Hans Christian Andersen and the Feminist Perspective

Hans Christian Andersen’s relationship with sexuality, specifically female sexuality, is deeply troubled. Throughout his youth, Andersen experienced rejection time and time again. Many critics identify Andersen as a homosexual, while others label him as bisexual. Whether or not Andersen repressed sexual feelings toward men is unknown. However, it is clear that he repressed feelings of sexuality in general and consequently projected these feelings onto his fairy tale characters. In Seashell Bra and Happy End, Regina Bendix comments on Andersen’s “admitted dislike for grown women and his abhorrence of sexuality” (282). In Hans Christian Andersen: The Misunderstood Storyteller, Jack Zipes asserts that “There is something perverse in his use of children to illustrate not only how proper behavior should work, but how sexuality should be governed” (79). Through rigorously repressing female sexuality, Andersen not only tries to adjust a basic primal desire, but he creates a female stereotype that is unattainable and unhealthy. This is seen in The Little Mermaid, The Red Shoes, and The Ice Queen.

The Little Mermaid is one such tale in which Andersen represses female sexuality in order to attain the feminine ideal. This fairy tale in its most basic form is one of sacrifice. The little mermaid must sacrifice her voice, her body, and ultimately her life for the Prince. This in and of itself creates a cultural stereotype which subordinates women. However, the tale is also largely about sacrificing ones sexuality in order to attain a feminine ideal. The little mermaid experiences a sexual awakening and represses her desires.

The little mermaid starts out as an innocent girl. However, on her quest to attain legs for the man she loves, she must endure a journey to the sea witch who will help her in her quest to become human. It is in this scene that she experiences a symbolic sexual awakening. When visiting the sea witch she is exposed to a multitude of phallic symbols. Andersen writes, “All the trees and shrubs were polyps (…) They looked like hundred-headed snakes (…) All their branches were long, slimy arms, with fingers like wiggling worms”. Unlike the sea witch who lets “the ugly fat water snakes (…) crawl and sprawl about on her spongy bosom”, the little mermaid is terrified of these phallic symbols. She is a good, innocent child and cannot cope with her budding sexuality. Andersen instills terror of sexuality in his little mermaid while the evil sea witch is seen as accepting of her sexual desires. This sexual awakening is not to be embraced by Andersen’s protagonist. Bendix writes, “Nowhere else in classic children’s literature is there so terrified a vision of sex, as seen through the eyes of innocence” (282).

The little mermaid then allows the witch to cut out her tongue in exchange for a potion that will give her legs. Many scholars focus their critique of Andersen on this specific act. In The Little Mermaid: Hans Christian Andersen’s Feminine Identification, Robert W. Meyers describes this as “the relinquishment of her right to be heard, the loss of her creativity and the wound of castration” (153). According to Meyers, Andersen had a strong feminine identification which he repressed. He then instilled his own subconscious desires into his characters. The cutting out of the little mermaid’s tongue is essentially Andersen’s way of repressing his own feminine identity and sexual desires. He metaphorically removes sexuality from his character.

Unlike The Little Mermaid, The Red Shoes is a tale in which the main character embraces her sexuality and is consequently punished. Andersen begins this tale by once again depicting the protagonist, Karen, as innocent. He describes her as “nice and pretty” and refers to her as a “little girl” multiple times throughout the text. When Karen receives a pair of beautiful red shoes she becomes obsessed with them. She can think only of her red shoes and neglects all other responsibilities such as taking care of a sick old lady. In his book The Kiss of the Snow Queen, Wolfgang Lederer writes, “red is and has always been the color symbolic of sexuality. And red is the color blood and, in the context of adolescence, specifically menstrual blood” (35). Zipes believes that Karen’s red shoes were a “sign of sin, curiosity and desire that Andersen wanted to repress” (88). In essence, Karen embraces her sexuality to the point that she becomes obsessed with it. It is all-consuming. As a result, the character must be severely punished for expressing herself in such an inappropriate manner. Andersen punishes this overt expression of sexuality by having an executioner cut off Karen’s feet with the shoes still attached. He writes,

The shoes danced away with her little feet (…) She hobbled to church as fast as
she could, but when she got there the red shoes danced in front of her (…) All
week long she was sorry and cried many bitter tears (…) But the moment she came
to the church gate she saw her red shoes dancing before her (…)

Karen exorcizes her sexuality and it literally comes back to haunt her. Zipes comments, “Andersen is severe and punitive when children pursue their dreams that involve sensual and sexual exploration” (85). Andersen ultimately channels his disgust of sexuality against this young girl. It is clear that Andersen’s feminine ideal is to repress one’s sexual desires.

In The Ice Queen, Andersen’s female protagonist, Gerda, is the exemplary female. She represses her sexuality and is able to find and save the boy she loves because of her innate innocence. Unlike Karen, Gerda discards her red shoes before they take over. Lederer writes

Gerda makes the crucial—and Christian—decision to remain pure. Nor is the
decision an easy one: when she casts the red shoes into the stream, they come
back. We now understand what a breath-holding matter it is whether she will
become a wanton or whether she will have the strength of character to remain
pure—to rid herself of a sexuality that has already threatened to become a
habit. (38)

However, Gerda does rid herself of this sexuality. On her quest to find her true love she encounters many helpers, one of them being a Finn Woman. At one point the Finn Woman says, “No power I could give her (Gerda) could be as great as that which she already has. Strength lies in her heart, because she is such a sweet, innocent child” (222). Similarly, the second to last line of the fairy tale is as follows: “And they (Gerda and her lover) sat there, grown-up-but children still—children at heart” (228). Gerda is Andersen’s exemplary female. She has managed to overcome her sexuality, to repress it to the point that it is no longer a part of her. As pointed out in the text several times, Gerda remains innocent and sweet.

One issue with the repression of female sexuality is that Andersen’s characters are unable to transition into adulthood. Meyers writes, “These stories are tragic. These girls are not developing into adulthood, but rather retreating into death and an asexual angelic idealized maternal image” (153). This is true for both girls in The Little Mermaid and The Red Shoes. At the end of the tales, the little mermaid becomes a “daughter of the air” while Karen’s “soul travel(s) along the shaft of sunlight to heaven”. Although Gerda is able to survive, she never fully transcends into adulthood. She and her lover are described as “grown-up, but children still at heart”. This feminine ideal is unattainable because a woman cannot maintain this innocence and denial of sexuality. Andersen must instead murder his characters or place them in a state in which they are adults but possess no mature attributes.

The Little Mermaid, The Red Shoes, and The Ice Queen all promote Andersen’s feminine ideal. Andersen sought to create female characters that were intrinsically innocent. He did not know how to deal with his own sexual feelings and as a result justified them through repressing sexuality in his characters. Through the girls he created, Andersen was able to demonstrate the correct way of handling sexual impulses. Zipes asserts, “This tension between hatred of a repressive society (…) and fear of his unfulfilled sexual desires, which he condemned as transgression, is at the basis of some of his most intriguing fairy tales in which he used children to test and play out his ideals and morals” (82). To Andersen, sexual impulses were unacceptable. He rewarded the female characters that were able to overcome them and harshly punished those that could not. This resulted in a cast of female characters, such as the little mermaid, Karen, and Gerda, that were emotionally stunted. That is, Andersen did not fully allow his female characters to develop into adulthood. They either retreated into death or remained children. Through rigorously repressing female sexuality, Andersen’s fairy tales perpetuate a feminine ideal that is unattainable.

Works Cited

Andersen, Hans Christian. Tales by Hans Christian Andersen. Avon: The Heritage Press, 1942.

Bendix, Regina. "Seashell Bra and Happy End: Disney's Transformations of "The Little Mermaid"." Fabula 34 (1993): 281-290.

Lederer, Wolfgang. The Kiss of the Snow Queen: Hans Christian Andersen and Man's Redemption by Woman. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1986.

Meyers, Robert W. "The Little Mermaid: Hans Christian Andersen's Feminine Identification." Journal of Applied Psychoanalytic Studies (2001): 149-158.

Zipes, Jack. Hans Christian Andersen: The Misunderstood Storyteller. New York: Taylor & Francis Group, 2005.