We never really talked about it but The Ugly Ducking that grew up to be a beautiful swan was still probably pretty fugly from a duck’s perspective
Like that story isn’t about an ugly duckling that grew up sexy, it’s a fucking swan was judged as a duck and hated itself as a duck until it found out it wasn’t a duck and stopped trying to be a duck.
The actual ducks in the neighborhood were probably still looking around at perfectly normal swans like “damn, look at those busted ass ducks”
This is pretty important, actually. The good ending is finding the other swans, not tearing yourself to pieces trying to impress the ducks.
although a lot of adaptations skip over this and sanitise it to the point where the message is apparently meant to read "you'll be forgiven for being born wrong, if you turn out thin and white and pretty!" - there's a lot going on in the original. For one thing, most adaptations present him as a wild animal, but the Ugly Duckling is born into captivity, into a society that mimics upper-class pretensions, which is why he's declared 'ugly'. His mother is loving and very generous at first - hatching him despite the inconvenient incubation period, and defending him firmly - but after the other domestic animals (including a higher-class dominant one) point out what a burden he is, she turns on her child. Previously, she genuinely appeared to like him.
And a thing that's missed, while kid's abridged adaptations miss out on the rest of the point, is that the Ugly Duckling decides he can't live like this and leaves the farmyard; he goes into the wild himself. In the various passages in which people try to keep him as a pet, or a duck, it's hammered home again and again that this does not make a good pet. there is nothing in him that suits being a domestic animal.
one of the particular parts that makes you go "sweet jesus, hans christian andersen" is where the wild geese rock up and are nice to the young swan, not quite recognising him as a swan but saying they're pretty into whatever weird vibe he has (is this a sort of queer recognition thing? we are told, explicitly, that the wild geese are both male, and they definitely say "you're so ugly it's hot - come with us" - given HCA, it might be) and then they're, you know, instantly shot dead. Because that's what happens to wild geese. They like your vibe and try to take you with them, and even offer to teach you how to flirt - and then you see exactly what happens to them. And then every encounter from there, from the old woman who attempts to keep him - a very satirical and funny passage - to the young family who genuinely attempt to save his life (but he's too fundamentally panicked and awkward to reciprocate their kindness, and explodes out of their house in a social catastrophe) the story hammers in: not only are you a terrible duck, but you just aren't MEANT to live with people. You're closer to the things they kill than the things they keep.
but yeah, adaptations miss this often: you have to go out into the wild to save your own life. you may die in the wild, and you WILL die where you are. nobody comes to save you - and nobody really could have, when you were younger - but ultimately, mate, you just aren't a very good pet. Of the list of "attributes of a domestic animal" you really suck, in detail, at all of them.
so it's very telling to me that the good ending is the one where he is a wild animal - but more importantly, a WILD SWAN.
Not killed. (like a wild goose).
Not kept. (like a duck).
but a secret third thing, that swans - of few creatures - get. they get admired and they get paid and they get LEFT ALONE. they have a position in relation to humanity, and it is BEING A LOVELY SWAN OVER THERE.
what a thing for a lonely heart to yearn for!
I saw some notes saying "oh wow I need to look up the original." It's very easy! It's here: The Ugly Duckling, by Hans Christian Andersen on Project Gutenberg. It is 3500 words or so and free.
The Ugly Duckling isn't a "fairy tale" or a fable. It didn't emerge from the collective unconscious - it didn't come from nowhere. It's an original work. Andersen wrote it in 1843. It didn't exist before he came up with it. the translation I linked above was translated in 1930.
like many HCA stories (The Little Mermaid, The Snow Queen) it's out of copyright and has pretty images, so it gets mined frequently as a free text - you can always republish a cheap Ugly Duckling, and don't have to pay an author. So people tend to just read and remember the various abridged versions. as a result, they think about it like a fairy tale - a sort of ambiguous, detached, floating thing that belongs to everyone and can mean everything. fairy tales - loose cultural fragments - can be hammered to suit any moral, or handwaved to be about anything, and then when you get bored of them, you can "twist" them a different way. Maybe it's about this. maybe it's about that. I read it as being about beauty. I read it as being about me. I don't like the politics. Today King Arthur is going to be Roman. Tomorrow Sleeping Beauty will wake up by herself. it doesn't really matter. And that's grand! that's what fairy tales have become - they are the people's mental property - they're to be played with.
But The Ugly Duckling isn't a fairy tale. it's a single sad, weird queer guy from a while ago, trying to tell you something personal about himself. maybe he isn't communicating clearly, maybe he's too weird, maybe you don't like it, maybe it annoys you - but <TheUglyDuckling> DOES have meaning and intention.
"I think the moral is this / I think the moral is that" - do try reading it first though! do try reading the whole thing first.
