Fairy Tale Flip Ep 10: The Girl Who Trod on a Loaf

Have you ever read a fairy tale, and wanted to better understand what it really meant? Get ready to dive into the dark and captivating world of Hans Christian Andersen's "The Girl Who Trod on a Loaf" in Episode 10 of Fairy Tale Flip! Join us, Donna Fields and Vanessa Rogers as we unravel the complex symbolism of bread, sin, and redemption in this lesser-known tale. Discover how Andersen's character-driven narratives differ from the Grimm brothers' traditional fairy tales, and explore the story's curious ending where the selfish Inger is transformed into a bird and is thought to fly towards heaven. This episode is packed with rich discussions on Andersen's literary influence, moral lessons, and why his tales continue to resonate today. Don't miss it!

Links:
The Girl Who Trod on a Loaf Full Story
The Girl Who Trod on a Loaf by Kathryn Davis

Notes:

• 🧚 Introduction and Background (00:09 - 11:06)
• Donna Fields and Vanessa Rogers discussing Hans Christian Andersen's 'The Girl Who Trod on a Loaf'
• Story summary: Inger, a selfish girl, uses bread meant for her poor mother as stepping stones
• Inger sinks into hell/marsh for her actions
• Andersen's stories differ from Grimm fairy tales in themes and archetypes
• Andersen's biography: Danish author, shoemaker's son, possible bisexual orientation
• Andersen's stories often feature social climbing, rich vs. poor themes
• 🍞 Symbolism and Themes (11:06 - 22:24)
• Bread symbolism: sustenance, covenant with God, important in religion and society
• Inger's disrespect of bread leads to divine punishment
• Devil's grandmother character introduced
• Christian themes of sin, repentance, and divine punishment in Andersen's stories
• Ambiguous ending: Inger redeemed as a bird, not restored to human form
• 👹 Character Analysis and Comparisons (22:24 - 32:55)
• Inger not a likable protagonist, unlike typical fairy tale heroines
• Empathetic girl who saves Inger through prayer and tears
• Comparison to Grimm tales: Andersen's characters often not redeemed on Earth
• Discussion of modern adaptations of the story (opera, novel)
• 📚 Literary Context and Influence (32:55 - 43:19)
• Timeline of fairy tale authors: Perrault, Grimm brothers, Andersen, Jacobs
• Andersen influenced by Grimm and Danish folk tales
• 20 out of 48 of Andersen's best-known fairy tales end in death
• Andersen's tendency to make characters suffer more than in other fairy tales
• 🖨️ Publishing Culture and Impact (43:19 - 54:02)
• 18th-19th century: fairy tales disapproved, focus on moral lessons for children
• Andersen's imaginative stories were groundbreaking in their time
• Andersen's writing style and use of language influential in children's literature

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Transcript

Donna: 0:08

Your rich mother tells you that you have to visit a very poor relative and it disgusts you. You're disgusted. You don't want to do it. What is the worst, most disrespectful thing you can do that ends up causing you to go to hell? Okay, I'm Donna Fields, and I'm here with the incredible Vanessa y. Rogers. And we are going to explore a girl who trod on a loaf. And this is exactly what happens in the fairy tale by Hans Christian Andersen. Vanessa and I both love to find parts of the danish writers and Christian Andersen stories. We think this is fascinating. His stories, especially because they don't follow the usual motifs and they don't usually have the same archetypes in the fairy tales that we know best from the brothers Grimm. And we're going to talk about a little bit of the difference. And the brothers Grimm. Usually there's a male hero, usually a prince, who thinks he needs to make big gestures to validate himself. There's usually a female heroine who's seemingly weak. Princess. And then there's a character who drives everyone crazy, who's usually a witch or the stepmother. So in fairy tale flip. Welcome. Vanessa and I love throwing the stories on their backs and looking at the underbellies to see what's being hidden so that they can add a lot to all of our understanding. More of ourselves, not just of them, but of ourselves. Today, Vanessa is going to take a break from her fantastic podcast, fabric of folklore. And I'm taking a break from mine doorways to learning. Because we're sure that you are going to love what we found out about this tale. The girl who trod on a loaf by hand, Christian Andersen. And wondering what choices you would make that could throw you into the fires of hell. Ready to get started? And before we go, for those of you who haven't listened to Vanessa and her incredibly adorable children, read the story. You can find them both on her YouTube channel and my YouTube channel. We'll put those in the notes. Vanessa is going to give us a summary of the story right now. What do you say, Vanessa?

Vanessa: 2:16

Yes, and I am a little nervous about giving this summary because it is a long story. I think it's about 3000 words. Hans Christian Andersen is not a short writer. He writes very elongated stories and he really likes to add in a lot of details. So I'm going to try and summarize the story as best as I can. Alright, so there's a little girl. Her name is Inger. Sometimes she's called Inge. I'm just going to call her Inge. And basically, she is very selfish. She's selfish, she's prideful, she's arrogant to, and she lacks empathy. And she lives in a very poor family. And one way that Anderson shows that she's not empathetic is that she likes to hurt bugs. She likes to take flies and tear their wings off of them. And at one point, she is adopted by a wealthier family. I think it's more of a foster home situation because her family is quite poor. But so she moves into a wealthy family's home, and she's adorned with beautiful clothing and beautiful shoes, and she becomes even more arrogant about her looks. And she's ashamed of her bio family's situation. And so once her adopted mother says, go visit your mother, I'm sure she misses you. She goes and she watches her mother from afar, but is too ashamed of her mother to go visit her. And once again, a few months later, her adopted mother says, you need to go take these loaves of bread that I baked to your mother because I'm sure she misses you. And this would be very welcome for her. She's not a wealthy person. And so Inga goes towards her mother's village, and she has the loaves of bread, and she comes across a bog or a marsh, and she doesn't want to get her beautiful shoes dirty. So instead of walking through the mud, she uses the loaves of bread that are intended for her mother as stepping stones. And as she's walking across the marsh, she gets stuck. And the marsh woman pulls on the loaf of bread and pulls her down into the marsh. And a lot of different things happen in this space, but basically, Inga is turned into a statue and she can't move. And she's covered insects and bugs, and a lot of these bugs don't have wings on them, mind you, to reminisce about all of the torture that she did to these creatures as a child, mind you, she still is a child. And she says, how can I endure this? But she must. And she endures it for years and years. And people start to sing songs, especially children start to sing songs about Inga and about how her wickedness and her arrogance and her pride got her taken down by the marsh woman. And so no one feels sorry for her except for her bio mom and this one little girl, whom Inga has never met but has heard the song and the story about Inga and feels dreadfully sorry for her. And she cries tears. And Inga is sitting there at a statue. And she just feels sorry for herself. She feels no remorse for her actions. She just feels sorry for herself. So years and years pass by in this horrible state, in purgatory or hell. And then as an old woman, this young girl who felt sorry for Inga, says a prayer for Inga, and she. Her tears fall down once again, and Inga starts to feel bad about her actions. She starts to feel remorse, and something happens, and she's turned into a bird, and she's released from hell. And as a bird, around Christmas time, she starts to become generous and starts to make sure when humans are spreading out crumbs for the birds, she starts to pass them out to other birds. And when she passes out enough bread crumbs to equal the amount of loaves she was intended to give to her mother, she then flies into the yonder, and it is believed that she is redeemed and has flown into heaven. And that is the end of the girl who trod on a loaf. So I personally wanted to do this story because I found it so incredibly bizarre. What were your reactions, Donna?

Donna: 7:06

Well, I think I mentioned that I really didn't want to analyze it at first, and I really tried to skim over it, and I was successful for a few months. And then you asked me which one I'd like to do, and I looked. I again saw the title. I thought, this is just too different. It's just too fascinating. We've got to figure out why it's popular, why he wrote it, what's it all about? And then I started getting really interested. So, yeah, I think what are some.

Vanessa: 7:36

Things that really stuck out for you?

Donna: 7:40

You know, it's what I began with that it's so different than the fairy tales that I'm used to, where everything mostly is. Everything ends happily in the Grimm's fairy tales, not the way they wrote it, but the versions that we're used to now. And with Hans Christian Emerson, I think we need to talk about this, is that many of his fairy tales do not end happily. And he's sort of vindictive, mostly about the heroines in his story. And so how about if we, I wonder if we talk about his life briefly? Briefly, then maybe it will shine some light on why his heroines so vindictive to them. What do you think?

Vanessa: 8:15

Yeah, absolutely. Why don't you go ahead and start, and then I'll jump in.

Donna: 8:20

Okay. Well, I. No, actually, I'd rather you give a little history of him, because then I just have a couple of things to insert, because what I'd like to do also after you give us a little bit of history, is compare his writing to the Brothers Grimm. So do you mind giving us a little bit of history of him?

Vanessa: 8:39

Sure. So he is born into. He's danish, so of Denmark, and his father is a shoemaker. And you will see there are several in his stories, there are several highlights of shoes. And people think that is partially why he. So his father dies at the age of eleven. His mother is supposedly an alcoholic and is sister, they believe becomes a prostitute, probably because when you are in poverty, there are very few options for unmarried women. Right. And so at a very young age, he is intended to. He has to basically take care of himself, I believe, at the age of 14. And he joins a theater and he really wants to, like, act and sing, but he isn't. He's told his. Not all that great, but he is. Someone told him that he is good at poetry. And so he starts out at poetry, and then he's kind of sponsored by another wealthy family, and he's sent off to a sort of boarding school, I think, around the age of 19, and. But it's a terrible experience for him. I'm not really clear what all happens there, but he really dislikes it. But he does get an education through it, and then he becomes a travel writer. He writes novels, but he really, his claim to fame is that he is considered the father of the literary fairy tale, and he's considered Denmark's greatest author. And so that's where most people know his name, Hans Christian Andersen, because he's written over 150 fairy tales, 48 of which are still in modern circulation. And I read at one point that there is a historian who actually believes that he was the illegitimate son of the current, of the king of the time, but it was not able to be proved.

Donna: 10:55

See, this is why I love. This is why I hand it over to you, Vanessa, because you're always so good with the details, and I like to just go for the anecdotes. Is one of them, is that. Yeah, there's a theory that he's the illegitimate son of the king, and as you say, there's nothing proving it. And when I read further, what most people say about the king is that he treated his illegitimate children very well, and that's not what we see about Hans Christian Andersen's childhood. So let's cross that off. Probably the other thing that I think is kind of salient is that he was kind of known to be homosexual.

Vanessa: 11:37

Which is not I think he's actually bisexual because he falls in love with women and men and he kind of like. So I think he's actually bisexual.

Donna: 11:47

Very possible. What I read about women is that he might have been bisexual because he did marry and I think. But he didn't enjoy sex or didn't have sex, at least with women. And there was this whole controversy and the one anecdote I kind of like, and hopefully nobody is going to sue me over saying this, he was obsessed. He met Charles Dickens, and he loved Charles Dickens writing. And first they bonded over their mutual admiration for the work of the other one. And then he went to visit Charles Dickens at his home. And it was only supposed to be a very short visit and it ended up being five weeks. And they ended up asking him to leave the family, him. And so me, I, my connection is that he probably fell in love with Charles Dickens and it was very uncomfortable. And he just said, get out, please. So I just think that's kind of a funny part of an incredible writer's history, his past.

Vanessa: 12:44

Well, and I think that you highlighted, you know, several things that I came across in that he was really unlucky in love. He fell in love with a lot of unattainable individuals and he just never really found a match. And he seemed to be a romantic, but he never really had success in his own relationships. He comes across, and I haven't read, there's a recent biography that was written about him. He wrote his own autobiography, but there was a recent biography of him. And it seems that he has, he comes across as needy and kind of strange and he's kind of a social climber, although he also sees that as a weakness in himself. He's very self aware of his own weaknesses, which is interesting. He wrote in some of his letters, my nasty vanity sneaks in. He wrote that while he was staying at the boarding school. And then he also says something. There is a kind of unpleasant dreaminess in me, something restless and impulsive in my soul. And he loves traveling. And he goes across Europe. He writes several travel logs. And he stays with a lot of people from german royalty, small kingdoms, and he stays with their families and he tells stories, but he just comes, kind of comes across as kind of a strange guy. My interpretation of my reading of him. What did you see?

Donna: 14:28

Yeah, I mean, it's obvious. It's obvious that he was not your normal kind of either. Middle, mid, you know, the middle class, poor, rich. He was all over the place. He had incredible talent. And trying to find his way. And I think that's what we see in his stories. So how about if we see if we can connect that to what his stories represent? Because there are actually some really important messages in his stories. And how about if we start with the difference between it's a comfort level. When you ask me what I thought about the story, the comfort level for me is that I grew up with the Grimm brothers versions, and in the Grimm brothers, there's usually transformative power of good and resilience. And with Hans Christian Andersen, it's a little different. He's really involved, like you were saying, with shoes, because his father was a shoemaker. It's all, it's very often about social climbing and about the discrepancy with how the rich treat the poor and how he's really against that. Anderson really likes to explore character development and the transformative power of love. So what do you see about the messages, the most important messages in his stories?

Vanessa: 15:44

A lot of times the characters start out in poverty like he did, and they, a lot of people indicated that a lot of his stories feel autobiographical. The ugly duckling is one of those that maybe might be one that we consider exploring later on, but that one is supposedly his story. That's how he felt as an ugly duckling, which I thought was interesting. And then the quote that I said earlier, my vanity, my nasty vanity, sneaks in. This is really evident in this story. The girl who trod on a loaf, because Inga, that is one of her main flaws, right? And he sees that as a weakness in himself, and he's passing it on to his heroine in the story. I also really like that there are so many female characters which you don't often see in a lot of fairy tales. You see a witch and you see a poor, hapless, helpless heroine. But there are so many female characters and a lot of his fairy tales, and they kind of, some of them are more ambiguous. So it's interesting.

Donna: 17:04

It's really interesting. You've highlighted a lot of themes that are really particular to his style. There's a lot of the norms and values of 19th century danish society. And so that's a little different than the comfort level we have with the Grimm's tale, which is different culture. And, of course, we probably read versions that are adapted to more western style cultures. But his stories often seem to be a warning to readers against pride and vanity. And that's exactly what we see in a girl who trod on a loaf. Let's go into just quickly, because we're going to backtrack to more of themes. But the bread. I mean, the bread is so important, Vanessa, and I know that you looked a little bit into bread, so why is it that she sunk into hell by stepping on a loaf of bread? What did you find?

Vanessa: 17:56

Right. That is really interesting. Let me find what I was talking about. I found an entire article that really highlighted the importance of bread in fairy tales in general. Because if you think back to, you know, the first one that comes to mind is Hansel and Gretel, because they use breadcrumbs to find their way back. But you find bread in a lot of different stories, and you also find it in a lot of religions. It's not a new combination. Certainly. The Egyptians, the Greeks and the Romans, multiple gods, each related to the process of bread. Jesus declares, I am the bread of life. He that cometh to me shall never hunger, and he that believeth on me shall never thirst. Bread is what everybody in all social classes eat, and it's incredibly important for those of the lower classes, because sometimes that is all they have to eat.

Donna: 18:50

That's their sustenance. That's right.

Vanessa: 18:52

That's their sustenance. So it has this interesting place in society in that it is both MUndane, but it is also incredibly important. Right. So it is. The making of bread is ritualistic, but is also something that you have to do every day in order to survive. And so the FaCt that she threw in this sustenance, that would have been so incredibly important to her mother to save her shoes. Right. That really says something about who Ingo was, because she knows that her mother is hungry. She knows that her mother is poor and is in desperate need. And instead of being thoughtful and generous, she's completely selfish in this thought process. And so I think that readers of that time period would have been much more aghast than we are in modern days, because to us, bread is just, you know, something that is easily obtainable at the grocery store for $2. It's no skin off our back. Right. But in those time periods, bread was incredibly important. So, I mean, I feel like it's just. It's an important note to change your mindset about what the meaning of bread was to the people of that time.

Donna: 20:18

And I'd just like to add a couple of bits more, because you covered it really well. The bread in the Bible is the covenant with God. And Hans Christian Andersen has many strong christian themes in his stories. So we really need to pay attention to the fact that she did sink into hell in the story, because through a piece of bread, her disrespect was so strong in christian themes. If bread is a covenant with God and she puts bread in a bog so that it's inedible only to save her appearance, then he's highlighting the disrespect. I mean, Hans Christian Andersen is, has, in most of his stories, he has this sin and repentance and divine punishment. And those are all very important because he wants to highlight a virtuous life. And so it makes sense then that she literally sinks into hell. And by the way, the great grandmother of Satan, the marsh woman is the great grandmother of Satan. So it's a big statement that she, that bread takes her down into hell. And the great grandmother asks Satan if she can have the girl. She's given permission. And that's when she's turned into a statue, watching everything above and not able to do anything.

Vanessa: 21:35

Let's talk about the grandmother, because I thought that was really interesting, and I was really confused when I came across a note about the devil's great grandmother, because in my original telling, that is on both of our YouTube channels. Just a note. If you're enjoying this, make sure you hit subscribe. Does not mention the great, the devil's great grandmother in that story. And so I had to go back and find a version that included that. And so the version I found actually said, the marsh woman and the devil's grandmother, or great grandmother, with two entirely different people. The marsh woman stays there. And at one point, let me see if I can find it. Oh, I found it. Okay. This is the quote of the marsh woman was at home, for the brewery was being visited that day by the devil and his great grandmother. The latter a very poisonous old creature who was never idle. She never goes out without taking some needlework with her. And she had brought some this time she was sewing bits of leather to put in people's shoes so that they would have no rest. She embroidered lies and worked up into mischief and slander, thoughtless words that would otherwise have fallen harmlessly to the ground. Yes, she could sew, embroider and weave that old great grandmother. She saw Inger then put on her spectacles and looked again at her. That girl has talent. She said, let me have her as a souvenir of my visit here. She will make a suitable statue in my great grandchild's antechamber. And. And she was given to her. So she actually goes and asks the marsh woman for Inga as a statue decoration for her antechamber for the devil himself. So if you get confused when listening to the story, my original telling doesn't include that element.

Donna: 23:33

It's just one of the versions. It's a wonderful version you read, but in some versions, the rich mother is the biological mother. So it all depends on what version you read. Let's talk about the fact that. Let me see, there's a couple of the ambiguous ending. Hans Christian Andersen, most of his stories were original, but in this case, it was a song. It was a popular song in Denmark at that time. And in the song, she stayed in hell, Inga stayed in hell, but hence Christian Andersen loves the idea of redemption and so brought her out, although you notice that she was never restored to human form. She lived as a bird and then went seemingly into heaven as a bird. So I thought that was important. Also you from hell, but you're not going to go and have this perfect life afterwards.

Vanessa: 24:31

Right. And at the very beginning of the story, he actually quotes and says, you might have heard of the. Of the vain little girl and Ingrae. And then he goes on to tell the tale. So, yes, I had. I wasn't clear if it was a song or if it was a story, but, yes, I had found that it was. It originally ended in hell, but Anderson didn't like to necessarily end there. He liked to have the redemption. But as you were saying before, his characters often are not redeemed on earth, whereas in Grimm's fairy tales, the happy ending or the. The justice happens on earth, which I thought was also interesting, and a lot of people noted that his version of the Little Mermaid, he also took from an original tale of the Little Mermaid, and he changed that as well, I believe the original ending of the Little Mermaid, she floats off as sea foam. But in his version, and I haven't read it through, so I really need to go back and look at it. But she evidently trades her. She trades her life to do good deeds or something of that nature for 300 years and then goes into heaven. But once again, she is not redeemed on earth. She's not, you know, it doesn't happen during her lifetime. So this is a theme, and this.

Donna: 26:08

Is interesting also, because, again, I'm going to go back to the first question you asked. Why did. What did I think of the story in the beginning? She's not a likable character. In a lot of fairy tales, you're rooting for the heroine. You don't root for her. She takes her till the very end of the story. And this is decades and decades later, to actually think about other people. What I'd love to talk about is the girl who was so empathetic that she saved Inga, literally, because Inga didn't save herself. It was this girl's empathetic approach. What do you think about that? What do you think the message is, if you thought about it? If not, you know, we can just talk about it lightly. But the only, you know, Inga's watching life go by, literally, and there's only one girl out of everyone in her village over, I think, a hundred year Spanish that actually has empathy for her. What is your take on that?

Vanessa: 27:07

You know, I mean, I didn't really think very deeply on it, except for to say, like, how wonderful of a person to be able to see through what everyone else around you is telling you about this warning story and see the real person. Right. See that she actually is a person who has feelings and. And to see past the veil of the social constructs. Right. So. And to. And it's not just as a child. She continues to think about Inga throughout her entire life. So that really struck me in that it wasn't just a fleeting moment. It was throughout her entire life. She feels this pain for Inga.

Donna: 27:57

I love that Vanessa. I love it because she did it on her own volition, and it went against what everyone else was saying about Inga, and nobody encouraged her to be empathetic. There's one little note that I made that I thought, you're going to appreciate this, because were talking about shoes, and what she did is put herself inga's shoes. I know the expression actually fits here, but I think part of the message there, because it is such an important part of the story, even though it's not given a lot of attention, is that Hans Christian Andersen wants us to consider the consequences of the actions on people around us, the bad and the good, and only because of this woman was on her deathbed and shed tears for Inga. So it is actually very important part of the story again. And I'm impressed with Inga, but I'm impressed with that girl.

Vanessa: 28:52

Yeah, exactly. Exactly. And I think that you're right. That's a really important message that Anderson is trying to relay. At least I hope that's a. What he's trying to relay. That's what I'm reading into it, at least, is that you can't just believe what society tells you. You can have your own feelings and thoughts about what's going on, and you can empathize even with a person who might be constructed as evil or bad, and you can still empathize with them. And so I think that's an important note.

Donna: 29:32

Yeah, I think that's really important. What about newer versions? There are a lot of. There's an opera about this. There are novels, there's one novel by Katherine Davis that within the novel, the protagonist writes an opera.

Vanessa: 29:51

Yes. Talk about that. Because I actually didn't do a whole lot of research into the modernization versions of it. I did see that there is someone who did a modern storybook of it, but I have, and I did see that when the novel mentioned multiple times, but I didn't really look into it.

Donna: 30:08

Yeah, I read the whole thing, and then I just made a few notes, and I didn't make enough notes to explain it really well, but it was really just the memoirs of a woman who was fascinated with the story, and she wrote, she turned out to be a woman who liked other women, and so she fell in love with the character Vinga, and so she just wanted the. She wanted someone else. This is in the novel. She wanted someone else to write an opera with her notes. So she had spent her whole life writing notes about how much she was in love with Inge and why, and then the person she gave all the notes to on her deathbed wrote the opera. So it's just a very interesting version.

Vanessa: 30:49

Interesting. And this is a modern book, right? This is one that recently came out?

Donna: 30:53

Yes, it is. And we'll include the link in our show notes. I'll send it to you. Yeah, yeah. It's called. I did. I even write down the title, but it's by Katherine Davis. We'll find out the title. It's probably the girl who trod on a loaf. I believe that's the title. Yeah.

Vanessa: 31:08

That's too interesting that the character fell in love with Inga, because she doesn't seem to have any redeeming qualities. What is it that the character really loves about her?

Donna: 31:19

I think it's kind of like what Hans Christian Andersen's attitude was to a lot of his heroines. And again, it's heroines, as you said in the beginning, he doesn't have a lot of heroes, that he first wants to show what he doesn't like about him. And this is usually about vanity and I. Pride and social values that he doesn't agree with, but then show how to redeem yourself. So I think in the character in the novel fell in love with all the possibilities of Inga, all the possibilities of how she could redeem herself. And so the opera in the novel that this other woman wrote was about redemption. So we're gonna have to read it, both of us, Vanessa, and then have a little, you know, follow up on this.

Vanessa: 32:09

I think it's also important to note that Inga is a child still. I don't know what her age is, but, you know, I feel like redemption can come on earth for selfish and prideful children. They can learn to empathize, and they can learn to feel for other people. And so the fact that I feel like society had really high expectations for this girl to, you know, not be so selfish and not be so arrogant, of course, that's what we want in our children. I don't want my children to be selfish or to hurt animals, but I also understand that their brains are still developing. They are not full people, right? And so they have not grown into maturity. And even, you know, if you think about males, sorry, males out there, their brains don't stop maturing until, like, 25. And so a lot of times, you know, children are making poor decisions for a long time, and then they realize the error of their ways later on into adulthood. But Inga is punished as a young child. I don't know what her age is, but I see her as an adolescent, which, let's be. Let's be honest, we're all very selfish as adolescents.

Donna: 33:30

Okay, so I love that. And I think you answered your own question. What did. What did the character in that novel fall in love with? And I think that it could very well be the woman understanding that she was an adolescent. And I think I understand that she was an adolescent in the story also. And that we have to give these children leeway. And even saying that, though we have to look at the upbringing and her very name, Vanessa, her very name, Inger, is scandinavian for the qualities of love, beauty, and protection. So the mother, the biological mother, named her this, and very could very well have emphasized her beauty instead of helping her. And this is. I'm stressing that because this is what you're saying in helping her pay more attention to values and the beauty inside. I don't have children, but I'm a teacher, and I can always see, always when the children are learning values at home that may not be aligned with how to get along in society really empathetically. Am I being clear?

Vanessa: 34:43

Yeah.

Donna: 34:44

So what I'm saying is, I absolutely agree with you. We have to give adolescents a lot of leeway, and at the same time, they need. They have. We have some responsibility about highlighting the values that will help them be fluid in the society that we're raising them in. And it doesn't look like that's what was happening in this story.

Vanessa: 35:06

Right. The responsibility does not just lay on Inga. It lies on the adults in her life around her and helping her to understand that there are other people that you need to consider in your life and setting those values and morals through their actions. So, yes, I, yeah, I agree with what you're saying.

Donna: 35:31

Right. So, I mean, a lot of this, some people have said that the story has a lot to do with karmic, you know, the karmic payback, the poor thing that hell is full of. So if you believe in hell and for the, for this conversation, why not? I don't believe in hell in general, but for this conversation, we'll believe in it. And you have souls suffering from the continued obsession with earthly concerns. And what we have in the story is a girl who was very obsessed with her own beauty, which doesn't have anything to do with spirituality. It's all about the physicality of earth. And again, I'm not sure about Anderson himself. Like were saying, he's a strange, he was a strange creature, but it seems that he's stressing the beauty inside is what we really need to pay attention to. So what other themes have we not talked about that you are dying to explore a little bit?

Vanessa: 36:26

Well, I did want to talk a little bit. I wanted to go back to the devil's grandmother because I found something interesting that his mention of the grandmother, the devil's grandmother, is not the only one in folktales, the Grimace stories have at least two stories where the gr, the devil's grandmother shows up. And I'm not familiar with these stories. So maybe you are the devil and his grandmother, which is sometimes called the dragon, and his grandmother. And then there's a different story called the Devil with three golden hairs. And these two Grimm tales, she's actually friendly and she aids the hero against her grandson, the devil. And so there's a distinction in the Anderson story, whereas the great grandmother is also, you know, of the devil is, it seems to enjoy making mischief and not being kind. But in the Grimm stories, she is actually assisting the heroes to get out of their situations. Are you familiar with those stories at all?

Donna: 37:37

You know, when we started talking about the Smith and the devil, which is what? Two or three months ago, I saw the Smith and the grand, excuse me, the devil and the grandmother, but I didn't read it because I didn't have time, but I'm more than happy to go back. I think it's very interesting that it's not one of the more popular Grimm's tales. Why is that? If you have the. Once you have this, have Satan, people really have to decide if that's the way they want to go. Mostly in fairy tales, you want the prince and the princess, and Satan doesn't really make. He's not a real feel gooder, is he? No. So I think this is really important that you're bringing up. I want to know more about the grandmother. I think the Marsh woman, whether she was the great grandmother of Satan. She wasn't really nice. Someone who had her own agenda, that's for sure. So maybe we should explore Satan in different fairy tales. One month. What do you think?

Vanessa: 38:32

It might be interesting to look at one of these fairy tales and kind of go through it and find some connections to older stories. I'm betting these aren't the only ones with the devil's great grandmother, which is interesting because there's nothing canon in the Bible about devil having a grandmother, because the devil is Lucifer, who is actually a fallen angel, who's, you know, so there would be no actual grandmother. But in fairy tales, there's a lot of leeway allowed because a lot of these fairy tales were taken down during christian times. But many of these fairy tales are much older than the christian tales, and so they come from more pagan telling. So we are using more modern religion language where these tales probably came from. Older, older stories.

Donna: 39:30

Yeah. And I'm just looking at some notes here about the Marsh woman because I don't remember that I made this note. It's a snake winds around her hair and neck. Or maybe this is a statue that while she's with the marsh woman, there's a stake, there's a snake that winds around her. I mean, the butterflies that she had. Oh, I hate that part where she pulls the wings off, they actually walk across her eyeballs.

Vanessa: 39:51

Yes.

Donna: 39:52

So they're very.

Vanessa: 39:53

Yes. There was a lot of description about Inga's torture, which was really unpleasant. A lot of. A lot of description about it. And I feel like I just kind of breezed over it because I didn't really want to read about it. But I think it was probably very important in the time period because there was a lot of emphasis on why you should be moralistic and have christian values, because these are. That, the tortures you want to avoid.

Donna: 40:25

Right, right. And I. And I think it's, again, very interesting. He really has a division where she went down to hell and this lovely girl who became an old woman in the story, and she was described as, her eyes were likened to two bright stars. And so Hans Christian Andersen is really making a very strong distinction about the values. If you're valuing physicality too much, you're going down. And when your heart is open and you are empathetic to someone for absolutely no reason except you believe in love, then you're likened to heaven. And so I think that's really nice, actually.

Vanessa: 41:03

So we've been talking about how the differences between Grimm's tales and traditional tales. A lot of times the redemption comes on earth. I found a really interesting quote or statistic. By contrast, many of Anderson's stories end unhappily. In fact, 20 out of the 48 best known of his fairy tales end with death. Sometimes that includes eternal life. And so Anderson really likes to make his characters suffer much more than in other fairy tales, where many times it's the villain who's being forced to undergo grotesque punishments. Anderson, for some reason, delights in torturing his heroines because we often, we talked about how a lot of times it's the heroine rather than the hero. So I wonder if that just has to do with what was happening with Christianity at the time. I don't know.

Donna: 42:02

Well, also, I mean, just happening, his suffering. He wanted what he couldn't have. Apparently. He was very flamboyant about some of his male, the people he was in love with, the men he was in love with. And it was not accepted. It was not at that time and probably more accepted in Europe than anywhere else. But they weren't very happy with him. And I think that he suffered, first of all, for money. He suffered about the loves he wanted. He just, he wasn't that happy. And I think he put in to his work his whole heart, which was a little bit unstable.

Vanessa: 42:38

That definitely makes sense. Okay. One thing I wanted to mention, you know how I love my timelines because I really enjoy context. It helps me to, like, clarify in my head what's happening when. So we talked a couple episodes ago about the donkey skin, and that was Charles Peroll. And he. So in the timeline of fairy tale authors, he comes first. He is known for popularizing the fairy tale genre for children. Right. He's one of the very first authors who takes nursery rhymes and writes them for children at the same time as he is Madame de la Noy. Is that how you say it? I'm sorry.

Donna: 43:20

Yeah, I love her. Oh, yeah.

Vanessa: 43:22

He's the one who's coining the term fairy tale. And she's. She is writing fairy tales and not for. Not for children, but for adults, but she's the one who coins that term and that they're both French. They're both happening in France. Then the brothers Grimm is shortly after that. So we're talking about the 1620s to the early 17 hundreds. 1705 is when Madame Delnoy dies. The brothers Grimm, Jacob and Wilhelm, are from 1785 to 1863. That's when they are alive. And they wrote Snow White, hansel, Gretel, Rapunzel. Those are the german folktales that they have created and published in their books. Hans Christian Andersen overlaps with that. So he is familiar with the Grimm's fairy tales and he's probably influenced by them as well. He is alive from 1805 to 1875, I believe his first nursery fairy tale is published in 1835. So I think just ten years after the Grimm brothers. And then he is also influenced. Anderson is also influenced by the danish folk tale collector, basically the Grimms, the danish version of the Grimm Brothers. I think his last name is. I lost it. Oh, winther. And so he is. He has done the same thing. He's collected a lot of the folk tales. Matthias Winter is right prior to Anderson. And then after Anderson, the last one I'm going to mention is Joseph Jacobs, and he's England, Australia, and he's famous for Jack and the Beanstalk, the three little pigs, and he's 1854 to 1960. So hopefully that's helpful for people to kind of get a context of what the order is of a lot of these famous fairy tale authors that we are currently talking about. So we probably should explore Joseph Jacobs soon because I think that we need to cover all our bases.

Donna: 45:40

Yeah. And I love that. And you've just given us exactly why people need to go to fabric of folktale, because you are so good at making the. Keeping the details and highlighting the details and educating all of us. So I strongly encourage all of the listeners to go to the other podcast as well. And Vanessa, having listened to that, they're all generally in the same time, we need to find some modern fairy tale writers and see what they're highlighting in their stories.

Vanessa: 46:09

I think that would be fascinating. So I also looked a little bit at the printing and publishing culture of that day. Did you have any. Did you look into that at all?

Donna: 46:20

No, that's something I didn't look into. Tell us, please.

Vanessa: 46:23

So this was really interesting because, okay, this is kind of a little timeline of how people related to stories. So the dark ages were the good old days for storytelling, man's earliest form of entertainment. Then there reached the sophistication in the 17th century with Joseph parole. And he starts to tell nursery rhymes. Is that you?

Donna: 46:47

Yeah. Sorry, I. Glass water, just in case.

Vanessa: 46:51

Okay. And he starts to tell nursery rhymes and tales to the court. And then there's the age of enlightenment, which is really based into rational and really kind of pushes away the frivolous and the dangerous. And they demote all fairy tales and their existence to what's called. Called chapbooks. So fairy tales were in general, and this is specifically in England, but I think that this is happening all over Europe. Fairy tales are disapproved of by english writers in the 18th and 19th century. And they want those stories for children to be all about the improvement of juvenile character. And so they really drab, terrible stories that are really uninteresting. They don't want imagination. They don't want the supernatural. They really just want to force children going to hell for being sinful. And so in 1839, Catherine Sinclair's holiday house is one of the very first times children were allowed to be naughty rather than sinful. And so it's one of the first books where there's joy in the book, because at this time, it is the belief of the christian mentality that children are damned from birth, being born from sin. And so all of their the literature aimed at children is dull moral lessons, where they really are just trying to beat into them that they are of sin, and they have to redeem themselves. And imagination is not of God, but of the devil. And so when Anderson starts publishing these and they start publishing, starts to kind of broaden to larger audiences where more people are able to afford books. Anderson's imagination was incredibly groundbreaking because before that, they, in printing printed form, that was just not allowed. And so a lot of his writing style, his use of language, his use of idioms, and the fact that he was not a stuffy scholar, just trying to force morality down children's throats and trying to create an atmosphere of, you know, fun and joviality. Although a lot of histories, you know, are in terribly, it was still incredibly influential. So I thought that was really important to consider when you're reading his stories, because the time period in which he's writing these stories are incredibly revolutionary.

Donna: 49:50

Brilliant, brilliant. I love that you got that. You brought all this back to the fact that his stories were really revolutionary and a little happier than those horrible ones you talked about right before. Right?

Vanessa: 50:04

I mean, I just feel like it would have been terrible to be a child during that time period. You know, like, I don't know, it just the way that it's described, the moralistic tone of emphasizing sin rather than emphasizing children's joy is, you know, it's just counterintuitive to my parenting style.

Donna: 50:31

Big time. Big time. And please listen to her reading this story on YouTube because you'll really get. You'll get a really good hit of her parenting style because her children are so adorable, and she really just rolls with the punches. I'm talking about you, Vanessa. So I think we really explored this one, haven't we?

Vanessa: 50:49

Yeah. Well, you know, you and I both, when were coming up with our notes, it was funny when were talking about this before, you sent me your notes, and I actually thought that you were just sending me my notes because it was the same amount of pages, which was seven pages worth of notes, which seems excessive, but there was so much to kind of dive into in this story, which I, you know, makes it for a good time. Right?

Donna: 51:19

Yeah. And also, while you're saying that, I realize it's just what we need to do with the people all around us, that there are things that make us uncomfortable. But if we just sort of accept the uncomfortableness of whatever we're reading or whoever we're talking to or whatever situation we're with, we'll also find some joys and some gems. And I think that's exactly what we did during this discussion of this strange story by a strange man.

Vanessa: 51:46

And this is a story that was suggested to us by one of our listeners during one of our live episodes, which hopefully we will start doing again once soon. So we love your suggestions. We love hearing your thoughts about the different, our different deep dives. If you got a different take from the story, if you had a different interpretation, we want to hear from you. So you can comment whether you're watching on YouTube or you're listening on our podcasting platform. You can comment on our, you know, anywhere you find us on Instagram, on Twitter. We want to hear your thoughts about these different fairy tales because different fairy tales have different. They hit differently for different people. And just because I have one reaction and you have a different reaction just means that, you know, we have different experiences. And sometimes sitting with the uncomfortable helps us to explore what's going on within ourselves. Right. So I think it's important for us to all look at these stories together and find what makes us tick. What are your thoughts about that?

Donna: 53:04

No, no. I'm not going to say anymore. You said it beautifully. So we will put out the next story in a few weeks when we're going to explore. You and I have to talk about it. And, Vanessa, thank you, as usual, for this really interesting discussion. I hope it hits with a lot of people. So we're going to see each other again next month?

Vanessa: 53:23

Absolutely. And once again, don't forget to subscribe. If you're watching on doorways to learning or folklore, make sure you hit that subscribe button so you get our notifications. This is a podcast that drops every month, but fabric of folklore is a weekly podcast, and I think doorway is still learning. Is it still on hiatus?

Donna: 53:43

Still on hiatus? Yep. But don't worry, I'll come back that.

Vanessa: 53:47

You can go back and listen to, especially if you're a teacher or an education. She has a lot of great information there. Thanks so much. And we can't wait to see you. Until next time. Until next time. Keep the fairy tales alive.