the little mermaid and other fairy tales by hans christian andersen

This doesn’t make ‘The Ugly Duckling’ an unusual fairy tale by any means: it’s the equivalent of the poor orphan girl discovering she’s really the princess, or the kitchen boy discovering he’s heir to the throne.īut it does remind us that Andersen’s work is shot through with a melancholic streak which keeps in mind the misery the lies just under many people’s daily lives. Or, to put it another way, the happy resolution to the story is a result of sheer fluke – that the ‘ugly duckling’ was, essentially, a changeling. If anything, the story is an acknowledgment of the tribalism and lack of acceptance that is an inevitable feature of human society, rather than a resolution of this depressing feature. Or rather, it is about the protagonist’s acceptance that most people don’t like him, rather than the world’s acceptance of him. Andersen’s fairy stories are remarkable in the genre for not shying away from the harsh realities of life: people aren’t going to like you (‘The Ugly Duckling’), the one you love isn’t necessarily going to love you back and there’s nothing you can do about it (‘The Little Mermaid’), and often evil or manipulative people get away with it and avoid punishment (‘The Snow Queen’).Īnd although ‘The Ugly Duckling’ ends happily, and with a far more conventional happy ending than Andersen’s fairy tales often have, it is actually not about acceptance.

Well, perhaps there’s a little more to it than that. Not everyone in the world will necessarily welcome you with open arms, but there’s a ‘family’ or group for everyone.Īt least, that’s one way to analyse the tale – but is its meaning actually a little more complex than its straightforward plot, and seemingly straightforward moral, suggest? The short tale can be read, variously, as a moral fable about the short-sightedness of dismissing someone for their perceived lack of conventional ‘beauty’ or for ‘not fitting in’, or as a story celebrating the value of perseverance. The tale has become a symbol and a shorthand for the spurned outsider whose virtues are ignored by the world, only for them to transform into a successful person at a later date. ‘The Ugly Duckling’ has, like Andersen’s invention of the ‘emperor’s new clothes’, entered everyday speech and common use.

The little mermaid and other fairy tales by hans christian andersen