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http://www.terminate.com/hc/ |
Our
class discussion on Hans Christian Andersen centered on The Ugly Duckling,
as representative of an Andersen tale that:
 | draws on the general
idea of the traditional (orally transmitted) fairy-tale, but |
| is an original
story. |
Structure:
| The general
structure of the story follows the patterns we have already identified in
many of the traditional tales we have looked at. |
| It opens with a
(very long) preamble, setting the situation - here, the ugliness of the
ugly duckling. |
| There is a single
parent, as so often. |
| The duckling does,
in fact, have a task, which from his point of view is to find a place in
the world, but from ours is to find his true nature. |
| His story is a
series of the standard journey structure, opening with different
wilderness settings, and accompanied by images of transformation. |
| One of those
episodes has strong resemblances to witch-in-the-woods stories (such as
Hansel and Gretel). The old woman and her houses has echoes of the
Russian Baba Yaga witch stories, and indeed, she has her familiar, the
cat. |
| Andersen also draws
on the idea of the fable, which so often have animal characters standing
in for human characteristics, and which are regularly set in farm yards
with farm yard hierarchies. |
| The food motif comes
in at the end (cakes), which is appropriate to the story. |
| We noted that,
compared with traditional tales, there is much more description (and we
also noted the quality of that description, Andersen's powerful skills of
observation - of both human and animal behaviour - and how children
respond to those descriptions). |
| We also noted how
effectively Andersen introduces actual children into the story - the girl
who kicks the duckling, and then the much kinder children at the end of
the story. This allows child listeners/readers not only to identify with
the duckling anthropomorphically, but also to identify with the
child/animal relationship (as in a child/pet relationship). |
Layers of meaning:
We identified a number of layers of
interpretation/meaning in the tale:
| First, there is the
surface tale, with its obvious moral - that everyone has his or her own
beauty and worth, in spite of what others might say. It is this aspect
which has made the story so popular with educators (and animation
features), as it is a moral tale of bullying and its effects, and of the
idea of self-esteem. Indeed, it has strong values in these areas. |
| However, there is a
second layer which is much more disturbing, and whose message often goes
unnoticed. The duckling really does virtually nothing himself to come to a
realization of his true nature - he is acted upon rather than acting. The
only place where he may have shown such fortitude is in the winter he
survives, but Andersen dismisses this in one very short paragraph, and
does not tell us how he survives that winter.
The duck really does wallow in self-pity (to a quite extraordinary extent,
when one analyzes this), culminating in the 'Kill me" request to the
swans. Again, this is an uncomfortable element (and message) in the story.
As the duckling does not actual act to achieve his status, that
status is achieved through his looks - his beauty as a white swan. There
are very mixed messages here, including the one that it is appearance that
makes the person, reinforced by Andersen's equivocal attitude to other
farm yard 'ugliness' - see his description of the turkey. |
| A third layer is a
social one, primarily (but not exclusively, as children have similar
patterns in the school playground) aimed at adults - an attack on the
hierarchies of the social order, clearly seen in the farm yard (with the
wonderful Spanish hen, addressed as 'Your Grace'), but continuing
throughout the story as an undercurrent. |
| The fourth layer
answers the question why the self-pity and the social comment are there in
the story, and that is the strong autobiographical content of this story
(for a succinct chronological biography, click
here - opens in a new window). An number of features of the story
remind us of this:
- The sudden change of voice, when Andersen the writer (as opposed to one
of his animal characters) says the duckling is ugly
- The incident with the dog, which is somewhat unconvincing, and only
seems to be there so that Andersen can say he was so ugly that not even
the dog would touch him
- From a Jungian point of view, the symbols of the buildings in the story
as symbolic of the psyche of the person himself - here at the various
stages of both the duckling's life and of Andersen's early life. In this
context note how the symbolism of the doors (and how the duckling gets
through them) also match. |
It seems perfectly
plausible that, while on the one hand Andersen is writing a very effective
story for children, and the other he is also, whether he was aware of it or
not, writing a cathartic story for himself, attempting to lay to rest some
of the ghosts of his own experience.
But we also noted that,
like so many other children's stories that have survived the test of time,
it may be this multi-layeredness that is in part responsible for the
extraordinary impact and longevity of this story. |
 |
|
The Hans Christian Andersen Center |
A major
resource, from Odense University. Includes scholarly information and
articles |
|
Jean Hersholt : The Complete Andersen |
The most
complete edition of Andersen's fairy tales on the web (in association with
the Hans Christian Andersen Centre) |
|
Hans Christian Andersen Picture Page |
A small
collection of photos of Hans Christian Andersen collated by Bo Bendtsen |
|
Hans Christian Andersen Here and Now |
Official site
of the 200th anniversary of Andersen's birth |
 |
 |
One of the odder Hollywood biops, from 1952, with Danny
Kaye as H.C. Andersen, and directed by Charles Vidor. The story bears little
relation to Andersen's life, but was a box-office hit and was nominated for
six Oscars. Some modern commentators have seen homo-erotic sub-texts in the
movie. |
 |
1986. Animated, and narrated by Cher |
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