ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the meaning and importance of fairy tales in the development of female sexual identity using Hans Christian Andersen’s tale “Thumbelina” as an illustration. “Thumbelina” is illustrative as a vehicle for helping the young girl resolves the developmental difficulties of her journey towards womanhood. Thumbelina may be analyzed as a story of female masturbation. The “tiny, little girl, delicate and lovely” represents the clitoris, and through masturbation the child discovers her body and her femininity. “Thumbelina” is the story of the child’s masturbatory life. Marie Bonaparte states that, as part of infantile sexuality, the female child experiences birth and pregnancy as alimentary functions and that birth occurs through the anus rather than through the vagina. More modern psychoanalytic writers on female sexuality take issue with the classical view. Elaine Siegel notes that as early as 1932, Brierley presented clinical evidence that females have sensations in the vagina at an early age.
