Goodreads feminist reviews - Hans Andersen's Fairy Tales (featuring The Little Mermaid)

Book: Hans Andersen's Fairy Tales, anthology, translation and commentary by Naomi Lewis.

2/5 Goodreads review also here.

+1 Interesting, informative notes by Naomi Lewis about the stories, often focusing on Andersen's influences for each story in the anthology, and sometimes also including some talk of feminism and representation.

+1 Illustrated with lovely ink drawings.

-1 Even though this is a very nice edition with interesting notes and lovely illustrations, the 2/5 stars come mainly from the content of the stories, often containing sexism and the promotion of unhealthy relationships, some racist/colonialist stereotypes, and a lot of religious morals in the narration, which I personally found pretty jarring.

+1 There are some interesting proactive female characters in 'The Snow Queen', my favourite of the stories in this selection, but it's not really enough to compensate for the rest of the content I usually find in Andersen's stories, which is really not my cup of tea :S

More than a standard review, this is going to be more of a series of feminist impressions/commentary on some of the stories in this anthology of Hans Christian Andersen's fairytales: 'Thumbelina', 'The Shepherdess and the Chimney Sweep', 'The Snow Queen', and, most importantly, 'The Little Mermaid'.

• Thumbelina (see the end of the post for some screenshots with quotes)
  

-Aka everyone keeps kidnapping, grabbing at, and trying to marry a pretty girl :/ First she's kidnapped by a toad who wants her to marry his son. She escapes with the aid of a butterfly, and gets grabbed at by a beetle. She escapes again from the beetles and ends up being forced to get into an arranged marriage with a mole, until she escapes yet again with the aid of a bird she tended to. Her final reward is to get a man she actually wants to marry (that at least, I suppose). But all this tale is pretty much rape culture normalized, as it basically revolves around a woman who is constantly kidnapped, harassed and being forced to marry men she doesn't want to be with :S

-She's of course reduced to being pretty and to her appearance. This alternates between being praised for how beautiful she is (pretty much always). to, sporadically, being called ugly by the beetles and ergo, deemed worthless for it  (which means to she is even more reduced to her physical appearance as a result, as the narrator assures us that no, she is super pretty!). Thumbelina's beauty is also very defined by traditional femininity - slender, small and delicate.

-Forced marriages are a big part of this tale, and pretty much the rest of female characters in the tale play the role of abusing matchmakers. First there's the toad's mother, who kidnapped her from her adoptive mother (the only female character she has a positive relationship with, and she hardly appears in the tale). And then there's a field mouse, who shelters Thumbelina in her home from the harsh Winter, but who also ends up forcing her to marry a middle-aged mole (bonus point for the age gap) because he's super rich and, most importantly, he's into her, and male desire is always the priority :S Even though Thumbelina keeps refusing the suitors she doesn't want to marry, her agency is very limited in the tale, needing help from (male) friends in order to escape each and every one of these forced marriages.

Thumbelina is forced to marry the mole, by Barbara Freeman

-But of course, Thumbelina's previous experience with forced marriage are hardly a critique of this patriarchal institution or of women's limited role in the home and relationship sphere. Rather, the theme of traditional romantic love (aka love at first sight and an immediate marriage with a handsome prince) is the happy ending for fairytales practically everywhere, and hardly ever challenged as toxic in its execution. And in this context, I kinda find it even more offensive that the female protagonist was forced to endure constant harassment and forced marriages repeatedly, because it kinda serves as a contrast to highlight just how marvellous the final prince is. 

Thumbelina meets the fairy prince, by Eleanor Vere Boyle

We sometimes have a critique of forced marriages and abusive relationships in fairytales, but the criticism often falls short because it's OK for a woman to refuse to marry someone she doesn't want to marry as long as most of her defiance also revolves around the fact that she wants to marry for love, and ends up married to someone else so the status quo of marriage and heteronormative relationships is not challenged :S I mean, women being in a relationship with whomever they want or marrying whoever they choose is most definitely an important part of having agency, but it's curious how traditional stories seem to limit women's very limited agency to that. In this case, this theme doesn't even appear, as Thumbelina meets the fairy prince she will marry just at the end of the story.

-Because there's not actually much good to choose from, it's certainly the best dynamic yet (they're similar in height, Thumbelina gains wings, and she's into marrying him, so for once she isn't forced into it, applause), but still, it's the trope of love at first sight that leads immediately to marriage without even knowing how the relationship will remotely be. And Nice Rich Fairy Prince Guy still basically meets her, thinks she's pretty and that's that, same as the rest. While being young and handsome himself, unlike the rest of suitors, he still reduces her to how beautiful she is as the main reason to marry her. He is also pretty entitled and respects her agency just as much as the rest of men and complicit women in this story (which is not at all), as he decides to change her name without even asking for her opinion.So not thrilled.

• The Shepherdess and the Chimney Sweep (see the end of the post for some screenshots with quotes)
  

-Another example of a pretty woman being pressured into marriage with an unsavoury type, while also being in love with a charming type to sustain the traditional romantic love trope. Andersen also follows the trend of Victorian racist Orientalist themes with the threatening 'Chinaman'/Mandarin figure, in this case :S Another tale in this anthology also features China, but fortunately it's way better handled (not in a racist offensive way, that is), even though he also calls Chinese people 'Chinamen' at the start (which is a racial slur).

• The Snow Queen (see the end of the post for some screenshots with quotes)

'The Snow Queen' by Elena Ringo

-This is the initial inspiration for Frozen, and a story with a proactive female protagonist who actually dominates the plot and get the stuff done. It's also the only one in this anthology with way more female than male characters.  But even so, the Snow Queen is hardly fleshed out and rather depicted as a femme fatale/witch figure, probably also inspiring the Ice Witch Jadis from The Chronicles of Narnia, who's also not painted in a good light at all :S Thank the gods for Frozen and Elsa!

-Gerda is the proactive protagonist who goes on a quest to free her friend Kay from the Snow Queen, and she meets a lot of women along the way, so that was nice. But many of these women aren't painted in a very good light either. The middle-aged witch who wants to keep Gerda in her house 'isn't wicked', but still she tampers with her memory and basically makes her a prisoner. The robber woman who captures Gerda is depicted as ugly, coarse and brutish, and her daughter, the Robber Girl, is an antagonist initially as well, and also depicted as violent and disagreeable at first.

-The princess is initially depicted as smart and knowing her own mind, and she has to get married, but is looking for an intelligent man who can be her intellectual equal. Still, she finishes in a pretty minimal role in the story alongside a handsome youth who Gerda mistakes for Kay - A creepy implication that either the princess married super young, or, worse still, that she's into minors, given that Gerda and Kay are very young teenagers at the most :S

-The Robber Girl starts her part in the tale by being portrayed in a pretty negative way as an antagonist who is aggressive, 'spoilt and willful'. She's also described as darker-skinned, sturdier and with broaer shoulders, which in my book is great representation (yay for strong women, and for diversity of ethnicity and body type), but in a world which favours white and lighter-skinned people, as well as delicate thin women (like Thumbelina), it's suspicious to see her described in this way when paired with her antagonistic character :S At least the Robber Girl is seen more positively at the end of the story, in an independent, proactive role, and the relationship between her and Gerda is also way better, more of a friendship. Gerda also meets two wise-women who help her, one of them at least also being darker-skinned, and they're treated pretty positivley, so yay for that, at least.

Gerda and the Robber Girl, by Henry H. Ford

-Andersen is also super religious, so yeah, Gerda prays to get help against the antagonist Snow Queen and gets a whole legion of armed Angels to vanquish the snow army of the Queen. I appreciate the imagery of an angel angel, but meh for the unsolicited religious pamphlet.

-To finish, Naomi Lewis in the notes has the opinion that 'every positive character in the story is a girl or woman', and I have to disagree because it simply isn't true that all female characters are seen in a positive light in this tale :S It's true that there are way more female characters than in many other Andersen tales, and proactive, smart, independent, physically strong, and powerful ones at that. It's also true that some of them are certainly seen either positively or in greyscale. But this is worded a bit too optimistic. Like I mentioned above, characters such as the robber woman, the Robber Girl (initially), the Witch, and the Snow Queen herself are seen with negative characteristics, or dubious at least. It's great to see both positive and negative female characters who are portrayed as 3D human beings, but there are still too many stereotypes going on to reach this state here, I think. The Snow Queen, for example, who Lewis says is 'of a quality that trascends evil', may not be directly demonized, as the Ice Queen of Narnia is, but she's still pretty much the 2D pagan femme fatale witch figure who initially tempts a little boy to make him her thrall in her castle, and who Gerda defeats with the aid of an Angel army. And she hardly appears in the story, even if it's named after her.

 

And I mean, it's also not as if we should go and call Andersen a feminist ally just because he decided, for a change, to write a tale with 1) more than one female character and 2) with roles that go beyond traditional female roles, or the trope of the tragic lover or the pretty love interest :S When the story still includes a series of pretty traditional problematic stereotypes - Magical women who tamper with your heart and mind and keep you prisoner, darker-skinned women who are (at least initially) seen as violent and disagreeable, physically strong and/or not-as-thin women portrayed in a bad light,...Yes, we've got Gerda who does the rescuing, we've got the Lapland and Finland women who are wise-women, part of the characterization of the smart Princess, and the final depiction of the independent action woman, the Robber Girl. It's most definitely quite an upgrade compared to 'Thumbelina' or 'The Little Mermaid'. But still, I need a bit more than this to claim that 'all the female characters in this tale are seen positively'. Which they also really don't necessarily have to be to be in a feminist tale, either, as no human, male or female, is always 2D 100% good, and it would be nice to have a mix of greyscale characters of every gender - We just need a little bit less traditional stereotypes, as well as a little more of this in the whole anthology, for me to be a bit more satisfied xD

• The Little Mermaid (see the end of the post for some screenshots with quotes)

And finally, 'The Little Mermaid'. Here we go with some criticism of toxic relationships, toxic religion, and problematic (Disney) role models for girls and women. Yayyy.

Illustrations by Roger Langton

-One positive aspect of the original story vs the Disney version: The Mer-King doesn't actually appear (and I'm no fan of an authoritarian wrathful father who ends up redeemed as a great dad because we don't hold bad fathers accountable meh). But the grandmother does, described as a 'wise old lady', and she has scenes with the Little Mermaid (she remains unnamed in the story, so let's call her Ariel, OK xD) where they speak of stuff, so hey, Bechdel! But of course, the grandmother is the one 'keeping house' for the King and looking after all his daughters because gender roles suck.

-The sisters also make a bit more of an appearance in the original story compared to the Disney version, although their role is still pretty limited and minor. And of course, all mermaids are described as beautiful and pale and slender, because what else is there *eyeroll*

 -Ariel is super into adventure and exploring and seeing the human world, but of course,  everything and anything having to do about her interests about the human world start revolving around the man (and religion) just after she rescues the prince from drowning.

-Also, apart from the man and true love and all that, one of the main motivations for Ariel in this original version of the tale when it comes to the desire to become human is attaining an immortal soul and a place in (Christian) Heaven after death, because merpeople live for 300 years but don't have souls and when they die they 'just' dissolve into sea foam. So I guess that from the point of view of this kind of religious people their 300 whole years of life are utterly worthless and they basically become a 'handful of foam' with no trascendence (speaking with acrimony here because I have a contact who offered this exact discourse around the time I was posting the storytime of this on IG lol).  

 

  -Anyway, so the merpeople are super misguided because they're OK with living 300 years happily and fully and stuff, and they're trying to convince Ariel to try that as well (wow). But she becomes obsessed with attaining an immortal soul asap, and becomes as obsessed with this promise of a religious afterlife as she is about mooning over the guy she has just met - Maybe even more :S And luckily, she can consider both things at once, because she can gain a soul if a human man offers her the True Love card! The kind of True Love featuring toxic 'romantic' ideas about caring more about this other person than yourself, your soul, your parents, you name it. For eternity, of course. 

 Also, she becomes so obsessed with the religious afterlife and the trope of romantic love, she basically forgets about living her life - Suddenly, her home, her family, her hobbies and talents (such as singing), those mean nothing to her because she keeps remembering that she has no soul (and no man).

Mid-song, she remembers she can't take pleasure in singing and being appreciated by her people because hey, she has no man and no immortal soul!

  After all, toxic romantic love notions and religious brainwashing combined will do wonders when it comes to literally forfeiting your voice (silent women are best, after all!), changing your body and literal species for someone *you don't even know will love you*, and leaving your whole life, family and friends behind :/ Also, the Disney movie sugarcoated the fact that every time she walks as a human she feels as knives going through her, but what is constant daily torment when you can get a man and a soul, right? After all, love is supposed to be about pain when it's stronger, and the more you suffer in your life the more points you seem to win for the afterlife, because neither of these constructs are problematic at all. 

 

- So Ariel goes to the Sea-Witch for help and she agrees to give her human legs in exchange for her voice (in the movie this fact is made even more infuriating seeing as King Triton's trident had the power to transform her into a human *in the first freaking place*, if only he had deigned himself to be a minimally decent father and had communicated with her instead of breaking things, shouting and whining about how difficult being a father is. But not, he's redeemed as the super Nice Guy Dad in the end after Ariel went through all that shit, by doing the exact same thin Ursula blackmailed her with! Ugh). 

 

  Anyway, the Sea-Witch tells her that her voice is not the only thing she will be forfeiting in this deal. If the man doesn't love her and ends up marrying someone else, she'll die and turn into sea foam. Arielis still super willing to go through with it because heternormative, gender-roled 'love' and Heaven's afterlife are wirth it, I guess. It's also kinda a bitof unfair pressure on the man, actually, who doesn't really know her at all (in the book he's not even obsessing about her singing voice), and doesn't have any obligaton to fall in love with her or marry someone he hasn't even met yet!

 

 And she won't be able to speak with him at all (and no one thinks about writing, maybe book!Little Mermaid doesn't know how to? Because movie!Ariel sure signed the contract lol). "But if you take my voice" says the Little Mermaid in the story, "What shall I have left?" No problem, the Witch-Sea says, she has "her beauty, er grace in moving, her lovely speaking eyes", and what else is there?! What use is a woman's voice when she's pretty?! That's more than enough to "catch a human heart", not to mention build a successful eternal relationship with someone! 

 

Also, the Little Mermaid has to get rid of what makes her different and Othered, her mermaid's tail, to be accepted in the human world, the possibility of a man's love and the promise of an eternal soul, which is not very cool :S

-So Ariel gets her legs, gets to the Prince's palace and "suffers gladly" every time she feels as if knives were piercing her body when she walsk or dances, because love is pain! This also kinda sounds like women having to endure the pain of high heels to be considered graceful and beautiful, to be honest :S 

 

-Another thing I hate about this storyline is how it promotes the trope of the sweet, passive, infantilized woman - The Little Mermaid doesn't speak, literally has to learn to walk, and doesn't know practically anything from the human world, which makes her pretty dependable on the prince and the rest of the people in the palace :S

-Also, the original story includes more than one mention of slave girls of the prince who dance for entertainment and who are further used as competition for Ariel. Am I supposed to feel great about a dude who keeps enslaved women for his entertainment now? Because I don't feel great for anyone who does that :S 

 -The prince also proceeds to treat Ariel basically very similarly to one of his enslaved girls. She becomes his favourite in the way a rich privileged, entitled dude has a favourite slave or courtesan he keeps company with while she entertains and amuses him. She's at his  beck and call, be they at the castle or on outings, and she is even described to sleeping on a cushion outside his door, so WTF. Ariel is hyped, though, because the more company she keeps with the prince the more he might fall in love with her, and she keeps smiling while cutting her feet climbing high mountains 'so that all could see' (WTF) because, they remind us, love is pain and female suffering is always hidden behind a smile for male convenience.

 

 -Ariel begins to get worried the prince will indeed not fall in love with her (so far he's treated her like a favourite and a child, and nothing more, not even a true friend :S) because he starts talking more and more about the girl he thought rescued him from the sea wreck (spoiler alert, it's not Ariel), a human princess who was getting educated in a nearby convent (and not Ursula in a femme fatale disguise like in the movie). Ariel obsesses even more, claiming that "I am here; I am with him; I see him every day. I will care for him, love him, give up my life for him!". Ariel, you have already given your life for him, your literal species by changing your body for him. You have lost your voice, left your home, family and friends for ever. You will literally lose your life, if he marries another woman. Healthy relationship indeed, from both fronts :S

 

-And while he actually doesn't owe her a lifelong romantic relationship either, and is entitled to moon over the girl he thinks saved him, Prince Dude also toys with her a lot. He takes her everywhere but doesn't seem to really care about her as a human being, as she's clearly there to be his companion, his therapist, his pretty favourite. He treats her like she's a child and at the same time kisses her randomly on the mouth. He treats her as his confidante when he speaks about his infatuation with the girl at the convent, and then says he would rather marry her, Ariel, than any other random princess his parents forced him to meet. And the way he phrases all this is pretty offensive - She's literally plan B in case he doesn't find the other girl. Also, he keeps calling her 'child' when he's just one year older than she is (17 vs 16), so WTF dude. And also keeps calling her 'dumb' in what he feels is an affectionate way, but sounds pretty ableist and fetishist af.

-So the prince meets the convent princess and immediately wants to marry her (why do everyone marry at first or second sight in these stories wtf?). Ariel's interaction with the princess is limited to her thinking about how beautiful her competition is. Entitled Prince has no qualms telling his plan B that he knows Ariel will be happy for him because he knows her priority is always him. Conclusion: Ariel now has to die because she wasn't chosen by the man. Agency? None.

 

-Also, it's interesting that Andersen was actually hating on the prince here as well because he was projecting big time on the Little Mermaid as a parallel to him being rejected by a woman who had had the audacity to say no to him, so he was resentful af lol. Andersen, my dude, the prince was entitled af and yes, he toyed with Ariel and treated her in a pretty shitty way. But he isn't obligated to be with her either! 

 

-Also, Andersen, my dude, stop telling women and girls love is about sacrifice, pain and literally losing your life and voice. What a terrible role model :S

-Ariel's sisters make their final appearance and go see Ariel to tell her that they've given up their hair to the Sea-Witch in order to save her from death (which is at least more female bonding and interaction between women than we see in the Disney version!). They tell her that in order to survive, though, she has to kill the prince, the person who didn't want to marry her, with an enchanted knife. Which doesn't sound like problematic at all either, the concept of killing a person because they didn't want to be with you romantically or sexually :S.

-Ariel isn't able to kill the prince to save herself, something which I do at least agree with (this would have been a super problematic analogy of the scorned person thinking they're entitled to kill the person who refused them, and it happens all too often as part of gender-based mysogyinistic male violence). But she can't return to the sea either, so she has to die because she didn't get love.Yay.

 

-And the bittersweet 'happy ending' is that her sweetness and goodness (which is not just about not killing the prince, but also about all the sacrifices, torment and tribulations she has gone through, of course) gains her a place among a series of air spirits who are able to gain the coveted eternal soul in Christian Heaven if they keep doing good actions for 300 years, maybe more :S You know, the general religious idea that if you 'behave correctly and virtuously' you gain happiness in the afterlife, as if behaving ethically and with integrity weren't a total valid imperative in and for itself that *gasp* non-religious people can be totally into without being promised an afterlife prize (Kant rules).

-And this kind of mindset bugs me so much not just because they're telling you that behaving ethically is cool because you'll get rewarded (and yet often religious people behave anything but ethically heh), or because the idea of 'the promise of an eternal soul in Heaven is what really matters and gives life value, and without it your past life wasn't worth it' (yeah nope). It also bugs me to no end because they're equating negative things such as needless sacrifice and pain, and toxic relationships based on self-denial and dependency, with behaving virtuously, and yeah, that's a terrible mindset.

 

-Finally, God requires these spirits to keep on suffering for whatever it is they did in their lives (not having an eternal soul in the first place?), and so what they already suffered in life isn't enough. Now they're also apparently to blame for the bad actions of children, of all things, and rewarded for their good behaviour. Excuse me, but why are they responsible for the behaviour of children now??

 

 I'm sorry, but with this kind of toxic baggage maybe I'd rather not sign in for the eternal soul offer, to be honest :S I also don't really applaud a mindset that teaches you to not appreciate your time of life (300 years in Ariel's case which she has now lost!) and that you have to ever be looking forward to what comes *after*, in the event that something ever does! So yeah, I'm at least glad that all the religious soul bullshit didn't make it in the Disney version, at least :S xD

 And finally, the IG storytime with more or less the same text content, but also including direct quotes and a bit more specifics (also here)

• Thumbelina:

 

 

 

 

• The Shepherdess and the Chimney Sweep

• The Snow Queen

• The Little Mermaid