Coming-of-age And Ethical Choice

Writing fairy tales plays an important role in Hans Christian Andersen’s literary career, though he emphasized that he was more than a fairy tale writer and he also wrote poems, novels, autobiography, drama and travel writing. It is Andersen’s fairy tales that make him a household name. Andersen’s fairy tales have being translated into different languages and is the top choice of children’s reading. In the history of literary fairy tales, Andersen’s fairy tales serves as a milestone, combining traditional motif and fairy tale narrative with literary creation, presenting a cross-genre artistic style with multiple narrative skills. After Charles Perrault’s Contes du temps passe started the genre of literary fairy tale in the17the century and German Romantics’ creation of literary fairy tales set a new breakthrough in this field, Andersen’s creation brought about the third phase of literary fairy tale development, immensely influencing the following fairy tale writers. With the objectives of exploring the aesthetic features and ethical implication of Andersen’s fairy tales, it is the aim of this paper to explore the ethical thread his tales follow concerning children and maturation. The study will be focused on the image of children, stories of animals, plants and toys, the travel motif and travel stories, the motif of metamorphosis and stories with scientific fiction features, and also tries to combine the study form with that of contents in order to elucidate how the fairy elements are utilized to serve a ethical purpose. The whole paper will be divided into five parts.The First Chapter will be concentrated on the image of children as presented in Andersen’s fairy tales. The study of Andersen’s depiction of children in fairy tales will be placed with the context of his whole literary creation, and also with a comparative perspective, aiming to explore special features and skills Andersen employ to capture the true nature of children and childhood in his fairy tales. This chapter will prove that the contribution Andersen brought to the description of children in fairy tales, and also to children’s literature lies in his use of colloquial and childlike language, the use of children’s perspective and detailed psychological depiction showing children’s perception and experience of the world different from adults, and thus equip fairy tale, which used to have its emphasis only on action and plots, with a psychological dimension. With the help of those techniques, children no longer serve a narrative function but become a representative of children and their lives in reality. The presentation of children as innocent implies Andersen’s observation and concept of children and childhood. In his fairy tales, children’s innocence lies in three aspects. As children follow their natural desire and instinct, not as much conform to rules and regulations of civilization as adults do, their priority is to meet their needs and this contributes to their naive understanding and perception of the world. Children’s innocence also refers to their lacking in moral consciousness, with no sense of guilt for they are more of a natural being than social being and thus is not as capable to know right or wrong, good or evil as adults are. All their actions and judgments are from instincts. The third aspect of children’s innocence resides in their natural emotion of empathy which has the potential to develop children’s moral sense. Andersen did not pass a judgment of children’s innonce, but instead, presented his manipulation on the creative potential shown in children’s free will, the morality of their natural feeling as well as his worries about the clash between children’s free will and the confinement of civilization. It is this truthful presentation of children’s innocent nature and his ethical concern that separate Andersen’s concept of children from that of Enlightenment rationalists and that of the Romantics.The Second Chapter studies fairy tales with the metamorphosis motif. Andersen uses this traditional mythical motif as a way to explore the ethical meaning of growing up. By creatively imbedding initiation ritual in the motif of metamorphosis, using spatial change to imply the transition from natural being to social being, and place identity formation in the process of metamorphosis, Andersen brings a new ethical function to this traditional motif as a way to present the ethical rebirth during the process of growing up. He connects the implication of metamorphosis concerning human nature with the ethical dimension of socialization, showing that maturation is to form the ethical identity as a human being, becoming moral conscious and capable of regulating one’s behavior as to comply with the moral codes. This new way of using metamorphosis motif then has its influence on the flowing children’s literature.The Third Chapter studies the ethical implication conveyed by animal stories, and by stories with plants as it major characters as well as by toy stories. This chapter aims to show that Andersen makes animals, plants and toys talk and think and behave like human beings, and thus creates three different worlds, the world of animals and plants, the world of toys and the world of human beings. The extend of "being anthropomorphical" are decided by their distance from human world, with animals and plants in natural world totally different from human beings while the poultry and tamed animals, or plants and flowers in gardens and those toys are more human like and become an objection of human characters and human society. Those inhuman characters and the worlds they live in well reflect the hierarchical social reality and its value system. In those stories, Andersen shows his concern on the negative influence of hierarchy society and its utilitarian value system on children’s identity formation. He shows that children’s understanding of their identity and self-value are to a great extent formed in the discourse of others, and also the discourse of ideal identity will cause a desire of identification in children, thus the mainstream values will greatly influence children in their identity formation. Besides, through the changes of young animals educated by their more humanized parents and of plants moving from nature to human world, Andersen shows that children will face different values in the process of socialization, and thus the value system of hierarchic society and utilitarianism will insert is harmful to the cultivation of sound values in children. For this concern, Andersen uses techniques like polyphony, carnival, irony and metanarrative comments as to guide children’s choice when facing different values. Another concern at issue in animal and plants stories are the ethical importance of self-realization. Andersen tries to show that the way to realize one’s value is self-realization.The Forth Chapter focuses on the stories with the journey motif. The aim is to explore how Andersen uses this motif ethically. The journey motif in his fairy tales is developed into three sub-modes:the adventurous journey inhering from myths and folktales, the exile journey and the sentimental journey. The first type functions to present the existence of evil in real life and thus a moral guidance to children. In the journey of exile, Andersen brings the theme of fate into his fairy tales. The heroes are facing misery, misfortune and even death in their exile away from home, uprooted and misplaced, they are put in the dilemma of survival and moral consciousness. The issues at core is how to face fate and forces that out of ones’ control without compromise his moral principles, and when life is at stake, which is to choose between survival and morality. The sentimental journey is Andersen’s contribution to literary fairy tales. By learning from the sentimental literature, Andersen constructs his heroes journey as a reflection of their emotions and feelings, for the purpose of cultivate the moral sense of children. With all the tree journey types, Andersen tries to convey the information that when facing plights in life love and the moral courage are essential in guiding our choice.The Fifth Chapter will be concentrated on tales with features of science fiction. The aim is to prove that as Andersen’s creation transits from Romanticism to Realism, the fantasy world in his fairy tales are constructed with scientific and technological elements instead of traditional magic factors as fairies, magicians, witches and the likes. Witnessing the dramatic development of science and technology, Andersen sees the power of reason. In his view, it is the choice that must be made in the new times to see the world with a scientific perspective. By doing so we can have a better understanding of where we are and where we are heading. The spirit of science is the spirit of reason, as shown in science, morality, and arts, being the source of the Good, the True and The Beautiful. Since science can bring us closer to the truth and by doing so facilitate the development of the good and the beautiful, the choice of science is also an ethical choice as a way to create a better world. In the sci-fi fairy tales, Andersen builds an ideal world as can be realized by the development of science and technology. To conclude, the ultimate goal of this paper is to prove that there exists an innate ethical logic behind Andersen’s fairy tales. This ethical thread behind his tales shows Andersen’s concept of reason. Reason in reason is truth, in will is kindness, and in imagination is beauty. For his understanding of children’s nature and the ethical meaning of growing up, Andersen tries to use his fairy tales as an ethical guidance, showing children the sound values to choose and the moral codes they should follow. That’s the ethical guidance produced by his animal and plant stories, by the toy characters and by the journey his heroes and heroines experience as an initiation ritual, and his sci-fi fairy tales serve as a scientific guide to children. That’s the ethical function and value of Andersen’s fairy tales to children.