Hans Christian Andersen
Hans Christian Andersen Bio
Danish author Hans Christian Andersen (1805-1875) is best known for his well-loved fairy tales, including “The Ugly Duckling,” “The Little Mermaid,” and “The Emperor’s New Clothes.” A prolific writer throughout his life, he kept a daily diary, wrote thousands of letters, and wrote a new autobiography every few years. He tried his hand at poetry, fiction, and drama, but he struggled to master those genres. It was when he finally turned his hand to fairy tales that he met with unmitigated success and world-wide fame.
The story of his own life, in fact, reads like something from a fairy tale. He was born to a poor couple who lived in a small cottage in the slums of Odense. His father was a shoemaker, his mother was a washerwoman, and his grandmother worked in the lunatic asylum. At times the family was so poor young Hans had to beg for money or food. He left home at 14 to try to make a living in the big city of Copenhagen.
Although Andersen was born years before the word “autism” was used, Andersen displayed many traits that would indicate he was on the spectrum. As a child, he was a loner who did not get along with other children. His favorite pastime was collecting, sorting, and handling tiny, interesting slivers of fabric. He would stagger through the streets with a clumsy gait, eyes closed, reciting Shakespeare as he walked (his eidetic memory allowed him to memorize entire plays). He would lecture people on odd topics, such as the time he barged into the poor house and started lecturing the old women about body organs and their functions. His social skills were rough and always clumsy, but he was always sincere and somehow likeable. People wanted to help him.
He was passionate about personal writing such as diaries, letters, and autobiography, yet he struggled to narrate his life story in a coherent way. He re-wrote his life story at least every ten years, not sure how to create a coherent narrative with a consistent style and over-arching themes. These difficulties—writing about the self and writing a sustained narrative—are common challenges among people on the spectrum. His rough drafts reveal a painful writing process that involved writing paragraphs, scribbling them out, re-writing them, and scribbling them out again. Sometimes he cut out descriptions of himself that others had written about him and pasted them right over his text. “Let me tell you it has not been an easy task [writing his life story],” he said to a trusted friend.
When he turned his pen to fairy tales, he discovered the genre that best fit his particular way of developing a story.
Autistic Traits in Andersen’s Narrative Structure:
Randomness (stories are driven by random events, characters, objects, and sequences)
Repetition/Ritual (echolalia, repetitive words and phrases, ritualistic behaviors)
Obsessions with Special Interest (characters fixate on interests such as shiny objects, flashy clothes and shoes, mechanical gizmos, fires)
Surfaces and the Superficial (glitzy appearances, perfection, beauty, royal titles, wings)
Symbolic representations of autism (Princess and Pea, Snow Queen, Ugly Duckling, Little Mermaid, Steadfast Tin Soldier)
In one autobiography, Andersen wrote in despair “I am a peculiar being!” Fortunately for Andersen, and for the world, he dipped his pen into ink one more time to try his hand at fairy tales. In them he was able to pin down and confront the feelings that had eluded him in his autobiographies. The fairy tales allowed him to explore the nagging feelings of insecurity, loneliness, frustration, anger, and shame that had plagued him throughout his life. Furthermore by using symbol and allegory instead of direct exposition, he was able to share something of what it felt like to be a man with autism living in the 19th century. The fairy tales also gave him the opportunity to share his unfailing optimism, his joyful spirit, and his well-deserved pride.
Recognizing that Hans Christian Andersen was on the autism spectrum, and recognizing that his stories were influenced by this, gives us the opportunity to learn about the connections between an author’s neurological wiring and his way of telling a story: autism not only gave him the material to write about, but also the persistence, creativity, and intelligence he needed to become a successful author. Once he found the perfect genre for expressing himself creatively, his popularity soared. His story collections sold well around the world, and he was invited to spend time with Denmark’s royal family. The ugly duckling had indeed become a swan.