SOURCE: Ingwersen, Niels. “Being Stuck: The Subversive Andersen and His Audience.” In Studies in German and Scandinavian Literature after 1500, edited by James A. Parente, Jr. and Richard Erich Schade, pp. 166-80. Columbia, S.C.: Camden House, 1993.

In the following essay, Ingwersen illustrates a common motif seen in Andersen's fairy tales, “that of being captured, of being trapped … of being denied freedom,” and how this dilemma is overcome in Andersen's “subversive” stories.

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Hans Christian Andersen's “Butterfly” (“Sommerfuglen,” 1862) flutters through life without finding anyone quite fit for marriage. When he finally proposes, he is firmly told by the desired object that too much time has passed to realize a marriage; friendship must suffice. As an old butterfly, he finds himself comfortably lodged in a parlor, but in spite of the warmth and protection of the locale, he passes judgment on his life by admitting that a butterfly ought to...