"Incessantly she had to dance," by Honor Appleton (1879-1951)

It was just as if all the stars of heaven were falling down upon her

"Incessantly she had to dance,"

Honor Appleton (1879-1951)

c.1932

Illustration for Hans Christian Andersen's story, "The Red Shoes" in Hans Andersen's Fairy Tales. London: Nelson, 1932. Facing p. 330.

[See commentary below]

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This illustration shows poor Karen being punished for wearing her fine red shoes to church, and going to the ball in them instead of continuing to minister to her dying foster-mother. It is one of the cruellest and most moralistic of Andersen's tales: Jack Zipes describes it as "merciless" (102). Appleton has not been afraid to show its full pathos. As in the tale, Karen is tearing frantically at her stockings; meanwhile, the rays of the sun behind the trees on the left look like a spider's web. The ending, Karen's final flight from this world in a glow of elevated feeling, is typical though, and it is interesting that Andersen himself rather undercuts the severe moral warning against vanity and disobedience by adding that, once in heaven, no one questions the girl about her red shoes. On the one hand, the "sin" has been wiped out; on the other, perhaps, it no longer seems to have been so heinous. The tale no doubt owes something to the Cinderella story, and the way the Ugly Sisters suffer when squeezing their feet into Cinderella's slipper.

Scanned image and text by Jacqueline Banerjee

References

"Honor Charlotte Appleton (1879-1951)." (Books Illustrated website). Viewed 6 December 2008.

Zipes, Jack. When Drreams Came True: Classical Fairy Tales and Their Tradition. London: Routledge, 1998.

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Last modified 6 December 2008