The Princess and the Pea

Nobody gets the point of Hans Christian Andersen’s tale “The Princess and the Pea.” When I Grok for the moral of the story, its search of the consensus on the Internet brings up “don’t judge by appearances.” 

That is, the princess does not look like a real princess, but she is.

This misses everything. In what sense is she a “real princess”?

Follow the text. The hero’s conflict is the inability to find a real princess. “He travelled all over the world to find one, but nowhere could he get what he wanted.”

Now, how hard is it to identify a real princess? A king will be the most prominent and well-known person in the country. His daughters will be princesses. Merriam-Webster: “princess: a female member of a royal family.” 

Finding a real princess is about as hard as asking one question to anyone in the next country over. If somehow you don’t already know.

Andersen is plainly telling us that “princess” here is meant metaphorically.

“Suddenly a knocking was heard at the city gate, and the old king went to open it.”

Would a king go out personally to open the city gate? No king would, for reasons of national security and his own safety from assassins, even before any other considerations. Let alone an elderly king, on a stormy night.

Andersen is telling us that “king” here is also metaphorical.

“It was a princess standing out there in front of the gate. But, good gracious! what a sight the rain and the wind had made her look. The water ran down from her hair and clothes; it ran down into the toes of her shoes and out again at the heels. And yet she said that she was a real princess.”

Obviously, no princess in the dictionary meaning of the word would be out wandering in a foreign country alone with no place to go in a rainstorm.

Let alone “down at heel.” The rain is running into the toes of her shoes and out the heel. In other words, her shoes are worn out so that the heel is lower than the toe, and both have holes. She is literally not “well-heeled,” “down at the heel.” She is not someone accustomed to luxury.

So by what authority is she a princess? By her own. She says so.

Next, the elderly queen then puts a pea on her bed, and covers it with twenty mattresses and twenty coverlets. This odd old queen clearly has no maids nor ladies in waiting.

Were this not yet enough to make matters clear, how plausible is it for anyone, however sensitive and accustomed to luxury, to feel a pea under twenty mattresses?

“Princess” here means someone who demands to be treated like a princess; someone who will complain no matter what is done for her or given to her. A narcissist.

The next question is why on earth would any man want to marry such a woman? Yet the prince does exactly that, indeed searches far and wide for such a woman; with his mother assisting in the hunt.

And the clue is that his father is a “king,” and his mother a “queen.” They are both also narcissists. Andersen is showing to us why abused children come to be magnets for abusive partners. The “prince” has grown up with the experience of those he loves being constantly self-important and demanding. As the Catechism of the Catholic Church puts it, the family is the “school of love.” Seeking for love, the poor man will seek the same thing he knows in a mate. It will look like affection to him. He will feel unworthy of anything else.

And so he is trapped in a lifetime of abuse.

There, that is a true story.