The Little Match Girl

"The Little Match Girl" (Danish: Den Lille Pige med Svovlstikkerne, meaning "The little girl with the sulphur sticks") is a short story by Danish poet and author Hans Christian Andersen. The story is about a dying child's hallucinations, and was first published in 1845. It has been adapted to various media including animated film, and a television musical.

Plot summary

Bayes illustration, 1889

On a cold New Year’s Eve, a poor girl tries to sell matches in the street. She is freezing badly, but she is afraid to go home because her father will beat her for not selling any matches. She takes shelter in a nook and lights the matches to warm herself. In their glow, she sees several lovely visions including a Christmas tree and a holiday feast. The girl looks skyward, sees a shooting star, and remembers her deceased grandmother saying that such stars mean someone is dying. As she lights her next match, she sees a vision of her grandmother, the only person to have treated her with love and kindness. She strikes one match after another to keep the vision of her grandmother nearby for as long as she can. The child dies and her grandmother carries her soul to Heaven. The next morning, passers-by find the dead child in the nook, with rosy red cheeks and a smile on her face. They express sadness at her death and the burnt-out matches she must have used to warm herself, but they cannot know the wonderful visions she saw in her final moments or how gloriously she is celebrating the New Year with her grandmother.

Source

The source for the story was Andersen's genius, sparked by a widely popular woodcut illustration by the Danish artist Johan Thomas Lundbye depicting a poor child selling matches printed in a calendar for 1843. Several illustrations had been sent to Andersen by the editor of an almanac requesting him to write a story around one.^[1]

Another known inspiration for the story is the well known fairy tale The Star Money previously recorded by the Brothers Grimm. It is a story of a poor young girl who gives away everything that she has to the needy and ends up with nothing except her love for God. The Grimms' variation differs, ending with the girl remaining alive and receiving divine gifts (money that falls from the stars) for her charity.

Publication

"The Little Match Girl" was first published December 1845 in Dansk Folkekalender for 1846. The work was re-published 4 March 1848 as a part of New Fairy Tales. Second Volume. Second Collection. 1848. (Nye Eventyr. Andet Bind. Anden Samling. 1848.), and again 18 December 1849 as a part of Fairy Tales. 1850. (Eventyr. 1850.). The work was also published 30 March 1863 as a part of Fairy Tales and Stories. Second Volume. 1863. (Eventyr og Historier. Andet Bind. 1863.)^[2]

Adaptations

Animated film

• In 1928, "La Petite Marchande d'Allumettes" ("The Little Match Girl") by Jean Renoir was released (40-minute silent film).
• The Charles Mintz studio adapted "The Little Match Girl", including its grim ending, into a 1937 Color Rhapsodies animated short film, considered among the studio's best films. It was nominated for the 1937 Academy Award for Best Short Subject (Cartoons), losing to Disney's The Old Mill.
• In 1971, Toei Animation released an animated film based on Andersen's works, entitled "Hans Christian Andersen no Sekai" ("The World of Hans Christian Andersen").
• In 2003, "The Little Match Girl" was made into an animated short film by Junho Chung for Fine Cut: KCET's Festival of Student Film.
• In 2005, an adaptation of "The Little Match Girl" was released by ADV Films in Hello Kitty Animation Theater Vol. 3.
• In 2006, Walt Disney Feature Animation finished production work on a new adaptation of "The Little Match Girl". The short was originally intended to be a part of a Fantasia film, but this project was canceled. The Little Matchgirl is last of the four shorts from the aborted compilation to be developed as a standalone film. This short was subsequently released as a special feature on the 2006 Platinum Edition DVD of The Little Mermaid.
• In the 2005 anime series The Snow Queen, based on another H.C. Andersen story, there is an episode entitled "The Little Match Girl" which retells the story in a variation.

Music

• David Lang composed his The Little Match Girl Passion in 2007, with two sopranos, tenor and bass-baritone. This work earned Lang the Pulitzer Prize for music 2008.
• The German avant-garde composer Helmut Lachenmann has written an opera based on the story called Das Mädchen mit den Schwefelhölzern.
• In 2001, guitarist Loren Mazzacane Connors released the album The Little Match Girl based on the story.
• In 2001 the Hungarian band Tormentor wrote the song "The Little Match Girl," with lyrics based on the story.
• In 2002 GrooveLily released Striking 12, a musical based on "The Little Match Girl".
• The story was also used as a basis for the band GrooveLily's 2004 off-Broadway musical Striking 12.
• Xiong Tian Ping the song 'Match Heaven' was performed by the Taiwanese pop artist Xiong Tian Ping in his debut album.
• Finnish symphonic metal band Nightwish released an album called Wishmaster. The song "Bare Grace Misery" contains the line "A Little Match Girl freezing in the snow."
• In 2005, Erasure made a music video of their song "Breathe", based on a modern adaptation of the story.
• As described by art director Rob O'Connor, the artwork for the album A Winter Symphony by Sarah Brightman has the artist portraying an "exotic, beautiful...grown-up version of the little match girl."
• In 2002 Moppi Productions released the demo "Halla" which was heavily influenced by "The Little Match Girl".

Television

• In 1974, a contemporarized version set in Cincinnati was aired on WLWT. It featured a nine-year-old named Sarah Jessica Parker in the role of the title character.
• In 1987 British TV released "The Little Match Girl" a musical based on the original story. The cast included Twiggy and Roger Daltrey.

Literature

• In 1996, Hogfather, one of Terry Pratchett's popular Discworld series of novels, gave the story a decidedly less morbid ending, thanks to the intervention of Death himself.
• La Vendedora de rosas (lit: "The Rose Seller") was a modern adaptation of Andersen's fairy tale in a very realistic, almost documentary form, a 1998 film directed by Víctor Gaviria, with Leidy Tabares.
• In 2003, "The Little Match Girl" was adapted into a short story manga by Hans Tseng and was featured in the first volume of Tokyopop's Rising Stars of Manga.
• In Neil Gaiman's 2004 novella, "A Study in Emerald," the main characters view a set of three plays, one of which is a stage adaptation of the "Little Match Girl".
• A Spider-Man short story titled "Leah" about a homeless little girl who goes into a coma and is found by Spider-Man, the doctors inform Spider-Man she won't make it, as Spidey kisses Leah on the cheek he wishes her "sweet, sweet dreams"; Leah falls asleep looking at newspaper clippings of Spider-Man mirroring the girls death while looking into the matches. The story was originally in the Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man Annual #1.

Other

• Suikoden III, (2002), a video game for the Playstation 2, contains a highly-abridged play version of "The Little Match Girl". In the game, the player can cast characters in different roles and have them perform a shortened version of the story.
• "Resurrection of the Little Match Girl" is a 2003 Korean movie, by which the L.M.G. abbreviation of Light machine gun is somehow relevant.
• In the Japanese anime, Gakuen Alice, the main character, Mikan Sakura puts on a play to earn money about The Little Match Girl.

See also

• List of works by Hans Christian Andersen
• Vilhelm Pedersen, first illustrator of Andersen's fairy tales

References

External links

• "The Little Match Girl" Jean Hersholt's English translation
• Den Lille Pige med Svovlstikkerne Original Danish text
• Surlalune: The Annotated Little Match Girl
• "The Little Matchgirl" Creative Commons audiobook
• "The Little Match Girl 1902 Adaptation (downloadable)" at The British Film Institute Released as part of the Creative Archive
• Dramatic reading of "The Little Match Girl" with full text and notes (Downloadable mp3 and streaming audio)
• Shedding Light on the Little Matchgirl traces the path director Roger Allers and the Disney Studio took in adapting the Hans Christian Andersen story to animation.
• David Lang's passion
• English translation (full text) from "Andersen's Fairy Tales"
• KIDOONS presents the Andersen fairy tale "The Little Match Girl"