Oh! Oh! Let me tell you why Andersen wrote The Little Match Girl. Honestly, I think you’ll love it.
Hans Christian Andersen wrote it--on the request of the publisher, Andreas Christian Ferdinand Flinch--in response to an illustration. Well, Flinch actually sent Andersen three illustrations to choose from, but I have no idea what the other two pics looked like.
(Photo of the woodcut drawn by Jacob Thomas Lundbye that inspired Andersen to write "Den Lille Pige Med Svovstikkerne"--literally, "The Little Girl With the Sulfur Sticks"--in late 1845. )
The woodcut had been printed once before, in 1843, in another publication (Flinch's Almanac, or House Calendar) run by the same person. The first time around, it illustrated an "article"--little more than a paragraph--called "Gjør vel, naar du giver (Do right when you give)." I don't know if Andersen was aware of this or of the article's content, but if he was, then he delivered the ultimate Take That to its author...who was probably Flinch himself.
If you want a line by line sporking of the translated article, go here. But basically, “Do right when you give” argued that broke kids who were begging (and selling matches was a cover for begging in the Victorian era) shouldn’t be given money or food, as that would simply encourage their parents to be lazy and improvident.
I don't know if Andersen was aware of this article...but if he wasn’t, then he wrote, by coincidence, a tale where everyone closes their eyes and hands to the needs of a poor child. He was extremely poor as a child, as was his mother, and he knew damned well what he was talking about.
If we interpret this story as a Take That to Flinch's article...well, it's basically showing the audience the worst possible outcome of their inaction. The little match girl freezes on the streets--but her home is so full of holes (and her parents clearly aren't earning enough to repair the damage if they are stuffing the holes with rags and straw) that she could have frozen there just as easily. She works all day at selling matches--but no one is willing to buy from her, which does neither her nor her parents any good. It certainly doesn't inspire them to work harder. And the making and selling of matches was generally a family business in the Victorian era. The match girl's mother and older siblings would probably be making the matches she sold--and incurring lasting damage to their bones and facial structure in the process. (DO NOT, FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, GOOGLE "PHOSSIE JAW.") That happened to almost all people who made matches with phosphorus, i.e. mostly poor women, and the results were hideous and, eventually, fatal. The condition also severely limited their employment; businesses, then as now, had issues with illness and disfigurement.
In fact, aside from the boy who steals one of her slippers, no living person interacts with the little match girl at all. She is unimportant to the point of invisibility. No one sees her. No one even notices her presence until after her death. In the midst of all of the holiday celebrations of love and joy--which honor another impoverished child--a little girl freezes to death, because everyone else is busy with their own affairs.
The story takes Flinch's argument to the logical extreme, showing what happens if someone with no food and no money isn't given any. There is no Hail Mary pass at the end, as there is for Tiny Tim, who manages to live once Scrooge reforms. Andersen provides no reassuring moments at the end. If you don't feed a child, keep her warm, or love her, you end up with a dead, unloved child. Sure, she goes to Heaven--but Earth could have been a lot kinder. All Flinch's selfish philosophy did was ensure that the little match girl died quicker...which didn't have to happen.
I wonder if Flinch realized all this when he published the story.
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