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Counteracting the Fall "Sneedronningen" and "Iisjomfruen" The Problem of Adult Sexuality in Fairy tale and Story

2002; University of Illinois Press; Volume: 74; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

2163-8195

Susanne Kries, Thomas Krömmelbein,

Themes in Literature Analysis

IN ANDERSEN'S WORKS, a barrier exists that more often than not prevents the protagonists from experiencing adult sexual fulfillment. Indeed, even if this barrier is overcome by the denouement on the level of plot, somehow the reader doubts the authenticity of the putative sexual happiness because the resistance to growing up and enjoying the physical side of adult life seem to be entrenched in the texts. This is well known and serves only as my point of departure. What I want to look at here are the techniques of avoidance in two texts in which the barrier that prevents mature sexuality is openly explored: Sneedronningen [The Snow Queen] and Iisjomfruen [The Ice Maiden]. Sneedronningen begins with a cosmic prologue staging the opposition between God and the Devil and the latter's ability to harm the original goodness of man with the splinters of the enchanted mirror. The setting then shifts to a small idyllic ambience created by poor bourgeois parents in order to preserve benign nature within an urban milieu. Here the two children, Gerda and Kai, grow up in a humble earthly paradise. The advent of male puberty and the splinters of the mirror mean a fall/Fall and a break up of both the happy and innocent relationship between male and female children and the trust and love between the grandmother and the boy. Instead, little Kai is spellbound by the Snow Queen, a beautiful, mature woman incapable of caring and loving. Little Kai is, thus, not only kissed half to death by the Snow Queen, but her kisses also erase his memory of childhood, making it easy to hold him prisoner in the ice castle at the North Pole in Lapland. In Kai's case, the transformation is swift and irreparable as far as he is concerned since he cannot himself escape his confinement in eternal winter. The story of Gerda's quest and rescue of Kai, on the other hand, is divided into a series of adventures. Her quest begins with the sacrifice of her red shoes, which Kai never saw, to the river, a sacrifice that in Andersen's system of images means giving up selfishness, vanity, and sexual desire. The next stop in Gerda's quest is at the old woman's house. Here the old woman tries manner of ploys to make Gerda forget her mission, such as combing her hair with the comb of oblivion and by making the roses--the symbols of true love--disappear. She wants to hold Gerda prisoner as a child in eternal summer (all the flowers are blossoming simultaneously). However, the tears of pity that Gerda sheds make this attempt vain. Interestingly, the stories that the flowers tell her at the old woman's house are but one--the buttercup's story about love between grandmother and grandchild--about the transitory nature of happiness, the wrong way of loving, or the damning effects of erotic desire and longing. Three of these embedded stories are, notably, blatantly erotic: the tiger lily's about a sexual desire that burns hotter than the consuming fire of a funeral pyre. But Gerda answers the lily: Det forstaaer jeg slet ikke! (2:58) [I don't understand that at all (61)]. The hyacinth's story describes the fragrance that grows even stronger; and the account of the three sisters who vanish and die in the forest is laden with erotic overtones as well. In the last story, the protagonist, the narcissus-ballerina, is described as follows: hvor hun kneiser paa een Stilk! jeg kan see mig selv! jeg kan see mig slev! (2:61) [See how she stretches out her legs, as if she were showing off on a stem. I can see myself, I can see myself (62)]. It does not take much effort to infer what is also implied in this self-mirroring. At this point, then, Kai is imprisoned within the eternal winter of male pride and pubescent sexuality whereas Gerda barely escapes the imprisonment in eternal female childhood, a childhood, however, beset with erotic fantasies: to wit the curious passage: da fik hun en deilig Seng med rode Silkedyner, de vare stoppede med blaae Violer, og hun sov og dromte der saa deiligt, som nogen Dronning paa sin Bryllupsdag (2:57) [then she slept in an elegant bed with red silk pillows, embroidered with colored violets; and then she dreamed as pleasantly as a queen on her wedding day (60). …