Intro
When you think of fairy tales, chances are you have some of Andersen's stories in mind: "The Ugly Duckling," "The Little Mermaid," "The Emperor's New Clothes"—these are instantly recognizable tales. They're full of the sorts of themes and narrative devices that we expect from fairytales, including binary oppositions (like good and evil), instantly recognizable types (like the hero and villain), and magical characters and settings.
Many of the tales focus on the struggles of misfits and outsiders, and this is something with which Andersen was all too familiar—he was bullied as a child and never part of the in-crowd. Not all of Andersen's stories have upbeat endings, either: check out "The Steadfast Toy Soldier" if you want a good cry. It's not just doom and gloom, though: plenty of these tales totally have a "happily ever after" scenario.
Andersen wrote lots of classic stories that we could analyze, but let's take a look at one of one of his longest and best-known tales: "The Snow Queen" (1844). You may know it as kinda sorta the inspiration for Frozen.
Anyway, this story starts off with a classic fairy tale motif, the magic mirror, which in this case distorts things so that they appear the opposite of what they really are. When a hobgoblin carries this mirror up to heaven in an attempt to mess with everyone's heads, the mirror cracks and falls to earth in pieces. The shards then blow around and lodge in people's eyes and hearts, causing people to become uncaring and to only see the bad in others.
We then cut to a large town where we're introduced to a boy and girl, Kay and Gerda. Kay's grandma tells the two kids a story about the Snow Queen (she's in charge of the snowflakes), and, one winter's day, Kay sees the Queen for himself. However, when the Queen beckons him to follow her, Kay draws back in fear.
As we jump ahead to the summer, a crucial plot point occurs: remember the magic mirror? Well, one of its shards gets into Kay's eye, and he starts acting like a major jerk. When winter rolls around again, he takes off with the Snow Queen, and everyone thinks that he's dead.
Everyone but Gerda, that is.
Gerda's not about to give up that easily, and so she embarks on a series of adventures—and challenges—as she pieces together Kay's whereabouts. Things draw to a close with some doves telling Gerda that they saw the Queen heading toward Lapland. Gerda then hops on a reindeer and makes her way to the Queen's palace, where she has to face her fair share of obstacles once again.
But it turns out that inner strength and love are the strongest powers of all: as Gerda's tears fall on Kay, the mirror dissolves and is washed away with Kay's tears (it's tears galore by this point). With everything back to normal the duo head home. And that, at last, brings us to our quote.
Quote
Kay and Gerda walked on hand in hand, and the farther they went the lovelier the spring appeared with its flowers and verdure; the church bells were ringing, and they recognised the tall steeples and the large town where they lived; and they entered it, and found their way to their grandmother's door, then up the stairs and into the room, where all looked the same as it used to do. The clock was still going "tick-tack!" and the hands were pointing to the hour; but, as they passed through the doorway, they perceived they were now grown-up. The roses on the roof were in full bloom and peeping in at the open window; and there stood their little chairs which they used as children, upon which Kay and Gerda now sat down, each on their own, holding each other by the hand, while the cold, empty splendour of the Snow Queen's palace vanished from their thoughts like a painful dream. The grandmother sat in God's bright sunshine, reading aloud the following passage in the Bible: "Except ye become as little children, ye shall not enter into the Kingdom of Heaven."
¬And Kay and Gerda exchanged looks, and they now understood the meaning of the old hymn:—
¬"The roses bloom but one short hour, then die,
But th' infant Jesus ever lives on high."
¬And there they both sat — grown-up, yet children still, for they were children in their hearts; and it was summer — warm, glorious summer!
Analysis
Here we have the standard fairytale ending: all the challenges have been overcome, the characters have gone through a learning experience and are reunited, and winter has turned to summer. In short, equilibrium has been restored.
One of the more unusual things about this story is that the hero is a girl—usually we'd expect the guy to be the one who has to defeat the villain, overcome the obstacles, and rescue the maiden. Other than that, though, this story includes the standard ingredients, including binary oppositions such as good/evil, old/young, and winter/summer; and character types such as hero, villain, helper, and wise elder. There's also plenty of magic and mischief as we delve into a world of sorcery, goblins, talking flowers, animal sidekicks, and a knife-toting robber-girl who's got some major attitude going on.
One common thread in fairytale narratives is a magical character (an elf, witch, troll, whatever) who crosses over into the "regular" world and sets off a course of fantastical events. In this case, there are a couple of events that work together to get the narrative started. The first is the shards of the mirror falling to earth, and the second is the appearance of the Snow Queen herself. Kay resists the Snow Queen at first, but once the shards are in his eye, the wheels have been set in motion—equilibrium has been disrupted.
With Kay under the Queen's spell, it's up to Gerda to restore order. The ending of the story consequently celebrates the triumph of love and goodness.
This final passage has the further effect of making us think about the time span in which the story takes place. Gerda certainly goes through a lot, and the narrative skims over the passing of the seasons pretty quickly. Still, when Gerda rescues Kay, we assume the two are still children. When they enter their house, however, they find that they're now grown up. Has their journey taken longer than we—and they—realize? Or have they suddenly turned into adults? What's up with this chronotope?
It's a fairy tale, after all, so we're not limited to the usual laws of time and space. It's not even like everything has to be clear-cut: what's important is that the duo has emerged from their saga as grown-ups while remaining children in their hearts. Fairy tales often have moral themes, and since this one's in the "happy ending" camp, everything is capped off with a biblical passage and hymn summing up what Kay and Gerda have learned.