The famous children's writer Hans Christian Andersen created amazing and magical fairy tales filled with drama and deep meaning. Children love these sad and beautiful stories, in which, in the form of a compelling story, the writer teaches the reader some serious life lessons. For adults, many of Andersen's fairy tales sometimes cause bewilderment, because they are too dark and tragic for the age category for which they were created.
For whom Andersen wrote
Today Andersen is called a brilliant storyteller, his works are fairy tales for children, but the writer himself believed that he was not understood correctly and his creations were more like instructive stories. In addition, he did not like children, and repeatedly said that he was creating his works for adults. Most of Andersen's tales were adapted and, in many respects, softened, while the original versions are saturated with Christian motives, they are darker and harsher.
Difficult childhood
It is believed that one of the reasons for the writer's cruel tales was his difficult childhood. Critics, contemporaries of Andersen, often attacked him, did not recognize his talent, accusing him of "poor family" and "mediocrity". The tale "The Ugly Duckling" was ridiculed and called an autobiographical work with elements of libel. This is partly true; later the author admitted that he was the very “ugly duckling” who became the “white swan”. Andersen's childhood was spent in poverty, misunderstanding from relatives and peers. The writer's father and stepfather were shoemakers, his mother was a laundress, and his adoptive sister, according to researchers, was a prostitute. He was ashamed of his relatives, and after he achieved fame, he practically did not return to his hometown until his death.
Andersen admitted that he borrowed some ideas for his works from folk tales of Denmark, Germany, England and other peoples. Of The Little Mermaid, he said it was worth rewriting.
At school, he was hardly given a literacy, for which he was repeatedly beaten by the teachers. However, he never mastered spelling, Andersen wrote with monstrous mistakes until his old age. The future storyteller was bullied by the neighborhood boys, teachers and students at school, and later in the gymnasium, humiliated him in the first place of work. In addition, the writer was unlucky in love, Andersen was never married and had no children. His muses did not reciprocate his feelings; in revenge, the images of the "Snow Queen", the princess from the fairy tale "The Swineherd", were written off from them.
Mental disorder
Andersen's maternal ancestors were considered mentally ill in Odense. His grandfather and father claimed that royal blood flowed in their veins, these stories influenced the storyteller so much that as a child his only friend was the imaginary Prince Frits, the future king of Denmark. Today they would say that Andersen had a highly developed imagination, but at that time he was considered almost insane. When the writer was asked how he writes his tales, he said that heroes just come to him and tell their stories.
Andersen became the cultural visionary of his era. In the fairy tales "The Little Mermaid", "The Snow Queen", "Wild Swans" there is a touch of feminism, alien to the writer's contemporaries, but in demand several decades later.
According to another version, Andersen's "scary" tales were caused by periodic depressions that overwhelmed him throughout his life and dissatisfaction in the sexual sphere. Until the end of his life, the writer remained a virgin, although he visited brothels, but he never used their services. The "abominations" he saw only disgusted him, so he preferred to spend time there in conversations with prostitutes.
