Gerda Vs. Snow Queen. Was There Competition?

2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 15:43

… an old legend in a psychological way about the classic love triangle in Lapland based on the tale of G. K. Andersen "The Snow Queen".

With the arrival of winter, with the onset of holidays, everything around us becomes fabulous. In the opera they give “The Nutcracker,” in the neighboring children's theater, a new production of “The Snow Queen,” “12 Months,” “Christmas Story.” On TV, they show “Frost” and “Icy Heart.” In winter, I also feel as fabulous as possible. Maybe because in winter my own fairy tale began, my life scenario, which was destined to repeat and repeat, repeat and repeat … until awareness intervened in the process.

Life scenarios tend to be inherited. Each one is unique. But at the same time, the script has certain patterns that are displayed in the collective unconscious: myths, legends, fairy tales. They are embodied using a certain set of archetypes.

Starting from childhood, we absorb the experience of possible scenarios for the development of our life, through fairy tales told by parents, grandmothers, grandfathers, and then in the same way we bring our fairy tale to life.

Each has its own tale. Someone becomes beautiful Assol, spending half of their lives near the ocean in anticipation of that very one Gray. Does he come? In a fairy tale, yes.

Someone finds their monster or their frog. Envelopes him / her with love and care, expecting changes, reincarnations, with the hope that love will soften the heart, melt the ice. What a common phrase: "He will change, he says that it is also difficult for him with his aggression, I will do everything to help him become different. I will save him."

Someone is destined to be Cinderella. Or Nastenka (from Morozko), voluntarily taking on the burden of responsibility for the whole family, over-investing in her home and children. Cinderella expects a reward, expects gratitude, love and recognition for her hard work. And Nastenka turns into a victim, blamed for her kindness and openness.

And someone, like Rapunzel, sits locked up in their beliefs and introjects, with the inability to move, explore, search - with the inability to live.

Andersen played a strange joke with his main character - Gerda, naming the fairy tale in honor of the Snow Queen - the mistress of the cold and snow, living in Lapland. And this despite the fact that the queen herself appears in the fairy tale only twice: at the beginning, when she takes Kai away and at the end, when she leaves her castle, skipping Gerda's visit and the return of warmth to the boy's icy heart.

I think we need to return the value to Gerda: after all, the main character is she - a girl who made an incredible journey, a rescue operation that she was not asked about.

Gerda VS Snow Queen (what does Kai have to do with it?)

In your childhood life Gerda only knows how to enjoy the world, roses, snow, beauty. The girl is quite driven, trusting, naive, with blurred personal boundaries. "Kindness" and "goodness" make her faceless and completely uninteresting at the very beginning of the tale. Therefore, another female image decisively bursts into the foreground - The Snow Queen: mysterious, alluring, whole, sublime, superior to many others. “Snowflakes surround her in a dense swarm, but she is larger than all of them and never sits down on the ground, always rushes in a black cloud. Often at night she flies through the city streets and looks into the windows, which is why they are covered with frosty patterns, like flowers."

Two images. Two prototypes. Is competition possible between such different images at all? And why? Or for whom?

It's hard to see the beginnings of competition here right away. But it is there. If you look at this tale from the point of view of psychology and the theory of subpersonalities, you will notice that Kai and Gerda are two parts of one personality. A person who is going through a crisis. A person who is ready to compete with a cold mother in order to grow up in order to appropriate his own duality.

Kai - a boy with an acute narcissistic injury caused by a shrapnel in his heart and eyes.

What do we know about this injury? The narcissistically traumatized child grows up in an environment filled with disregard for his basic needs: love, protection, acceptance for who he is, ignoring him as a person. Such injuries are now not uncommon. People who have not received recognition, admiration and approval from their parents live with the strong thought that the world is cruel and defend themselves from it, hurting others with sarcastic statements, condemnation, and contempt. In such people, rationality prevails over feelings. With Kai, this is exactly what happened, suddenly, after the fragments hit his heart and eyes, the boy becomes angry, suspicious, cruel, cynical. Admiring Kai, Gerda says: “- Yes, it's Kai! He's so smart! He knew all four operations of arithmetic, and even with fractions!”

A cold mother, hurting her child with her coldness, dooms him to life in the kingdom of the snow queen. Closer to your injury and to a cold inaccessible object, from which it is useless to demand warmth. Thus, Andersen in a metaphorical form described to us the process of traumatizing a child during the formation of a healthy narcissistic component of the personality.

Gerda is the embodiment of the traveler archetype

It is important to point out that the entire fairy tale "The Snow Queen" has the qualities of a myth, and can be viewed from the point of view of a mythological structure, as a construction consisting of archetypal images. For further analysis, I used the structure of Joseph Campbell, described in the book "The Thousand-Faced Hero".

Gerda appears before us in a fairy tale as an absolutely autonomous archetype living its history - the archetype of a traveler, a seeker.

Path-initiation - this is the path that every traveler must go when faced with obstacles and helpers. This is a path symbolizing the transition to another stage of development, symbolizing growing up.

So, according to the basic structure of any mythical journey, the following stages are present in a fairy tale:

1. The call to wanderlust and the rejection of the call. With the arrival of spring, Gerda decides that Kai is dead (drowned in the river that flows outside the city). Here Gerda and stop. Trust your feelings. Recognize reality. But Gerda chooses a different path. She decides to go in search of Kai, in whose death she does not believe. At this moment, Gerda is led by the signals of the world:

“- Kai died and will not return! - said Gerda.

- I do not believe! - answered the sunlight.

- He died and will never return! she repeated to the swallows.

- We do not believe! - they answered.

In the end, Gerda herself stopped believing it."

2. Overcoming the first threshold of the journey … The first threshold is always a certain border of the present, beyond which there is no more patronage, guardianship and security. For Gerda, such a threshold was the River. Areas of the unknown, the world into which Gerda goes, sailing away on a boat with the flow, symbolically are an open field for the projection of the content of the unconscious. All that happens to Gerda further is a meeting with the world through her own projections and defenses. Going on the road, Gerda does not seem to leave herself the opportunity to return, change her mind, become exhausted, get tired, call for help. Meeting these defenses is a prerequisite on the path of growing up in this fairy tale. This is a path for the sake of a path: “And the girl fancied that the waves were nodding to her in a strange way; Then she took off her red shoes, her first jewel (approx. - the first victim) and threw them into the river … The boat carried farther and farther; Gerda sat quietly, in only stockings ….

3. The way of testing. Having crossed the threshold separating the world of reality from the world of a magical journey, Gerda finds herself in the next obligatory part of the myth - on ways of testing. On this path, the heroine of a fairy tale (like the hero of any myth) receives a lot of help. Perhaps only here the heroine begins to perceive the world as a resource place, and only here she learns about the existence of a kind world, endowed with a helping and supporting force.

- Meeting with the Witch. At this stage of the tale, Gerda finds herself in a wonderful garden in which a woman who knows how to conjure lives lives, she seeks to keep Gerda with her, depriving her of her memory and memories of Kai.

- Fake meeting with Kai … Travel to the castle where Kai allegedly lives, who married the princess.

- Survival in the wild forest held hostage by the robber girl.

4. Like every hero who overcomes trials, Gerda's path meets different helpers: flowers, raven and crow, deer, lapland and finca. It is thanks to the assistants that the world unfolds as a friendly side to Gerda, providing resources and assistance.

5. Apotheosis. It seems that Gerda went all this way for the sake of Kai and in order to melt his cold heart. But actually it is not.

Kai and his narcissistic trauma is Kai's life scenario.

And Gerda's life scenario is overcoming the Path. Magic Way, which will completely change her. Initiation of adulthood. Transition to the next level of life. Into a new life scenario. Into your own life scenario.

Conclusion and conclusions or start and guess

“They climbed the familiar staircase and entered a room where everything was as before: the clock said“tick-tock”, the hands moved along the dial. But, passing through the low door, Kai and Gerda noticed that they had become quite adults."

The path of any traveler or seeker is the path to oneself. Indeed, in fact, all the characters in this tale and the processes that occur with them are a metaphorical reflection of the process that unfolds inside the personality on the way to growing up. Only after experiencing and integrating one's own “frozen experience” is it possible to appropriate it and use it in life.

Gerda's entire trip for Kai is a trip to psychotherapy. All obstacles and trials on this path to oneself are a reflection of those processes and defense mechanisms that a person comes with his psychotherapist. Frozen Lapland is a place of injury. In gestalt therapy, these are Kai's frozen feelings. “… Kai was left alone in the boundless deserted hall, looked at the ice floes and kept thinking, thinking, so that his head was cracking. He sat in one place - so pale, motionless, as if lifeless …"

A witch woman with a beautiful garden is the embodiment of resistance. A state in which it is so sweet and pleasant to remain with your illusion,

“- For a long time I wanted to have such a nice little girl! - said the old woman. - You will see how well you and I will heal!

And she continued to comb the girl's curls and the longer she scratched, the more Gerda forgot her named brother Kai - the old woman knew how to do magic."

A meeting with a little robber is a meeting with your Shadow, which is difficult to accept. The Shadow's task is to help Gerda. The robber gives Gerda a reindeer, which becomes her friend, and thanks to which Gerda finds Kai.

And, in the end, a meeting with their own infantilism, manifested in the hope of melting someone's heart with their tears.