The Snow Queen

One of the most famous stories recorded by Hans Christian Andersen’s is The Snow Queen. Moreover, it is also notable that this story breaks several fairy tail conventions, as discussed by Mari Ness on her blog. In the present post, I will consider some of her analyses and offer my interpretation and comments on them. 

First, on the appearance of the troll in the story, Ness states that the fact that the troll goes unpunished can be explained by the fact that 

"By 1840, [Andersen] had witnessed many people getting away with cruel and unkind behavior, and although he was certainly more than willing to punish his own protagonists, even overly punish his own protagonists, he often allowed the monsters of his stories to go unpunished."

While I believe that this is a fair argument, and that it may well be the case that it is an accurate explanation of why Andersen's stories are the way that they are, I would also like to offer an alternative interpretation of why evil goes unpunished in some of Anderson's stories. In particular, by noting that Andersen was writing near the end of the industrial era, in an age when the relations of production were changing significantly, it is possible to argue that Andersen was trying to depict an impersonal, structural evil that was always simply going to be persistent. To elaborate, we know that during the industrial revolution, there were significant disparities in wealth and widespread suffering, and that hard-working individuals may well be condemned to a life of poverty. 

There is something very unjust not simply about the circumstances of these people, but also the entire structure of society. In other words, it is an impersonal evil that originates not form individuals but rather from relations between individuals. Consider now the sources of evil in The Snow Queen: it is the troll and the Snow Queen herself. Both characters have supernatural aspects which reduce their humanity, and give readers a sense that these are impersonal, supernatural forces that are causing suffering. Indeed, Andersen seems to be arguing that the best we can wish for is the bittersweet ending that appears in the story; that we as individuals can only simply hope to survive in an unjust society, and that the option of defeating the evil inherent within the cultures of our cultures is an impossibility. 

Ness also states that one of her favorite exchanges 

“….Cannot you give this little maiden something which will make her as strong as twelve men, to overcome the Snow Queen?”

“The Power of twelve men!” said the Finland woman. “That would be of very little use.”

Which excellently illustrates my point. 

Now, if we allow ourselves to entertain the notion that the story is actually about the journey of two people battling a structural evil, we can then see what Andersen's suggested strategy is for this battle. In particular, I agree with Ness on the point that the story focuses on faith and love as the things that help individuals through their lives. In Ness's words

What does turn out to be of use: saying the Lord’s Prayer, which, in an amazing scene, converts Gerda’s frozen breath into little angels that manage to defeat the living snowflakes that guard the Snow Queen’s palace [...] with the power of her love, her tears, and her prayers finally breaking through the cold rationality that imprisons him, showing him the way to eternity at last.

Moreover, we note that there is an explicit rejection of reason and it's achievements in Andersen's narrative. If anything, we may interpret the Snow Queen as well as the Shards that entered Kay's heart, as metaphors for Reason. Ness believes that this position is inherently anti-intellectual, and argues that 

this defeat of reason, of intellectualism by love doesn’t quite manage to ring true. For one thing, several minor characters also motivated by love [...] end up dead, while the Snow Queen herself, admirer of mathematics and reason, is quite alive. For another thing, as much as Kay is trapped by reason and intellectualism as he studies a puzzle in a frozen palace, Gerda’s journey is filled with its own terrors and traps and disappointments, making it a little tricky for me to embrace Andersen’s message here. And for a third thing, that message is more than a bit mixed in other ways: on the one hand, Andersen wants to tell us that the bits from the mirror that help trap little Kay behind ice and puzzles prevent people from seeing the world clearly. On the other hand, again and again, innocent little Gerda—free of these little bits of glass—fails to see things for what they are. This complexity, of course, helps add weight and depth to the tale, but it also makes it a bit harder for the ending to ring true.

I disagree with Ness's position, and would like to argue that instead of being anti-reason, Andersen's story simply shows us that reason needs to be complemented with faith, emotion, and innocence if it is to produce desirable results. To elaborate, in addition to creating huge structural inequalities, the societies undergoing industrialization also created rational, intellectual arguments to justify those inequalities. In this sense, reason is quite literally being used as a tool to justify horrors that our emotion and conscience would find unbearable. 

Put in this context, Andersen's argument that reason alone is not enough, that it needs to be complemented, becomes more respectable. What exactly should then complement reason? It seems that intuition and emotion may not be enough, rather, faith, particularly in the form of organized religion, may provide better guidance, at least in Andersen's view. This idea is not without merit, considering that most of western society was organized around religion for most of its history. We see the importance of religion to Andersen at the end of the story when he states that 

The grandmother sat in God’s bright sunshine, and she read aloud from the Bible, “Except ye become as little children, ye shall in no wise enter into the kingdom of God.” And Kay and Gerda looked into each other’s eyes, and all at once understood the words of the old song. 

In addition to this direct allusion to the Bible, the very idea of innocence is also prominent throughout the book. This is important since in the Bible, men's original sin was not something so bad as murder or rape, but rather knowledge and the loss of innocence. Indeed, it is precisely knowledge and reason that allows horrors of the greatest scale to occur (think holocaust, the soviet state, and nuclear weapons). With reason alone can we create social and scientific structures that are capable of perpetrating mass murder and destruction, and it is all that we can do with reason alone. 

In contrast to the rather "new" reason of the enlightenment, there is the "old" religion which in a way may be understood as a distillation of human experience and knowledge throughout time, or, in other words, wisdom. It would seem that Andersen sees this as the perfect complement to reason and intelligence; indeed, the type of wisdom we find in scripture is not so different from the wisdom contained in fairy tales, myths, and folklore. 

Now, Ness offers a few arguments against the "defeat of reason by love," and while I agree with the details of her argument, I think she is missing Andersen's point and is arguing against something that Andersen isn't trying to convey. If we interpret Andersen's message as "reason and logic of the intellect must be combined with the wisdom of lived experiences as diluted within religion" then the very fact that characters who fully embrace emotions end up dead no longer contradict Andersen's message. 

Having voiced my disagreements with Ness, I would like to articulate a final agreement that I have with her - that the triumph of marginalized characters is one reason why the tale is so attractive. Indeed, the story of the underdog, whether in modern sports or in the story of David versus Goliath, has always captivated our attentions. The underdog story is one that provides us with hope and therefore the will to go forward. I think Ness said it perfectly when she wrote 

But for young readers, “The Snow Queen” does have one compelling factor: it depicts a powerless child triumphing over an adult. Oh, certainly, Gerda gets help along the way. But notably, quite a lot that help comes from marginalized people—a robber, two witches, and two crows. It offers not just a powerful argument that love can and should overcome reason, but the hope that the powerless and the marginalized can triumph. That aspect, the triumph of the powerless, is undoubtedly why generations have continued to read the tale, and why Disney, after several missteps, transformed its core into a story of self-actualization.