Yet this isn’t how Andersen intends to analyse or scrutinise his tale: he clearly was a Romantic who was unhappy with the way the world really was and felt that love and beauty should triumph over intellectualism and rationalism. Nor is there anything wrong with being fond of maths (another ‘skill’ Kay picks up following his encounter with the mote of glass).
The problem stems from losing all appreciation of the rose’s beauty, but blind romanticism and idealism are just as flawed (and arguably, just as dangerous).
But seeing a worm in the rose when there is one isn’t nasty cynicism: it’s just realism. When Kay is ‘infected’ by the grain of glass from the magic mirror, he does lose the ability to see the beauty in everything around him. the Snow Queen).īut what does love triumph over in ‘The Snow Queen’? ‘Cold reason’ might be one answer. Here, the gender roles are noteworthy: unlike ‘ Sleeping Beauty’ or ‘ Snow White’, it’s not a male character saving and waking a female character, but a heroine who rescues her male friend from the stasis (death?) he has been condemned to by the evil witch character (i.e. They spring from genuine sadness that she has lost him, and their warmth is enough to thaw his icy heart and bring him back. This, of course, is what the tears that Gerda sheds over the frozen body of Kay represent. But they can be cured of it, if they are shown love by their friends and those close to them. This suggests that a person’s individual circumstances shape their views and their personalities, and that they aren’t necessarily to ‘blame’ for how they behave. By the same token, Kay’s cynicism isn’t his own fault: it’s just his rotten luck that the grain of the mirror gets caught in his eye. But the glass doesn’t infect everyone: Gerda is able to retain her innocence even as she grows up, as is Kay once he is saved by Gerda.
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