24. The Snow Queen kissed Kai again. The Snow Queen secures her power over Kai through a kiss, and he begins to feel at home even as he loses the memory of his former home. Like vampires, lamiae, and other supernatural monsters, the Snow Queen uses seductive charms to trap her victims and rob them of their life substance.
25. She was so beautiful. The Snow Queen’s beauty is connected with mathematical perfection, but her realm of deadly beauty—however exquisite, sublime, and pure—can lead only to destructive solitude and intellectual solipsism. Her connection with the harsh and cold side of what we call Mother Nature, rather than with her more benign, nurturing aspects, is captured concisely in Gilles Deleuze’s formulation: “Nature herself is cold, maternal and severe. The Trinity of the masochistic dream is summed up in the words: cold—maternal—severe, icy—sentimental—cruel.” Naomi Wood, who has written extensively on children’s literature, points out that the Snow Queen figure can be found in the work of many British writers from Charles Kingsley to Philip Pullman: “In these fantasies, the cold mother is beautiful, frequently clad in furs, travels rapidly by flying or in a sled or some combination, and offers the child sublimity, rarefied love, and power. The child accepting her gifts understands their danger, yet that danger takes him or her to another developmental level. Under the cold mother’s tutelage, the beloved child explores the far reaches of human potentiality and either dies or is translated into new levels of existence—or both” (Wood, 199).
26. she soared away with him. Kai not only has the chance to fly “like the wind” on land behind the Snow Queen’s sleigh in his own sled, he also flies through the skies to the dark cloud that is the domain of the Snow Queen. The bleak landscape through which Kai passes contains acoustical allusions to the animals at the command of the Nordic god Odin, whose wolves are named Geri and Freki and whose two ravens, Huginn and Muninn, tellingly, represent Thought and Memory—just what Kai has lost. In this context, it is worth noting that Andersen’s home town, Odense, was named after Odin, god of war and wisdom.
27. “I don’t think so!” the sunshine said. Gerda too will leave home, but her journey takes a very different turn and occurs in the spring rather than in the winter. Instead of succumbing to the lure of the Snow Queen and taking flight to foreign regions, she first engages in dialogue with nature (sunshine and swallows), then sails down the river in search of Kai. The river can be seen as the River of Life but it also has associations with the River Styx, the stream that carried the living to the land of death in Greek and Roman mythology.
28. “I’ll put on my new red shoes.” Andersen’s story “The Red Shoes” was written in the very same year that he was working on “The Snow Queen.” For Gerda, the shoes are a prized object, “the most precious thing” she owns. Their color has been seen as marking an awakening to sexuality, but the shoes seem to signal vanity more than anything else. Gerda, unlike Karen, is willing to sacrifice the beautiful shoes in order to save Kai. Without shoes, she appears as a defenseless child as she makes her way in the world and the condition of being barefoot, especially in icy regions, is seen as a sign of both vulnerability and vitality. The heroine of “The Little Match Girl” is also barefoot.
29. There was not a person in sight. Like the children of fairy tales, Gerda will enter a realm in which nature (flowers, trees, sheep, and cows) plays a dominant role and in which she becomes a child of nature, dependent on its good offices. To be sure, she will encounter human figures, but they are generally recluses who keep company with nature rather than with other human beings. Again and again, Gerda finds herself on her own, required to make decisions without adult supervision and often required to act as an adult around creatures who behave in childish, irresponsible ways.
30. a really old woman walked out of the house. The old woman, with her cane and her curious house, calls to mind the witch in “Hansel and Gretel,” a story recorded by the Brothers Grimm in 1812. But it soon becomes apparent that she has a deeper mythological significance than the witch in that tale. Her garden, which contains every flower imaginable, suggests that she is, like the Greek goddess Demeter, the patron deity of agriculture and a goddess of fertility. A Mother Earth figure, her realm is not only that of vegetation and organic growth but also death and decay. As a woman who knows magic, she cultivates organic flowers, just as the Snow Queen is able to create crystalline flowers. Like the Snow Queen, the old woman also has the capacity to induce amnesia, leading Gerda to neglect her mission and dwell in a land of beauty. As she combs Gerda’s golden locks, the girl begins to forget Kai and to live for the sheer pleasure of the moment. The old woman seems more interested in companionship than control, and, unlike the Snow Queen, she is more maternal than magnetic.
31. Gerda played in the warm sunshine among the flowers. In the realm of the woman who knows magic, Gerda lives in a place filled with aesthetic pleasures and delights: “No picture book could have been more colorful or beautiful.” The old woman provides nourishment and shelter—the most delicious cherries and the loveliest bedding. Superlatives are attached to all objects and vibrant colors are seen everywhere. Yet what is “most beautiful” is missing. The flower painted on the old woman’s hat—the representation of natural beauty through art—reminds Gerda of her task and she leaves with renewed determination to find Kai and to bring him back home.
32. What did the tiger lily have to say? The flowers respond to Gerda’s question about Kai with stories about the all-consuming and self-immolating power of love. As symbols of self-absorption, each tells a tale that indulges in melodramatic action. The tiger lily’s story about the Hindu custom of suttee, the burning of widows on the funeral pyres of their husbands, seems at first to illustrate the powerful sacrifices made in the name of love and the redemptive power of true passion, but in fact it turns on a variety of issues ranging from coerced marriages and infidelity to starcrossed lovers and secret ardor. The language of nature speaks in vividly expressive terms, but it does not always impart wisdom.
33. What does the morning glory have to say? The beautiful girl on the balcony recalls Rapunzel in the tower, waiting for the prince to arrive. Romantic longing is represented in the image of the languishing girl, whose story is told by a flower that blooms in the morning and fades by afternoon, thus representing transience. The blend of patience and edginess communicated by the girl on the balcony represents the mixed emotions stirring in Gerda as she searches for Kai rather than patiently waiting for his return.
34. What does the little daisy have to say? The daisy, symbol of purity, sings about the beauty of childhood innocence. The two girls, dressed like daisies with their white dresses and green silk ribbons, swing back and forth, enjoying the sheer delight of freedom and flight. The boy with his pipe produces bubbles that reflect the beauty of the scene but that periodically burst as a reminder of the evanescence of youth, beauty, innocence, and all earthly things. The image of the beautiful, colorful bubble reflecting the girls swinging highlights the importance of aesthetics in Andersen’s fairy tales.
35. “What do the hyacinths have to say?” The hyacinth, said to have sprung from the blood of the beautiful youth Hyacinthus, is linked with death. The three beautiful sisters enter the woods as dancers and return from the woods in the moonlight in coffins, suggesting the perils of the journeys undertaken by Gerda and Kai. The colors of the dresses—red, blue, and white—when mixed, produce the purple of the hyacinth. As in “The Little Mermaid,” color is used repeatedly to supply ignition power that will kindle the imagination of readers, inspiring them to visualize the scene.
36. What kind of song could the buttercup sing? The song of the buttercup sounds a cheerful note at last, with its description of warm, golden sunshine and the gold of kisses, hearts, eyes, and sunrises. The sunshine shimmering down the wall produces another sparkling surface, much like the mirrors, ice, glass, or the “glassy lake” of the previous song. Andersen relies on these shimmering surfaces to create dazzling aesthetic effects.
/> 37. She bent down to listen to the narcissus. The narcissus, a flower linked to selfabsorption, grew at the spot where Narcissus pined away looking at his mirror image in the river in Ovid’s Metamorphoses. Listening to the vain chatter of the narcissus animates Gerda, who may also risk becoming fascinated by her own reveries and turning into a creature seduced into remaining in an earthly paradise where time stands still. The warning is sufficiently strong to propel Gerda into action as she realizes that time has flown by while she has lingered in the paradise of the woman who knows magic. Unlike Karen of “The Red Shoes” and Inger in “The Girl Who Trod on the Loaf,” Gerda is not seduced by appearances or enamored of her own image.
38. her little feet were so tender and sore. Gerda, like the heroine of the Scandinavian tale “East of the Sun and West of the Moon,” who wears out a pair of iron shoes while searching for her beloved, wears herself out in pursuit of one who has gone astray. In sacrificing her shoes to the river, she makes a profound symbolic gesture that strips her not only of vanity but also of protection from the elements. As a traveler, she has a special need for shoes, for without them her mobility is severely restricted.
39. a big crow came hopping across the snow. It is not by chance that Gerda meets a crow as soon as she departs from the amnesia-inducing realm of the old woman (recall that Odin’s crows are named Thought and Memory). Gerda, who communicated quite easily with swallows and sparrows when she set out on her journey, is now unable to speak a language that her wise grandmother, who is attuned to the forces of nature, speaks fluently.
40. all alone in the wide world. Once again, the reader is reminded that Gerda remains isolated as she traverses vast expanses. And yet there is also a sense of adventure, an openness to experience that Andersen sees as the stuff of stories. In his autobiography, he writes about his decision to leave home—“just like the heroes in the many adventure stories I had read to get out—all alone—into the world” (49). Andersen’s enterprising nature was fueled by the stories he read as a child: “my imagination for adventure was awakened. I thought of life itself as an adventure and looked forward to appearing in it myself as a hero” (The Fairy Tale of My Life, 42). As an adult, he traveled far more frequently than most of his contemporaries, and, although he declined an invitation to travel to the United States (a friend had perished crossing the Atlantic), he eagerly accepted nearly every other invitation, traveling by carriage, boat, and even (later in the century) on a train. The sense of adventure was balanced by a recognition that travel could also produce solitude. On a trip to the Jura mountains in 1833, Andersen described feeling an overwhelming sense of loneliness as he looked at the strange darkness formed by the mountains and spruce trees. Gerda does not have the linguistic skills of her grandmother, who understands the language of birds and P-speech (academic speech).
41. “that’s how clever she is.” Andersen was a master of what is known as crosswriting, producing texts that are directed at two audiences: children and adults. The satirical barb at newspapers is embedded in a tale for children and adds spice for the adult readers. As Andersen wrote to a friend: “Now I tell stories of my own accord, seize an idea for the adults—and then tell it for the children while still keeping in mind the fact that mother and father are often listening too, and they must have a little something for thought” (Grønbech, 91–92).
42. border of hearts. The border of hearts provides an interesting contrast to death notices, which traditionally have black borders. The sentimental touch is not in the style of Gerda, who is less of a romantic.
43. the man who seemed most at home in the castle and who spoke the most eloquently. The princess is making somewhat unusual demands (no other fairy-tale princess seeks these qualities in a man), and Andersen may have invented these traits because they matched so perfectly his own strengths. He was, of course, an expert in making himself at home in the manors and castles of aristocrats and royals, and he prided himself on his eloquence and on the fact that he had provided Denmark with a “poet.”
The riddle princess is found in myths and fairy tales the world over. Turandot is perhaps the most famous of these virgins, who execute suitors unable to answer their questions or to carry out assigned tasks. Portia, in The Merchant of Venice, is a milder version of the type, dismissing rather than decapitating the unqualified suitors. In his essay “The Theme of the Three Caskets,” Freud meditates on the motif and shows how a story about making choices for the sake of love masks an obsession with death. “The Snow Queen” might also be seen as a tale in which romance and passion are deeply enmeshed with anxieties about mortality. Andersen’s princess, in the subplot to “The Snow Queen,” is more whimsical and eccentric than belligerent and bloodthirsty, but the princess in his story “The Traveling Companion” has a garden in which suitors hang from trees.
44. “some of the more clever fellows had packed bread and cheese.” Andersen creates comic effects by moving seamlessly from descriptions of courtly fashion (guards dressed in silver and servants in gold) and the protocols and players of royal life (ministers of state, various excellencies, and a princess sitting on a throne) to the buffoon-like behavior of the suitors, who parrot the princess’s words and refuse to share their provisions.
45. “Kai’s boots began to creak loudly.” At his confirmation, Andersen prided himself on a new pair of boots: “My delight was extreme; my only fear was that some people would not see them, and therefore I drew them up over my trousers and marched through the church. The boots creaked, and that pleased me no end, for the congregation would know that they were brand new. My sense of piety was disturbed; I was aware of it, and I felt a terrible sense of guilt that my thoughts should be on my new boots as much as they were with God” (Fairy Tale of My Life, 22).
46. “a pearl that was as big as a spinning wheel.” A precious stone with many layers, the pearl seems an odd object to serve as a throne. Its round shape and color could be seen as evoking the moon, and its use as a throne offers a humorous touch. The allusion to a spinning wheel connects the story to the instrument whose use often provided the occasion for oral storytelling and adds a humble touch to the royal throne. Here again, Andersen yokes a precious object with the homespun.
47. Gerda’s heart was pounding with fear and longing! Gerda, unlike her fairy-tale counterparts, possesses a transparent mind, and we learn about her thoughts and emotions throughout her adventures. Her love of Kai keeps her from despair and helps her to overcome her fear of the unknown. In the term “longing,” there is one of the few hints that her love for Kai is more than sisterly. Gerda has a psychological depth absent from fairy-tale figures like Little Red Riding Hood or Cinderella, who are revealed to us solely through their actions. As W. H. Auden put it, “In the folk tale, as in the Greek epic and tragedy, situation and character are hardly separable; a man reveals what he is in what he does, or what happens to him is a revelation of what he is” (Auden, 207).
48. something rushed past her like shadows on a wall. Slavic folklore often features mysterious spectral horsemen representing various times of day. The hunting parties that haunt this particular castle are described as creatures from dreams, imaginative beings that can be brought to life in fiction but that rarely inhabit fairy-tale worlds, where few characters have a dream life. Just two years after finishing “The Snow Queen,” Andersen wrote “The Shadow,” which offers further evidence of his deep fascination with the interplay of light and dark and the chiaroscuro effects produced.
49. two beds that looked just like lilies. The chaste relationship between prince and princess becomes evident from the arrangement of the beds. The riddle princess remains locked in a state of virginal purity, unable to move to a condition of mature adult sexuality. Gerda is eager to continue on her journey once she realizes her error. Both couples in “The Snow Queen” are presented as passionately drawn to each other, but without a trace of erotic desire. In real life, Andersen seemed unable to consummate a romantic relationship, and he makes sure th
at the couples in his fairy tales remain drawn to each other in powerful but chaste ways. Note the striking use of color in this passage and how the attributes used to kindle our imagination and to help us visualize the scene have more to do with light and color than anything else.
50. a pair of boots and also a fur muff. Gerda receives a carriage—one that is linked with sunshine through its gold—but, just as importantly, she has received something to protect her hands and feet. Like the Snow Queen, she now has something made of fur and a magnificent mode of transportation. Her carriage, with its bounty of sugar pastries, fruit, and cookies, represents pure wish-fulfillment for a child. The fetishizing of feet and hands, along with boots and muffs, is intriguing, given the chaste and pious register in which the tale moves.
51. an old robber hag. Andersen most likely drew on the Grimms’ “Robber Bridegroom,” a horrific story derived from Apuleius’s Cupid and Psyche, to construct Gerda’s precarious brush with the bandits. In the Roman story from the second century, a young woman is about to be chopped into pieces by robbers when the crone who makes their supper puts her own life in jeopardy by intervening to protect her. The hag who forms part of the robber band in Andersen’s story does not turn out to be an unexpectedly benign protector (like the giant’s wife in “Jack and the Beanstalk”) but a bloodthirsty fiend who resembles the cannibalistic witch of “Hansel and Gretel.” It is never easy to predict whether the women Kai and Gerda encounter will be benefactors or villains.
52. “I want her to play with me!” The robber girl’s insistence on friendship is more terrifying than comforting. Her efforts to befriend Gerda perpetually turn into lifethreatening gestures. While Gerda’s relationship to Kai remains chaste, even after they mature into adults, her encounter with the robber girl is charged with passionate overtones, erotic and morbid, but also affectionate and playful.
The Annotated Hans Christian Andersen Page 10