Talk:The Princess and the Pea

Title of the fairy tale
I moved the contents of the page The Real Princess to the page The Princess and the Pea, turned the former into a redirect page and changed the links on other pages accordingly. There are two reasons for this. Firstly, even though the present (unsourced) Project Gutenberg version of Andersen's fairy tales uses the title The Real Princess, it seems that The Princess and the Pea is by far the most commonly-used English title (110,000 hits in Google as compared to 19,800 for the former). Secondly, the latter title much more closely resembles the Danish title, Prinsessen på ærten (literal translation: The Princess on the Pea). Bwiki 17:18, 9 October 2005 (UTC)


 * That's the title I've always heard. I added a PD Dulac image I got from this PG project. gren グレン 18:55, 3 May 2006 (UTC)

The correct title is The Princess on the Pea. That the Princess slept on the Pea is fundamental to the meaning. "... and the pea..." assigns the role of equal subject to the pea. That a misinterpretation of a correct translation is widespread does not make the incorrect title correct. It merely propagates an uneducated Anglo-/US-centric attitude within something that aspires to be an actual encyclopaedia.

Unsubstantiated analysis removed
It ends with a very interesting musing regarding possible sado-masochistic psychological imagery, but leaves it largely unanswered. I'm sure there's commentary out there somewhere. I'd look for it myself, but, honestly, I don't feel extremely motivated at the moment. Maybe later. However, leaving it as is would be a disservice. Either it's a legitimate analysis with documented material or it isn't. Cheers. -- Hinotori 11:31, 20 December 2005 (UTC)


 * Actually someone added this to the plot synopsis today, and I moved it to analysis. For all I know it's purely unsubstantiated speculation by this one person. --Steerpike 12:25, 20 December 2005 (UTC)


 * In fact, it was largely copy-pasted from the annotations found at the external link provided by Diddims today (sections 9 and 10). Therefore, I deleted it and moved the external link to the "External links" section, shortening the URL so that it does not point to any specific section of the annotations. Maybe the link is a vanity link, but I will leave that for others to decide. To be fair, the original annotation was more cautiously worded; it said that Some modern writers have explored the sado-masochist possibilities of [the black-and-blue-all-over] story element while Diddims speculates that "black and blue all over" has unsettling undertones of sado-masochism (my emphasis throughout, Bwiki). That would imply that the "black-and-blue" part of the story as such has S-and-M undertones, which is of course purely unsubstantiated. --Bwiki 18:17, 21 December 2005 (UTC)

Plot synopsis
Re TERMINOLOGY. In Switzerland, where I come from, a synopsis is something like an abstract: a brief summary, a condensed general view. This is obviously not what the term means in America at the moment. Otherwise Wikipedia would not give the title of "synopsis" to this retelling of The Princess and the Pea that takes up more space than the original. But however we may call it, I don't understand why anybody would want to make a short story long, managing in the process to leave out the most important details and adding in return elements of his own imagination. There must be a reason for it, but I just don't see it. Can anybody help?--BZ(Bruno Zollinger) 08:56, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

The Princess and C.G.Jung
Re BLACK&BLUE. The talk about SM is pure poppycock. The princess, when she went to bed, did not know that this was a test. So where's the masochism? The queen did not think that the girl was a princess. So where's the sadism? Besides, C.G.Jung who has analyzed every well-known fairy tale (cf various Grimm tales in Wikipedia) has nothing to say about SM. There is, however, this ingenious theory of his: Andersen, a sanitizer if there ever was one, made a "pea" out of pee. It was the all-pervading smell of urine that caused the princess to thrash around on her bed until she was black and blue.

As a rule, I wouldn't put much stock in what Jung has to say on any subject whatsoever. But here he certainly has a point. After all, reacting to a pea hidden under 40 mattresses would not signal delicacy but dementia. A nose for urine, on the other hand, is a true sign of nobility.--BZ(Bruno Zollinger) 13:03, 26 March 2006 (UTC)


 * A brilliant theory, except that in Danish, the words for pea and pee are not even remotely similar. Dearsina (talk) 19:20, 24 March 2010 (UTC)

Protagonists' virtues, motives
I was just reading a book on crystals and their healing properties. I came across an incerpt on magnetite (lodestone). The book claims that this crystal is used to test the loyalty and fidelity of a wife. It also states that a man could place this stone beneath his wifes pillow, and if she fell out of bed, she was no longer virtuous.

Somehow, this seems to relate to the princess and the pea story. Maybe if she did not feel the pea, somehow she would not be virtuous. ???

172.193.204.172 06:29, 19 September 2006 (UTC)


 * Re VIRTUOUS.  You missed the point of the story, Anonyma. The princess is virtuous by definition. We are to make up our mind about the virtue of all the others. Here goes: The king is obviously an old fool who has nothing to say. The queen is an evil schemer intent upon keeping a virtuous princess out of her family. The servants are cowards. They could have tipped off the princess about the stupid scheme. But they preferred to stay out of the picture altogether. This leaves the  prince: Mother's little helper? A coward like the servants? A victim of his mother's cabal? Or are we totally on the wrong track? Think: A "king" who has to go out in the rain himself to open some doors. A "queen" who herself has to perform menial tasks like preparing a bed. Could it be that all the time it had been the PRINCE who had been pulling the strings behind the scenes? The story gives us a hint: Now he knew that she was a true princess. He needed a test! Which brings us to the main question: How crazy must this princess have been to want to marry into such a family? What do you think, Anonyma?--BZ(Bruno Zollinger) 12:28, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

Wrong infobox
This should be using, not ; our article is about the folk tale and its adaptations (including Andersen's into a short story), not about the Andersen short story in particular. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  19:48, 18 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Then shouldn't it have both infoboxes, and probably some others besides. cygnis insignis 01:35, 19 September 2015 (UTC)