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Crumbling Gingerbread Lovers: Reading the Female Aphasia in Hans Christian Andersen’s “Under the Willow-Tree”

Received: 19 August 2022     Accepted: 29 September 2022     Published: 18 October 2022
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Abstract

“Aphasia” is originally defined as the loss of ability to articulate words or comprehend language, but after its introduction into literary criticism, it is usually correlated to women’s impediment to speech due to social deprival. In his “Under the Willow-Tree”, Hans Christian Andersen depicts the heroine Joanna as a “female aphasia”. This paper aims to explore and examine the reason why and how Joanna becomes a “female aphasia” in the story like other female characters in literary works written by male authors. Through reading the text, this paper finds that Joanna is “lost” in the story because the story is narrated from the perspective of the hero Knud. There are several ways to deprive a woman’s power of speech. Firstly, the patriarchal consciousness of speech impedes women to articulate their ideas. Secondly, in a patriarchal society, the use of language inevitably takes on a masculine consciousness and speech becomes dominated by men, thus women are depicted as objects. Thirdly, women are repelled by the formal register of speech, and they can only be active in informal domains. Therefore, women have been deprived of the ability to speak. The story of the gingerbread lovers implies the fact that Joanna is “female aphasia”, and it is the intertext of the tragedy of the two protagonists. Only by reading the two stories jointly can one manages to discover the origin of female aphasia.

Published in International Journal of Language and Linguistics (Volume 10, Issue 5)
DOI 10.11648/j.ijll.20221005.14
Page(s) 302-305
Creative Commons

This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, provided the original work is properly cited.

Copyright

Copyright © The Author(s), 2022. Published by Science Publishing Group

Keywords

“Under the Willow-Tree”, Female Aphasia, Linguistic Masculinity, Linguistic Women’s Alienation, Formal Domain Exclusion

References
[1] Has Christian Andersen. (2004) The Complete Hans Christian Andersen Fairy Tales. Trans. Ye Junjian. Tianjin: Tianjin Publishing and Media Group Co., Ltd.
[2] Alec McHoul, Wendy Grace. (1993). A Foucault Printer: Discourse, Power, and the Subject. London and New York: Routledge.
[3] Wenqian Sun. (2019). “Foucault’s Discourse and Theory of Power that Explores the Root Cause of Female Aphasia: Interpretation of ‘The Portrait of a Lady’”. Advances in Social Science, Education and Humanities Research, 368, 562-564.
[4] Shen Shujun. (2015). From “Aphasia to Voicing”: the Transition of Discourse Power in How I Learned to Drive. Journal of Nanjing Institute of Technology (Social Science Edition), 15 (3), 30-33.
[5] Hans Christian Andersen. (2010). Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen. The Floating Press.
[6] Hu Quansheng. (1995). 女权主义批评与“失语症” [Criticism on Feminism and “Aphasia”]. Foreign Literature Review, 2, 48-54.
[7] Pan Jian. (2012). From Langagnosia to Heteroglossia: Virginia Woolf’s Tracking Down Women’s History. Journal of Human University (Social Sciences), 26 (6), 99-105.
[8] Yue Jin, Li Jiwei. (2006). 被泛化的爱情——解读安徒生童话《柳树下的梦》中爱情的悲剧情结 [The Generalized Love: Interpreting the Tragic Complex of Love in Hans Christian Andersen’s Fairy Tale “Under the Willow-Tree”]. Journal of Educational Institute of Jilin Province, 22 (8), 23-24.
[9] Michel Foucault. (1988). Madness and Civilization: A History of Insanity in the Age of Reason. Trans. Richard Howard. New York: Vintage Books.
[10] Wang Weihua. (2008). Analysis of the Female Character in the Epic Janger. Collection of Women’s Studies, 1, 55-58.
[11] Lei Da. (1994). 意大利歌剧在欧洲音乐史上的地位及其影响 [Italian Opera in the History of European Music and Its Influence]. Journal of Capital Normal University (Social Sciences Edition), 2, 100-104.
[12] Roger Parker, Carolyn Abbate. (2012). “The History of Opera: The last 400 years [M]. London: Allen Lane.
Cite This Article
  • APA Style

    Lu Xingyu. (2022). Crumbling Gingerbread Lovers: Reading the Female Aphasia in Hans Christian Andersen’s “Under the Willow-Tree”. International Journal of Language and Linguistics, 10(5), 302-305. https://doi.org/10.11648/j.ijll.20221005.14

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    ACS Style

    Lu Xingyu. Crumbling Gingerbread Lovers: Reading the Female Aphasia in Hans Christian Andersen’s “Under the Willow-Tree”. Int. J. Lang. Linguist. 2022, 10(5), 302-305. doi: 10.11648/j.ijll.20221005.14

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    AMA Style

    Lu Xingyu. Crumbling Gingerbread Lovers: Reading the Female Aphasia in Hans Christian Andersen’s “Under the Willow-Tree”. Int J Lang Linguist. 2022;10(5):302-305. doi: 10.11648/j.ijll.20221005.14

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  • @article{10.11648/j.ijll.20221005.14,
      author = {Lu Xingyu},
      title = {Crumbling Gingerbread Lovers: Reading the Female Aphasia in Hans Christian Andersen’s “Under the Willow-Tree”},
      journal = {International Journal of Language and Linguistics},
      volume = {10},
      number = {5},
      pages = {302-305},
      doi = {10.11648/j.ijll.20221005.14},
      url = {https://doi.org/10.11648/j.ijll.20221005.14},
      eprint = {https://article.sciencepublishinggroup.com/pdf/10.11648.j.ijll.20221005.14},
      abstract = {“Aphasia” is originally defined as the loss of ability to articulate words or comprehend language, but after its introduction into literary criticism, it is usually correlated to women’s impediment to speech due to social deprival. In his “Under the Willow-Tree”, Hans Christian Andersen depicts the heroine Joanna as a “female aphasia”. This paper aims to explore and examine the reason why and how Joanna becomes a “female aphasia” in the story like other female characters in literary works written by male authors. Through reading the text, this paper finds that Joanna is “lost” in the story because the story is narrated from the perspective of the hero Knud. There are several ways to deprive a woman’s power of speech. Firstly, the patriarchal consciousness of speech impedes women to articulate their ideas. Secondly, in a patriarchal society, the use of language inevitably takes on a masculine consciousness and speech becomes dominated by men, thus women are depicted as objects. Thirdly, women are repelled by the formal register of speech, and they can only be active in informal domains. Therefore, women have been deprived of the ability to speak. The story of the gingerbread lovers implies the fact that Joanna is “female aphasia”, and it is the intertext of the tragedy of the two protagonists. Only by reading the two stories jointly can one manages to discover the origin of female aphasia.},
     year = {2022}
    }
    

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    AB  - “Aphasia” is originally defined as the loss of ability to articulate words or comprehend language, but after its introduction into literary criticism, it is usually correlated to women’s impediment to speech due to social deprival. In his “Under the Willow-Tree”, Hans Christian Andersen depicts the heroine Joanna as a “female aphasia”. This paper aims to explore and examine the reason why and how Joanna becomes a “female aphasia” in the story like other female characters in literary works written by male authors. Through reading the text, this paper finds that Joanna is “lost” in the story because the story is narrated from the perspective of the hero Knud. There are several ways to deprive a woman’s power of speech. Firstly, the patriarchal consciousness of speech impedes women to articulate their ideas. Secondly, in a patriarchal society, the use of language inevitably takes on a masculine consciousness and speech becomes dominated by men, thus women are depicted as objects. Thirdly, women are repelled by the formal register of speech, and they can only be active in informal domains. Therefore, women have been deprived of the ability to speak. The story of the gingerbread lovers implies the fact that Joanna is “female aphasia”, and it is the intertext of the tragedy of the two protagonists. Only by reading the two stories jointly can one manages to discover the origin of female aphasia.
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Author Information
  • School of Foreign Languages and Cultures, Nanjing Normal University, Nanjing, China

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