a few insights on various fairytales

Andersen's Fairytales:

It's commonly supposed that all fairy tales are stories from the folk tradition, passed through the generations by storytellers since the dawn of time. While it's true that most fairy tales are rooted in oral folklore, to a greater or lesser degree, many of the best-known stories actually come to us from literary sources. In previous columns, we've looked at the literary fairy tales of 16th century Italy (written by Straparola and Basile), and at the salon fairy tales of 17th and 18th century France (by Madame D'Aulnoy, Charles Perrault, etc.). In this column, we turn to 19th century Denmark, where Hans Christian Andersen (1805-1875) penned some of the best loved fairy tales of all time: The Little Mermaid, The Wild Swans, The Princess and the Pea, The Emperor's New Clothes, The Nightingale, The Tinder Box/The Firelighter, The Ugly Duckling, The Steadfast Tin Soldier, The Red Shoes, The Christmas Tree, The Snow Queen (his masterpiece), and many others.

Hans Christian Andersen's own life had aspects of a fairy tale, for he was born the son of a poor cobbler and he died a rich and famous man, celebrated around the world, the intimate of kings and queens. Although today Andersen is primarily known as a writer of stories for children, during his lifetime he was also celebrated for his other literary works, including six novels, five travel journals, three autobiographies, and numerous poems and plays. The modern image of Andersen (as portrayed in the sugary 1952 film Hans Christian Andersen, starring Danny Kaye) is of a simple, innocent, child-like spinner of tales, a character from one of his own stories.

Letters and diaries by Andersen and his contemporaries, however, draw the picture of a very different man: a sharply intelligent, ambitious writer with a hardscrabble past, a love of high society, and a tortured soul. Likewise, Andersen's fairy tales, when read in the original Danish (or in good, unabridged translations), are far more sophisticated and multi-layered than the simple children's fables they've become in all too many translated editions, retellings, and media adaptations. The writer was no innocent naïf recounting fancies whispered by the fairies; he was a serious artist, a skillful literary craftsman, a shrewd observer of human nature and of the social scene of 19th-century Denmark.

Reading Andersen's prose after growing up with abridged and altered versions of his stories can be a surprising experience -- much like reading J.M. Barrie's sly, subversive Peter Pan in the original. Both Andersen and Barrie wrote children's stories into which they carefully, skillfully embedded comedy, social critique, satire, and philosophy aimed at adult readers. Andersen pioneered this style, and writers like Barrie are indebted to him, as are numerous children's writers today — including Jane Yolen, Roald Dahl, Diana Wynne Jones, Philip Pullman, and J. K. Rowling -- whose works are beloved by adult readers. "I seize on an idea for grown-ups," Andersen explained, "and then tell the story to the little ones while always remembering that Father and Mother often listen, and you must also give them something for their minds." His fairy tales can be read simply as magical adventures, but for the discerning reader they contain much more, bristling with characters drawn from Andersen's own life and from the many worlds he traveled through in his remarkable life's journey.

Like the Ugly Duckling, born in a humble farm duck-pond yet destined to become a swan, Andersen was born the son of a poor cobbler in the provincial town of Odense on the island of Funen, where the family shared a single room and lived a hand-to-mouth existence. There was always food, but never quite enough; there were books on the shelf, but no money for grammar school. Andersen was sent to the Poor School instead, and expected to learn a trade.

Tall and gawky, red-haired and left-handed, ill at ease with other children, the boy spent his time reading, dreaming, sewing costumes out of scraps for his puppet theater, and haunting the doorway of the local theater when traveling players came to town. Odense, at that time, was a provincial town, or rather a large village, still rooted in its rural past, with a living tradition of Danish folklore and colorful folk pageantry. In The True Story of My Life, Andersen relates how he learned Danish folk tales in his youth from old women in the spinning room of the insane asylum where his grandmother worked. "They considered me a marvelous clever child," he recalls, "too clever to live long, and they rewarded my eloquence by telling me fairy tales, and a world as rich as that of The Thousand and One Nights arose before me." The Eastern tales of The Thousand and One Nights also fired the boy's imagination, for this was one of the few precious books owned by Andersen's father.

Andersen began writing at an early age (an unusual preoccupation for a boy of his class), but his true ambition was to go on the stage as an actor, dancer, or singer. He memorized scenes from plays and poems and loved to declaim them to anyone who'd listen; he also possessed a fine singing voice (he was know as the Nightingale of Odense), and this talent in particular began to open doors for him. The boy received invitations to sing at dinner parties in rich men's and women's houses, where his precociousness, combined with his shabby appearance, provoked as much amusement as admiration. This was Andersen's first taste of superior society (as it was called in those days of rigid class demarcation), a taste that he never lost as he subsequently climbed into Denmark's highest circles.

When Andersen was 11, his father died of consumption, leaving the family more destitute than ever, and the boy (just like Dickens) was sent off to factory work, at which he lasted only a few days. In 1819, at the age of 14, he left home and Odense and Funen altogether, traveling alone to Copenhagen to make his fame and fortune. Determined to join the Royal Theater, he presented himself to the theater's director, who bluntly advised the uneducated youth to go home and learn a trade. Undaunted, the boy sought out a well-known critic, then the prima ballerina, both of whom turned the scruffy urchin out and told him to go home. Growing desperate, running out of money, Andersen pestered every luminary he could think of until he turned up on the doorstep of Giuseppe Siboni, director of the Royal Choir School. Christoph Weyse, an accomplished composer, happened to be dining with Siboni that day. He had risen from poverty himself, and he took pity on the boy. Weyse promptly raised a sum of money that enabled Andersen to rent a cheap room and to study with Siboni and others connected to the Royal Theater.

Thus began a new period in Andersen's life. By day he studied and loitered in the theater, rubbing shoulders with some of the most famous men and women of Denmark's Golden Age; by night he lived in a mean little bohemian garret on a squalid backstreet, often going without meals and spending what little money he had on books. As in Odense, the boy was called upon to sing and recite at distinguished dinner parties among the society in the capital -- and once again the smiles of his hosts were often at his own expense. The aid he received for the next three years was sporadic and precarious, never quite enough to keep hunger from the door, bestowed with a mixture of generosity and condescension that left lasting marks on Andersen's psyche. (He would draw upon this experience years later when creating tales such as The Little Mermaid, in which the heroine submits to loss and pain in order to cross into another world -- only to find she'll never be fully accepted, loved, or understood.)

Yet despite the hardships he endured, and the humiliations he suffered through, the young Andersen was thrilled to be on his way to a theatrical career...or so he thought. He practiced scenes from famous plays, he tried his hand at writing a tragedy, and he began to study dance at the Royal Theater's Ballet School. But by the age of 17, his voice had changed; his gawky physique had proven unsuited to ballet. He was dismissed from school, informed that he had no future on the stage.

Another youth than Hans Christian Andersen might have crumbled under this blow, but throughout his life he possessed a remarkable (even exasperating) degree of confidence and never lost faith in his worth, no matter how often he faced rejection.

Determined to find success in Denmark's theater but barred from a performance career, Andersen focused on his remaining talent: he'd become a writer of plays. He'd already submitted one play to the Royal Theater, which had promptly been turned down. Now the boy dashed off another play, this time an historical tragedy. It, too, was turned away. Yet the play had shown a glimmer of promise, and this brought him to the attention of Jonas Collin, a powerful court official and the financial director of the Royal Theater. Collin perceived what everyone else had perceived: the boy was badly handicapped by his lack of formal education. Collin, however, decided to do something to solve the problem of Andersen, arranging an educational fund to be paid by the King of Denmark.

Andersen was sent away to grammar school in the town of Slagelse, 57 miles from Copenhagen in the west of Zealand island. He was six years older than his fellow students, far behind them in general education, and temperamentally unsuited for long days sitting in a classroom. Nonetheless he persevered, determined to prove himself worthy of Collin's interest, the King's patronage, and the faith of his small circle of supporters back in the capital.

But life as a grammar student would prove to be especially difficult, even for a youth whose life had hardly been easy to this point. Andersen's headmaster was a pedagogue who could have stepped from the pages of a Dickens novel, fond of using ridicule, humiliation, and contempt to bully his students into learning. He was particularly vicious to dreamy young Andersen, determined to crush the boy's pride, conceit, and especially his high ambitions -- and to teach him that his place in the world (due to his origins) must be a humble one. In particular, Andersen was strictly forbidden to "indulge" in any creative work such as creative writing -- a deprivation that the boy, who'd been writing since he was small, found particularly hard.

For four years, Andersen endured this tyranny, suffered, worried that he was going mad, and wrote despairing letters home -- which Jonas Collin calmly dismissed as adolescent self-pity. In 1826, at the age of 21, Andersen's emotions came to a boil; he defied his headmaster by writing a poem titled "The Dying Child."

Based on a common nineteenth century theme (in the days of high infant mortality rates), this poem was unusual in being told from the child's point of view, and it evoked a haunting sadness fueled by the author's own misery. Andersen's headmaster pronounced the poem rubbish (it became one of the most famous poems of the century) and heaped such abuse on Andersen that a young teacher became alarmed. The teacher spoke to Jonas Collin directly, and Collin swiftly pulled Andersen out of school. Andersen remained haunted by nightmares of his headmaster for the rest of his life.

Andersen was now allowed to return to Copenhagen, where he lived in a small, clean attic room, studied with private tutors, and took his meals with the Collins and other prominent families, in rotation. His particular attachment to the Collin family solidified during this period and would become a steady source of both joy and pain in the years that followed. Jonas, he loved as a second father; the five Collins children were as dear to him as brothers and sisters; and the Collins, in turn, grew used to this odd young man sitting at their hearth. Much has been written by Andersen scholars about the complicated relationship he forged with the family, who were pillars of Danish society and moved in the highest court circles. Jonas Collin's support of Andersen was both generous and unwavering, and Collin's household provided the young man with the family and stability he craved. But although they opened their home to him, included him in family gatherings, and assisted him in countless ways, Andersen was never allowed to forget that he was not entirely one of them, for he was not a member of their class. Even in the days of his world-wide fame, when he was home with the Collins, he was still the cobbler's boy from Odense... the Royal Theater's charity boy... the Little Match Girl with her nose pressed to the glass of a rich family's window.

Most complicated of all was Andersen's relationship with Jonas's son Edvard, who was not only Andersen's closest friend but also (Andersen scholars now believe) the great love of Andersen's life. Edvard's response to Andersen, by contrast, was stolid and unsentimental. He expressed his loyalty to Andersen with tireless acts of practical assistance, yet always held a small part of himself back from his friend. This was symbolized by Edvard's refusal to use the familiar pronoun Du, insisting on the formal De instead. "If you will forget the circumstances of my birth," Andersen wrote to Edvard poignantly, "and always be to me what I am to you, you will find in me the most honest and sympathetic friend." It did no good. Edvard stuck to the formal De for the rest of their lives.

Now Andersen left his studies for good (after passing two university exams), and he concentrated on writing and publishing his first collection of poems. Despite this bright beginning, the early years of his career were rocky ones -- full of lows as well as highs and marred by unsympathetic reviews in the Danish press. It was not until his books and poems began to excite attention abroad, particularly in Germany, that critics started to take him seriously in his native land. This mixture of praise (from abroad) and censure (at home) was hurtful and confusing to Andersen, as were the intermingled messages of acceptance and rejection he received from his upper-class friends. He grew a protective armor of wit, but kept a tally of each hurt, each blow; and in later years, no praise was ever enough to balance the scorecard. He grew into a man with two distinct and conflicting sides to his nature. In his talents he was supremely confident, speaking candidly of his high ambitions and rhapsodizing over each success -- which made him something of an oddity to his friends (and a figure of ridicule to his enemies) in a social milieu where displaying signs of personal ambition was frowned upon. Yet Andersen could also be sensitive, emotional, and hungry for approval to a debilitating degree. This made him, at times, an exasperating companion, but many found his friendship worth the trouble, for he was also capable of great warmth, humor, kindness, and moments of surprising wisdom.

We see this side of Andersen most clearly in his fairy tales, which he began to write at the age of 29, with great excitement. A volume containing his first four tales (The Tinder Box/The Firelighter, 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's earliest stories are more clearly inspired by Danish folktales than his later works -- yet none are direct, unadorned retellings of Danish folk stories. Rather, these are original fictions that use Danish folklore as their starting point and then head off in bold new directions, borrowing further inspiration from The Thousand and One Nights, the salon tales of seventeenth century France, the German tales collected by the Brothers Grimm, and the fantasies of E.T.A. Hoffmann, among other works.

It's impossible today to fully understand the sensation these little stories caused, for nothing quite like them had ever been seen in Danish literature. The tales were revolutionary for several reasons. Across Europe, the field of children's fiction was still in its very early days and was still dominated by dull, pious stories intended to teach and inculcate moral values. Andersen's magical tales were rich as chocolate cake after a diet of wholesome gruel, and the narrative voice spoke familiarly, warmly, conspiratorially to children, rather than preaching to them from on high. Despite the Judaeo-Christian imagery recurrent in the tales (typical of nineteenth century fiction), these are remarkably earthy, anarchic, occasionally even amoral stories -- comical, cynical, fatalistic by turns, rather than morally instructive. And unlike the folk tales collected by the Grimms, set in distant lands once upon a time, Andersen set his tales in Odense, Copenhagen, and other familiar, contemporary settings, mixed fantastical descriptions with common ordinary ones, and invested not only animals and plants, but even everyday household objects (toys, dishes, utensils... etc.) with personalities and magic.

A year after his return to the capital, Andersen sat down in his little attic room and wrote his first book, A Walking Tour from the Holmen Canal to the Eastern Point of Amager. Though the title sounds (purposefully) like a travel book, this clever and fantastical work, written when he was just 22, follows a young bohemian poet (an author avatar) through the streets of Copenhagen over the course of a single night. Unable to interest a publisher, Andersen scraped together the means to publish it himself -- and the book was a hit, quickly selling out its entire print run. He then wrote a play, which, to his delight, was accepted at the Royal Theater. Titled Love on St. Nicholas 'Tower, it proved to be a popular success.

Even the language of the stories was fresh and radical, as Jackie Wullschlager points out inHans Christian Andersen: The Life of a Storyteller: "The raw and unpolished Danish of these first stories was so radical as to be considered vulgar at a time when literary convention demanded rigorous, high-flown sentiment of the sort practiced by the playwright Heiberg. Andersen, by contrast, was deliberately direct and informal."

Andersen carefully crafted the narration of his tales to evoke the power of oral storytelling, yet the narrative voice is a distinctive one, not the impersonal voice of most folk tales. He perfected his stories by reading them aloud within his social circle, and many a dinner party ended with children and adults alike clamouring for a story. As Andersen's fairy tales became known and loved, he found himself much in demand as a dinner guest, and he also began to receive requests to read his work in public. Though he hadn't been destined for an acting career, his youthful theatrical training served him well. George Griffen, a diplomat from the United States, wrote of Andersen's performance:

"He is a remarkably fine reader, and has often been compared in this respect to Dickens — Dickens was in truth a superb reader, but I am inclined to think that Andersen's manner is far more impressive and eloquent. Both of these men have always read to crowded houses. Dickens voice was perhaps better suited for the stage than the reading desk. It was stronger and louder than Andersen's, but nothing like as mellow and musical. I heard Dickens read the death-bed scene of Little Nell out loud, and I was moved to tears, but I knew that the author himself was reading the story; but when I heard Andersen read the story of the Little Girl with the Matches, I did not think of the author at all, but wept like a child, unconscious of everything around me."

Griffen was not the only adult reduced to tears by Andersen's tales -- which were startling, fresh, and urgent in ways that we can only image, now that Andersen's stories have acquired the patina of age and familiarity. Nineteenth century readers were particularly affected by the way the tales gave voice to the powerless -- the young, the poor, the very old -- and imbued them with special strength, wisdom, and connection to the natural world (in opposition to the artifice of reason or the follies of society). Gerda, for instance, goes up against her rival (the rich, dazzling, coldly intellectual Snow Queen) armed only with her youth and compassion; in The Emperor's New Clothes, a child on the street displays more wisdom than the King. We find this theme in traditional folk tales (the good-hearted peasant girl or boy whose kindness wins them riches or a crown), but Andersen gave such figures new life by placing them in contemporary settings, layering elements of sharp social critique into their stories.

Wullschlager places this aspect of the fairy tales in context, noting that:

"Andersen was a product of his times -- of Romanticism, of the revival of the imaginative spirit and of the growth of democratic ideas -- in addressing himself to the child in the adult through a shift in perspective, by allowing the child, or toy, or later farmyard animal, to speak with his or her own voice and feelings. In doing so, he joined the wider movement of cultural decentralization, which was beginning to dominate in Europe in the early nineteenth century. In Denmark, Blicher gave voice to Jutland peasants for the first time; in Britain, the rural themes and regional speech and images of peasant life in Sir Walter Scott's novels shaped the Victorian novel... Suddenly the disposed and the poor were acceptable literary subjects. The crucial contributions of Andersen and Dickens in the 1830s and 1840s were to focus on children, another traditionally mute and oppressed group. The urge to speak out, to claim equality of talent and emotional need...was a driving force for the new nineteenth century writers who did not come from genteel urban classes, and none came from so deprived and uneducated a background as Andersen."

When Andersen was 33, the specter of poverty was banished from his life forever when the King of Denmark awarded the writer an annual stipend for life. Now he no longer depended on friends, or on the fickle whims of the reading public; now he was free to write as he liked -- and for a time he put aside the writing of novels, which had been his bread and butter, and concentrated on fairy tales and works for his beloved theatre. Andersen wrote two hundred and ten fairy tales in all, published over the course of his life. The tales were translated across Europe, then made their way around the world, making him the best-known Scandinavian writer of his age. The doors to noble houses opened to him, and he wandered from country manor to country manor, returning periodically to Copenhagen, to the Collins (his patrons) and to the Royal Theater.

He also traveled abroad extensively, unusually so for a Dane of his day, and he published several popular books about his travels. He was particularly fond of southern Italy and of Weimar (now part of Germany), and he enjoyed a close, important friendship with the literature-loving prince of Weimar. In Kassel (Hessen, also part of Germany), he introduced himself to folklorist Jakob Grimm, then ran away mortified because Grimm had never heard of his stories. Jakob's brother Wilhelm Grimm, who had read Andersen's tales, later sought him out in Copenhagen, and Andersen grew quite friendly with the Brothers Grimm and their Kassel-based circle of folklore enthusiasts.

Andersen made his first journey to England in 1847. His tales had appeared in English in four different volumes in 1846, and, despite uniformly poor translations, they were greatly loved by Victorian readers. Charles Dickens was an admirer, and he made a point of meeting Andersen, gifting the Danish writer with signed copies of his collected works. The two maintained a warm correspondence until, on Andersen's next journey, Dickens invited him to his country home in Kent. The visit was a disaster. The timing was atrocious, for Dickens's marriage was on the verge of collapse, and Andersen -- never noticing the tension in the household -- proved to be a needy guest. Dickens placed a sign on the guest room wall after Andersen's departure: "Hans Christian Andersen slept in this room for five weeks which seemed to the family AGES." Andersen himself never understood why he never heard from Dickens again.

Part of the problem was that Andersen spoke virtually no English ("In English, he is the Deaf and Dumb (ie Mute) Asylum," Dickens sneered to a friend), which led London society to view the writer as something of a simpleton. Also, his tales had been rendered into the English language by translators with limited literary skills, working from German texts, not the original Danish. Thus the versions of the tales that were best known to English readers (a problem that persists in some modern editions) were simpler, sweeter, less comic and ironic, than the ones that Andersen actually wrote.

This lack of sophistication in the English text caused Andersen to be labeled as a writer for children only, contrary to his broader reputation in the rest of Europe. His quiet, confused demeanor as he traveled through England (due to his inability to communicate) made the clever and witty Andersen appear as naive and child-like as his tales -- and a myth was born, later portrayed on film by the actor Danny Kaye. Andersen himself railed against the notion of being viewed as one who'd spent his life with children when he objected to the designs for a statue surrounding him with a circle of tykes. "I said loud and clear that I was dissatisfied...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 naiveté was only part of my tales, that humour was what really gave them their flavour."

Though Andersen's humour is indeed a salient characteristic of the tales (when they are well translated), what many readers remember most about Andersen's work is its overwhelming sadness. The Little Match Girl dies, the Little Mermaid is betrayed by her prince (In Andersen's story, the prince betrays the Little Mermaid by taking a human bride, causing her to die and dissolve into foam), the Christmas Tree (or Young Spruce Tree) lies discarded after Christmas, sighing over past glories. Even tales that end happily -- The Snow Queen, The Ugly Duckling, Thumbelina, The Wild Swans -- are heart-wrenching in their depiction of anguish endured along the way.

As a child, I found reading Andersen's tales a particularly wrenching experience -- and yet I read them over and over, both attracted to and disturbed by their unflinching depiction of pain. In a wonderful essay titled "In a Trance of Self", Deborah Eisenberg discusses the experience of reading Andersen's The Snow Queen:

"The febrile clarity and propulsion [of the story] is accomplished at the expense of the reader's nerves. Especially taxing are the claims on the reader by both Kai and Gerda. Who has not, like Gerda, been exiled from the familiar comforts of one's world by the departure or defection of a beloved?

"And what child has not been confounded by the daily employment of impossible obstacles and challenges? Who has not been forced to accede to a longing that nothing but its object can allay? On the other hand, who has not experienced some measure or some element of Kai's despair? Who has not, at one time or another, been paralyzed and estranged as his appetite and affection for life leeches away? ... Who has not, at least briefly, retreated into a shining hermetic fortress from which the rest of the world appears frozen and colourless? Who has not courted an annihilating involvement? Who has not mistaken intensity for significance? What devotee of art has not been denied art's blessing? And who, withholding sympathy from his unworthy self, has not been ennobled by the sympathy of a loving friend?"

Andersen's life was tragic one in many ways -- and yet, like a character from one of his own tales, he had the gift of turning straw into gold: transforming the sorrows and joys of his life's journey into stories we still love today.

Sale of Bed, or Three Nights, Tales

In East of the Sun, West of the Moon, the heroine and her monstrous suitor live as husband and wife before the beast's transformation. Each night the bear turns into a man and comes to the heroine's bed. She is not allowed to see his face -- but at length she breaks this prohibition, lighting a candle and spilling three drops of wax on the shirt he wears. "If only you'd been patient," rebukes the bear, revealed now as a handsome prince. "My stepmother placed a curse on me. Had you restrained your curiosity until the space of a year had passed, the curse would have lifted. But now I must go east of the sun, west of the moon, and marry the bride she's chosen for me, with a nose that's three ells (cubits) long."

The heroine proves her loyalty and courage by finding her way to this distant place, transported there by the winds and carrying magic from three ancient crones. She reaches her lover's side the day before he's due to marry a troll. He's overjoyed to see her, and together they hatch a plan. The next morning he tells the troll princess, "I wish to be married in this shirt. But see here, it's marked by spots of wax. I bid you to wash them out for me, for I shall only marry the woman who can make this shirt clean once more." The troll princess agrees, thinking that this will be an easy task — but the more she washes the shirt, the dirtier and dirtier it gets. Her maids of honour fail as well, and the prince snatches the shirt and cries, "Why, even the beggar maid at the gates can wash better than you!" The beggar maid, of course, is his own true love. She easily washes the stains away -- whereupon the prince's troll stepmother bursts into pieces with her rage, the prince's curse is lifted, and the lovers are reunited.

The three motifs common to this kind of stories are evident in Apuleius's tale: marriage to (or cohabitation with) a mysterious non-human figure; the breaking of a prohibition and subsequent departure of the magical spouse (or suitor, or lover); and a pilgrimage to regain the loved one and achieve a more lasting union. 

Stories that move on to the third part of the cycle, like East of the Sun, West of the Moon, end with the lovers reunited and the transformation of one or both. Such tales, notes Sax, express "an almost universal longing to re-establish a lost intimacy with the natural world."

Only rarely, by contrast, do young women stride off simply to seek their fate. Instead, fate comes knocking on their door in the form of crisis, betrayal, or magic, propelling them forcibly onto the path to transformation. Nor are young women often allowed to return again when the tale is done; instead, they must make new lives and new alliances, usually far from home. The mythic structure of such stories was something I came to appreciate later, when my own hero's journey led me on to college and the study of folklore.

As a child, I only cared that these girls were desperate, scarred, and scared, like me. Their tales assured me that with perseverance I could find my way to my own happy ending — provided I did not sit weeping in the cinders awaiting rescue. I'd have to earn a happy ending, and this was the "magic" that I would need: courage, compassion, determination, quick wits, clear sight, and luck.

Silver Hands/Constanze: 
On the Husband at War and the Forged Letters

Jungian scholar Marie-Louise von Franz saw the fairy tale forest not only as a place of trials for the hero, but also an archetypal setting for retreat, reflection, and healing. In a lecture presented to the C.G. Jung Institute in Switzerland in the winter of 1958-59 (subsequently published as The Feminine in Fairytales), she looked at the role of the forest in the story of "The Handless Maiden" (also known as "The Armless Maiden," "The Girl/Maiden Without Hands," and "Silver Hands"). 

She then leaves home, makes her way through the forest, and ends up foraging for pears (a fruit symbolic of female strength) in the garden of a tender-hearted king — who falls in love, marries her, and gives her two new hands made of silver — but this is not the usual happy ending to the story. The king is away at war and the devil interferes once again (or, in some versions, a malicious mother-in-law), tricking the court into casting her back into the forest. "She is driven into nature," von Franz points out. "She has to go into deep introversion.... The forest [is] the place of unconventional inner life, in the deepest sense of the word."

The Handless Maiden then encounters a stranger (angel/fairy/wise old man) who leads her to a hut deep in the woods. Her human hands are magically restored during this time of forest retreat. When her husband returns from the war, learns that she's gone, and comes to fetch his wife home, she insists that he court her all over again, as the new woman she is now. Her husband complies -- and then, only then, does the tale conclude happily. The Handless Maiden's transformation is now complete: to whole, healed woman; to queen.

In other versions of the Handless Maiden narrative, the young queen's time in the woods is not solitary. The stranger (or "white spirit") leads her to an inn at the very heart of the forest, where she's taken in by gentle "folk of the woods." (It's not always made clear whether they are human, animal, or magical beings). The queen stays with them for a full seven years (a traditional period of time for magical/shamanic initiation in ancient Greece and other cultures world-wide), during which time her hands slowly re-grow.

The Handless/Armless Maiden is not a passive princess in the old Disney mold, waiting for romance to rescue her. She finds her own way to the orchard of a king in her search of food, and although she agrees to marry him, a royal wedding is not the conclusion of her story, it's the half-way point. "It is a narrative with a strange hiccup in the middle," Midori points out. "The brutality of the opening scene seems resolved as the Armless Maiden is rescued in a garden and then married to a compassionate young man. But she has not completed her journey of transformation from adolescence to adulthood. She is not whole, not the girl she was nor the woman she was meant to be. The narratives make it clear that without her arms, she is unable to fulfill her role as an adult. She can do nothing for herself. 

"Conflict is reintroduced into the narrative to send the girl back on her journey of initiation in the woods. There the fantastic heals her, and she returns reborn as a woman. Every narrative version concludes with what is in effect a second marriage. The woman, now whole, her arms restored by an act of magic, has become herself the magic bride, aligned with the creative power of nature. She does not return immediately to her husband but waits in the forest or a neighbouring homestead for him to find her. When he comes to propose marriage this second time, it is a marriage of equals, based on respect and not pity.

"The story is that she is given silver hands by the king who falls in love with her. Eventually, she goes off into the forest and her own hands grow back. In the Grimms' version it is because she’s good for seven years. But there’s a Russian version which I like better where she drops her infant child into a spring as she bends down to drink. She plunges her handless arms into the water to save the baby and it’s at that moment that her hands grow. I read a psychoanalytic interpretation by Marie Louise von France in her book, The Feminine in Fairytales in which she argues that the story reflects the way women cut off their own hands to live through powerful and creative men. They need to go into the forest, into nature, to live by themselves, as a way of regaining their own power. The infant in the story represents the woman’s creativity that only the woman herself can save. This was such a powerful idea that I had to write about it. It took me three years to find a way of doing it. In the end I chose the voice of the Handless Maiden herself -- as if I was writing the poem with the hands that grew at the moment that she rescued her work, her child. 

"I suppose I go through the process of endlessly cutting off my hands and having to grow them again. You ask if I’ve found any strategies for writing. Only to go away on my own, to be myself, and just to write." 

In the universe of fairy tales, the Just often find a way to prevail, the Wicked generally receive their comeuppance — but there's more to such tales than a formula of abuse and retribution. The trials these wounded young heroes encounter illustrate the process of transformation: from youth to adulthood, from victim to hero, from a maimed state to wholeness, from passivity to action. Fairy tales are, as Ellen says, maps through the woods, trails of stones to mark the path, marks carved into trees to let us know that other women and men have been this way before.

The girl must move forward in her journey to a new destination where she will reconstruct not only her severed arms, but her identity as an adult woman as well.

Then there was the rescue as the Prince discovered the girl beneath the mud and matted hair and took pity on the beautiful face. And there would always be that complicated twist in the middle of the story, the exchange of forged letters that forces the armless woman back into nature where the final act of her initiation occurs.

It is a narrative with a strange hiccup in the middle. The brutality of the opening scene seems resolved as the armless maiden is rescued in a garden and then married to a compassionate young man or Prince. But she has not completed her journey of transformation from adolescence to adulthood. She is not whole, not the girl she was nor the woman she was meant to be. The narratives make it clear that without her arms, she is unable to fulfill her role as an adult. She can do nothing for herself, not even care for her own child. Through the exchange of forged letters, conflict is reintroduced into the narrative to send the girl back on her journey of initiation in the woods. There the fantastic heals her, purifies her in the waters of the lake and she returns reborn as a woman. Every narrative version concludes with what is in effect a second marriage. The woman, now whole, her arms restored by an act of magic, has become herself the magic bride, aligned with the creative power of nature. She does not return immediately to her husband but waits in the forest or a neighbouring homestead for him to find her. When he comes to propose marriage this second time, it is a marriage of equals, based on respect and not pity.

Whether we chose it for ourselves or have it thrust upon us by circumstances, change demands both an act of undoing, a severing of the past, and an act of reaching, sometimes with little more than faith, for an imagined future. But this journey, composed of dangerous and destructive moments, speaks as eloquently about the real potential for failure and the threat of remaining permanently wounded. The exchange of forged letters denigrates the young mother's life and her creative achievements. If she believes the letters, then she must accept her worthlessness and become an accomplice in her own dehumanization. If she capitulates to this outside voice of authority, if she forgoes the risks of transformation, she remains truncated, alienated from her true creative self.

Silverhands: Healing the Wounded Wild, Kim Antieau

Before we continue, let us hear the story of "Silver Hands" one more time. It goes something like this: Once upon a time a few days from now, she walks and walks, going deeper and deeper into the woods. At dusk she comes to a moat surrounding an orchard of fruit trees. A spirit in white empties the moat so that the maiden is able to walk to the trees and eat a pear with her mouth. A gardener witnesses this and tells the king about the miracle he has seen. The next night the king and gardener hide out to watch the disheveled girl float to the king's orchard and eat a pear. The king confronts the maiden and tells her he will never desert her. They fall in love, the king has someone create silver hands for her, and they marry. Soon after the king has to go to war far from home.

Her mother–in–law sends the king a message about what is occurring in his absence.The messenger falls to sleep on the road, however, and the devil digs around in his bag, finds the message, and changes it to say that the queen has been unfaithful. The king gets the message, but sends back a note instructing his mother to care for his wife. Again the messenger falls to sleep and the devil changes the message to read, "Kill the queen." The mother–in–law can't bring herself to kill her new daughter, so she sends her away into the woods.

The queen wanders until she comes to an incredibly dense forest. Near dark, the spirit in white again helps her, leading her to an inn run by the people of the forest. The queen stays for seven years, caring and learning the ways of the forest people. During this time, her hands grow back.

Meanwhile, the king returns from war and is distraught to learn that his wife has been killed. The mother reassures him that she spared her life. He promises to go without food or drink until he finds her. He wanders the countryside for seven years searching for his family. By the time he finds the inn and the forest people, he looks like a wild man. He falls to sleep under a veil the spirit in white drapes over him. When he awakens, he sees a woman watching him. The queen tells him that she is his wife. They celebrate with the forest people, then return home and are married again. They have many children and live happily ever after.

That is the skeleton of the story.

Silvia's first foray into the wilderness is her first attempt at being wilder or "rewilding." She finds someone who loves her. He even has someone fashion new hands for her. But they are not her hands. They are made from the same kind of technology which destroyed the land and dismembered her. She hungers for comfort, however. Most of us do. When we have been ill for a long while, we crave comfort the way a starving person craves food. Comfort equals sustenance. But the comfort of modern civilization or the comfort — in Silvia's case — of being a queen with silver hands is a soulless comfort; it is an unwild comfort. She is still not taking care of herself. She is not in touch with her inner or outer wilderness. She remains a part of the patriarchal world. This becomes clear when her husband deserts her to go fight a war. Her husband does not understand how to love, and he gives up his wife, at least temporarily, to fight in a war.

Silvia begins to connect with her creativity. The devil shows up and makes mischief, however, and she is soon running for her life. This time she wanders deeper into the wilderness, and she does not stop until she meets the forest people.

She is welcomed into the community of forest people. She begins to learn their ways. Her true rewilding begins. Even though she is in the forest, she is now in community too. Being wild and in touch with our true wild does not mean we leave community. It doesn't mean we lose our senses— we regain them instead. The wild is not about chaos. Nature is dangerous and frightening and wonderful, but it is not chaotic. It makes sense. It is sensual. To come into communion with our outer and inner nature is to discover the wild. True community can help with that process.

The forest people are indigenous people, or at least people who understand their environs. They understand the language of the animals and the land. They navigate through their world as a part of it, not apart from it. They understand that all the flora and fauna — including human beings — have their place in a healthy ecology. The forest people embody the wild, truly, and make certain their existence does not destroy the habitat they share with many others. As Silvia becomes a member of this community and learns to care for herself, her hands begin to grow back. She has re–membered herself. (It's interesting that she is in the forest for seven years; because our cells are continually dying and renewing; we have a new body every seven years.) Her husband returns, now a wild man himself, and the family is reunited. All is well with the world.

In contrast to Disneyfied fairy tales, let's take a look at an older tale that is rarely found in children's collections: The Girl with No Hands, or The Handless Maiden. The story goes something like this:

Her hands bound, her feet bare, she lives like an animal in the woods, starving, unable to feed herself — until she comes to a king's garden, filled with trees dropping pears to the ground. The king's son investigates the nightly theft of the royal fruit, discovers the handless maiden, and brings her into the palace to live. Although she is not whole, she is kind and noble, and soon the prince has fallen in love. He has a beautiful pair of silver hands made for the girl, and then he marries her.

In a Disney film, this is where the story would end — but not in this old fairy tale. The transformation of the heroine is not complete, true healing has not occurred. The silver hands give the young woman the mere appearance of wholeness; the hands are useless, and when she gives birth, she cannot care for her newborn. The prince is off at war at this point, and a letter is sent to give him the happy news. But here misfortune strikes again — in the form of the prince's own jealous mother or stepmother (in other versions, a spurned noblewoman, the maiden's stepmother, or Satan himself). A false letter is substituted, and the prince is told his wife has given birth to a horrid monster, or had a love affair. He writes back to say that nonetheless wife and child must be treated tenderly. Once again, a false letter is substituted, containing instructions to kill the handless bride, or cast her out into the woods.

The handless maiden returns to the forest, her baby strapped onto her back. She cannot feed herself, and she cannot feed her infant child. When she kneels wearily by the river to drink, the baby plunges from its bindings and falls into the water. As she leaps in, desperate to save her child, her hands are magically restored. And an angel leads her to a hut, where mother and child live in solitude. Meanwhile, the prince returns from war and uncovers the whole deception. He goes into the wood to seek his family, but when he finds his wife at last, he doesn't recognize her — for now she is a healed woman, with two white, graceful hands. Before she will return to the palace, she insists he acknowledge this change in her. Last time, he courted her with his pity; now, he must court her properly. He does so, with pomp and ceremony, and trains of horses laden with gifts. And then their true marriage is sealed, and the story ends happily.

Our modern notion of fairy tales as simple stories for very young children is quickly disabused by a look at tales like The Girl with No Hands/The Handless Maiden, unflinching in their portrayal of the complexities of the human heart. Here we find true wickedness — not a caricature of Evil, dressed in black. The devil begins the chain of events that propels the story; the prince's step/mother continues the devil's work; and the court stands by as mother and child are thrown back into the forest. In the universe of fairy tales, the Just often find a way to prevail, and the Wicked generally receive their comeuppance. But a close look at the stories reveals much more than a simple formula of abuse and retribution. The trials our heroes encounter in their quests illustrate the process of transformation: from youth to adulthood, from victim to hero, from a maimed state into wholeness, from passivity to action. It's this transformational subtext that gives true fairy tales their particular power: not as a quaint escape from the harsh realities of modern life, but in their symbolic portrayal of all the dark and bright life has to offer.

"But the messenger, weary with the long distance,
rested by a brook
and was in fact so tired 
that he fell asleep."
A messenger who continually falls asleep on the job is also a member of this partnership. He passes messages only after they have become twisted and convoluted.
We cannot berate the messenger -- he was hot and tired. He wasn't out to cause trouble. He didn't know what was going on. This messenger, who becomes unconscious at all the crucial moments...
The messenger sleeps by the brook. We would always rather blame someone beside ourselves for the feelings we are having. We want someone else to be responsible for them.
These, in turn, routed their communications through the weary messenger.
This causes the young love the couple had created between them to be seen now as a monster and an aberration.
..., through the befuddled messenger, ...
Perhaps the messenger had delivered a certain truth after all: the love they had between...
(Gertrud Müller)