A Case of Dancing Sati: The Construction of Feminine Divinity on Subaltern’s Crinoline in The Red Shoes by Hans Christian Andersen

Abstract

This paper attempts to scrutinize the short story The Red Shoes by Hans Christian Andersen under the relational analysis. This perspective is specifically chosen to destabilize the text to locate it in another dimension i.e. the tradition of Sati. Andersen has positioned the protagonist’s identity in an ambivalence which is significant of her trial and her subalternity in pursuing the path of mysticism. In this research it is made visible that how the story contains liminal threads of exotic reality of feminine divinity. In this paper an attempt has been made to analyze Karen’s masochistic pattern of being a female mystic and this pattern is compared with the subaltern subjectivity, the idea given by Gayatri Spivak in her essay “Can the Subaltern Speak?” by taking Sati as referential point. Sati and the story, The Red Shoes converge on specific motifs and expressions to consign their spiritual tendencies in one frame. The discussion focuses on the entity where subalternity and spirituality unite and those are slippages provided by imposed social constructs, hence a deconstructing factor. The paper offers the understanding of underlying patterns of feminine spirituality used by Sati

and Karen while projecting the new space as an extension of subaltern’s identity.