“Why, yes, I’ll come with you!” Thumbelina exclaimed, and she climbed onto the bird’s back, put her feet on his outstretched wings, and tied her sash to one of the broader feathers. The swallow soared through the air, high up above forests and lakes over to the tall mountains that are always capped with snow. At first, Thumbelina shivered in the chill air, but then she crept under the bird’s warm feathers and poked her little head out to gaze at all the wondrous sights below her.19
At last they reached the warm countries. The sun was shining more brightly there than it ever does here, and the sky seemed twice as high. Along the ditches and hedgerows grew marvelous green and blue grapes. Lemons and oranges were hanging from trees in the forest, and the air was fragrant with myrtle and mint. The most adorable children were running on the road here and there, chasing after brightly colored butterflies. The swallow flew even farther away, and everything became even more beautiful. Beneath magnificent green trees near a blue lake there stood a dazzling white marble palace from ancient times.20 Its lofty pillars were wreathed with vines, and many swallows had made their nests on top of them. One of those nests belonged to the swallow that was carrying Thumbelina.
“Here is my home,” the swallow said. “But if you want to pick out one of those magnificent flowers down below, I’ll set you down on it, and you will have everything your heart desires.”
W. HEATH ROBINSON
Thumbelina sits on the swallow’s back and soars through the air, gazing at the wonders below her.
ELEANOR VERE BOYLE
The swallow swoops down to deposit Thumbelina on one of the beautiful white flowers growing near his home.
“How lovely,” Thumbelina cried, and she clapped her tiny hands.
One of the great white marble pillars had fallen to the ground and broken into three pieces. The most beautiful big white flowers were growing among them. The swallow flew down with Thumbelina and put her on one of the larger petals. How surprised Thumbelina was to find a tiny man sitting in the middle of the flower, as white and transparent as if he were made of glass. He was wearing the daintiest golden crown on his head, and on his shoulders were the loveliest bright wings. He was not a bit bigger than Thumbelina. He was the flower’s angel. In every flower there lived a tiny man or woman just like him, but he was king of them all.
“My Lord, he’s handsome,” Thumbelina whispered to the swallow. The little prince was rather afraid of the swallow, for the bird was gigantic compared to him. He himself was so tiny and delicate. But he was elated when he saw Thumbelina, for she was the most beautiful girl he had ever seen. No one was surprised that he took off his golden crown and placed it on her head. He asked if he might know her name and wanted to know if she would be his wife. Then she could become queen of all the flowers. Yes, he would certainly make quite a husband—not at all like the toad’s son or the mole with his black velvet coat. And so Thumbelina said yes to the handsome prince, and from every flower a tiny lady or a tiny gentleman appeared, each bearing a gift for Thumbelina. But the best gift of all was a pair of beautiful wings from a big white fly. They were fastened to Thumbelina’s back so that she could also flutter from one flower to the next. Everyone rejoiced, and the little swallow sat in his nest and sang the nicest songs he could for them. But deep down in his heart he was sad, for he was so fond of Thumbelina that he never wanted to be parted from her.
HARRY CLARKE
The swallow bids farewell to Thumbelina, while she and the prince are surrounded by flowers of dazzling beauty on a moonlit night.
“Your name will no longer be Thumbelina,” the flower’s angel told her. “It’s too ugly a name for someone as beautiful as you are. We shall call you Maya.”21
“Farewell! Farewell!” said the little swallow as it flew away from the warm lands back to faraway Denmark, where he had a little nest above the window of the man who can tell you fairy tales.22 To him the bird sang, “Tweet, tweet! Tweet, tweet!” and that’s how we heard the whole story.
W. HEATH ROBINSON
1. an old witch. The designation “witch” does not always signify evil in Andersen’s works: The witches in “The Snow Queen” and “The Tinderbox,” for example, are not particularly wicked or nasty. In “The Wild Swans” and “The Little Mermaid,” however, witches have malevolent designs on the heroine. This particular witch seems to function as a midwife with magical means at her disposal to help the childless woman. In some English translations, the childless woman at the beginning of the tale is turned into a couple without children. The woman and witch both disappear quickly, but one illustrator has depicted the woman and witch as doubles, thereby suggesting that “Thumbelina’s story is the imaginary projection of a childless woman longing for a child” (Nikolajeva and Scott, 48).
2. “grain of barley.” With its countless references to a world divided between an underground realm and a domain of bright sunshine, “Thumbelina” contains a number of allusions to the myth of Demeter and her daughter Persephone. Persephone is abducted by Hades to become goddess of the underworld, and her distraught mother, goddess of agriculture, goes into deep mourning, turning the earth into a site of barren misery. Persephone is returned to her mother, but, each year, she must return to Hades for a period of several months, during which the earth yields no harvest. In this context, it is worth noting that barley seeds planted in the ground during Persephone’s absence come to naught because of the goddess’s anger. In Greek mythology, children of the soil (Cecrops and Erichthonius, for example), or Autochthons, were creatures born of the earth, without mother or father. Folklore contains many examples of children born in nutshells, peppercorns, hazelnuts, and groves of bamboo.
3. she was no taller than a thumb. Diminutive figures are common in folklore, and they are often described as being the size of a thumb, hence the terms Tom Thumb, Thumbkin, Thumbling, and Thumbelina. Many tales featuring boys repeat the terms of the David and Goliath story, but Thumbelina is characterized by beauty, fragility, and vulnerability (rather like the princess in “The Princess and the Pea”) as well as by her small stature. Illustrators have depicted her in a variety of ways, occasionally as an infant, sometimes as a sylphlike child, and even as a miniature grown woman.
4. a voice as soft and sweet as hers. Thumbelina is not only visually attractive but also possesses an enchanting voice. The many references to the chirping of birds makes it clear that Thumbelina and the swallow she rescues are linked by song.
5. a hideous toad hopped in through the window. In fairy tales rooted in ancient cultures, toads and frogs often function as benefactors, for they were seen as symbols of fertility, regeneration, and rebirth. Ancient Egypt, for example, associated frogs with renewal, and the water goddess Heket was represented as a woman with the head of a frog. Egyptian women often wore amulets in the form of frogs to honor the midwife goddess Hegit. In European folklore, by contrast, toads and frogs are commonly presented as hideous creatures that arouse feelings of revulsion, as in “The Little Mermaid,” which describes a toad feeding from the mouth of the Sea Witch. The Grimms’ “Frog King” inaugurated a tradition of repulsive frog suitors by showing a princess pursued by an amorous amphibian, who demands to dine with her, sleep with her, and be her companion. There are many European and Slavic versions of tales about benevolent frog princesses who assist humble young bumpkins in their pursuit of wealth and power. The animal bride in all variants of that tale type is a humble, charming, and generous creature who turns into a young woman of radiant beauty once the spell is broken.
6. “Ko-ax, ko-ax, brekke-ke-kex!” was all he could say. The toad, unlike his mother, who has the power of human language, can utter only cacophonous noises that make him all the more frightening. Thumbelina’s sweet voice and her ability to sing lullabies form a powerful contrast to the disruptive, unattractive sounds that issue from the toad’s throat. The associations with mud and dirt of the earthbound and waterbound toad position him as a creature standing in opposition to the melodious bird
s encountered by Thumbelina during her journey.
7. the lily pad began to float downstream. As Clarissa Pinkola Estés points out in Women Who Run with the Wolves, fairy-tale figures frequently encounter magic objects with “transportive and sensory abilities that are apt metaphors for the body, such as magic leaf, carpet, cloud.” Cloaks, helmets, boots, and hats also often provide mobility and magical powers: “Each enables the physical body to enjoy deepened insight, hearing, flight, or protection of some sort for both psyche and soul” (Estés, 205). The ordinary comes to be invested with the extraordinary, and the magic object has the power to transport not only the body but also the senses.
In 1874, many years after writing “Thumbelina” and just a year before his death, Andersen complained about a sense of depletion and loss of motivation by referring to how the sight of a lily pad reminded him that he had already exhausted its power to inspire him: “If I see the broad leaf of a water lily, then Thumbelina has already ended her journey on it” (Rossel 1986, 119).
8. soon Thumbelina was traveling abroad. Thumbelina escapes her domestic prison and makes her way out into the same “wide world” that Gerda entered in “The Snow Queen.” Open to adventure and eager to explore, Thumbelina has traded a sheltered existence that will drag her down into muddy foulness for an audacious journey that will expose her to risk but will also let her see the beauty of the world.
9. A lovely little white butterfly. As a symbol of transformation and renewal as well as of death and rebirth, the butterfly helps Thumbelina flee her muddy prison and begin a new life, one marked by a turn in her fortunes. Liberated from an earth-bound existence, Thumbelina joins with the butterfly to enter airy, spiritual domains. The butterfly, long associated with the human soul, also symbolizes the magnificence of an unworldly life. Characterized by beauty (“lovely”), daintiness (“little”), and innocence (“white”), the butterfly is almost like a double of the heroine and anticipates her elevation from an earthbound life to one characterized by regal splendor and the ability to fly.
10. even if she didn’t look at all like a beetle. Social acceptance is always based on conformity in the worlds constructed by Andersen, and Thumbelina—for all her charm and beauty—cannot overcome differences in appearance. Andersen provides a critique of conformity in the encounter between girl and beetles by reversing and defamiliarizing the commonplace revulsion of humans for insects with a chorus of complaints from beetles about the revolting features of humans.
HARRY CLARKE
The butterfly pulls Thumbelina along the water in her lily-pad boat.
W. HEATH ROBINSON
Thumbelina is terrified as she flies through the air, carried by a beetle. This flight contrasts strikingly with her magically absorbing journey on the swallow’s back.
11. She was terribly cold. Like the ugly duckling and the little match girl, Thumbelina experiences not only the cruel ordeal of exile and abandonment but also the harshness of the climate. This double exposure to emotional degradation and bodily mortification is Andersen’s trademark, and only the intensification of the condition leads to its reversal.
12. “you must keep my house nice and clean.” Thumbelina’s travels are followed by a period of domestic hibernation in the stillness of an underground world. Like many of her female folkloric cousins, most notably Vasilisa (the Snow White and Cinderella of Russian folklore) and the heroine of the German “Mother Holle” (a Cinderella who proves her worth by carrying out domestic chores under the tutelage of the title figure), Thumbelina finds shelter in a sphere associated with both domesticity and death. She undergoes an apprenticeship, in which she puts on display her ability to care for things. It is no accident that Thumbelina first makes a pact that requires her to care for things, then discovers her power to care for living beings and to heal them. The move from the domestic to the restorative is seamlessly woven into Thumbelina’s underground experiences.
13. “He has such a lovely black velvet fur coat.” Like Hades, the mole is cloaked in black and lives underground, preferring darkness and gloom to sunshine and light. The division of the earth into three regions ruled by three deities (Zeus, Poseidon, and Hades) is taken up and mapped anew in zoological terms. Moles and mice inhabit the nether world; toads and fish dominate the land and the seas; birds and butterflies soar into higher regions. Just as Hades was referred to as “the Rich One” because he possesses the treasures of the earth, so too the mole is described as a creature of great wealth (and great learning as well). Although Thumbelina finds shelter and safety with the mouse, she encounters underground a second suitor who is charged with qualities more lethal than those of the toad. Women writers from Mary Shelley to Muriel Rukeyser have used the myth of Persephone to describe the dark side of female sexual initiation, mapping the consequences of “abduction, rape, the death of the physical world, and sorrowful separation from female companions” (Gilbert and Gubar, 504).
14. “You’ll have to tell him the most enchanting stories you know. ” The mole’s blindness to visual beauty draws attention to his dark side and his inability to appreciate higher values—he does not care for the sun or for flowers. Still, he is enchanted by Thumbelina’s voice when she sings songs to him. Although Thumbelina withholds stories from the mole, she agrees to use her voice, singing children’s songs that were popular in Andersen’s day.
15. he was a mole. Simon Meisling, the headmaster at the school Andersen attended in Slagelse, has been seen as the model for the mole. A classical scholar, Meisling treated others miserably and told Andersen he was a “stupid boy” who would never succeed in life. Cai M. Woel, in his biography of Andersen, provides the following description that hints at an identification between the mole and Meisling: “below average height with a very round head . . . his mouth thin, his nose bulbous. . . . His body was plump with a protruding stomach, big flat feet and short arms. . . . Something about the man’s appearance made you think about the underworld. His hands hardly ever touched water; they were so black that a quick glance would make you think he was wearing gloves” (Frank and Frank, 76–77).
16. you could see the dead swallow. On a trip to Greece in 1841, Andersen’s attention was drawn by a shipmate to “a little bird, who lay among the coiled ropes on the deck, so exhausted it couldn’t even lift its wings. . . . I became quite irritated with the Roman cleric, because he wanted to cook it straightaway. . . . One of the Lieutenants took care of the bird, gave it bread crumbs and water, and it was our guest for the whole day, indeed for the night too. It did not fly away until the next day, chirping as it went, as though in thanks for the kind reception” (Travels, 134).
In Danish folklore, the swallow is known as the svale and was said to have received its name from chirping “Svale, svale” (Cheer up, cheer up) when it flew around the suffering Christ on the cross. The swallow is part of many different folkloric traditions, but it is, above all, associated with springtime. The moribund bird can be seen, in this instance, as both a symbol of winter’s petrifying and deadening effects and a reminder of Christ’s entombment before his resurrection. Oscar Wilde revived the swallow as a symbol of freedom in his fairy tale “The Happy Prince,” which contains multiple allusions to Andersen’s tales.
17. “I’ll take good care of you.” Thumbelina cares for the swallow, bringing him back to life through her tender ministrations. When we learn that the swallow tore his wing on a thorn bush (a possible allusion to Christ’s crown of thorns), it becomes evident that there are biblical undertones to Thumbelina’s nurturing efforts. Not-withstanding a pagan emphasis on nature qua nature and allusions to mythical beings, Andersen’s story also refers repeatedly to Christ’s suffering and resurrection and to the Christian notion of salvation.
18. “Just tie your sash around me.” A second time Thumbelina is rescued by a winged creature, but on this occasion she is able to soar rather than skim the surface of the waters. The swallow is able to lift her into airy regions that put an end to the manifold risks on land an
d sea as well as underground.
19. poked her little head out to gaze at all the wondrous sights below her. In 1906, the Swedish author Selma Lagerlöf (the first woman to win the Nobel Prize in Literature) published part one of The Wonderful Adventures of Nils, a storybook commissioned by the National Teachers’ Association to teach geography to schoolchildren. Lagerlöf’s Nils Holgersson, alone at home and obliged by his parents to read the script of a church service he is missing, falls asleep and awakens to find that an elf is making mischief in the household. Outwitted by the creature, he is turned into an elf himself and finds that he has the ability to communicate with animals. Wild geese take him on a trip across Sweden, and, in the course of his “wonderful adventures,” Nils (or Thumbietot) receives many lessons in the geography of his native land and also learns that humans do not have the world to themselves. Nils’s adventures were no doubt inspired in part by Thumbelina’s journeys.
20. a dazzling white marble palace from ancient times. Where has Thumbelina landed? Andersen was probably alluding to Italy, where he had traveled the year before. Since the swallow returns to Denmark, Thumbelina has clearly found a home in foreign regions, one that can also be seen as a kind of fairyland or even a realm of death, inhabited by angels.
W. HEATH ROBINSON
Thumbelina receives a pair of wings and is able to fly on her own.
21. “We shall call you Maya!” The renaming signals that Thumbelina has developed a new identity, living in a world where she is no longer diminutive. The transformation takes her from adolescence to marriage and moves her from the condition of being a perpetual misfit to membership in a community of kindred spirits. In Hinduism, Maya represents the manifold appearance of the world of phenomena, a world of illusion that obscures the spiritual reality from which it emerged.
The Annotated Hans Christian Andersen Page 28