Hans Andersen is usually romanticized in popular culture and his portrayals are often inaccurate. Jack Zipes presents a different image; a man with a massive ego, painfully aware of his lower class roots. Contrary to the gentle and quaint image purported by the media, Andersen was a man of contradictions and far from easy. His mood swung from humble to haughty and accommodating to hostile (Zipes 171). He rather disliked children even going as far to refuse to allow the commission of a stature of him reading a story to them.
He was the victim of abuse in his childhood and that may have contributed to his unfortunate experiences. Andersen tried to win over high-born of both sexes, although it is highly doubtful he was homosexual. Nevertheless, these attempts were done in part to escape his poor background and in part to find love (Andersen 11). However he was conspicuously unsuccessful in the latter. He ended up having no physical relations all his life and his pent-up passions are many a time seen in his narratives as are the themes of poverty and the desire to escape from it including the fairy tales of chance…show more content… Her fascination with getting to own a very fashionable pair of red shoes can be easily dismissed as a poor-to-rich transition of bewilderment. It takes a closer look to see the self-absorption that Karen has, hinted at when she attributes her adoption by the old lady as the result of the shoes, but explicit when the mirror tells that she is more than pretty, that in fact she is beautiful. Karen is unable to stop herself. She is hyperaware that everyone in church is staring at her because of the red shoes and even having been warned about their inappropriateness at a service, still goes for them. Later even after losing her feet she attempts to go back to the church so people can see her. The lure to the limelight is just too
