Thumbelina
A childless woman is given a barleycorn that opens into a flower with a girl no bigger than a thumb asleep inside it. A toad carries her off to marry her son, and from there she passes through the keeping of a beetle, a field mouse and a mole, each of whom has plans for her. Andersen's smallest heroine, and his first sustained study of a creature who fits nowhere she is put.
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Lineage
- shares sources with ↑ Children's and Household Tales
Attributes
Plot structure
Symbol / motif
Culture / tradition
Closest analogues
- 57% · 14 shared
- 53% · 10 shared
- 48% · 10 shared
- 43% · 9 shared
- 43% · 8 shared
- 43% · 8 shared