffered unheard-of pain daily for him, while he knew nothing of it. This was the last evening that she would breathe the same air with him, or gaze on the starry sky and the deep sea; an eternal night, without a thought or dream, awaited her; she had no soul and now she could never win one….
Andersen was a writer of tragedy. He wrote tragedies for children, which seems perverse to us. But Andersen was a lonely, shy man who had little experience of happy endings. He’d grown up in poverty and been rejected by every woman he ever fell in love with (he was not, despite what the activists will try to tell you, a homosexual). He was only comfortable with children; remained a child himself in many ways. But the message he had for children was not the one we like to give them—“Hold on, keep hopeful, and everything will turn out all right.” His message, forged out of his own experience in a world where lots and lots of children never grew up, was, “You may fail. You may die. But death doesn’t have to be the end, and the way you die can make your life beautiful.”
I wrote about something like this the other day, in regard to the story about the widow in the smoky house. Our ancestors lived in a harder world than ours, and they had wisdom we can’t begin to comprehend, wisdom that allowed them to endure suffering we can’t imagine and retain their sanity. Afraid to look closely at such holy things, we, the descendents, malign them and label them “morbid.”
Very insightful last `graph there, Lars.
Some of the characteristics of Anderson’s writing reminds me of Gordon MacDonald’s stuff; I’m thinking particularly about “At the Back of the North Wind.” Even in the middle of the sadness and suffering pretty much everyone in those times faced, there were moments of painful beauty.
Sorry, that should have been George, not Gordon, MacDonald.
Yeah, I kind of figured that.
Um, actually, the conclusion of Little Mermaid is quite a bit more hopeful than the part you quote, albeit not the conventional happy ending of Disney. To the point where quoting this as an example of an unhappy Anderson ending *almost* violates the truth in advertising laws. Try “Steadfast Tin Soldier” or “Little Match Girl” for a really classic case of Anderson doom’n’gloom.
PS Lars: have you read the one with the Viking-reared were-frog princess?
Well, she doesn’t marry the prince, and she dies. When I was a kid, I saw that as a tragic ending, regardless of the destination of the main character’s spirit. I still do. Tragedy can be good and great. But it’s never a happy ending.
That’s my story, and I’m sticking to it.
And no, I don’t know the frog princess story.
Could folks tell what their favorite fairy tale is?
Mine could be “Soria Moria Castle,” one of the great Asbjornsen and Moe tales from Norway. There are trolls and three beautiful princesses in it, and one hapless lad who loses the princesses till the end, when he marries the youngest one. He has to travel a long way first.
The illustrations by Werenskiold or Kittelsen in my edition are wonderful.
Lars: fair enough, I guess my own mental hardware kind of glossed over the whole dying part.
I’ll have a go at finding the name of the were-frog story. It’s kind of a multi-generational saga, involves a Christian missionary to the Vikings who *almost* penetrates the were-frog’s hard heart (it’s kind of a nutty professor situation: by day, she’s a charming and beautiful but heartless woman and by night a grotesque but kind hearted giant humanoid frog), and reminds me in tone, though not in characterization, a bit of your work Lars (or rather your work reminded me of it).
I’m bad at picking favorites, but I think my favorite fairy tale is The Nightingale. It’s a wonderful comparison between God’s beauty and man’s innovation. The mechanical bird was certainly efficient and had a beauty of its own, but it was a trinket compared to the wild, living nightingale.
I like The Twelve Dancing Princesses too, perhaps because I was exposed to a horrible adaptation of it before reading the real thing. In the short version, the father of the girls announces his problem to the world and sets a deadline: figure out why my girls are dancing holes in their shoes in three days or lose your head. How stupid is that?
“The Nightingale” was Anderson’s tribute to the singer Jenny Lind, “The Swedish Nightingale.” She was one of the several women he fell in unrequited love with. They remained good friends though.
I saw an old movie version of The Little Match Girl as a child nearly 65 years ago and was deeply touched by its sadness. I see the sadness in it as a way to teach compassion, understanding, a means to understanding and discussion. Hans Christian Anderson remains my favorite author.