History Literature / TheRedShoes

[[quoteright:350:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/the_red_shoes_2.jpg]]
[[caption-width-right:350:Karen doesn't know it yet, but her red shoes are about to be her unmaking.]]

This gruesome didactic story, written at a time when Andersen was experiencing an increase in religious sentiment, is notoriously difficult to adapt satisfactorily. Even if some of the gorier details are omitted, there is little in it that could be considered optimistic or positive enough to present to children today. Nowadays, it is more popular as a historical curiosity for adults to analyze. Among its better-known adaptations is the 1948 (adult) [[Film/TheRedShoes film of the same name.]] The original can be read [[https://andersen.sdu.dk/vaerk/hersholt/TheRedShoes_e.html here]].

* DisproportionateRetribution: A girl roughly in her early teens who has spent the first years of her life in poverty pays a bit too much attention to her shoes and is not attentive enough to her prayers and her benefactor. For this, she gets overpowered by the shoes, dragged across the countryside by them, and has to endure [[spoiler: having her feet cut off and further harassment from both an angel and her severed feet in order to induce her to repent of her sins.]] Rather cruel to say the least.

This gruesome didactic story, written at a time when Andersen was experiencing an increase in religious sentiment, is notoriously difficult to adapt satisfactorily. Even if some of the gorier details are omitted, [[SocietyMarchesOn there is little in it that could be considered optimistic or positive enough to present to children today.]] Nowadays, it is more popular as a historical curiosity for adults to analyze. Among its better-known adaptations is the 1948 (adult) [[Film/TheRedShoes film of the same name.]] The original can be read [[https://andersen.sdu.dk/vaerk/hersholt/TheRedShoes_e.html here]].

* ClingyMacGuffin: The titular shoes, of course. The coachman is able to get them off Karen's feet the first time she starts dancing uncontrollably, but they're permanently stuck the second time she puts them on.

One of [[Creator/HansChristianAndersen Hans Christian Andersen's]] more sinister fairy tales. Karen is a pretty but very poor girl; so poor in fact, that she has to go barefoot in the summer and wear clogs in the winter that chafe her ankles until they are red. Old Mother Shoemaker takes pity on Karen and makes her a pair of ungainly red shoes. Just then, Karen's mother dies and, having no other shoes, Karen wears them for the first time to the funeral, though they are inappropriate for mourning. An old lady of some means happens to pass by in her coach, sees Karen, takes pity on her, and takes her in as her ward. Karen thinks that her shoes were what drew the old lady to her, but in fact the latter considers them ugly and has them burned.

At first, things seem to be going well, but then the time comes for Karen to be confirmed. When shopping for new shoes for the occasion, Karen, who has developed a vain streak, sets her eyes on a beautiful red leather pair that had been made for a count's daughter but had not fit her, and that are just like those she has seen on a young Princess when her mother the Queen had taken her through the land. The old lady buys them for her; however, she has poor eyesight and does not see that they are red; otherwise she would never have let Karen wear something so gaudy to church. At her confirmation, Karen does not pay attention to the service, thinking of nothing except her new shoes. People do notice, and gossip about it; when the old lady hears that Karen has worn red shoes to church, she tells her that it was naughty of her to do this and that in the future she is to wear her old black shoes to church. The next week, though, Karen puts on her red shoes anyway; it is the week of holy communion and again, Karen thinks only of her shoes and does not participate actively in the service. This time, however, a mysterious stranger had met Karen and the old lady at the church door: a crippled old soldier with a long red beard. He had offered to dust off the old lady's shoes and when Karen had put out her foot as well he had commented: "Oh, what beautiful shoes for dancing," and had then said to them: "Never come off when you dance," as he tapped the sole of each of them with his hand. Indeed, on leaving the church, the soldier meets them again and again says "Oh, what beautiful shoes for dancing!" just as they are boarding the coach. Karen can’t resist trying a few steps, but soon she cannot stop dancing; the coachman has to chase her, catch her, and lift her into the coach, where she keeps trying to dance, kicking the old lady in the process; it is only when she takes her shoes off that her legs calm down. The red shoes are taken away from her and put into a cupboard.

Soon after, the old lady takes ill and is not expected to live. It falls upon Karen to nurse her, but then she gets invited to a ball and reckons that there would be nothing wicked in going. Of course she puts on her beloved red shoes. But when she gets to the ball, the shoes take control of Karen's feet again and this time there is no stopping them. They soon make her dance out into the wide world for days on end, taking her all over the place and physically wasting her. She dances into the dark woods, where she comes across the old soldier again. He ironically repeats "Oh, what beautiful shoes for dancing." When she dances up to the church, she finds an angel sternly guarding its doors, sword in hand, who threatens Karen that she will dance until her flesh shrivels down to the skeleton and that she must knock on the door when she comes somewhere where proud and vain children live, until they are afraid of her. Karen will have to live through physical and emotional torment in order to achieve adequate repentance for her sins.

This gruesome didactic story, written at a time when Andersen was experiencing an increase in religious sentiment, is notoriously difficult to adapt satisfactorily. Even if some of the gorier details are omitted, [[SocietyMarchesOn there is little in it that could be considered optimistic or positive enough to present to children today]]. Nowadays it is more popular as a historical curiosity for adults to analyze. Among its better-known adaptations is the 1948 (adult) [[Film/TheRedShoes film of the same name]]. The original can be read [[https://andersen.sdu.dk/vaerk/hersholt/TheRedShoes_e.html here]].

Andersen's more obscure ''Literature/TheGirlWhoTrodOnTheLoaf'' about a cruel and haughty girl who sinks bodily into hell and does penance there is a companion piece, as is ''Anne Lisbeth'', a story about a proud woman haunted by the soul of her son, whom she had abandoned in order to care for a nobleman's son.

* AmbiguouslyHuman: The mysterious soldier may indeed be just a crippled old veteran; it seems more likely, however, that he has an otherworldly origin; he could, for example, be a demon tempting Karen. He would certainly seem to be the one who curses Karen's shoes into forcing her to keep dancing.

* DiedHappilyEverAfter: Implied. At the church service that Karen [[spoiler: has been transported to following her repentance, her heart breaks and her soul travels along a shaft of sunlight to heaven, "where no one questioned her about the red shoes."]]
* DisproportionateRetribution: A girl roughly in her early teens who has spent the first years of her life in poverty pays a bit too much attention to her shoes and is not attentive enough to her prayers and her benefactor. For this she gets overpowered by the shoes, dragged across the countryside by them, and has to endure [[spoiler: having her feet cut off and further harassment from both an angel and her severed feet in order to induce her to repent of her sins.]] Rather cruel to say the least.

** The executioner falls somewhere between this and GoodIsNotNice. When the shoes dance Karen to his house, he says that he cuts off the heads of bad people and that he feels his ax beginning to quiver. Karen asks him to [[spoiler: cut off her feet instead]]; he complies. Then, however, he makes her [[spoiler: a pair of wooden feet and some crutches]] (and teaches her a hymn sung by repentant prisoners).
** The old lady subverts this trope. She forbids Karen to wear the red shoes to church, but proves incompetent in enforcing this rule and Karen outright defies her. The first time the shoes took control of her feet the old lady could have had them discarded or burned; instead, the shoes are merely placed in the cupboard, leaving Karen to put them on again when the opportunity arises.

* HappilyAdopted: Subverted. Karen and her foster mother don't see eye to eye on the issue of wearing red shoes to church. Karen doesn't seem to have warmed up to the old lady too much, and leaves the latter on her deathbed to go to a ball when she should have been nursing her.

* RedIsViolent: From the very beginning of the story, there are references to red things that invoke and imply negative ideas and connotations. When Karen is poor, her clogs make her ankles red. The red shoes are symbolic of worldly pride. The ominous old soldier has a beard "more red than white", and finally, when the shoes force Karen to dance, she is dragged through thorn and briar that scratch her until she bleeds; eventually, the curse can only be lifted by shedding further blood.
* RedemptionEqualsDeath: Once Karen has achieved genuine contrition, she is transported to the Sunday church service. She is so moved by the experience of being there again [[spoiler: that her heart breaks and her soul is lifted up to heaven.]]
* SparedByTheAdaptation: Pretty much any modern re-telling has to [[LighterAndSofter soften the story and omit the more morbid elements]], [[spoiler: in particular by having Karen find a less painful way of removing the title ClingyMacGuffin and ending the story with her still alive.]] A version featured in the ''Fairy Tale Classics'' Anime series makes (more or less) the whole sequence from where [[spoiler: the shoes take control of her feet, across the death of her foster mother, and to her own ascent to heaven]], AllJustADream and both she and the old lady live HappilyEverAfter in the end.

** The old lady subverts this trope. She forbids Karen to wear the red shoes to church, but proves incompetent in enforcing this rule and Karen repeatedly defies her. The first time the shoes took control of her feet the old lady could have had them discarded or burned; instead, the shoes are merely placed in the cupboard, leaving Karen to put them on again when the opportunity arises.

* DisproportionateRetribution: A girl roughly in her early teens who has spent the first years of her life in poverty pays a bit too much attention to her shoes and is not attentive enough to her prayers and her benefactor. For this she gets overpowered by the shoes, dragged across the countryside by them, and has to endure [[spoiler: having her feet cut off and further harassment from both an angel and her severed feet in order to induce her to repent of her sins.]] Rather cruel to say the least.

* {{Irony}}: All the protagonist wanted to do was dance. This was literally all she could do.

* SparedByTheAdaptation: Pretty much any modern re-telling has to [[LighterAndSofter soften the story and omit the more morbid elements]], [[spoiler: in particular by having Karen find a less painful way of removing the title ClingyMacGuffin and ending the story with her still alive.]] An Anime version makes (more or less) the whole sequence from where [[spoiler: the shoes take control of her feet, across the death of her foster mother, and to her own ascent to heaven]], AllJustADream and both she and the old lady live HappilyEverAfter in the end.

[[quoteright:350:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/the_red_shoes.jpg]]

* SparedByTheAdaptation: Pretty much any modern re-telling has to [[LighterAndSofter soften the story and omit the more morbid elements]], [[spoiler: in particular by having Karen find a less painful way of removing the title ClingyMacGuffin and ending the story with her still alive.]] An Anime version makes (more or less) the whole sequence from where the shoes take control of her feet, across the death of her foster mother, and to her own ascent to heaven, AllJustADream and both she and the old lady live HappilyEverAfter in the end.

* SparedByTheAdaptation: Pretty much any modern re-telling has to [[LighterAndSofter soften the story and omit the more morbid elements]]. An Anime version makes (more or less) the whole sequence from where the shoes take control of her feet, across the death of her foster mother, and to her own ascent to heaven, AllJustADream and both she and the old lady live HappilyEverAfter in the end.