Lets Fracture This FairyTale: Thumbelina
(Yes, late again because I am sick)
Written by Hans Christian Andersen, long story short a beggar woman gives a piece of barley corn to a peasant woman in exchange for food. The peasant plants the corn and Thumbelina emerges from the grown flower.
She is kidnapped by a toad who wants to marry her off to his son (queue the main theme of this story: marriage). Thumbelina does not like this idea so she escapes with a fish and butterfly. A stag beetle shows up, then discards her because of his friends after which Thumbelina is in danger of turning into an ice cube in winter and is saved by a field mouse.
The field mouse starts pressuring Thumbelina into marrying his neighbor: a mole. Well, Thumbelina wasn't having any of that so she nurses a swallow back to health and flies out! She then meets a fairy prince in a meadow somewhere and lives happily ever after with her own set of wings and a new name: Maia.
In my opinion, Thumbelina was not a silly little girl. She knew what she wanted and she did not stay in situations that made her uncomfortable or even situations where she could easily be "trapped". She was not pressured into anything, which is admirable.
As a child there was something about this story that truly unsettled me. I cannot remember if it was the situation with the mole or the toad, or even being underground. The story, though not a particularly scary one, always freaked me out. It was possibly the setting of being underground, I am not particularly claustrophobic but the thought of never being outside in the fresh air again does not sit well with me. Still, unsettling.
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