| Paper Ballerina | |
|---|---|
 From Hans Christian Anderson #1 | |
|
Real Name |
Paper Ballerina |
|
First Appearance |
Fairy Tales Told for Children. First Collection. First Booklet (October 2, 1838) |
|
Original Publisher |
C.A. Reitzel |
|
Created by |
|
Origin[]
The Paper Ballerina is the love interest of the Steadfast Tin Solider from story written by Hans Christian Andersen.
On his birthday, a boy receives a set of 25 toy soldiers all cast from one old tin spoon and arrays them on a table top. One soldier stands on a single leg because, as he was the last one cast, there was not enough metal to make him whole. Nearby, the soldier spies a pretty paper ballerina with a spangle on her sash. She, too, is standing on one leg, and the soldier falls in love. That night, a goblin among the toys in the form of a jack-in-the-box, who also loves the ballerina, angrily warns the soldier to take his eyes off her, but the soldier ignores him.
The next day, the soldier falls from a windowsill (presumably the work of the goblin) and lands in the street. Two boys find the soldier, place him in a paper boat, and set him sailing in the gutter. The boat and its passenger wash into a storm drain, where a rat demands the soldier pay a toll.
Sailing on, the boat is washed into a canal, where the tin soldier is swallowed by a fish. When this fish is caught and cut open, the tin soldier finds himself once again on the table top before the ballerina. Inexplicably, the boy throws the tin soldier into the fire, which is most likely the work of the jack-in-the-box goblin. A wind blows the ballerina into the fire with him; she is consumed by it. The maid cleans the fireplace in the morning and finds that the soldier has melted into a little tin heart, along with the ballerina's spangle, which is now burned as black as coal.
Illustration by Vilhelm Pedersen, Andersen's first illustrator (1850)
Public Domain Appearances[]
All published appearances of the Paper Ballerina from before January 1, 1930 are public domain in the US.
Some notable appearances are listed below:
Public Domain Literary Appearances[]
- Fairy Tales Told for Children. First Collection. First Booklet (1838)
- Fairy Tales (1849)
- Little Ellie and Other Tales (1850)
- Fairy Tales and Stories vol. 1 (1862)
- Hans Andersen's Fairy Tales (1888)
- The Yellow Fairy Book (1894)
- The Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen (1899)
- Fairy Tales and Stories (1900)
- Fairy Tales and Other Stories (1914)
Public Domain Comic Appearances[]
- Hans Christian Anderson #1
Public Domain Animated Appearances[]
Brave Tin Soldier (1934) Lobby Card
- Brave Tin Soldier (1934): The antagonist is not a Jack-in-the-Box, but rather a toy king who wants the ballerina for himself. The tin soldier attacks the king, and as a result is put on trial and sentenced to death via firing squad. The ballerina pleads for his life to be spared, but her pleas go ignored. She then stands alongside the tin soldier and both are shot into a burning fireplace, where he melts into the shape of a heart with her. In the cartoon's ending, both the tin soldier and ballerina are sent to "Toy Heaven", where the tin soldier now has both legs.
Notes[]
- Mike Mignola's graphic novel Baltimore, or The Steadfast Tin Soldier and the Vampire fuses the poignancy of "The Steadfast Tin Soldier" with supernatural Dracula myths, set in a post-World War I environment.