A review by arachne_reads
The Complete Fairy Tales and Stories by Hans Christian Andersen
3.0
Andersen's body of work is one I feel complicatedly about. Andersen responded to his critics in many of his tales, which seems to my present American sensibilities like so much playground taunting.
His female characters can only seem to participate in "goodness" and "purity" through self-sacrifice and rejection of adulthood; the resulting tales leave our heroines from "The Bog King's Daughter" to the well known "Little Mermaid" to suffer for the sin of being female, and for their lives to end as a result. The Bog King's daughter is punished (rewarded?) for her desire to be close to the Christian divine by having her newly won life swept away by currents of time for "peeping" on heaven, then is allowed to go back to heaven. Our mermaid is given a chance to earn a soul after a life of suffering by watching children perform good deeds among the Daughters of the Air. Even Gerda, to remain pure, must be a sexless child at heart after rescuing Kay. It's infuriating. And yet, Andersen touches on some deep imagery that pushes and pulls at the reader.
I was sometimes frustrated with his tendency to describe how dear and sweet all the flowers were, and his pie-in-the-sky-when-you-die Christianity. It allows him to draw morals about how blessed the poor really are— an infuriating attitude. And yet, he writes with great empathy for the downtrodden, the humble, and the unloved.
There are times when his wry humor tugged at the corners of my mouth: "Auntie Toothache." There were times when I wanted to throw the book across the room for his almost Panglossian- "it's all God's will, the world is perfect and clearly the best of all possible" type of notions.
I found his faith in the advancement and increasing empathy of humankind fascinating. His work is rife with the refutation of the notion that "the good old days" were so very perfect, pointing out the barbarism of the past.
It was a slow and maddening and delightful read. I am very glad I slogged through it, for all the troublesome notions Andersen presented me with.
His female characters can only seem to participate in "goodness" and "purity" through self-sacrifice and rejection of adulthood; the resulting tales leave our heroines from "The Bog King's Daughter" to the well known "Little Mermaid" to suffer for the sin of being female, and for their lives to end as a result. The Bog King's daughter is punished (rewarded?) for her desire to be close to the Christian divine by having her newly won life swept away by currents of time for "peeping" on heaven, then is allowed to go back to heaven. Our mermaid is given a chance to earn a soul after a life of suffering by watching children perform good deeds among the Daughters of the Air. Even Gerda, to remain pure, must be a sexless child at heart after rescuing Kay. It's infuriating. And yet, Andersen touches on some deep imagery that pushes and pulls at the reader.
I was sometimes frustrated with his tendency to describe how dear and sweet all the flowers were, and his pie-in-the-sky-when-you-die Christianity. It allows him to draw morals about how blessed the poor really are— an infuriating attitude. And yet, he writes with great empathy for the downtrodden, the humble, and the unloved.
There are times when his wry humor tugged at the corners of my mouth: "Auntie Toothache." There were times when I wanted to throw the book across the room for his almost Panglossian- "it's all God's will, the world is perfect and clearly the best of all possible" type of notions.
I found his faith in the advancement and increasing empathy of humankind fascinating. His work is rife with the refutation of the notion that "the good old days" were so very perfect, pointing out the barbarism of the past.
It was a slow and maddening and delightful read. I am very glad I slogged through it, for all the troublesome notions Andersen presented me with.