Thumbelina

Author: Hans Christian Andersen

Time Period: 1851 CE–1900 CE

Country or Culture: Denmark

Genre: Fairy Tale

PLOT SUMMARY

“Thumbelina” begins with a woman who wishes to have a child but cannot, so she consults a fairy, who tells her to plant a special grain of barley. The barley produces a flower with red and gold leaves, and as soon as the woman kisses the flower, it opens. Sitting on the stamens is “a very delicate and graceful little maiden” (45). The woman names her Thumbelina for her tiny size and makes her a bed from a walnut shell. One night, an ugly toad mother sneaks into the house and spies Thumbelina. Wanting a wife for her son, the toad takes Thumbelina away in her walnut bed. She places the maiden on a water lily in a stream and then prepares for the wedding. When Thumbelina wakes, the mother comes and announces that the girl will marry her ugly son, prompting Thumbelina to weep bitterly.

When the toads leave, the fish swimming around the lily pad take pity on Thumbelina and decide to help her by nibbling through the stem’s leaf. Once free, Thumbelina sails downstream away from the toads. She passes through towns and is admired by birds flying above her. A butterfly joins her on her leaf, and Thumbelina ties it to the leaf with her sash. Suddenly, a cockchafer snatches Thumbelina away to a tree, gives her honey, and praises her beauty. But when the other cockchafers say that Thumbelina is ugly, the first one believes them and leaves Thumbelina on a daisy, where the poor maiden weeps with sorrow.

Thumbelina lives alone in the forest for the summer, eating honey and drinking dew. But when winter comes, she wanders in an empty grain field until she arrives at the house of a friendly mouse, who invites her to stay for the chilly season. Soon, the mouse informs Thumbalina that a wealthy mole who wears a velvet coat and has a large house will come to visit, but he is blind, so Thumbelina must be sure to tell him excellent stories. The mole falls in love with Thumbelina, but she finds him dull. While walking in an underground passage, they find a dead swallow, which moves Thumbelina to great pity because of her fondness for the birds who once sang to her so beautifully. Visiting the bird again on her own, she discovers that it is not dead but merely stunned from the cold.

Thumbelina nurses the swallow back to its full strength, and in the spring, it invites her to fly away with it. Afraid of offending the mouse, she refuses. But soon after, Thumbelina learns that the mouse has arranged her marriage to the mole. As the wedding draws near, Thumbelina bids the sun farewell and again meets the swallow. This time, she agrees to fly south. When they arrive in a warm country near a lake, the swallow places Thumbelina on a lovely white flower. There, she is delighted to find a tiny man very similar to her. He wears a gold crown, and when he sees Thumbelina, he asks her to marry him and become queen of all the flowers.

A large host of tiny flower people attends their wedding. Thumbelina receives wings as a gift, and her new husband renames her Maia. The swallow sings a lovely wedding song but feels sad when he flies back to Denmark. There, his nest is “over the window of a house in which dwelt the writer of fairy tales. The swallow sang, ‘Tweet, tweet,’ and from his song came the whole story” (56).

SIGNIFICANCE

A nineteenth-century Danish fairy tale, “Thumbelina” was written by Hans Christian Andersen during a cultural period of Western European fascination with collections of fairy tales and folktales. Beginning in the eighteenth century, writers produced anthologies of folk and fairy tales as a way of contributing to the cultural distinctiveness of their nations, and part of this cultural project included presenting the stories as moral exempla. In the famous collections of the Brothers Grimm in Germany, of Andersen in Denmark, and of many other anthologists, stories were offered as lessons and entertainment for young people, but they were also intended to reflect the cultural uniqueness of particular countries.

In this context, “Thumbelina” was not well received by critics in part because it lacks an explicit moral lesson; instead, it emphasizes the maiden’s fanciful adventures with various animals and her desire not to marry the toad and the mole. The woman at the story’s beginning who desires to have a child evidently fails, and the little man who finally becomes Thumbelina’s husband is declared to be “the angel of the flower; for a tiny man and a tiny woman dwell in every flower; and this was the king of them all” (56). This latter detail is emblematic of the story’s interest in fantastic details and romance rather than in morality. The story ends happily as Thumbelina finally wins her perfect prince.

This romantic ending, however, implies the values of independence and of finding one’s place. Thumbelina repeatedly rejects the marriages arranged for her largely because the animal mates are unsuitable: the toad is ugly, and the tedious mole shuns the sunlight that Thumbelina loves so much. Although she is frequently acted upon rather than taking matters into her own hands, Thumbelina finds ways to escape the undesirable situations she meets, and her acceptance of the flower angel as a husband represents her totally free choice of whom to marry. With this romantic ending, Andersen presents a lesson that was perhaps a bit modern for audiences who desired more traditional tales.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Andersen, Hans Christian. Fairy Tales. New York: Orion, 1958. Print.

Churchwell, Sarah. “Justice and Punishment in Fairytales.” Guardian 14 Oct. 2009, Great Fairytales sec.: 34. Print.

Opie, Iona, and Peter Opie. The Classic Fairy Tales. New York: Oxford UP, 1974. Print.

Sale, Roger. Fairy Tales and After: From Snow White to E. B. White. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1978. Print.

Zipes, Jack. Breaking the Magic Spell: Radical Theories of Folk and Fairy Tales. Lexington: UP of Kentucky, 2002. Print.