Psychoanalysis of Hans Christian Andersen’s Tales

Hans Christian Andersen was born in Odense, Denmark, the son of a poor shoemaker and a washerwoman. As a young teenager, he became well known in Odense as a reciter of drama and as a singer, but when at the age of fourteen, Andersen set off to acquire fame in Denmark’s capital, Copenhagen, he failed miserably. However, while in Copenhagen, young Andersen was able to make some influential friends who would get him into school to remedy for his lack of proper education. In Copenhagen, he gained access to two families – the Collins and the Wulffs. There he came to know both the bourgeois upper class of the capital and the very lowest stratum of its proletariat. He came to know the fight for survival and the bitterness of being a dependent on the good will of others. It is at this time that Andersen experiences the suffering and humiliation that followed from leaving one world without having quiet been accepted by a higher one, which is an experience shared by many characters in his tales. Andersen was a very intelligent, ambitious writer with a love of high society and a tortured soul

In 1820, Andersen’s first book was published and after that books came out at regular intervals. At first, he considered his adult books more important than his fantasies. In later life, however he began to see that through his tales, the apparently trivial stories could vividly portray constant features of human life and character, in a charming manner. As a consequence, Hans Christian Andersen began to write more original stories, rather than retelling traditional tales. A volume containing his first four tales ( The Tinder Box, the Princess and the Pea, Little Claus and Big Claus, and Little Ida’s Flowers) was published in May 1835, followed up by a volume of three more tales the following December. Andersen returned to the stories he had heard as a child, but gradually he started to create his own tales. In 1837, Andersen began writing the fairy tales that won him international fame and access to the royal houses and cultural elites of Europe. While his novels were traditional romantic works celebrating religion and nature and a deep faith in God and Christianity, his fairy tales offered more room for his subconscious mind and for a projection of issues that haunted Andersen during his lifetime. During these stories, Andersen would often thinly disguise people he liked or disliked as characters in his stories such as in “The Little Mermaid, and “The Snow Queen” and “Little Ida’s Flower”.

Sexuality – “Little Ida’s Flowers”

Andersen’s sexual orientation is a matter of great controversy in academic circles. Many of his stories are interpreted as references to his sexual grief. Among these stories is “The Nightingale”, a tribute to Jenny Lind, a famous opera singer with whom Andersen was in love. In another, “The Little Mermaid” sacrifices her own life for that of her unattainable prince and some biographers believe that this story is connected to Andersen’s love for Edward Collin to whom he wrote: “I languish for you as a pretty Calabrian wench…my sentiments for you are those of a woman. The femininity of my nature and our friendship must remain a mystery.” Collin on the other hand, may have been the love of Andersen’s life but refused to play the part of his romantic soul mate. Likewise, the infatuations of the author for the Danish cancer Herald Scharff and Carl Alexander, the young duke of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach, did not result in love affairs. It is believed that during his lifetime, Andersen expressed deep feelings for both men and women but that each time it resulted in unrequited love and deep emotions that would influence his stories. Sexual frustration was one of the main pervasive motifs for writing some of the most recognizable of his stories. Many biographers believe that Andersen may have never had sexual relations with anyone. The pages of his diaries are decked with crosses which he used to indicate masturbation. His hidden obsessions, often of a homoerotic nature, drove Anderson to create some of the most extraordinary characters and develop them to embody the disturbance and dissatisfaction of Andersen’s own life.

When presenting psychoanalysis of Christian Andersen’s tales where sexuality is a fundamental component of the underlying theme of the tale, it is crucial that one closely analyzes one of Andersen’s most sexually occupied stories, “Little Ida’s Flowers”. “Little Ida’s Flowers” is read as a story about a little girl’s sexual fantasies and overnight discovery of real sexuality, in which the student functions as the teacher, the one who knows all about flowers and butterflies; the clerk as the forbidden conscience; the dance of the flowers as the king and the queen as the final excitement. In “Little Ida’s Flower”, Andersen presents a dream within a tale that is filled with sexual content but what is most interesting is that his comments indicate a tone of disapproval. The more sexually dangerous the dream content becomes, the greater the defense mechanism and disapproval sets in. The dream is moved to a deeper layer of the unconscious in that it expresses Andersen’s sexually fraught, surreal metaphors and his struggle with his own sexuality. The death of the flowers represents the fading of sexual excitement while the promise of even more beautiful flowering next summer indicates the certainly of sexuality as a recurrent fact of life.

Religious Implications - “The Little Mermaid”

While verbally transmitted fairy tales express universal human traditions and issues, the literary fairy tale, permits a psychodynamic understanding of the writer. In “The Little Mermaid”, Anderson portrays the willingness to undergo the pain and mutilation involved in the loss of both the mermaid’s tail and her voice in order to become a mortal and marry a prince. This has been regarded as illustrating problems in female sexual development as well as Andersen’s homosexual conflicts that support Freud’s concept of the role of castration anxiety in the negative Oedipus complex. Freud considered the successful resolution of the Oedipus complex to be key to the development of gender roles in identity. He posited that boys then resolved this conflict with castration anxiety and believed that the unsuccessful resolution of the Oedipus complex could result in neurosis, pedophilia and homosexuality. Andersen’s unresolved sexual issues may have been the cause behind the storyline of “The Little Mermaid” however, a great deal of analysis is found on the religious implications in “The Little Mermaid” and its foundation as a moralizing and didactic tale concerning sexuality and development. Andersen’s religious feelings, which provide an undertone to all that he wrote, stem from an unidiomatic sort of Christianity, a religion of the heart and the emotions bound to human nature and to the natural world around us as a start point for the yearning for God. In “The Little Mermaid”, Salvation from the power of evil is defined as the alchemical power of love as the power to turn evil into good, to bring epiphany where there has been suffering. Though love that can defeat death in “The Little Mermaid”, a duality is yet observed where both sides of love are encountered: the erotic one that cannot purge death into life and the pure love that is capable of self-sacrifice and which manifests itself when the mermaid is rewarded by transcending death itself into a promise of an immortal soul among the daughters of the air. This archetype embodies the epiphany for the victory of good over evil. Thus it is only essentialized love, which ahs transcended the erotic level of the senses and has purged of the selfishness that can work miracles, assimilated with Christian love.

Duality – “The Snow Queen”

Nietzsche once argued that, for the sake of life, origin and aim had to be kept apart. Andersen never desired to separate the two. Hans Christian Andersen was a product of two social environments. His social rise provides the direct and indirect motif in many of his tales, novels and plays, both as a productive source in his search for a new and more comprehensive identity and as a source of perpetual and unresolved issues. Even more decisive were the disturbing social experiences from the lowest ranks of society and his own urge to cast off the trammels of poverty, break with his social inheritance and realize his potential in the only outlet the times provided, the world of art, an urge that became ever more dominant throughout his childhood. Andersen also stands between two worlds: the popular old oral narrative tradition and the modern world with its culture of books and focus on the role of the author. Thus it is only natural that Andersen’s stories contain a duality element, an alchemy of values which functions dialectically, implying both black and white magic, good versus evil, beautiful versus ugly.
Andersen’s genre of fairy tales is so unique in part due to his ability to seldom assume the legitimacy of fairy tale logic, motivation relying rather on realistic assumptions. An excellent example is exposed in “The Snow Queen” which many have considered Andersen’s attach on cold, harsh reason. In contrast, this tale, among the most distinctive tales written, presents a duality within its context that embodies Andersen’s style of writing. Though the ending of this tale is happy, it is apparent that the heroes have undergone a change that is more complex than the initiation of fairy tale heroes: at he end of “The Snow Queen”, Kai and Gerda have become adults and, though they are still “children at heart”, they have learned about the existence of evil in the world and, worse than that, about the evil that can exist within themselves. Andersen takes the degree of realism as a criterion for classification, while at the same time asserting the intrusion, to a greater or lesser extent of the supernatural dimension in all of them. The positive and negative poles of these oppositions are difficult to determine since the slight touch of a fantastic that is rather of a psychological nature is very powerful. The dual function is performed by means of questioning and revitalizing oppositions between values, which not only challenges the simplicity of the fairy tale pattern but also enriches by passing judgment on the social world of Andersen’s time.

The main pairs of opposite of values such as good versus evil, beautiful versus ugly, true versus false are characteristic of fairy tales in general but the difference comes when these values are analyzed in their deep structure. The good / evil opposition for example is approached in such a complex sense that it goes beyond the common moral sense. The valence of the good / evil opposition is increased with their internalization as coordinates of the identity quest characterizing the evolution of the heroes. In “The Snow Queen” this quest materializes in the evolution from childhood to maturity, which involves getting the awareness of evil in the world and within oneself. When becoming aware of his own shadow, in Jungian terms, (which in fairy tales is perceived as the difference between natural and supernatural); one also discovers the existence of the evil in one’s own soul. C.G. Jung believes that “Heaven and Hell are destinies of the soul”, thus suggesting that the human soul is the site of good / evil opposition. It is there that one also encounters the shadow, which according to Jung is the first step to self knowledge.
Reflection and representation is essential along the identity quest, being visible in the various roles that the characters of Andersen’s tales play which have a development throughout the tale. In “Snow Queen”, the story which is about identity formation, Kai is alternatively himself and his shadow, the absorption of the latter by the former finally marking his coming to the grownup stage. Temptation and perversion of the self is also portrayed in “The Snow Queen” by the wizard’s distorting mirror which breaking into fragments, invades the whole world with small particles of evil that distort the perception of the world. Thus, Gerda’s journey in search of Kai is actually a quest for reunifying the fragments of the mirror and also for correction the distorted perception of the world. It is also a quest in the name of love, against coldness and lifelessness. The mirror also makes the connection between the duality of beautiful / ugly. Andersen, going against the traditional fairy tale where there is a one to one correspondence between beauty and good, on the other hand emphasizes the ethical dimension, opting for a beauty of the inner nature, coming from the spirit.

Hans Christian Andersen’s stories linger in the imagination partly because they defy the world of comfort with which parents, teachers and children’s books attempt to block out the terrors of isolation, abandonment and extinction. The presence of pain in human experiences, sexuality and adult issues pervade Andersen’s writings. Anderson wrote about the relationship between the individual and the external world, natural about the individual’s relationship to the social world, about the response to the gaps and conflicts that arise between what is desired and what is allowed. Andersen shows how dark and light, sorrow and joy, pain and pleaser cannot be separated but in fact possesses a duality that is crucial to human development. These themes have evolved and have allowed generations of psychoanalyst to offer theories of the conscious and unconscious.

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.

H.C. Andersen: Contemporary & Modern Critique and Influence (M.Brewer)

 From the very start Andersen’s fairy tales were popular among the Danish reading public.  Although the first reviews were often unappreciative, Andersen rarely had reason to be dissatisfied with professional criticisms. Andersen was widely received abroad, gaining fame and notoriety across Europe.  Andersen’s primary influence on modern literature remains his collection of fairy tales; read widely by children and adults in a multitude of languages, they have achieved the distinction of inspiration for artists of all sorts. A thin-skinned demeanor that left him at the mercy of many contemporary critics plagued Andersen, throughout his life, and early failures left their mark in the form of constant self-doubt and insecurity.  By no means the first writer to introduce the tales to the aristocracy, it was Andersen’s unique narrative style and background that poignantly displayed characters of universal wisdom and appeal.  Andersen’s most influential contemporary was Charles Dickens and named authors like Shakespeare and E.T.A. Hoffmann as influential in his work.  His meager beginnings and early failures caused Andersen to crave the reception both at home and abroad achieved by his literary idols.

            Hans Christian Anderson, though a remarkably prolific writer in a number of different genres, will always be remembered for his fairy tales. Andersen invented what the last two centuries have called ‘children’s literature,’ but after some early stories he is no more available just to children than are the early works of Perrault or Basile. Rather, Andersen expressed clear distaste for the “Pied Piper myth which was to engulf his reputation” (Wullschlager 5). When, just before his death in 1875, he saw a design of a statue to commemorate him, which showed him surrounded by children: “I said loud and clear that I was dissatisfied,” he wrote in his diary, “that I didn’t tolerate anyone standing behind me and I never had children on my lap or between my legs, that my tales were just as much for older people as for children, who only understood the outer trappings and did not comprehend and take in the whole work until they were mature—that naivety was only part of my tales, that humor was what really gave them flavor” (Wullschlager 5).  All his biographers stress that there were two of him, the Dane in Denmark, vulnerable and obsessed by supposed under-appreciation, and the showman abroad, the wunderkind of Weimar and of London.

            Anderson, born the son of a poor Danish shoemaker in the early nineteenth century, expresses his fascination with the literary works of Shakespeare from an early age.  His early admiration for English writers Shakespeare and Walter Scott had a great importance in the forming of his works, he even borrowed the names of the two authors to form his first pseudonym: William Christian Walter (Bredsdorff 11).  His lower social background plagued Andersen well into his adult life and expressed itself in the frustrations and successes of each of his characters.  His roots among common people were at first a handicap but proved to be his fortune as an artist. Andersen called one of his memoirs "The Fairy Tale of My Life," making clear how painful his emergence was from the working class of Denmark in the early 19th century. The driving purpose of his career was to win fame and honor while not forgetting how hard the way up had been.  Writes one modern day journalist: “Among his contemporaries, Andersen can be situated between Dickens, who dropped the Dane after he overstayed his welcome on what became a five-week visit, and Tolstoy, who loved the simplicity and directness of Andersen's narrative mode” (Bloom).  A major writer of the Danish Golden Age, Andersen craved the celebrity and acceptance that these two writers had achieved.

            It was contemporary criticism in his native land that was most scathing and unforgiving.  Published in 1838, the work by Danish writer Søren Kierkegaard, Af en Endnu Levendes Papirer (From the Papers of a Person Still Alive). This work is an extended review of Andersen's novel Only a Fiddler, published in 1837. According to Kierkegaard, the fiddler's hopeless struggle is a reflection of Hans Christian Andersen's own grudge against the world: 'Andersen's fundamental idea [is] dissatisfaction with the world:'

(...) displeased and dissatisfied as he is with the real world, he tries to gain vicarious satisfaction in his own timid poetic creations. Like Lafontaine, therefore, he sits and cries over his unhappy heroes, who are doomed to perish, and why? Because Andersen is the man he is. The same joyless fight that Andersen himself has fought in life is now repeated in his poetry. (HCA Center)

Kierkgaard regards Andersen’s novel of lacking any real genius and contends he merely bows to the disapproval of others and writes for his critics, thus lacking any real use of talent.  He contends that Andersen, like his hero character in Only A Fiddler, is pampered and nurtured instead of schooled by adversity, a fate Kierkegaard saw as his own. (HCA Center)

            Andersen’s friendship with Charles Dickens began as one of mutual respect and admiration and his influence can clearly be seen in Andersen’s works.  After meeting Dickens in 1847, he developed a repertoire with the writer that earned him a visit to Dickens home ten years later.  Andersen well overstayed his welcome, however, much to the chagrin of Dickens and his family, and later cut ties with the Danish writer he found insufferable (Bredsdorff 125). In a letter to Richard Bentley, his London publisher, he likened his style to Dickens, “the difficulty of reproducing my style, which is said strangely to resemble Dicken’s without my having wished to copy it, for it is indeed my nature..” Having many works already published and translated into Danish, Dickens was a well-established writer by the time he and Andersen met, and Andersen loved and admired Dickens long before he met him—expressing the falling out of their friendship in later years as a real disappointment. (Bredsdorff 126)  Nowhere is Dicken’s influence on Anderson more clear than in his story, “The Little Match Girl,” in which a little beggar girl freezes to death as she looks through the window at the lavishly decorated Christmas tree and roast goose of a wealthy family. Knowing Andersen’s and Dicken’s background, it’s no wonder that suffering is a major quality of Andersen’s heroes and heroines.

            Andersen responded to much of the negative criticism that he received through some literary work. The Fir Tree reflects Andersen’s own struggle with winning the appraisal of critics:

"Who is Humpy-Dumpy?" asked the Mice. So then the Fir Tree told the whole fairy tale, for he could remember every single word of it; and the little Mice jumped for joy up to the very top of the Tree. Next night two more Mice came, and on Sunday two Rats even; but they said the stories were not interesting, which vexed the little Mice; and they, too, now began to think them not so very amusing either.

"Do you know only one story?" asked the Rats.

"Only that one," answered the Tree. "I heard it on my happiest evening; but I did not then know how happy I was."

"It is a very stupid story! Don't you know one about bacon and tallow candles? Can't you tell any larder stories?"

"No," said the Tree.

"Then good-bye," said the Rats; and they went home.

At last the little Mice stayed away also; and the Tree sighed: "After all, it was very pleasant when the sleek little Mice sat round me, and listened to what I told them. Now that too is over. But I will take good care to enjoy myself when I am brought out again." (HCA Center)

The mice represent the public, the rats the critics, and the lonely fir tree whose stories never quite measure up, Andersen himself. The interest of the mice wanes over time, and the story fails to meet the expectations and so the fir tree is left to reminisce about the days he had won the appraise of all.  Other stories that parallel this include: A Good Humour, Something, Soup on a Sausage Peg, The Nightingale, and Ole the Tower Keeper.  It was not just amongst Danes that he received criticisms, his tall and lanky apperance and uncomfortable, shy demeanor left him at the the mercy of many an unforgiving critic.  A Swedish writer likened him to a crane; another writer called him the “tree-high Dane.”  Yet another contemporary said, “His nose was like a mighty cannon, his eyes like two small green peas.” (Garfield, 7) 

            Hans Christian Andersen lived to see his tales translated into dozens of languages, and often he knew that the results were deplorable. Some translators "improved" Andersen's prose, and other didn't know Danish well enough to translate it correctly. Long before Disney, a sad ending was made happy; a moral might be added, and conservative Victorian sensibilities demanded a bit of censorship.

            Hans Christian Andersen By means of his fairy tales achieved fame, honor, and riches during his lifetime; and the pressure, criticism and demand that accompanied his celebrity.  His enduring classics reflect a need to soothe his troubled soul and endured to give later generations the templates to grasp their own suffering.  He had many faults that plagued him throughout his life, especially his hypersensitivity to real or imagined offense, and was ill at ease with the reviews that many gave his work.  Seen as child-like to many contemporaries and modern biographers, Andersen achieved his success in his widely received collection of fairy tales. His creations brought him the attention, appreciation, and adulation he craved throughout much of his adult life.  

Works Cited:

Bredsdorff, Elias. Hans Andersen and Charles Dickens; a friendship and its dissolution. Copenhagen: Rosenkilde and Bagger, 1956

Jensen, Lars Bo. Criticisms of Hans Christian Andersen. 2003. 2 May 2008

             < http://www.andersen.sdu.dk/forskning/anmeldelser/kritik_e.html>

Garfield, Patricia. “The Dreams of Hans Christian Andersen.” PatriciaGarfield.com. 2 May 2008.

Wullschlager, Jackie. Hans Christian Andersen. London: Viking/Penguin Books, 2005 

Measure of the Mermaid: Popularity of H. C. Andersen

Questions for Contemplation:

Why is The Little Mermaid, namely, Hans Christian Andersen’s most popular tale?

What are the elements that Andersen incorporates into his writing that contribute to a successful and time honored tale?

Is there a method or formula to the way in which Andersen experienced popularity with some of his tales and not other?

Hans Christian Andersen is undeniably a unique storyteller when placed next fellow tale writers of his time and even those who are influenced by him presently. He has been described on numerous accounts in this way, “No other European writer did more to make himself misunderstood by his readers while begging for their recognition than Hans Christian Andersen” (Zipes xiii). The recognition that Andersen pried for is a complex and intricately bound issue that is subtly reflected in his writing style, the symbolism of his characters and plots, and parallels his tales draw to his own experiences growing up and living in seventeenth century Denmark. In this right, there are a great many things that can be hypothesized for contributing to the success of some of Andersen’s more famous tales such as The Little Mermaid (1837), as this is arguably his most internationally acclaimed tale. This write up aims at capitalizing on how Andersen’s passion for the theatre, the dramatic nature of his literature, the infusion of his own unique experience with the class system and personal life reflected in his tales and how these things, but certainly not limited to, are attributes of his tales that have achieved wide international popularity.

Andersen’s Technique:

Considering how Andersen’s works are characterized for their unapologetic portrayals of how society is unfairly but realistically structured in his time, his tales have a darker tone to them than some of Andersen’s predecessors. Zipes comments on the experience of reading Andersen and the emotion evoked:

“…it is painful to read the hurt and rage in his tales that account for their profound dramatic tension. One must indeed be careful not to read Andersen too much into his tales and other works. Yet, to a certain extent, it is somewhat unavoidable: he embodies his thoughts and desires in his writings, and there is a great temptation to read the fairy tales as autobiographical representations.” (xiv)

This passage gives readers a good idea of where Andersen’s tales are categorized on the spectrum of subject matter. Perhaps his place along this continuum, nearer the end that represents a darker and more depressed motif, is unassuming of the success and popularity that he achieved across the world with his most honored tales and adaptations. What was it the people saw in these tales that not only spoke to those struggling with the oppressive class structure at the time but also spoke to those who were at the top of the class system? Andersen would not only traverse the class system with his popularity but also impressively traverse time with his tales as adaptations and retellings continue today.

Andersen had an interest in writing even in his early childhood. Having the mind and creativity to begin writing as early as he did allowed him to mature along with his writing and incorporate much of his adolescence, a very telling time for Andersen, into his writing career. For example, “Andersen constantly defended notions of self-abandonment and self-deprivation in the name of aristocratic-bourgeois laws and standards designed to make members of the lower classes into tractable, obedient citizens” (Zipes 37). This aspect of Andersen pouring a lot of his own experience into his tales, undeniably contributed to the effectiveness of his end product in achieving a level of success. When speaking specifically about Andersen’s The Little Mermaid, it is apparent that she parallels Andersen’s life in certain ways. She breaks away from her world to join another as he went to live with the aristocratic Collin family.

Andersen and the Theatre: Integrating Theatrics into the Fairytale

Andersen had a strong interest in the theatre through out his childhood and into his adult life. Because of this innate passion for the theatre, it can be argued that Hans Christian Andersen infused elements into some of his tales that inspired potential performative elements seen by other creative minds. Zipes affirms his passion for the theatre when he stated, “Andersen’s greatest love was unquestionably the theatre and the musical world…in the course of his life he composed over thirty dramatic works, and twenty-five of his original pieces…today these works are largely forgotten” (Zipes 19). Andersen’s tales have been adapted in several different realms of media, as outlined by another piece on this site, and this performative and theatrical nature to tales such as The Little Mermaid pervades, it is understandable why audiences have enjoyed this tale in theatres, on the stage or even illustrated dramatically on a page. It is ironic that Andersen’s attempts at writing plays and dramatic literature for the stage failed considerably. Andersen’s most renowned theatre piece was The Mulatto which was actually an opera. Andersen adapted his own dramatic poem Agnete and the Merman as an opera in 1843 when it was deemed a “monumental flop” (Zipes 20). This work came after his initial conception of mer-people in his works as he had already written The Little Mermaid.

Unaligned with Society: Reflected in Andersen’s Themes

With the several dramatic pieces he wrote for the stage, Andersen did not achieve the success he had hoped for in this avenue which is surprising. It seemed that when he was writing instead for children, in the realm of fairy tales and folklore, is when the public saw him to be an outstanding writer. This perpetuates Andersen’s struggle to align himself with a society that he always seemed to be in contention with. Not so say that he was not interested in writing for children or choosing this avenue of literature. It is noted that “…his experience with the theatre influenced the way he shaped many of his stories and fairytales, for it was through an appreciation or the stage that he developed a keen sense of observation and dramatic flare” (Zipes 19). This statement clearly outlines the success that Andersen’s The Little Mermaid achieved in the theatrical world because of this sense of dramatics which Andersen was able to incorporate into his tales.

For any writer, achieved success can be attributed to how connected an author was to their work and the creative process of producing a work. Andersen was no exception with this assumption: “Andersen was at his best when he could experiment with personal experience in his own idiom” (Zipes 25). Jack Zipes proposes that his achieved success was also attributed to:

“...his extraordinary understanding of how class struggle affected the lives of people in his times, and some tales even contain a forthright criticism of abusive domination – though his critique was always balanced by admiration for the upper classes and a fear of poverty.” (71)

The reality of Andersen’s unique situation of class experience is reflected in his tales as an experience of seeing both the perils of living in poverty as well as the pleasures of living a rich life. In this very mindset, many of his stories manifest this very complex but profoundly unique critique of society that only Andersen has the full understanding of and reflects it in The Little Mermaid.

A Sophisticated Spin on Fantasy and Adventure

With Andersen’s tale The Ice Maiden, towards the end of his writing career, he used “careful description of the Swiss locale and humorous sketches of the miller’s household. Andersen transforms the common events and everyday routine of country people into a miraculous adventure story” (Zipes 45). It was Andersen’s ability manipulate situations as such is the case in The Ice Maiden and make them more appealing with twists of excitement to connect with an audience in a more dramatic and personal way. Andersen always was attempting to appeal to a more mature audience however in his constant struggle to break through to the upper class mentality.

In this same way, Andersen uses creatures such as mermaids in his most popular tale of the little mermaid as strong agent to differentiate this story from some of his other less fantastical tales. He also uses this agent of the adventurous “under the sea” setting which sets him apart from other creative story tellers that even he was influenced by such as Goethe and other German writers during the seventeenth century. Not that fantasy and fantastical creatures were unfamiliar to the realm of story telling. Quite contrarily, including fantasy and adventure in a tale could be argued as a definitive aspect of the fairy tale. It can also be said that “The popularity of this tale [The Little Mermaid] may, in fact, have a great deal to do with the long history of European fascination with mermaids, often associated with sirens and water sprites” (Zipes 107). But Andersen created this world under the sea with mermaids and sea urchins and humanized it which made it much more tangible for critics and audiences at the time. In a modern day sense, it continues to live on as one of the most famous tales noted for its creative setting. “Under the Sea” has a connotation that will for ever be associated with the tale of The Little Mermaid, largely in part due to the Disney film adaptation with music, but it was Andersen who initially conceived of this world in the first place.

This is not to be confused for a comparison between Andersen’s original tale and the Disney adaptation of The Little Mermaid. It should be made clear that the two versions are quite obviously and radically different from one another. It can be justified however that the two resemble enough similarities to allow for a proper parallel to be drawn in this context of popularity being discussed. Andersen is a prominent figure in literary tradition that has influenced writers in and outside of his genre, children and adults across the world. For a writer that struggled with his role in society in the truly unique and challenging upbringing he experienced, his story telling and literary themes certainly would not be the same with out this influence. His achieved popularity often occurred in endeavors that he would not have predicted. Understanding Hans Christian Andersen is a far more difficult task to manage than understanding why tales such as The Little Mermaid achieved such wide success. The monument of the bronze Little Mermaid statue in Copenhagen is a secure indication that Andersen’s legacy is immortalized by the single figure in his home country. The statue is most symbolic of his longing to escape and become a part of another world in a society that would never fully understand the complexities behind one of the world’s most famous fairy tale authors of all time.

Works Referenced for this Piece:

Greene, Carol. Hans Christian Andersen: Teller of Tales. Children’s Press Chicago. Chicago, 1986.

Wullschlager, Jackie. Hans Christian Andersen: The Life of a Storyteller. Alfred A. Knopf. New York, 2001.

Zipes, Jack. Hans Christian Andersen: The Misunderstood Storyteller. Routledge. New York, 2005.

Hans Christian Andersen in All Facets of Media

Hans Christian Andersen, the Danish Poet, is known, alongside the Brothers Grimm, to be one of the most prolific and celebrated authors of fairytales, folklore and children’s literature. His tales are many and range in varying popularity and renown. Because of their success through unique tale types, characterization, and morals, many of Andersen’s tales have translated from oral and written tradition to all facets of media ranging from new literary interpretations, illustrations (especially those of Vilhelm Pedersen), animations, television, film, parody and many of his tales have even found their way into comic books and graphic novels. The universality of Andersen’s tales have been applied to all sorts of methods of storytelling and while some of his tales, such as The Little Mermaid, The Ugly Duckling, and The Emperor’s New Clothes, are more popular and can be found in all sorts of varying media, even traits of Andersen’s lesser known tales appear in the least likely of mediums.

Andersen lived and wrote his tales in the 1800s, therefore it is only natural for the famed author’s work to be referenced, parodied, and reinvented as fellow writers and appreciators approach Andersen’s tales from changing, modern standpoints. The text of Andersen’s that is most popular in media revisions is quite obviously the tale of The Little Mermaid. Adapted by the Walt Disney Company with their ubiquitously popular animated film in 1989, The Little Mermaid is easily the most widely known tale of Andersen’s. However, both before and after the popular animated film adaptation, the tale has been popularized and adapted in many different mediums. The Little Mermaid has spawned several operas such as French composer Germaine Tailleferre’s La Petite Sirène in 1957. Aside from the Disney film, The Little Mermaid was adapted in several other film formats with Russian animated shorts (1968) and live actions shorts (1976) entitled Rusalochka (The Little Mermaid). In ’61, however, Shirley Temple had already played the part of the Mermaid in a TV movie version of The Little Mermaid during Shirley Temple Theater. While animated, live action, and theatrical versions of the tale have become wildly popular, The Little Mermaid also appeared in a variety of illustrative formats. Illustrator Vilhelm Pedersen, gained a lot of acclaim in the mid-1800s for illustrating a full volume of Andersen’s tales. The 125 illustrations featured in the volume skyrocketed both Andersen and Pedersen’s popularity. Pedersen's illustration of the mermaid is pictured to the right.


Illustrated and animated versions of the tale have become the most popular because it is the easiest way to portray the tale’s supernatural elements. Aside from animation, another form of illustrating fairy tales is the growing medium of comic arts. The first mainstream comic book appearance of The Little Mermaid was in issue #525 of Classics Illustrated Junior. The Little Mermaid has also appeared in the most recent issues of the popular comic book series, Grimm Fairy Tales, which takes old classic tale types and puts a horror-comic spin on it. Each story arc focuses on a different tale; the most recent arc, consisting of issues #25 and #26 interpret Andersen’s The Little Mermaid through a horror comic lens.



The Snow Queen, one of Andersen’s longest, consisting of seven smaller stories, tells a story of a boy and a girl, Kay and Gerda and their experience with the struggle between good and evil. The story has also been successfully adapted in a wide array of mediums, making the story and its themes more relevant to audiences of today. The story inspired a popular Hugo Award-winning 1980 science fiction novel of the same name by American novelist Joan D. Vinge. The sci-fi novel takes Andersen’s classic love story tale type and adds a fantastical space element, featuring space travel and exotic alien creatures. American short story writer Kelly Link also adapts the tale, but portraying the protagonists Kay and Gerda as romantically involved adults, rather than children. There have also been several international theatrical films. The American versions include an animated adaptation of the tale narrated by Sigourney Weaver as well as an updated made for TV movie with special effects and starring Bridget Fonda. HBO also featured a popular animated series entitled Happily Ever After: Fairy Tales for Every Child airing from 1995 to 1998 (http://www.hbofamily.com/programs/happily-ever-after.html).

The series was highly popular and featured voice talent from many popular actors (ranging from Samuel L. Jackson and Will Smith to Cyndi Lauper and Sharon Stone) on animated tale renditions of HC Andersen works, including The Snow Queen. The TV series would retell the popular tales but update them by setting them different cultures such as episodes animating Andersen’s Thumbelina in the Amazon Rain Forest, The Princess and the Pea in an ancient Asian setting, and even the lesser known Andersen tale, The Empress's Nightingale, told with a new-age feminist approach.

Another important series of adaptations that included several of Andersen’s works was a live-action television series for children called Faerie Tale Theatre and was produced by actress Shelley Duvall. The series, consisting of 27 films in all and airing between 1982 and 1987, adapted several Andersen tales, including the ever-popular Little Mermaid and The Emperor’s New Clothes. In his book, Hans Christian Andersen: The Misunderstood Storyteller, Jack Zipes says of the series:

As might be expected, the films are uneven, largely because the fairy tales are means for the actors to show off their talents and to tweak the tales in titillating ways. Some manage to be series and artistic and endeavor to offer relevant observations on the Andersen texts for contemporary audiences. (Zipes 115)

Through animation like Disney’s, Andersen tales have repeatedly been adapted for younger contemporary audiences, however the form of the parody allows new creative approaches to take the tales and transform them into something new and more entertaining for today’s viewers. During the first season of The Rocky and Bullwinkle cartoon show from 1959 to 1960, the show featured an animated segment called Fractured Fairy Tales. This segment parodied various famous fairy tales, including many of Andersen’s like The Princess and the Pea.

The Princess and the Pea is yet another of HC Andersen’s tales that is often adapted and parodied. The most popular parody of this tale is the musical comedy entitled Once Upon a Mattress, which opened on Broadway in 1959 and was written by Mary Rodgers. The musical, which was adapted to film in 1972 and again in 2002 satirizes Andersen’s classic tale. The tale is also parodied, along with several other notorious fairy tales in the popular children’s parody book, The Stinky Cheese Man and Other Fairly Stupid Tales, written by Jon Scieszka and illustrated by Lane Smith (http://www.jsworldwide.com/yeah_he_wrote_em.html). The two are a very successful creative team in creating children’s literature. In The Stinky Cheese Man and Other Fairly Stupid Tales they’re version of this tale is entitled The Princess and the Bowling Ball. The satire pokes fun at the ridiculous nature of this particular tale. In the tale, the prince replaces the pea with a bowling ball to ensure the king and queen approve of the princess he wishes to marry,

The Stinky Cheese Man and Other Fairly Stupid Tales also pokes fun at Andersen’s incredibly renowned story The Ugly Duckling, telling the story in a very similar way, yet makes the duckling sillier and slightly stupid as well. The other ducks consequently antagonize the duckling, yet the ugly duckling is arrogant about growing up into a beautiful swan. The arrogance turns against the duckling when he instead grows up to just be a very ugly duck.

Another avenue of reinvention of Andersen fairy tale characters--a new and unconventional method, is the highly innovative graphic novel series entitled Fables by Bill Willingham . The series takes an all-new unique approach to fairy tales and fairy tale mythos. Unlike the comic book series Grimm Fairy Tales, Fables does not shift focus every few issues from tale to tale. Instead, Fables creates a universe where all fairy tale characters and creatures, Grimm or Andersen, coexist as real inhabitants of one fairy tale universe, a community in New York City called Fabletown. The series is told in a noir-like setting and feature various story arcs focusing on different fairy tale characters. Many of the characters included in Fabletown are adaptations of Hans Christian Andersen’s beloved characters. The Snow Queen is an important villain of the series and there is even an Andersen Street located in Fabletown, paying homage to the creator of many of the characters.

While many have made very successful attempts in bringing Andersen’s characters and dreams to life in film and other adaptations, in Hans Christian Andersen: The Misunderstood Storyteller, Jack Zipes approaches the adaptation of Andersen’s tales to film from another standpoint. In the book, Zipes has a negative outlook on adapting Andersen’s tales for film, saying that the many creators have attempted dumb down Andersen’s work too much to make it acceptable for younger, more mainstream audiences. Zipes worries that by adapting all of these tales to movies and television, “people, young and old, are reading less and less, and even their reading is influenced by movies and TV” (Zipes 106). This “aliteracy” is growing problem today and very unspecific to the work of HC Andersen.

As previously discussed, many have adapted Andersen’s work in other literary way, using his stories for science fiction novels, plays, musicals, and even graphic novel art forms. One of Zipes’s main concerns is with the mass marketing of The Little Mermaid following the Disney film’s success. He argues that the Disney film robbed many aspects of the story by adapting it for children in the mode and formulaic framework of their previous films. Disney then went on to create a cartoon series spin-off of their hit airing between 1992 and 1994 and even spawned a sequel, The Little Mermaid II: Return to the Sea. Zipes reproaches Disney for capitalizing on their unfaithful adaptation of Andersen’s tale, feeding it to mass markets of children to gobble up and give them large profits.

Hans Christian Andersen created a realm of wonderful characters with his fairy tale collections. The characters and stories he brought to life have obviously been extremely influential on the modern media we experience through everyday pop culture. The characters and their tales are evidently timeless, only needing slight tweaking and adjustment to be relevant and equally entertaining for today’s audiences, viewers, and readers. Andersen’s stories are adapted so often for the richness and magic he instilled in each tale. The stories evoke imagination and fantasy and as technology, intellectual curiosity, and artistic talent expand with time, it allows new artists to take Andersen’s creations and bring them to life, more so than anyone had ever been able to before and for any type of audience. While some may argue that these endless adaptations are stealing the magic of Andersen’s work and not doing the tales justice, using elements from his work can also act as a great way for fans, readers, and viewers to get interested in the original source material, sparking a new interest in reading Andersen’s original renditions of the tales.







Work Cited
Zipes, Jack. Hans Christian Andersen: the Misunderstood Storyteller. New York: Routlage, Taylor & Francis Group, 2005. 105-142.