The Princess and the Pea
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The Princess and the Pea is a Danish fairy tale by Hans Christian Andersen, first published in 1835 and also known as The Real Princess. It was part of Andersen's first volume of fairy tales Eventyr, fortalte for Børn (Fairy tales, Told for Children) as Prindsessen paa Ærten.
Plot synopsis
Once upon a time there was a prince who lived in a wealthy kingdom. When he had reached the proper age his mother the queen decided the time was right to find a bride. The prince however was determined not to marry just any girl, and decided that his future wife should be a "real" princess. So he travelled the world and sought in all the kingdoms and met with all the princesses, until at last he still wasn't satisfied.Then, one stormy night, a girl came knocking at the castle door who claimed she was a true princess. Although no one believed her, she was invited in to stay for the night. The queen then planned to test the young girl's claim and went into the bed-room, took all the bedding off the bedstead, and laid a pea on the bottom; then she took twenty mattresses and laid them on the pea, and then twenty eider-down beds on top of the mattresses. On this the princess had to lie all night. The next morning when the girl woke up, the queen asked how she slept.
"Oh, very badly!" she said. "I have scarcely closed my eyes all night. Heaven only knows what was in the bed, but I was lying on something hard, so that I am black and blue all over my body. It's horrible!"
The queen then immediately ordered for a wedding. Only a true princess could have such a delicate skin to feel a pea through forty layers of bedsheet.
Analysis
In the Aarne and Thompson classification of folktales, The Princess and the Pea is categorized under its own type as type 704, The Princess on the Pea.In an Italian version of the tale, "The Most Sensitive Woman," offers three highly sensitive women, but the prince chooses the one with the highest sensitivity. The first has suffered agonies from the pulling of one single hair from her head while brushing it. The second is in pain from sleeping on a wrinkle in her sheets. The third and final woman, the most sensitive, has a serious injury from a jasmine petal falling onto her foot[link]. It is true that in times past, sensitivity and delicacy in women was favored to be considered a lady, but one has to wonder why the prince would want a woman who is so sensitive physically. To contemporary eyes, such a woman would seem high-maintenance. Still, it is also likely a reference to emotional sensitivity or intuition; a proper ruler must be sensitive to the needs of their people.
Adaptations
Andrew Lang included a version, "How to tell a True Princess", in The Yellow Fairy Book.Once Upon a Mattress is a musical based on the story, that opened on Broadway in 1959 and was made into a TV movie in 1972.
A Soviet movie adaptation, entitled Printsessa na goroshine (The Princess and the Pea) and directed by Boris Rytsarev, was released in 1976.
A parody of this fairy tale, The Princess and the Bowling Ball, can be found in The Stinky Cheese Man and Other Fairly Stupid Tales.
Gail Carson Levine has also rewritten this fairy tale. Her version is The Princess Test.
The character of November from No Rest for the Wicked is based on the princess.
External links
- [English translation of the tale]
- [Original Danish version]
- [Annotations] at the SurLaLune Fairy Tale Pages
- [Free eBook: Stories from Hans Andersen] at Project Gutenberg
- [Audio story of The Princess and the Pea] at Storynory
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