'The Cherry-red Shoes' (1845) is perhaps the strangest of all of Hans Christian Andersen's well-known fairy tales. Divining the meaning of some of Andersen's other stories for children is relatively easy, but a number of aspects of the significant and symbolism of 'The Red Shoes' remain troubling. Let's take a closer wait at this unusual and oddly compelling story.

You can read 'The Carmine Shoes' hither before proceeding to our summary and analysis of Andersen's story beneath.

'The Carmine Shoes': plot summary

The protagonist of 'The Cherry Shoes' is a young peasant girl named Karen. She is and so poor she has no shoes except a rough pair of wooden shoes to wear in the winter. The local shoemaker makes her some red shoes fashioned from carmine cloth. When Karen'due south female parent dies, Karen wears the shoes, fifty-fifty though their color is hardly appropriate for mourning attire.

An one-time lady is passing one day and takes pity on the poor daughter. She adopts Karen, burning her awful ruddy shoes soon later on. When the fourth dimension comes for Karen to be confirmed into the church, she is taken to the shoe shop to purchase some shoes. Inspired past the sight of the princess wearing a pair of brilliant crimson shoes, Karen persuades the former lady to purchase her a pair of scarlet leather shoes in the shop.

The old lady agrees, only only because her eyesight is so bad that she cannot tell what colour they are. Later all, blood-red would not be an appropriate colour to wear to one's confirmation at church.

Indeed, everyone in the congregation is shocked when they see Karen wearing the cherry shoes in church during her confirmation anniversary. Afterwards, they tell the quondam lady that Karen wore red shoes during the service, and the old lady chastises Karen for her naughtiness, telling her that she must wear black shoes to church from at present on.

But Karen is too in love with the ruddy shoes, so defies the quondam lady'south command, and wears her scarlet shoes to church building the following week, also.

Outside of the church, an old soldier offers to shine their shoes, and he remarks that Karen'south are dancing shoes. In church building, her crimson shoes describe comments and gasps from the congregation once more, and Karen is so decorated thinking of her shoes that she neglects to sing along with the hymns or recite the Lord's Prayer.

As they're leaving the church, the old soldier remarks on Karen'south dancing shoes over again, at which indicate her anxiety begin to dance of their own accordance. She has no control over them. When they become home, the old lady puts the shoes away in a cupboard, just Karen tin't get out them exist, and goes to wait at them again.

The old lady falls ill and Karen knows she should stay by her side; but she has been invited to a thou brawl in the town, so dons her red shoes and leaves the old lady who has done then much to intendance for her when she had nobody. But at the ball, the shoes do whatever they like, forcing Karen to dance in whatever direction they delight. Growing frightened, she tries to accept them off, but they are stuck fast.

She dances all the way out of the town simply eventually makes information technology back to the church. At the church building door, an angel appears, telling her that she volition continue to trip the light fantastic in her cherry shoes until she is pale and cold. Karen learns that the one-time lady has died. She goes to the executioner's house and begs him to cut off her feet and so she volition be freed from the curse of the cerise shoes. He does then, making her some wooden feet and crutches and so she can walk back to the church.

However, when she gets to the church, she finds the red shoes still dancing in front end of her, and she runs home, terrified and saddened. She tries to go to the church a 2d time, but in one case once more, the shoes announced, dancing in front of her.

She goes to the parson's house and begs him to take her into his service, and he does so, when his wife takes pity on the girl. When the family unit asks if she volition back-trail them to church, she declines, but the angel appears to her over again, bringing the church building to her, with the girl's room slowly turning into the church with all of its congregation seated within.

Overcome by relief at being back in church, Karen feels her middle burst with happiness, and she dies.

'The Crimson Shoes': analysis

'The Red Shoes' is one of Andersen's best-known tales and has oftentimes been adjusted for moving-picture show and the stage. But its premise is such an unusual one that it requires further comment and deeper analysis for its significant to become fully articulate. What do the cerise shoes correspond? And what does their insistent dancing mean? Is Karen being punished for liking fine things in life, or for neglecting religious contemplation, or both?

Part of the mystery of the story is cleared up past learning most the tale's origins, which – equally is oftentimes the case with Andersen'south original fairy tales – deeply personal and autobiographical. Andersen named the story's protagonist afterwards his own half-sis, Karen Marie Andersen. There was little love between the siblings.

What's more than, Andersen was inspired by something he had witnessed as a child. His father was a shoemaker, who was once sent a piece of ruby silk with the education to make some dancing shoes for the daughter of a rich lady. Andersen's father fashioned a pair of red shoes from the silk, using carmine leather (such as features in the story), simply the lady refused to buying them, saying that he had ruined a perfectly good piece of silk. Andersen'due south father was so incensed that he cutting the shoes upwardly in front of the woman.

And poverty is indeed an important chemical element of 'The Red Shoes'. Karen is given a sense of taste of the finery which the princess enjoys when she sees the ruby shoes in the shop and tricks her guardian, the blind former lady, into buying them for her. Thereafter, she repeatedly uses deceit in order to exist able to vesture the shoes, including in church, where she knows they will be frowned upon. The kind old lady who had taken her in is, finally, abased on her death bed because the lure of the m ball and a chance to prove off her prized red shoes is too swell for Karen to resist.

In some means, then, 'The Cerise Shoes' prefigures the themes of what is Dickens's most fairy-tale-inspired novel, Great Expectations (1860-61), where Pip forgets his family and neglects poor Joe once he has had a sense of taste of life as a gentleman in the metropolis.

Like Pip, Karen must undergo a chastening road to redemption, although the sacrifices demanded of her will be much greater: she must lose her own feet and then, in the end, her own life in club to be rid of the curse of the ruby shoes and welcomed dorsum into the house of God.

(Curiously, the two writers admired each other, with Dickens fifty-fifty inviting Andersen to stay with him and his family; although when Andersen refused to accept a hint and didn't leave, the Dickenses tired of him. When he finally left, Dickens sprawled on the mirror in the invitee room, 'Hans Andersen slept in this room for v weeks – which seemed to the family AGES!')

So the central themes of 'The Red Shoes' are vanity, temptation – specifically, the lure of luxuries and fine things in life – and redemption, specifically religious redemption. Karen wants to wear the cherry-red shoes and be admired in them. We can inappreciably blame her for this, given her poor upbringing when she had near zero to call her own at all. But Andersen is careful to permit Karen's descent into obsession unfold gradually over several pages, until she clearly crosses a line from mere naughtiness (wearing the shoes to church) to wickedness and selfishness (abandoning her dying guardian so she can attend the grand ball in the town).

In many ways, the very surreal and strange cardinal motif of 'The Carmine Shoes' – the shoes almost comically dancing against their wearer's will – is what makes the story so powerful. Andersen could have had the girl be attracted to a bright shawl (which then fastened tight around her until it strangled her) or a pretty dress (which grew tighter, etc.), just the choice of shoes associated with the gaiety and levity of dancing is inspired, because it constantly draws attending to Karen'due south shoes, making her loathe the attending they bring her and the way they wear her out as she ship her off across the town and across.

Merely such quasi-comic activeness is sharply undercut by the gruesome, Grimm-esque nature of Karen's penance, which involves losing her anxiety (tellingly, Andersen gives this task to an executioner, a homo responsible for dealing justice to wrongdoers, rather than a uncomplicated woodsman) so, once she has been forgiven and welcomed back into the church, her life. She has undergone the necessary sacrifice in order to purify her soul and then she is fit to enter sky, where, the narrator tells united states of america, 'no one … asked nigh the ruddy shoes.'