thumbelina
A childless woman seeks the help of a fairy in order to have a child and the fairy gives her a “barleycorn” (you know, that old predictable beginning to a story). After the woman plants the barley seed, a flower grows in which there is a tiny little girl whom she names Thumbelina. Tiny Thumbelina is so small that she sleeps in a walnut shell and uses a tulip leaf as a boat when she plays in water. But her sweet childhood in her family home doesn’t last long. She is stolen away by an ugly toad to be married off to the toad’s even uglier son. Some fish help Thumbelina escape this unfortunate situation and, for a time, she lives alone until the seasons change and the winter conditions are too harsh for her. Eventually, she seeks shelter with a field mouse who introduces her to an old blind mole. The mole takes her to his underground tunnel where Thumbelina encounters a swallow that the mole tells her is dead. Thumbelina takes pity on the bird and, when everyone else is sleeping, sneaks back underground to cover it with a blanket she made out of hay. The blanket warms the bird and it turns out that it was not actually dead, just very cold and unwell, so Thumbelina nurses it back to health in secret. When spring comes she releases the swallow and resigns to stay with the field mouse rather than leaving with her new bird friend. Unbeknownst to little Thumbelina the field mouse has gone ahead and arranged her marriage to the mole. Thumbelina is beside herself, she doesn’t want to marry the mole and, to add insult to injury, she learns that after the wedding she will have to move underground with him and never see sunlight again. She tries to refuse but the mouse tells her she has no choice. So guess what our tiny heroine does? When her old bud the swallow comes back for a visit she hops on his back and escapes! They fly south to get away from the impending winter and the upcoming marriage she did not consent to. Now, that’s a “happily ever after” I can get behind!
I guess a fairy tale can’t end without a wedding, so there’s more. Once they arrive down south Thumbelina chooses where she wants to live and meets a tiny fairy prince whom she likes. When he proposes she accepts and is very happy that he asked if she wanted to marry him rather than just telling her that she has to (like the mole and the toad had done). She changes her name to Maya (a fresh start) and is given a pair of wings so she can fly around freely. The end is kind of Meta and was a surprise to me: the swallow flies back to Denmark and winds up in “a nest 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.” So I suppose we can assume that Hans Christian Andersen was inspired to write this story because of one bird’s song.
I guess a fairy tale can’t end without a wedding, so there’s more. Once they arrive down south Thumbelina chooses where she wants to live and meets a tiny fairy prince whom she likes. When he proposes she accepts and is very happy that he asked if she wanted to marry him rather than just telling her that she has to (like the mole and the toad had done). She changes her name to Maya (a fresh start) and is given a pair of wings so she can fly around freely. The end is kind of Meta and was a surprise to me: the swallow flies back to Denmark and winds up in “a nest 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.” So I suppose we can assume that Hans Christian Andersen was inspired to write this story because of one bird’s song.