Thumbelina

Once upon atime . . . there lived a woman who had no children. She dreamed of having a little girl, but time went by, and her dream never came true. She then went to visit a witch, who gave her a magic grain of barley. She planted it in a flower pot. And the very next day, the grain had turned into a lovely flower, rather like a tulip. The woman softly kissed its half-shut petals. And as though by magic, the flower opened in full blossom. Inside sat a tiny girl, no bigger than a thumb. The woman called her Thumbelina. For a bed she had a walnut shell, violet petals for her mattress and a rose petal blanket. In the daytime, she played in a tulip petal boat, floating on a plate of water. Using two horse hairs as oars, Thumbelina sailed around her little lake, singing and singing in a gentle sweet voice. Then one night, as she lay fast asleep in her walnut shell, a large frog hopped through a hole in the window pane. As she gazed down at Thumbelina, she said to herself: "How pretty she is! She'd make the perfect bride for my own dear son!" She picked up Thumbelina, walnut shell and all, and hopped into the garden. Nobody saw her go.Back at the pond, her fat ugly son, who always did as mother told him, was pleased with her choice. But mother frog was afraid that her pretty prisoner might run away. So she carried Thumbellna out to a water lily leaf ln the middle of the pond. "She can never escape us now," said the frog to her son. "And we have plenty of time to prepare a new home for you and your bride." Thumbelina was left all alone. She felt so desperate. She knew she would never be able to escape the fate that awaited her with the two horrid fat frogs. All she could do was cry her eyes out. However, one or two minnows who had been enjoying the shade below the water lily leaf, had overheard the two frogs talking, and the little girl's bitter sobs. They decided to do something about it. So they nibbled away at the lily stem till it broke and drifted away in the weak current. A dancing butterfly had an idea: "Throw me the end of your belt! I'll help you to move a little faster!" Thumbelina gratefully did so, and the leaf soon floated away from the frog pond.

But other dangers lay ahead. A large beetle snatched Thumbelina with his strong feet and took her away to his home at the top of a leafy tree. "Isn't she pretty?" he said to his friends. But they pointed out that she was far too different. So the beetle took her down the tree and set her free. It was summertime, and Thumbelina wandered all by herself amongst the flowers and through the long grass. She had pollen for her meals and drank the dew. Then the rainy season came, bringing nastyweather. The poor child found it hard to find food and shelter. When winter set in, she suffered from the cold and felt terrible pangs of hunger. One day, as Thumbelina roamed helplessly over the bare meadows, she met a large spider who promised to help her. He took her to a hollow tree and guarded the door with a stout web. Then he brought her some dried chestnuts and called his friends to come and admire her beauty. But just like the beetles, all the other spiders persuaded Thumbelina's rescuer to let her go. Crying her heart out, and quite certain that nobody wanted her because she was ugly, Thumbelina left the spider's house. As she wandered, shivering with the cold, suddenly she came across a solid little cottage, made of twigs and dead leaves. Hopefully, she knocked on the door. It was opened by a field mouse. "What are you doing outside in this weather?" he asked. "Come in and warm yourself." Comfortable and cozy, the field mouse's home was stocked with food. For her keep, Thumbelina did the housework and told the mouse stories. One day, the field mouse said a friend was coming to visit them. "He's a very rich mole, and has a lovely house. He wears a splendid black fur coat, but he's dreadfully shortsighted. He needs company and he'd like to marry you!" Thumbelina did not relish the idea. However, when the mole came, she sang sweetly to him and he fell head over heels in love. The mole invited Thumbelina and the field mouse to visit him, but . . . to their surprise and horror, they came upon a swallow in the tunnel. It looked dead. Mole nudged it wi his foot, saying: "That'll teach her! She should have come underground instead of darting about the sky all summer!"

Thumbelina was so shocked by such cruel words that later, she crept back unseen to the tunnel. And every day, the little girl went to nurse the swallow and tenderly give it food. In the meantime, the swallow told Thumbelina its tale. Jagged by a thorn, it had been unable to follow its companions to a warmer climate. "It's kind of you to nurse me," it told Thumbelina. But, in spring, the swallow flew away, after offering to take the little girl with it. All summer, Thumbelina did her best to avoid marrying the mole. The little girl thought fearfully of how she'd have to live underground forever. On the eve of her wedding, she asked to spend a day in the open air. As she gently fingered a flower, she heard a familiar song: "Winter's on its way and I'll be off to warmer lands. Come with me!" Thumbelina quickly clung to her swallow friend, and the bird soared into the sky. They flew over plains and hills till they reached a country of flowers. The swallow gently laid Thumbelina in a blossom. There she met a tiny, white-winged fairy: the King of the Flower Fairies. Instantly, he asked her to marry him. Thumbelina eagerly said "yes", and sprouting tiny white wings, she became the Flower Queen!

SYNOPSIS Thumbelina is worried that there is no one her size so her mother tells her a story of fairies. That night the fairy prince comes to her window and hears her singing. They instantly fall in love and go flying and singing together where toads and bugs see them. Prince Cornelius promises to come back the next day after telling his parents about her. That night a toad comes and steals Thumbelina away because she heard her singing and wants her to join the family band "Singers de Espagna." Her toad son loves Thumbelina and wants to marry her. After convincing Thumbelina that she will be a star in show biz the toads leave her on a lily pad to get things ready for a wedding. Thumbelina is angry and calls for help, she doesn't want to marry the toad, she loves Cornelius. Meanwhile, Prince Cornelius goes to her house and finds her gone. The dog tells him that she was stolen by a toad and he leaves vowing to find her. He rushes home and asks his parents to stall the frost, which they can't really do. Thumbelina meets a bird who helps her off the lily pad and promises to find the Prince for her. A beetle hears Thumbelina and gets her to sing at a Beetle Ball where the beetles tell her she is ugly. The bird finds her (without news of the Prince) and reminds her that Prince Cornelius thinks she is beautiful and that she shouldn't give up. The Toad searches for Thumbelina and finds the beetle and steals his wings so the beetle will find the Prince for him so he can set a trap to get Thumbelina, since she will come for the Prince. Cornelius falls into water and gets frozen. The beetle finds him, pulls the block of ice out and brings him to the Toad and tells him where Thumbelina is. Thumbelina is taken in by Ms. Field Mouse who tells her that Prince Cornelius was found dead. Ms. Field Mouse introduces Thumbelina to Mr. Mole. Mr. Mole wants to marry Thumbelina and bribes Ms. Field Mouse to set them up. He also shows them a "dead bird" who happens to be Thumbelina's bird friend who got a thorn in his wing and passed out and fell into Mr. Mole's hole. Thumbelina comes and warms him that night and pulls the thorn out. The bird flies off to find the veil of the fairies before Thumbelina can tell him that Cornelius is dead.

Thumbelina goes to marry the Mole. Some young jitterbugs thaw out the Prince. At the altar, amid visions of Prince Cornelius, Thumbelina refuses to marry the mole and runs. The toad arrives and tries to catch her, but she refuses him too. She runs

out and heads towards the light outside of the hole. Prince Cornelius shows up after she runs out and duels with the Toad. Above ground the bird finds Thumbelina and flies her to the veil of the fairies. It is frozen and she doesn't believe it's the veil of the fairies. The bird tells her to sing. She sings a little and gives up, then Prince Cornelius starts to sing and then proposes, Thumbelina accepts and sprouts wings. They get married and "live happily ever after."

Plot
In the first English translation of 1847 by Mary Howitt, the tale opens with a beggar woman giving a peasant's wife a barleycorn in exchange for food. Once planted, a tiny girl, Thumbelina (Tommelise), emerges from its flower. One night, Thumbelina, asleep in her walnut-shell cradle, is carried off by a toad who wants the miniature maiden as a bride for her son. With the help of friendly fish and a butterfly, Thumbelina escapes the toad and her son, and drifts on a lily pad until captured by a stag beetle. The insect discards her when his friends reject her company. Thumbelina tries to protect herself from the elements, but when winter comes, she is in desperate straits. She is finally given shelter by an old field mouse and tends her dwelling in gratitude. The mouse suggests Thumbelina marry her neighbor, a mole, but Thumbelina finds repulsive the prospect of being married to such a creature. She escapes the situation by fleeing to a far land with a swallow she nursed back to health during the winter. In a sunny field of flowers, Thumbelina meets a tiny flowerfairy prince just her size and to her liking, and they wed. She receives a pair of wings to accompany her husband on his travels from flower to flower, and a new name, Maia. In Hans Christian Andersen's version of the story, a bluebird had been viewing Thumbelina's story since the beginning and had been in love with her since. In the end, the bird is heartbroken once Thumbelina marries the flower prince, and flies off, eventually arriving at a small house. There, he tells Thumbelina's story to a man who is implied to be Andersen himself, who chronicles the story in a book.

Background of the author

Hans Christian Andersen was born in Odense, Denmark on 2 April 1805 to Hans Andersen, a shoemaker, and Anne Marie Andersdatter.[2] An only and a spoiled child, Andersen shared a love of literature with his father who read him The Arabian Nights and the fables of Jean de la Fontaine. Together, they constructed panoramas, pop-up pictures, and toy theatres, and took long jaunts into the countryside. [3]

Andersen in 1836 Andersen's father died in 1816,[4] and from then on, Andersen was left to his own devices. In order to escape his poor, illiterate mother, he promoted his artistic inclinations and courted the cultured middle class of Odense, singing and reciting in their drawing-rooms. On 4 September 1819, the fourteen-year-old Andersen left Odense for Copenhagen with the few savings he had acquired from his performances, a letter of reference to the ballerina Madame Schall, and youthful dreams and intentions of becoming a poet or an actor. [5]After three years of rejections and disappointments, he finally found a patron in Jonas Collin, the director of the Royal Theatre, who, believing in the boy's potential, secured funds from the king to send Andersen to a grammar school in Slagelse, a provincial town in west Zealand, with the expectation that the boy would continue his education at Copenhagen University at the appropriate time. At Slagelse, Andersen fell under the tutelage of Simon Meisling, a short, stout, balding thirty-five-year-old classicist and translator of Virgil's Aeneid. Andersen was

not the quickest student in the class and was given generous doses of Meisling's contempt. "You're a stupid boy who will never make it," Meisling told him. [7] Meisling is believed to be the model for the learned mole in "Thumbelina".[8] Fairy tale and folklorists Iona and Peter Opie have proposed the tale as a "distant tribute" to Andersen's confidante, Henriette Wulff, the small, frail, hunchbacked daughter of the Danish translator of Shakespeare who loved Andersen as Thumbelina loves the swallow;[9] however, no written evidence exists to support the theory.[8]

COMMENTARIES

For fairy tale researchers and folklorists Iona and Peter Opie, "Thumbelina" is an adventure story from the feminine point of view with its moral being people are happiest with their own kind. They point out that Thumbelina is a passive character, the victim of circumstances whereas her male counterpart Tom Thumb (one of the tales inspirations) is an active character, makes himself felt, and exerts himself. [9] Folklorist Maria Tatar sees Thumbelina as a runaway bride story and notes that it has been viewed as an allegory about arranged marriages, and a fable about being true to ones heart that upholds the traditional notion that the love of a prince is to be valued above all else. She points out that in Hindu belief, a thumb-sized being known as the innermost self or soul dwells in the heart of all beings, human or animal, and that the concept may have migrated to European folklore and taken form as Tom Thumb and Thumbelina, both of whom seek transfiguration and redemption. She detects parallels between Andersens tale and the Greek myth of Demeter and her daughter, Persephone, and, notwithstanding the pagan associations and allusions in the tale, notes that "Thumbelina" repeatedly refers to Christs suffering and resurrection, and the Christian concept of salvation.[19] Andersen biographer Jackie Wullschlager indicates that Thumbelina was the first of Andersen's tales to dramatize the sufferings of one who is different, and, as a result of being different, becomes the object of mockery. It was also the first of Andersen's tales to incorporate the swallow as the symbol of the poetic soul and Andersens identification with the swallow as a migratory bird whose pattern of life his own traveling days were beginning to resemble.[20] Roger Sale believes Andersen expressed his feelings of social and sexual inferiority by creating characters that are inferior to their beloveds. The Little Mermaid, for example, has no soul while her human beloved has a soul as his birthright. In Thumbelina, Andersen suggests the toad, the beetle, and the mole are Thumbelinas inferiors and should remain in their places rather than wanting their superior. Sale indicates they are not inferior to Thumbelina but simply different. He suggests that Andersen may have done some damage to the animal world when he colored his animal characters with his own feelings of inferiority.[21]

Jacqueline Banerjee views the tale as a failure story. Not surprisingly, she writes, Thumbelina is now often read as a story of specifically female empowerment.[22] Susie Stephens believes Thumbelina herself is a grotesque, and observes that the grotesque in childrens literature is [...] a necessary and beneficial component that enhances the psychological welfare of the young reader. Children are attracted to the cathartic qualities of the grotesque, she suggests. [23] Sidney Rosenblatt in his essay "Thumbelina and the Development of Female Sexuality" believes the tale may be analyzed, from the perspective of Freudian psychoanalysis, as the story of female masturbation. Thumbelina herself, he posits, could symbolize the clitoris, her rose petal coverlet the labia, the white butterfly "the budding genitals", and the mole and the prince the anal and vaginal openings respectively.[24]

Setting

It takes place in both a park and a city. Thumbelina and her fairy friends all live in the park, but the builder who plans to tear the park down and build lives in the city. Thumbelina travels into the city wit the builder's daughter and many scenes take place in their home.

Characters

Thumbelina: She is the main character and the heroine of the story. She, like the rest of her people is no bigger than a human's thumb. Thumbelina lives up in the valley with her father, and it's him who sends her on a journey to find the prince of the little people and warn him about the breaking of the dam.

Adoptive mother: The childless human lady who looks after her in a tulip which was given to her by a witch.

Mona: She is an old mouse who lives in her cozy mouse-house at the foot of a tree. She takes Thumbelina into her home after she finds her half frozen in the snow outside. Mona takes advantage of Thumbelina's gratitude and tries to force her into marrying the old Mr. Mole.

Father: Simply referred to as "father", he is Thumbelina's father and his job is to watch over the dam and make sure everything is in order. One day, he gets the feeling that there will be a lot of snow in the upcoming winter and when spring comes, the melting snow will flow over the Meadow of the Tulips.

Swallow: Thumbelina and this kind swallow are friends since they first meet and although they say goodbye shortly after their first meeting, destiny brings the two friends together again. After Thumbelina saves him from death, the swallow will help her complete her important task.

Mr. Mole: He is the ugly old mole who falls in love with Thumbelina from the moment he hears her beautiful singing. He is then willing to offer Mona a fair stock of goods in order for

her getting Thumbelina to agree to marry him. Thumbelina hates the idea.

The Prince: he's the stereotype of a prince who she finds at the end.

REFERENCES

Andersen,

Hans

Christian;

Erik

Christian

Haugaard

(transl.)

(1983)

[1974]. The Complete Fairy Tales and Stories. New York, NY: Anchor Books. ISBN 0-385-18951-6.

Andersen, Hans Christian (2000) [1871]. The Fairy Tale of My Life. New York, NY: Cooper Square Press. ISBN 0-8154-1105-7.

Classe, O. (ed.) (2000). Encyclopedia of Literary Translation into English; v.2. Chicago, IL: Fitzroy Dearborn Publishers. ISBN 1-884964-36-2.

Eastman, Mary Huse (ed.). Index to Fairy Tales, Myths and Legends. BiblioLife, LLC.

Frank, Diane Crone; Jeffrey Frank (2005). The Stories of Hans Christian Andersen. Durham, NC and London, UK: Duke University Press. ISBN 08223-3693-6.

Loesser, Susan (2000) [1993]. A Most Remarkable Fella: Frank Loesser and the Guys and Dolls in his Life: A Portrait by his Daughter. New York, NY: Hal Leonard Corporation. ISBN 0-634-00927-3.

Opie, Iona; Peter Opie (1974). The Classic Fairy Tales. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-211559-6.

Sale, Roger (1978). Fairy Tales and After: From Snow White to E.B. White. Harvard University Press. ISBN 0-674-29157-3. Text "New Haven, CT " ignored (help)

Siegel, Elaine V. (ed.) (1992). Psychoanalytic Perspectives on Women. New York, NY: Brunner/Mazel, Inc. ISBN 0-87630-655-5.

Wullschlager, Jackie (2002). Hans Christian Andersen: The Life of a Storyteller. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press. ISBN 0-226-917479.