"Princess on a pea": a concise, but profound meaning

Probably, in the world there is no fairy tale with a more concise content. "The Princess on the Pea," whose story will not succumb to the detectives of Agatha Christie, was written in the distant 1835 by the Danish writer Hans Christian Andersen, but was never accepted by critics, and it contained a profound philosophical sense about the subtlety of the soul and imaginary values.

Story line

Summary of "The Princess on the Pea": a wealthy prince was looking for a wife, the main condition being that the future wife should be a hereditary princess without a spot on the pedigree, with a royal appearance and ideal character. Naturally, the search went by for nothing, because, as you know, there are no ideal people in nature. The Prince sank into a family castle in sorrow, driving himself into depression.

And one evening, in a severe thunderstorm, a girl of model appearance, pretending to be a princess, asked for a night's lodging, although she looked primitive and miserable at the expense of clothes of poor quality and the consequences of the elements. The Queen Mother immediately realized that the girl was a hunter for the rich groom, but she did not show it, but quietly put the "pig" of the princess in the form of a pea that she hid under 20 mattresses.

But the girl, too, was not a scoundrel. Although who knows, can, in fact, so subtle soul? She followed the old queen. As a result, in the morning, in the process of questioning herself, the queen recognized the aristocratic origin of the girl, the prince immediately married, and the ill-fated pea was placed in the Kunstkamera.

Characteristics of the heroes of a fairy tale

The princess on the pea is the main character of the story. But who was the girl in reality: a capricious princess, a girl and a hunter for a dowry, dissatisfied hospitality and honors (why else had she complained about insufficiently soft feather beds and a hard bed), or a ruined orphan of blue blood that accidentally fell into a thunderstorm and turned out to be Doors of the rich man-prince?

From the brief content of "The Princess on the Pea," it becomes clear that the door to the princess is opened by the old king. How so? A rich kingdom still existed, if the prince could afford to search for his wife around the world, but his father acts as a butler. From boredom or despair (bread, for example)? After all, it is clear that everyone in the palace was run by the Queen Mother. If not - why did she have to climb into the relationship of the young with checks?

What did Andersen want?

It happens that the audience (or readers), having become carried away by the plot or protagonists, forget about the details that play the most important role in history. Goroshina: what did Hans Christian mean by saying that the princess felt the pressure of a pea in twenty (!) Perinas?

You do not have to be seven wits in the forehead to understand that it was not a plant from the legume family. No, even the most gentle and hereditary princess with an ideal pedigree, simply could not physically feel a pea seed through the bed. So a pea is a metaphor? What did the great storyteller want to convey to her?

No wonder the "Princess on the pea" summary - the author did not consider it necessary to expand on the details of history, and highlighted the essence: the character can not hide anywhere!