THE CLEVER PRINCESS: THIS CHARMING LADY

Khac Ti Ang Thuyet, June 2014
Thesis on Andersen female characters (Excerpt)

...has supposedly married a clever and beautiful princess...
She (Gerta) is helped by the prince and princess, who give her a carriage and horse and a little pair of boots so that she might drive out again into the wide world...
the princess gives Gerda a pair of boots and a muff, a carriage and a horse, together with a coachman, footman and outrider, facilitating her journey;
...a clever princess who gave her (Gerta) a golden carriage and a horse.

These stories provide

all we need in the way of awesome images of very strong female characters, whether

good or evil: in the Fourth Story, the clever princess. They are very free in their

world. They are determined and strong-willed. They are able to make choices and

decide their own destinies. They can do what they like to make their own dreams

come true.

The princess is a supplementary character who only appears in one chapter of the

Snow Queen story, yet she is an admirable and inspirational female character. She is

clever and intellectual.

 In this kingdom where we are now, there lives a Princess who is 

very clever. She has read all the newspapers in the world and forgotten them 

again, so clever is she. One day she was sitting on her throne, which is not such 

an amusing thing to do either, they say. And she began humming a tune, which 

happened to be: “Why should I not be married?”[...]. And she made up her mind 

to marry, if she could find a husband who had an answer ready when a question 

was put to him, not one who could only stand there and look grand, for that is too 

stupid. 

 (Andersen, 1997, 226)

This is a refreshingly different way to introduce a character, and we find nothing so

witty, ironic, sophisticated in Grimms’ fairy tales' (18)

emphasis on a fairy-tale princess’ beauty rather than, as here, her intelligence and wit

– though in fact we do not know what this princess looks like. She decides on her own

that she wants to get married, and she then goes on to consider what kind of husband

she is looking for – one who is intelligent, “unabashed of royalty,” and who “feels at

home with her” (Andersen, 1997, 126). The man actually chosen by the princess is not

a prince but a wanderer, one with creaking boots and a knapsack on his back.

However, he is “a picture of good looks and gallantry, and then he had not come with

any idea of wooing the Princess, but simply to hear her wisdom, he admired her just

as much as she admired him” (Andersen, 1997, 129). He does not slay any dragon, but

he can match the princess’s intellect with his own rather than impressing her with

victories. Just as our looks may fade; our wealth and status might also be diminished:

only our intellect and wisdom can last. The princess is not only clever; she is generous

and sympathetic as well. She is willing to help Gerda with her new golden carriage.

At the end of the tale, the princess and her husband go away “to live in foreign

countries”. They are free, totally not bound by the traditional social roles.


(18) This would be true even if we only heard the author, or the Raven, or the princess speaking there, but in fact we hear all three in this complex passage that combines three narrative-discursive levels. 

Just like the princess, the robber girl is a very inspirational and admirable

female character. Her reward is her “complete freedom”.