The princess and the pea

The princess and the pea

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  THE PRINCESS &THE PEA BY HANS CHRISTIAN ANDERSEN (1835) Frances Kazan
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  Once upon atime there was a prince who wanted to marry a princess; but she would have To be a real princess. He travelled all over the world to find one, but nowhere could he get what he wanted.
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  There were princesses enough,but it was difficult to find out whether they were real ones. There was always something about them that was not as it should be. So he came home again and was sad, for he would have liked very much to have a real princess.
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  One evening aterrible storm came on; there was thunder and lightning, and the rain poured down in torrents. Suddenly a knocking was heard at the city gate, and the old king went to open it.
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  A princess standingout there in front of the gate. But, good gracious! what a sight the rain and the wind had made her look. The water ran down from her hair and clothes; it ran down into the toes of her shoes and out again at the heels. And yet she said that she was a real princess.
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  “Well, we’ll soonfind that out,” thought the old queen. But she said nothing, went into the bed-room, took all the bedding off the bedstead, & laid a pea on the bottom; then she took twenty mattresses and laid them on the pea, and then twenty eider-down beds on top of the mattresses.
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  On this theprincess had to lie all night. In the morning she was asked how she had slept. “Oh, very badly!” said she. “I have scarcely closed my eyes all night. Heaven only knows what was in the bed, but I was lying on something hard, so that I am black and blue all over my body. It’s horrible!”
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  Now they knewthat she was a real princess because she had felt the pea right through the twenty mattresses and the twenty eider-down beds. Nobody but a real princess could be as sensitive as that.
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  So the princetook her for his wife, for now he knew that he and the pea was where it may if no one had a real princess; put in the museum, still be seen, has stolen it.
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  On the surfacethis simple tale is about "curious and ridiculous" measures taken by the nobility to establish the value of bloodlines when a young woman's royal identity is established by a test of her physical sensitivity. However, there is are two moral lessons here reflecting man's follies when assessing strangers:
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  1. Don notmake important judgment calls regarding strangers based on first impressions and appearances  it is very risky and very often not accurate - the young woman had experienced a lifethreatening situation (a dark and stormy night,)
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  2. Do notuse unsuitable assessment tools (unreliable and invalid tests) in an attempt to establish true identity, strengths and character.  Is physical sensitivity truly the mark of a princess? (If so then I must also be a princess which I know I am not since I went through a stage where I traced my family tree to three generations and I can assure you we come from peasant stock!)
• 13.
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