The Emperor's New Clothes...Makers
The literal point of the emperor being naked has to do with narcissism, despotism and class division, of course, but there is a more subtle symbolic dimension to the story as well that bears a more personal stamp for the author. The makers of the new clothes which supposedly becomes invisible to those unworthy (incapable of appreciating it) are perpetrating a fraud against genuine artistic achievement. Thus the clothes become a symbol for bad art that is manipulated into being though great art through the swindle of convincing those who cannot its greatness as simply being unworthy of expressing criticism.
The Porcelain Chinaman
In “The Shepherdess and the Sweep” a porcelain china figure of an actual old Chinese man alone has the unusual ability to nod his head. He has long made claims to being the grandfather of the shepherdess, though has never offered evidence to prove it. These two important characters have endowed the Chinaman with the power to give his blessing to any suitor who asks for her hand in marriage and in giving his blessing to one who whom his “granddaughter” does not love, he sets in motion a series of events which ends with his falling to the floor and breaking. He is repaired, but at the cost of losing his ability to nod which allows the shepherdess to be with her true love, the chimney sweep. He becomes, then, a symbol for all those who exert, make claims to or are endowed by others with authority they do not actually possess.
The Phallic Forest
When the Little Mermaid finally makes it past the dominion of the sea witch in her obsessive quest to know what life is like beyond the sea, the description of the forest she must pass through is a symbolic wonderland of phallic symbols both enticing and threatening to her innocence: “trees and flowers were polypi, half animals and half plants; they looked like serpents with a hundred heads growing out of the ground. The branches were long slimy arms, with fingers like flexible worms, moving limb after limb from the root to the top.”
The Snow Queen
The Snow Queen is quite manifestly a symbolic personification of death. When Kay falls into her clutches near the point of freezing, he can no longer feel the chill following her kiss. The kiss of death, if you will.
The Red Shoes
The Red Shoes is one of the most fairy tales or folk tales of all time and is quite obviously one of the best known of Andersen’s stories. As a symbol, the title footwear is unusually robust. If the shoes were any other color, they would certainly be most recognizable as a symbol of obsession; Karen dances to the detriment of all else, including her own health. Were the shoes white, they might well be more strongly associated with highly addictive drugs like cocaine and heroin. That the shoes are red, however, has meant a long history of symbolic explication focusing on their being a metaphor for the young girl’s sexual awakening and maturity with the color themselves being associated with menstruation and the obsessive dancing with sexual desire and the move to have the execution relieve her of her obsession by cutting off her feet representing the attempt at repression.
