Melinda Uno
K Sanders
Scandinavian 106: Hans Christian Andersen
5 October 2010
Object as Subject: Anthropomorphism in Two Tales
While Hans Christian Andersen became famous and iconic for his fairy tales, it is apparent thematically that he is critiquing the world he has witnessed. Using anthropomorphism, Andersen disguises the severity and gravity of the fates of some of his characters by declaring each individual to be non-human. The voice Andersen distributes to these objects give readers access to the more mature themes (i.e. growth, loss, shame, embarrassment) and exposes human vices (i.e. vanity, self pity). Most importantly, these objects serve as observers and lack agency (they are generally subject to the whims of others). Hans Christian Anderson uses the Bidungsroman formula to tell a story about the journeys of inanimate objects from a home unsatisfying to a foreign environment, back to a home-like environment. These personified objects possess unique voices that reflect their nature and function. These stories are appealing to children due to their fantastical nature and funny characters. However, the stories are not only targeted for children, as the objects are used as vessels for Andersen’s social commentary. Beginning with his autobiography and continuing through the stories “The Bottle” and “The Flying Trunk”, among others. Hans Christian Andersen with voice and syntax, uses objects as symbols to make poignant remarks about the nature he has observed in humanity.
In “The True Story of My Life”, one of Hans Christian Andersen’s autobiographies, the author exposes his humble beginnings and the effect of the world around him before he had the capacity to affect the world. Andersen describes a morbidity surrounding his infancy and childhood, beginning with a cradle made of a coffin: “Instead of a corpse... lay a child (wailing)” (1 “The True Story of my Life”). This early description of his first bed attributes qualities to his surroundings based on the bed’s previous intended function as a coffin. Andersen uses this narrative formula in many of his tales in which fictional storytellers are often vehicles through which we experience the history of an object, as found in “The Bottle” along with other stories. Hans Christian Andersen takes objects and turns them into the narrators of stories (most often their own). Andersen tracks the life journeys of different subjects to make objective statements about society and human nature. As seen in “The Princess and the Pea”, even the smallest object can have a huge impact and reveal the true nature of a person.
Part of what makes children’s literature aptly named is a common didactic element. It is, however, incorrect to assume that all Hans Christian Andersen’s didactic messages are aimed toward children, nor are all his children’s stories didactic. Hans Christian Andersen often frames his stories in a somewhat realistic setting and ends the story with a moral (even if the locations and events could not possibly exist except in one’s imagination). For example, the story “The Bottle” is entirely realistic except for the fact that most of the story is told from the bottle’s perspective: “The birds sang, and the passers-by down in the alley thought about their own problems or didn’t think at all, while the bottleneck reflected upon its life” (Andersen 493). This is also an example of Andersen’s subtle interjections regarding other people. Andersen seems a bit of a misanthrope as he states that some people do not think, and this type of after-thought is common. This humorous interjection may be lost on most child listener/readers who may take the story at face-value and understand the story to be primarily about the bottle itself or even the tangential love-story. Interestingly, the story does not extend beyond the observations of the bottle. Andersen stays true to the fact that the story is based on the experiences of the bottle, although there is another narrator commenting on the nature of the bottle: “When they arrived in the forest the young couple went for a walk alone, and what did they talk about? Well the bottle never knew, for he had stayed in the picnic basket” (Andersen 494). Although the bottle can tell a story like a person, the bottle is still a bottle. The bottle is not animated, it cannot climb out of the basket and speak to the couple nor can it say anything to the bird who bathes in it.
Andersen takes a real thing and keeps it realistic; the bottle still serves the function of a bottle, but is now personified (an element at the core of anthropomorphism), and has emotions, thoughts, and experiences. The bottle cannot know anything it hasn’t directly encountered, and even what the bottle has encountered, it does not always remember or comprehend; the bottle is not omniscient, it is actualized and individualized. The bottle’s knowledge is also limited because it is subject to the constraints of the culture of its origin; the bottle understands the language spoken where it was created: “It was a foreign country, the bottle didn’t understand a word of what was said; and that was most irritating. You miss so much when you don’t understand the language (Andersen 496). The narrator interjects here regarding the lack of understanding of one’s immediate environment. This is a way for Andersen to explain a sociological concept to a child using subjects that are easily understood. The bottle is already regarded as foreign because of the illustrative descriptions of the bottle’s appearance and because everything the bottle interacts with is an animal or person. An interesting aspect of utilizing an object as the subject of this story is the longevity of the bottle. The bottle does not live and die by conventional means, it is created, “blown into life”, and continues to exist as long as it is partially intact. This quality allows the bottle to witness the events of many generations which provides the reader with an optimum narrator.
True to the popularity of romantic literary trends influencing Andersen’s life and writing, many of Andersen’s stories are grandiose tales of kings, princesses, foreign lands and magical transformation, yet the means by which we encounter these elements are through the perspectives and experiences of seemingly ordinary and unimportant objects. True to this form and echoing the bidungsroman, “The Flying Trunk” first tells the story of a merchant and his wealth, the story of his son and how he lost that wealth, and then how the son travels only to end up right where he began. In this case, the trunk is literally a vehicle transporting an ordinary and impoverished young man to ‘the land of the Turks’. Part of the beauty of Andersen’s tales is the simplicity and certainty used to depict complex and uncertain ideas. For example, as the merchant’s son discovers the magical use for the trunk: “It was a strange trunk; if you pressed on the lock, then it could fly. This is what the merchant’s son did, and away it carried him” (Andersen 145). There is no explanation as to how the trunk accomplishes this feat, a logical oversight that undoubtedly would not be popular in more mature texts. In Andersen’s worlds, things can be completely imaginative, providing there is enough plot and plausible characters.
The meta-story of the matches turns the merchant’s son into a story teller, and subsequently turns the objects within the stories into storytellers as well: “The matches lay on a shelf between a tinderbox and an old iron pot; and to them they told the story of their childhood and youth...” (Andersen 147). The story told by the matches reveal their personality as “aristocrats” and parallels that of the merchant’s son, for the matches end up burning out quickly just as the merchant son is quick to spend his inheritance and just as the flying trunk ends up in ashes after a short bout of glory. Each mini-narrative is told in a tone that mimics the way an object looks, its function, or its composition. The iron pot, for example, is practical: “I do the solid, most important work here, and should be counted first among you all. My only diversion is to stand properly cleaned on the shelf and engage in a dignified conversation with my friends. We are all proper stay-at-homes here, except the water bucket... and the market basket. She brings us news from the town, but as far as I am concerned it is all disagreeable” (147). The iron pot is most likely a staple in the kitchen and enjoys its aesthetically pleasing qualities (shine of proper cleaning) and repeatedly emphasizes what is ‘proper’ and ‘dignified’. The iron pot is possibly a caricature of a person of the bourgeois or white-collar working class as manners of society are reflected upon. Similarly the tinderbox is grumpy, the earthenware pot used every day tells of everyday things, the plates are excitable and clatter in unison, the feather duster interrupts and is self-serving, and the black tongs dance. The pen logically suggests that the bird should sing when the samovar will not due to pride: “True, his voice is untrained; but his song has pleasing naive simplicity about it” (149). The mannerisms, styles of speech, and movement of the objects valued for their everyday use contrast with the nature of the samovar, the pen, and the tea kettle. These latter objects are more refined and are more often owned by people of some success and their opinions reflect a haughty disposition. This is a simple way Andersen creates a hierarchy among the objects even though the objects themselves have no society through which world can be filtered except the one based upon their function.
Perhaps Andersen is self-projecting his own story onto the stories of these objects. Andersen’s autobiography reveals humble beginnings, but under blessed circumstances he has had access to global fame and popularity. It is easier for Andersen to make fun of the character of peoples of different socio-economic statuses (particularly his patrons, members of the nobility, etc.) if his explicit observations are turned into comical, exaggerated depictions of everyday things. Andersen repeatedly uses storytellers as narrators within a frame story and perhaps each of these storytellers reflects something about Andersen himself as he uses his stories to reflect human nature and society.
Works Cited
Andersen, Christian Hans. ""The Bottle"" Hans Christian Andersen: the Complete Fairy Tales and Stories. Trans. Erik Christian Haugaard. New York: Anchor, 1983. 492-500. Print.
Andersen, Christian Hans. ""The Flying Trunk"" Hans Christian Andersen: the Complete Fairy Tales and Stories. Trans. Erik Christian Haugaard. New York: Anchor, 1983. 145-150. Print.
Andersen, Christian Hans. The True Story of My Life. 1846. Chapters 1-3