SOURCE: "Andersen's Heroes and Heroines: Relinquishing the Reward," in Triumphs of the Spirit in Children's Literature, edited by Francelia Butler and Richard Rotert, Library Professional Publications, 1986, pp. 122-26.

In the following essay, Anderson argues that the endings of Andersen's fairy tales do not convey pessimism but that they instead express the "triumph of the Spirit " and the optimism and wisdom of remaining true to one's ideals and one's self.

Hans Christian Andersen's fairy tales have sometimes been described as too adult or too pessimistic for children. For example, May Hill Arbuthnot in her classic Children and Books, although praising Andersen as an allegorist, notes that "because of the double meaning, the adult themes, and the sadness of many of these stories, the whole collection is usually not popular with children."¹ P. L. Travers found a "devitalizing element" of nostalgia in the tales.² Bruno Bettelheim has commented that the...