The Little Match Girl

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

Plot summary

On a cold New Year's Eve, a young, poor girl (name unconfirmed) tries to sell matches in the street. She is already shivering from cold and early hypothermia.^[1] Still she is afraid to go home because her father will beat her for not selling any matches. She shelters in a nook and sits down.^[2]

The girl 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 and sees a shooting star; she then remembers her dead grandmother saying that such a falling star means someone is dying and is going to Heaven. As she lights the 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 alive for as long as she can.

After running out of matches, the child dies and her grandmother carries her soul to Heaven. The next morning, passers-by find the child dead in the nook and feel pity for her although they had not shown kindness for her before her death.^[3] Anderson intended this to be a happy ending, as the girl is happy in heaven with her grandmother and God, never to suffer in poverty again. Some more modern versions have changed the ending, in that a kind family rescue the girl from the cold, and give her good food, warm clothing and a soft bed.

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.)^[4]

Adaptations

Live-action film

• In 1902 a short silent film called The Little Match Seller, directed by James Williamson
• In 1928, The Little Match Girl (La Petite Marchande d'Allumettes), a forty-minute silent film by Jean Renoir, was released.
• La vendedora de rosas directed by Víctor Gaviria, was partially based on the story. The film earned a nomination for the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival.

Animated

• 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 short The Old Mill. This version of the story is also slightly different from the story, specifically near the end.
• 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 stand alone film. This short was nominated for the 2006 Academy Award for Best Animated Short, losing to The Danish Poet. This short was subsequently released as a special feature on the 2006 Platinum Edition DVD of The Little Mermaid.
• In the 2010 anime series Ōkami-san, draws inspiration from various fairy tales, the final episode entitled "Girl Who Doesn't Sell Matches But is Misfortunate Anyway" features a character called Machiko Himura who is based on the little match girl.

Music

• In 1994, Frederik Magle released the album "The song is a Fairytale" with songs based on Hans Christian Andersen's fairytales with Thomas Eje and Niels-Henning Ørsted Pedersen amongst others. The Little Match Girl is one of the songs.^[5]
• In 1988–96, the German avant-garde composer Helmut Lachenmann wrote an opera based on the story called Das Mädchen mit den Schwefelhölzern, also including a text by Red Army Faction founder Gudrun Ensslin.
• In 1995, German singer Meret Becker included the song "Das Mädchen mit den Schwefelhölzern" in her album Noctambule.
• 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.
• In 2005, Erasure made a music video of their song "Breathe", based on a modern adaptation of the story.
• In 2006, the English band The Tiger Lillies and a string trio released the album "The Little Match Girl" based on the story.
• American composer David Lang completed his own rendition of the original story in 2007. The Little Match Girl Passion is scored for four solo voices, soprano, alto, tenor and bass, with percussion, and was written for Paul Hillier and his ensemble Theater of Voices. The work was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in music in 2008. It presents Hans Christian Andersen's tale in Lang's characteristic post-minimalist style with thematic influence from Johann Sebastian Bach’s St. John and St. Matthew Passions.
• In 2012 The Crüxshadows recorded the song "Matchstick Girl" on their album As The Dark Against My Halo. According to front-man for the band, Rogue, the song "Matchstick Girl" refers to Hans Christian Andersen's fairy tale The Little Match Girl.

16mm short subject

• In 1954, Castle Films released a 16 mm English language version of a 1952 black and white French short live-action film. Instead of her grandmother, the Virgin Mary, whom the match girl believes is her own long-lost mother, takes the girl to heaven. No mention is made of the father beating the child.

Television

• In 1974, a contemporarized version set in Cincinnati on Christmas Eve was aired on WLWT. This Christmas special was placed in syndication and last aired on the Family Channel in December 1982.
• In 1987, HTV released "The Little Match Girl" a musical based on the original story. The cast included Twiggy and Roger Daltrey. It included the song "Mistletoe and Wine", which became a Christmas hit a year later for Cliff Richard.^[6][7]
• In 1987, a modernized version, "The Little Match Girl", was shown on American television. The cast included Keshia Knight Pulliam, Rue McLanahan, and William Daniels.
• In 2009, a modernized version set to original music and narrated by F. Murray Abraham was presented by HBO Storybook Musicals, in which the girl is the daughter of a homeless New York couple forced to live underground in an abandoned subway station due to the economic collapse of the 1990s.

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; currently acting as the Hogfather to compensate for the original's absence, he uses his current status to give the little match girl the present of a future.
• 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".
• Match Girl, a short story by Anne Bishop, published in Ruby Slippers, Golden Tears in 1995.
• In 1992 Women Who Run With the Wolves by Clarissa Pinkola Estés page 319 The Little Match Girl, as told to the author by her aunt, is followed by a lucid analysis.
• Novelist Gregory Maguire read a short story based on "The Little Match Girl" over the air on NPR. In 2009 he expanded the short story into a novel, published as Matchless: A Christmas Story.^[8]
• The Little Match Girl is retold in a poem by William McGonagall (1825–1902)^[9]
• In Anne Ursu's 2011 novel "Breadcrumbs", the main character Hazel meets a character based on the Little Match Girl in the woods.

Other

The Little Match Girl in the Fairy Tale Forest, Efteling, Netherlands

• "Binbou Shimai Monogatari", (2004), in the 18th chapter of the manga replays the tale of "The Little Match Girl" featuring the protagonists Asu and Kyou with a happy ending twist.
• "Shirobako" (2014), episode 11 of the anime is titled 'The Little Key Frames Girl' and humorously replays the whole match girl story from a more modern and lower stakes point of view.
• 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.
• In the Japanese anime Gakuen Alice, the main character, Mikan Sakura puts on a play about The Little Match Girl to earn money.
• The Colombian movie La Vendedora De Rosas (Little Rose Selling Girl) is a 1998 film about homeless children victims of solvent abuse, loosely based in The Little Match Girl.
• In France, director Jean Benoît-Lévy's film version, La Jeune Fille aux Allumettes (1952) included a brief dance sequence with ballet star Janine Charrat.
• The Fairy Tale Forest (Sprookjesbos in Dutch) of the amusement park Efteling in the Netherlands has a three-dimensional attraction showing the story of the Little Match Girl, called Het Meisje met de Zwavelstokjes.^[10] In this attraction, use is made of the pepper's ghost technique.

See also

• List of works by Hans Christian Andersen
• Near death experience
• Vilhelm Pedersen, the first illustrator of Andersen's fairy tales
• To Build a Fire, a short story about an adult who also dies of hypothermia

References

External links

Wikisource has original text related to this article: The Little Match Girl

Wikimedia Commons has media related to The Little Match Girl.

• "The Little Match Girl" Jean Hersholt's English translation
• "The Little Match Girl" in the New Normal Reader
• 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
• 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"

Hans Christian Andersen Bibliography Collections Fairy Tales Told for Children (1835–1837) Fairy Tales Told for Children (1838) New Fairy Tales (1843) Stories "The Angel" "The Elf Mound" "The Emperor's New Clothes" "The Fir-Tree" "The Flying Trunk" "The Galoshes of Fortune" "The Garden of Paradise" "The Goblin and the Grocer" "Golden Treasure" "The Ice-Maiden" "The Little Match Girl" "The Little Mermaid" "The Most Incredible Thing" "The Nightingale" "Ole Lukøje" "The Princess and the Pea" "The Red Shoes" "The Shadow" "The Shepherdess and the Chimney Sweep" "The Snow Queen" "The Snowman" "The Steadfast Tin Soldier" "The Story of a Mother" "The Sweethearts; or, The Top and the Ball" "The Swineherd" "The Tallow Candle" "The Teapot" "Thumbelina" "The Tinderbox" "The Ugly Duckling" "The Wild Swans" Novels The Improvisatore (1835) The Two Baronesses (1848) Films Hans Christian Andersen (1952) The Daydreamer (1966) Hans Christian Andersen: My Life as a Fairytale (2001 miniseries) Related Hans Christian Andersen Museum Odense, Denmark Pleated Christmas hearts International Children's Book Day Hans Christian Andersen Award Hans Christian Andersen Literature Award Category Commons Wikiquote Wikisource texts