The Princess and the Pea

"The Princess and the Pea"
1911 Illustration by Edmund Dulac
Author	Hans Christian Andersen
Original title	"Prinsessen paa Ærten"
Translator	Charles Boner
Country	Denmark
Language	Danish
Genre(s)	Fairy tale
Published in	Tales, Told for Children. First Collection. First Booklet. 1835.
Publication type	Fairy tale collection
Publisher	C.A. Reitzel
Media type	Print
Publication date	8 May 1835
Published in English	1846 in A Danish Story-Book

"The Princess and the Pea" (Danish: "Prinsessen paa Ærten"; literal translation: "The Princess on the Pea") is a literary fairy tale by Hans Christian Andersen about a young woman whose royal identity is established by a test of her physical sensitivity. The tale was first published with three others by Andersen in an inexpensive booklet on 8 May 1835 in Copenhagen by C. A. Reitzel.

Andersen had heard the story as a child, and it likely has its source in folk material, possibly originating from Sweden, as it is unknown in the Danish oral tradition. Neither "The Princess and the Pea" nor Andersen's other tales of 1835 were well received by Danish critics, who disliked their casual, chatty style and their lack of morals.

In 1959 "The Princess and the Pea" was adapted to the musical stage in a production called Once Upon a Mattress starring Carol Burnett.

The story tells of a prince who wants to marry a princess, but is having difficulty finding a suitable wife. Something is always wrong with those he meets, and he cannot be certain they are real princesses because they have bad table manners or they are too fat or thin or not beautiful. One stormy night a young woman drenched with rain seeks shelter in the prince's castle. She claims to be a princess, so the prince's mother decides to test their unexpected, unwitting guest by placing a pea in the bed she is offered for the night, covered by 20 mattresses and 20 feather-beds. In the morning, the guest tells her hosts that she endured a sleepless night, kept awake by something hard in the bed that she is certain has bruised her. The prince rejoices. Only a real princess would have the sensitivity to feel a pea through such a quantity of bedding, so the two are married.

The story ends with the pea being placed in a museum, where according to the storyteller it can still be seen today, unless someone has removed it.

In his preface to the second volume of Tales and Stories (1863) Andersen claims to have heard the story in his childhood, but the tale has never been a traditional one in Denmark. He may as a child have heard a Swedish version, "Princess Who Lay on Seven Peas" ("Princessa' som lå' på sju ärter"), which tells of an orphan girl who establishes her identity after a sympathetic helper (a cat or a dog) informs her that an object (a bean, a pea, or a straw) had been placed under her mattress.

Andersen deliberately cultivated a funny and colloquial style in the tales of 1835, reminiscent of oral storytelling techniques rather than the sophisticated literary devices of the fairy tales written by les précieuses, E. T. A. Hoffmann, and other precursors. The earliest reviews criticized Andersen for not following such models. In the second volume of the 1863 edition of his collected works Andersen remarked in the preface: "The style should be such that one hears the narrator. Therefore, the language had to be similar to the spoken word; the stories are for children, but adults too should be able to listen in."