The Nutcracker and the Mouse King: Cracking the Shell of E.T.A. Hoffmann's Classic

In December of 2011, I wrote a variety of blogs about E.T.A. Hoffmann's The Nutcracker and the Mouse King and a number of its adaptations. Since that time, there have been two highly noteworthy derivative works released and I came across other adaptations, so I've decided to revisit the story this December.

Ralph Manheim

The version of the original Hoffmann story that I'm familiar with is translated by Ralph Manheim, an eminent translator of German literature, whose other notable translations include The Neverending Story, Grimm's Fairy Tales and Mein Kampf. Manheim was Jewish and was certainly not sympathetic to Hitler, yet in the latter book, he set the standard he would create for his translations of fantasy works: he would strive to emulate the author's language and wordplay into English. For Hitler, this included carrying over some grammatical errors in letting this historical figure speak for himself. For the fantasies, this meant capturing the whimsical nature of these stories and making them accessible to a new audience. That is why Manheim's translation—available only in a large format edition illustrated by Maurice Sendak—is the only one I recommend.

The illustrations that you will see in this blog are from a portfolio of illustrations by Peter Carl Geissler, produced about 1840, and the illustrations by Jocelyn SC from the first English translation in 1853.

Hoffmann's early life saw him estranged from his father and elder brother when his parents separated. Young Ernst was living with his mother and her three siblings. Hoffmann's two aunts, he remembered fondly, but his uncle was not so kind and got the nickname "O Weh" ("oh dear!"). He would go on to work as a clerk before his attempts at composing and artwork got some attention. Napoleon's invasion of Warsaw had actually forced him to go to Berlin. When Napoleon invaded Germany, he was forced to leave his home yet again. It was seven years before he was able to return home at last. Yet this did not stop him in his love of writing and creating stories, as well as artistic output as a composer and draftsman and caricature artist. (His birth name was actually Ernst Theodor Wilhelm Hoffmann, but he used Amadeus instead of Wilhelm as a pseudonym as a nod to his favorite composer, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.) He also served as a music critic and jurist.

Nussknacker und Mausekönig was originally published in 1816, in Kindermärchen, some six years before Hoffmann's death, putting it at a time when he had become his most creative. In 1818, it was reprinted in his anthology Die Serapions-brüder (The Serapion Brethren) named for a literary circle he was a part of. While presented as a work one of the writers is sharing with his friends, it is wholly Hoffmann's story:

“Stop, stop!” cried Lothair. “If we give this spirit-seer Cyprian a chance, we shall be drawn into a regular labyrinth of dreams, presentiments, and all the rest of it. Allow me to dispel the gloomy tone which has come upon us at one stroke, by reading you—as a finale to our present sitting—a children's story which I wrote a short time ago, as I believe, under the direct inspiration of the tricksy spirit Puck, himself.”

“A children's story by you, Lothair!” they all cried.

“Even so,” said Lothair. “It may seem to you a piece of insanity that I should write a children's story; but let me read it to you, and then give your verdicts.”

Lothair took a carefully written manuscript from his pocket, and read.

The story begins at Christmas as the younger two children of the Stahlbaum family await their Christmas presents. This well-to-do family sees three sets of gifts: the presents on the tree that German tradition says were placed by the Christ child, the gifts from their parents, and an elaborate clockwork invention by their godfather Herr Drosselmeyer, a judge and clockmaker who also repairs the family's clocks.

The children—the eldest being Louise, the second being Fritz, and the youngest being Marie—are thrilled with their gifts, with Fritz getting his much-longed for soldiers to supplement his toy army, both girls getting dresses (Louise immediately tries on her new one, while Marie decides she'd rather look at it a bit longer), and Marie also receives a nice dollhouse. They are also impressed with Droselmeyer's new clockwork castle, but the inventor is frustrated when Fritz asks him to alter how it works and then declares that he's bored of seeing it do the same thing over and over.

Marie soon finds a nutcracker on the tree, her father instructing her on how to use the little man to crack nuts. Observing it, Marie notes that it's not attractive, but reflecting on how her godfather isn't exactly an attractive man either, but he is good, decides that there is more to him than meets the eye. When Fritz decides to crack nuts, he picks harder and larger nuts, causing the Nutcracker to lose some teeth and break his jaw. Marie, fascinated by the little man, bandages it and puts it in a doll bed.

Marie sits up and as she's about to go to bed, she spots her godfather sitting on the clock, muffling the sound of the chimes so mice invade the room, led by a large seven-headed king. It is at this point that she hits the glass door of the toy cabinet with her elbow and breaks it. This allows Fritz's army, led by the Nutcracker to battle the mice. The toys are overwhelmed with the mice, but as the Mouse King is about to strike the Nutcracker, Marie takes off one of her slippers and throws it at the King, making her faint onto the floor.

Marie awakens in bed, her mother wondering what she was doing. She explains that she found Marie at about midnight lying on the floor with her arm bleeding with cut glass from the cabinet and a lot of the toys around her, no sign of the mice anywhere. Marie has a fever and a sore arm that will take several days to recover.

During this time, her godfather visits and tells her how "ugliness came into Nutcracker's family." Over the course of three days, he tells her how a king was celebrating the birth of his new princess with a feast, the sausage course being ruined when the Mouse Queen and her family ate most of the fat, resulting in coarse and dry sausages. In retaliation, the king ordered all the mice in the castle killed, forcing the Mouse Queen to threaten a curse on the princess. Despite a guard of nursemaids with cats on their laps, the Mouse Queen manages to place her curse, making the princess ugly, with hints that she is now a live wooden person like a nutcracker. The court clockmaker—Christian Elias Drosselmeyer, who may or may not be Marie's godfather—and court astronomer look into the matter and find that the curse can be broken if the kernel of the Krakatuk nut is fed to princess, having been broken by a young man who has never shaved or worn boots. The two spend sixteen years searching in vain, but before returning to the king, the clockmaker decides to visit his cousin in Nuremberg, who not only happens to have the nut, but also a son who fits the description. The clockmaker decides to ensure a royal reward from the king and has several other young men attempt in vain to break the nut. When the younger Herr Drosselmeyer breaks the nut and takes the required seven steps backward to break the curse, he is cursed by the Mouse Queen, who is killed with the final step, and changed into a nutcracker. The princess and king renege on their promised rewards and banish the nutcracker and the clockmaker. However, it is foretold that the nutcracker's curse can be broken if he can find the love of a young woman in spite of his ugliness and vanquish the Mouse King, the son of the Queen.

As Marie recovers, at night, she is visited by the Mouse King, demanding her Christmas candy or else he will destroy the Nutcracker. She obeys, but the next night, he demands her precious sugar dolls, which she also sacrifices. On his third demand, she tells the Nutcracker that she's afraid that soon she'll have nothing to trade. He comes to life briefly and asks for a sword. Asking Fritz, he provides one from one of his soldiers.

That night, Marie hears a scuffle and a loud squeak. Nutcracker comes to her door and presents her with the seven crowns of the Mouse King and asks her to come with him. At her request, he takes the shortest route, which is through a ladder coming out of the sleeve of her father's fur coat.

Coming out into a meadow, Marie spots whimsical little animals, structures made of delicious baked goods, and dancing figures rather like many of the sugar dolls she gave up. Going along, they find Gingerbread City and Candytown on their way to a lake full of swans, rather like the one Marie once asked her godfather to make. They take a gondola across the lake, during which Marie spots a lovely face in the water. Believing it to be the princess from her godfather's story, Nutcracker tells her that it is her own face.

Coming to Marmalade Grove, Nutcracker and Marie come across another city that Manheim translates as Candytown. (Giving two cities the same name has been cited as the one flaw in this translation. The cities are in German "Bonbonhausen" and "Konfektburg," so a more proper translation might be "Bonbon Village" and "Candytown.") Passing through, they see a large variety of people of all nations beginning to quarrel and fight with each other, the hubbub being broken by the Lord Mayor ringing a bell and crying "Pastrycook!" Nutcracker explains that Pastrycook is a cruel spirit whose name invokes existential questions into the minds of the people. They come to Marzipan Castle, which is being repaired after the giant Sweettooth ate some of a tower before paying him off with some of the city and Marmalade Grove.

Arriving at the castle, they are met by Nutcracker's four sisters who cry to have their brother finally return. In the castle, the sisters begin to show off their cooking skills and asking Marie to use a mortar to pound rock candy. As the festivities begin, silvery mists seem to sweep her away, and she seems to fall... into her bed at home.

Awakening, Marie tells her parents of her adventure, but they scoff at the dream and even Herr Drosselmeyer claims that the seven crowns of the Mouse King were charms from his old watch chain that he gave to Marie. Her family has seemingly had enough of her fantastic claims and forbid her to speak of them or else Nutcracker and all her toys will be thrown out.

Some time passes and finally, one day Marie declares her love for the Nutcracker. Hearing her godfather call it nonsense, she falls off of her seat, her mother reproaching her and telling her that her godfather's nephew from Nuremberg has arrived.

The nephew cracks nuts for the family and gives Marie replacement sugar dolls for the ones she sacrificed. Going to the glass cabinet with Marie, he confesses he returns her love for him and asks for her hand in marriage, she accepts and the story ends by telling how they were married a year later and went to live in the Marzipan Castle, where it says they live still in a marvelous land of beauty.

In Die Serapions-brüder, the title characters comment on the story:

“Tell me, dear Lothair,” said Theodore, "how you can call your Nutcracker and the King of the Mice a children's story? It is impossible that children should follow the delicate threads which run through the structure of it, and hold together its apparently heterogeneous parts. The most they could do would be to keep hold of detached fragments, and enjoy those, here and there."

“And is that not enough?” answered Lothair. “I think it is a great mistake to suppose that clever, imaginative children—and it is only they who are in question here—should content themselves with the empty nonsense which is so often set before them under the name of Children's Tales. They want something much better; and it is surprising how much they see and appreciate which escapes a good, honest, well-informed papa. Before I read this story to you, I read it to the only sort of audience whom I look upon as competent critics of it, to wit, my sister's children. Fritz, who is a great soldier, was delighted with his namesake's army, and the battle carried him away altogether. He cried 'prr and poof, and schmetterdeng, and boom booroom,' after me, in a ringing voice; jigged about on his chair, and cast an eye towards his sword, as if he would go to Nutcracker's aid when he got into danger. He had never read Shakespeare, or the recent newspaper accounts of fighting; so that all the significance of the military strategy and evolutions connected with that greatest of battles escaped him completely, as well as ‘A horse! a horse! my kingdom for a horse!’ And in the same way dear little Eugenie thoroughly appreciated, in her kind heart, Marie's regard for little Nutcracker, and was moved to tears when she sacrificed her playthings and her picture-books—even her little Christmas dress—to rescue her darling; and doubted not for a moment as to the existence of the glittering Candy Mead on to which Marie stepped from the neck of the mysterious fox-fur cloak in her father's wardrobe. The account of Toyland delighted the children more than I can tell.”

“That part of your story,” said Ottmar, “keeping in view the circumstance that the readers or listeners are to be children, I think the most successful. The interpolation of the story of the Hard Nut, although the 'cement' of the whole lies there, I consider to be a fault, because the story is—in appearance at all events—complicated and confused by it, and it rather stretches and broadens the threads. You have declared that we are incompetent critics, and so reduced us to silence; but I cannot help telling you that, if you bring this tale before the public, many very rational people—particularly those who never have been children themselves (which is the case with many)—will shrug their shoulders and shake their heads, and say the whole affair is a pack of stupid nonsense; or, at all events, that some attack of fever must have suggested your ideas, because nobody in his sound and sober senses could have written such a piece of chaotic monstrosity.”

“Very good,” said Lothair, “to such a head-shaker I should make a profound reverence, lay my hand on my heart, and assure him that it is little service to an author if all sorts of fancies dawn upon him in a confused dream, unless he can discuss them with himself by the light of sound reason and judgment, and work out the threads of them firmly and soberly. Moreover, I would say that no description of work demands a clear and quiet mind more absolutely than just this; for, although it must have the effect of flashing out in all directions with the most arbitrary disregard of all rules, it must contain a firm kernel within it.”

The story has its peculiarities. I note that the story provides a duality in that Hoffmann's narration comes from a voice that understands child-like imagination and wonder. Fritz's enthusiasm for his toy soldiers is encouraged by Hoffmann and they are spoken of as if they are live, real soldiers. Early on, Marie's understanding of Drosselmeyer repairing a clock is described as him sticking sharp objects into it, with her understanding that despite the appearance, this doesn't "hurt" the clock, giving the first hint that this child isn't past thinking inanimate objects might actually live. Thus, when Marie's strange adventures with the Nutcracker and the Mouse King begin, they are treated every bit as matter of fact.

When Marie's parents come into the story, they often offer alternate explanations for Marie's claims. Being the adults, their grown up view is a little cynical, but the story could be that Marie is having dreams or letting her imagination run wild, that is, until the last page when we are told of her marriage.

How old is Marie at the end? Some adaptations have her as much older than the preceding events when she is seven, but while the story says some time has passed, it might be that she is still seven when she is engaged, and married at eight. Yet the nephew's age is never outrightly stated either, the suggestion that he had "never shaved or worn boots" being that he was very young. And we must remember that this is 1818 in Germany, where child marriage was finally banned in 2017. I'd personally prefer the interpretation that some years have passed and she's now at a more mature age, but the text isn't explicit. In any case, while the romance factor in the story is high, it is not tinged with sexual implications.

There are other factors to consider with Marie's age and her marriage. When Marie is forbidden to speak about the Nutcracker, she becomes quieter and doesn't play as much anymore. This suggests that she has come into maturity, but is she becoming mature before her time or is this talking about the young woman she grew into? Either interpretation works.

A big theme is the subversion of attractive appearances being good. The Nutcracker is unattractive, but is full of glowing praise and admiration for Marie and fights nobly. The princess, however, has her beauty raved about, but when it comes time for gratitude for young Drosselmeyer's breaking her curse, she rebuffs him. It asks its audience to look past appearances.

There are a few German traditions about the wooden nutcrackers, with high quality wooden dolls with strong jaws for cracking nuts believed to originate from the region. It is said that nutcrackers are a symbol of good luck and will protect the home from evil spirits. Hoffmann seems to play on this idea in that there are no evil spirits, but there are wicked mice who seem capable of magic. And the nutcracker of the story is himself cursed.

Why do toys and candy figure so highly in the story? Hoffmann had come from war-ravaged times and locales where luxuries such as sweets were rare, so having an abundance of them is the epitome of the opposite of the times he saw. It was fantastical extravagance, whereas today it might only seem whimsical.

Toys of course figure into the childhood factor of the narrative. They were similar luxuries for well to do families, particularly the nice ones that the Stahlbaum family is described as owning. Toys are the friends of children and their treasures. However, during the battle, the toys also become soldiers, and we might find some commentary coming from a man twice displaced by Napoleon in that toys are replaceable and also breakable.

A big part of Marie's role in the story is her willingness to sacrifice her things for the Nutcracker. Feminist critics may note that often, women are usually expected to give way to men, but it is her choice to do so, although the Nutcracker does tell her that she doesn't need to do it, asking her for a sword instead. He praises her for it, and when the curse is finally broken fully, he replaces many of the things she lost.

I find it interesting that Hoffmann describes Marie's beloved sugar dolls and then the first humanoid characters she encounters with the Nutcracker in their celebratory journey are similar in description to the ones she loved the most. In addition, she also sacrificed her little store of candy and finds a world where candy is in abundance. It is as if the things she gave up are in this fantastical world, only now made greater.

And what of the mice? Mice could carry disease, or chew up valuable possessions or ruin food stores. Thus, having them nearby was to be avoided.

I find something very interesting about the fact that Hoffmann enjoyed a loving female presence at a young age and that the hero of The Nutcracker is actually a young girl instead of the titular character. I would not go so far as to call this a feminist story, particularly as Marie has little say in her participation in the proceedings, plus the questions about her marriage. However she is the main character and does play an important role in the proceedings.

It is also interesting that in the backstory of the Nutcracker, two of the prominent characters are female: the princess and the Mouse Queen, named Pirlipat and Mouserinks. The Queen also plays a role, but is not as prominent.

The male characters are generally focused on war: Fritz with his toy soldiers, and the fight between the titular characters. Marie's father is largely secondary to the plot, but more mysterious is Herr Drosselmeyer who always seems as if he knows more than what he's saying. All named male characters except the Nutcracker (and the doctor who tends to Marie's wounds) are at some point antagonistic to Marie. Godfather Drosselmeyer and Fritz are only briefly so, most of the time supporting Marie. Fritz is even spoken of highly by the narrator. It's interesting to note that Hoffmann lacked positive adult male figures in childhood when this is considered. The Nutcracker and Herr Drosselmeyer are not considered to be handsome, but are presented as some of the positive male figures. This story is clearly lacking in glowing examples of male characters, so despite the title characters, this doesn't revel in masculinity.

Another interesting point about the story is that Marie is forbidden to speak of her experiences with the Nutcracker while Fritz throughout the stories talks about his toy soldiers as if they're real and is never reproached. When he hears that his army failed to stop the mice, he even demotes some of them, but when Marie is forbidden from her tales, he seemingly turns on her by refusing to listen and even promoting his soldiers again. Is Fritz allowed his fantasy because he's a boy? Is it because he's younger? Is it because his games of war are accepted as normal instead of Marie's stories of the strange things she's seen? Are there unfair pressures being put on Marie? Is it some lingering effect of the Mouse Queen's curse or is it classic sexism?

And of course, there is the central good and evil battle. Can we extrapolate that mice are evil and toys are good? In the viewpoint of a child in Germany during the early 19th century, sure. But the curious thing of Hoffmann is that although he writes a fairy-tale, he makes no pretense at creating a moral.

The Land of Sweets that Marie and the Nutcracker visit then rule over is an early example of an alternate world in fantasy literature. It is far from the first, and many more would follow. I'm unsure of tales of "otherworlds" aimed at children, though. And unlike many stories that feature them, the visit to this Land is short and depicted as a reward and celebration, unlike Wonderland, Neverland, Oz or Narnia where the majority of the story happens there. This story takes place mainly in "our world." In fact, it is only when we see the Land of Sweets that we arrive in an outdoor setting in the story. Marie's story until that point has taken place entirely inside her home.

There is a widespread misconception about Hoffmann's original story being dark and terrifying or dreary and depressing. I wonder if anyone making these claims has actually read Hoffmann's story for themselves, particularly as these are usually done in talking up adaptations such as those of Dumas and Petipa. Hoffmann includes quite a bit of humor and good nature, contrasting smartly with darker moments to make a more interesting story rather than a bland one.

To speak further of the story, it speaks clearly of German Christmas traditions. Characters have German last names. The ranks of soldiers are clearly German. However, other English translations and adaptations remove German references. This is likely due to negative feelings towards Germany around the first and second World Wars. Film adaptations are either vague about where the story takes place, rarely making a suggestion that it's Germany. Some even clearly place it elsewhere. If you want to read more about The Nutcracker and its influence on other works and its retellings, please see this informative article.

Thus, we have a unique fantasy tale. It defies many popular conventions of story telling, but holds together on its own, and in a good way leaves the reader asking a few questions. Treat yourself to a copy of Manheim and Sendak's version and enjoy a good read.

Sources:

Nutcracker; E.T.A. Hoffmann, translated by Ralph Manheim, illustrated by Maurice Sendak, Crown Publishers, 1983

Hoffmann, E.T.A.: Nußknacker und Mausekönig; Bettina Kümmerling-Meibauer

The Serapion Brothers, Vol. 1; E.T.A. Hoffmann, translated by Alexander Ewing, Project Gutenberg

E.T.A. Hoffmann; Wikipedia