How do you do.
For the upcoming Christmas Season, I decided to start the reviews on literature with one of my favorite Christmas tales, E.T.A Hoffmann's Nussknacker und Mauskoenig or The Nutcracker and the Mouse King. This has been long in the work and has nothing to do with the recent film adaptation that is in theaters now, but since everyone is watching I decide to get it posted this year.
When you first hear of The Nutcracker, you might be thinking of the ballet by Russia's great composer, Pyotr Ilych Tchaikovsky. The ballet was from a late period in the composer's life, about a year before his death, best known to American listeners in the abridged style "Nutcracker Suite", on which a sequence from Disney's Fantasia is based on. Tchaikovsky reportedly disliked the piece and after 1892 it was rarely played[1], until in the middle of the last century with the frequent productions of the ballet itself. Because of the setting of the story being in Christmas eve, it's become part of the Christmas traditions just as Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol and Clement Moore's "A Visit from St. Nicolas" had before it.
Yet, before there was a Russian ballet, there was the fairy tale, and it was the work of two men: a German Romantic writer named Ernst Theodore Amadeus Hoffmann, aka E.T.A. Hoffman, and French novelist Alexandre Dumas, the man who gave us The Three Musketeers and The Count of Monte Cristo. I list it as the work of two men because the original story was written twice. The first was by Hoffman in 1816, done as a novella, while Alexandre Dumas rewrote it as The History of the Nutcracker twenty eight years later. The plot lines in the story are completely identical that one could accuse Dumas of plagiarism, yet a few changes in writing style are noticeable, the way Dumas looks into the Christmas Tree concept like that of an anthropologist observing natives in a ritual in contrast to Hoffman presenting Christkind tradition, and so on. So, we're basically looking over the same story if I reviewed the both at once.
One noticeable difference is in the family, where Hoffman features the Stahlbaum family while Dumas renames them the Silberhaus. The first is said in genealogy.com to mean "steel tree", whereas the latter "silver house"[2]. And it's not too hard to see that plenty of German influences are in the ballet, such as the inclusion of "Grandfather Dance" in the libretto, itself a traditional German dance done to signal the end of a gathering (making its place as the end of the Christmas Party scene right).
The heroine of The Nutcracker is not named Clara, unlike what the ballet has, but Marie Stahlbaum / Silberhaus. Marie is a variant of Mary, a French and German variant mostly (though The Sound of Music taught us German speakers could also use Maria). This name connection, as well as the way she holds the Nutcracker, invokes the image of the Virgin Mary holding the Christ Child. In a way of avoiding the actual motherhood, Drosselmeier, her eccentric godfather, gives Marie the Nutcracker doll that he made himself and she protects the doll like a mother protects her baby. Like any mother, she discovers that there are other things to come between her and her doll, which was originally to be shared with, but Herr Stahlbaum / Silberhaus deemed it to be in Marie's care. First case is when Fritz breaks the Nutcracker while trying to crack nuts. Later, she finds him being threatened by the mice.
The theme of protective motherhood shows in the differences between Marie and her brother, Fritz, in treatment of the Nutcracker. Fritz, like any boy, just sees the Nutcracker as a toy to play with; another hussar to command. He even tries to crack a really hard nut with it and it breaks the jaw. Marie weeps over the injury of the Nutcracker while Fritz considers him not a good soldier. By every right, Fritz should have gotten a good spanking for that but he was lucky that time. Instead, his father makes him ashamed of his treatment of a soldier, since Fritz is in to toy soldiers. This protective mother stage goes to the Mouse King's advantage when he threatens to chew him up if she doesn't appease him with sweets. The Mouse King, of course, uses this for extortion.
When Drosselmeier comes on the scene, we learn alot of the man from the start. Godpapa Drosselmeier, as he is called in the story, is Fritz and Marie's godfather, a special sort of relation in Marie's life: he is there to rear the children should their parents die, as according to his role when they were baptized. Drosselmeier is described as a little man with wrinkles in the face and some long hair, plus a black patch over his right eye. Looking at him, you would think of the Norse god Odin, trading in his wanderer robes for that of a clock maker. The appearances are just about the only connection to Norse mythology that Drosselmeier appears to have. His whole name is Christian Elias Drosselmeier. If you look at the name, you notice the two instances of "el" being used, especially in Elias.
Drosselmeier is a strange sort. Though he is good natured and friendly, I couldn't help but notice he could be a jerk at times. When Fritz breaks the Nutcracker, he sides with the boy. Later, he scoffs at Marie figuring out who the Nutcracker really is, and tries to show her false. Yet, when he presents his nephew in the end. There are times that Drosselmeier is someone who knows more than what he is saying, which makes him the most unpredictable of the characters.
On Christmas Eve night, Marie sneaks into the toy room to check up on her nutcracker doll (stored with, along with other toys, a doll that is named Clara) and that is when the mice arrive. Mice were a common pest in Europe for centuries, along with their cousins, the rats. The reason is because mice and rats were considered carriers of the Plague (ironically, a family of rats is also called "plague"). Mice also like to get into food and will eat anything left out, as evidenced in the story where the mice bother the queen to have some lard. They also get in people's hair, nibble on exposed skin, crowd in clothes, and leave stains on floors and walls. So, based on this knowledge it's no surprise to see the mice as villains.
The worst among them is as big as a hamster with the attitude of a shrew. He has no name but is called The Mouse King. Now, the ballet productions portray the Mouse King as a conventional mouse with a crown on his head, with the animated film The Nutcracker Prince making him seem rat like (perhaps playing off on Professor Ratigan from The Great Mouse Detective), but Hoffman's story describes him as a large mouse with seven heads. The image is also in Dumas' version. The seven headed rodent invokes the image of the Dragon and the Seven Headed Beast described in the Book of Revelations (both cases are described wearing a diadem on each head). The reason most productions didn't use the original image is practicality; you just can't create a seven headed mouse mask and put it on the body of a man, and they are yet to use today's puppetry like they are with King Kong. One thing scary is real life rodents in Germany have been recorded bounding together into a bigger menace, usually because they are stuck together by sticky substances. Rat kings, they are called, and they could consist of up to thirty-two rats stuck together as one body.
Reading over the battle with the mice seems like that of a miniature version of Armageddon. The Mouse King is the Beast, Whore of Babylon, and Satan himself rolled into one while the Nutcracker and the dolls become the angels defending Earthly paradise from the Armies of Darkness. Mostly the toy soldiers, along with international dolls, while the girly dolls hide in the rear; yet I am positive in this day, you could have some of the most popular toys taking part in the action (even Barbie dolls taking on the mice). In the first battle, the mice appear to win near the end as the Nutcracker seems outwitted as a commander and then the toys get literally help from above. Marie throws a shoe at the mice who scatter and then everything goes black (The Nutcracker Prince takes it a step further by having the Mouse King land on his candle and run off screaming "MY TAIL'S ON FIRE!" and later winds up in the fire place, sort like the Devil tossed into the Lake of Fire).
Another biblical allusion is presented in the story Drosselmeier tells to Marie and the children. The core of The Nutcracker is the story of a literal tough nut to crack, the Crackatook Nut, which is introduced as a cure to a curse. In the story, which is never used in the ballet, a king and queen of an unspecified kingdom have daughter named Pirlipat, presented as a beauty with good teeth. At least, she was until Dame Mouserinks comes on the scene.
Dame Mouserinks, aka the Mouse Queen, starts out extolling the Queen for food, such as the lard used in making sausages, resulting in them not tasting well (it's strange how the King faints when he discovers "too little fat"). Once more, the fact mice were a problem in the past is illustrated and the King has it decreed they are to go. Drosselmeier is shown in the story working with the Court Astrologer in taking out the mice plague with mousetraps, with only the Mouse Queen escaping and vowing revenge.
She does so by biting Pirlipat, turning her into an ugly thing. The King is angry and tells Drosselmeier to find a cure. When he couldn't, the King almost has him executed, but spares him at the urging of the Queen, sort of a play to scene of Bathsheba petitioning to King Solomon, only streamlined. Instead, when Drosselmeier brings up the Crackatook Nut, he is sent on a quest with the astrologer to find it.
Besides the occult theme with magicians involved in the court, one thing that seemed queer is how the Princess is examined. Drosselmeier is said to take her apart as one would take apart a machine to examine for repairs, making one wonder if she were a girl or a puppet. It's likely a metaphor for a body examination, which makes it seem creepy (I don't think someone other than the court physician would be permitted to examine a princess' body like that). Anyhow, they realize they need not only the nut, but also someone who hasn't shaved yet and never worn boots, and the man turns out to be a youth who is also named Drosselmeier.
The theme of virginity is shown in the younger man in various ways: he has not shaved yet nor has he worn boots. It's an interesting symbolism of virginity as shaving and wearing boots were considered the trademarks of manhood and boys generally don't do one or the other (it was once a rite of passage for a boy to put on a collar on the top of his shirt and cuffs at the end of sleeves, while also putting on trousers). Since I grew facial hair before age fifteen, it does seem strange for the youth to not be shaving at age fourteen, but some boys at that age have only peach fuzz. The boots part is understandable since such were hard to come by that could fit and fourteen is when boys go through growth spurts in the legs and feet that would make it hard to have the right size. Yeah, you might be wondering what do those things have to do with it? Let's say it's a cultural thing to compare male virginity to boyhood, since people believe men cannot be virgins.
With this theme, this makes the younger Drosselmeier the one who can crack the nut. He cracks it and gives it to the Princess, sort of how in the Last Supper, Christ takes bread, breaks it, and gives it to His disciples. He then walks back seven steps (as if to mark the days of the week, if not Creation). However, the Mouse Queen comes in once more to avenge her broken spell by biting him in the ankle, turning him into a Nutcracker, thus turning the Young Drosselmeier into a Christ figure (think Genesis 3:15), taking Pirlipat's curse away and upon himself. The Mouse Queen pays for the bite with her life, but upon transformation, the Nutcracker is rejected by the princess he cured, which brings to mind how the people of Israel rejected Christ. Instead of crucifixion, the Nutcracker, Drosselmeier, and the Astrologer are banished from the kingdom.
Just now, I was thinking it over and see that the Blessed Trinity in the three men: in this case Uncle and Nephew play Father and Son, with the Astrologer as the Holy Spirit. Considering the Bible also has kings rejecting God, it should be no surprise when they are banished from the kingdom after the Princess is cured. It is also a sad twist, considering how Pirlipat fell for Young Drosselmeier on first meeting, when he was at his height, only to reject him when at his lowest. I should add on that that the Brothers Grimm were arranging their fairy tales around the same time Hoffmann was writing his. In a sense, Hoffmann had satired the Grimms' fairy tales where a beautiful and pure princess is paired with a handsome and noble prince, by showing beauty to not mean good. It's at that point, we return to the story proper.
After the first battle with the mice, Marie's role as mother ends and she becomes less like the Virgin Mary and more a princess guarded by a prince. A psychologist would consider this progression a case of Freud's Oedipal attraction in reverse, where instead of the son being attracted to the mother figure it's the mother attracted to the child figure. The fact that the child is actually a man makes this sort of thing taken to another level. How is it a man? The Nutcracker comes to life that night (not in the Toy Story sense) and we hear of a story from Drosselmeier of how a nephew of his was turned into a Nutcracker. Marie figures it out and starts calling the Nutcracker by his name, even refraining from the Pieta pose that she had earlier. The Nutcracker tells her to stop sacrificing her things for him and requests a sword, which he uses against the Mouse King.
At this point, I should point out that the story takes on a turn similar to most fairy tales and folk tales with dragons. The common image has them guarding things, and sometimes a princess, and the man would slay it to rescue the latter. In this case, the dragon is played by the Mouse King. Without us seeing it, he slays it, wakes up Marie, and takes her to Toyland. From this, we see the Brunhilde legends being referenced as well as "Sleeping Beauty" and "Snow White."
Finally, Marie becomes the perfect bride. She is presented a fairy tale marriage when the Nutcracker takes her to his kingdom. She does wake up from this and goes to the Nutcracker to make a vow to be not like Princess Pirlipat. This vow results in the Nutcracker taking human form at last and Marie finds a handsome suitor presented to her by his uncle.This kind of transformation follows that of the Beast in Barbot de Villeneuve's fairy tale, "Beauty and the Beast" where the girl makes a solemn vow of love and it breaks the spell that was holding the man in another form. In this case, it's as a nutcracker doll.
One final Biblical allusion comes when the Nutcracker takes Marie to the Doll Kingdom, shown as a magical world where toys and sweets live and every Christmas tree known grows. The set up of this fantastic world is meant to resemble Heaven, and Marie sees it twice. First the Nutcracker shows her the place after slaying the Mouse King. The second is after the Nutcracker becomes human again and takes her there upon hearing she would love him regardless.
In the final chapter, Marie tells everyone of it but no one believes her. Her father even threatens to throw her toys away if anymore talks of it come. But, Marie keeps faith and says the magic word. In the end, all are happy. That ending is preferable to the Baryshnikov production of the ballet that ends with Clara back in the living room and wondering if the whole thing was just a dream.
Notes.
1. Fantasia. Disney Pictures. (1940) (Classicalmpr has an article on the movie's use of the suite in better detail).
2. genealogy.com. (accessed in 2018).
When you first hear of The Nutcracker, you might be thinking of the ballet by Russia's great composer, Pyotr Ilych Tchaikovsky. The ballet was from a late period in the composer's life, about a year before his death, best known to American listeners in the abridged style "Nutcracker Suite", on which a sequence from Disney's Fantasia is based on. Tchaikovsky reportedly disliked the piece and after 1892 it was rarely played[1], until in the middle of the last century with the frequent productions of the ballet itself. Because of the setting of the story being in Christmas eve, it's become part of the Christmas traditions just as Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol and Clement Moore's "A Visit from St. Nicolas" had before it.
Yet, before there was a Russian ballet, there was the fairy tale, and it was the work of two men: a German Romantic writer named Ernst Theodore Amadeus Hoffmann, aka E.T.A. Hoffman, and French novelist Alexandre Dumas, the man who gave us The Three Musketeers and The Count of Monte Cristo. I list it as the work of two men because the original story was written twice. The first was by Hoffman in 1816, done as a novella, while Alexandre Dumas rewrote it as The History of the Nutcracker twenty eight years later. The plot lines in the story are completely identical that one could accuse Dumas of plagiarism, yet a few changes in writing style are noticeable, the way Dumas looks into the Christmas Tree concept like that of an anthropologist observing natives in a ritual in contrast to Hoffman presenting Christkind tradition, and so on. So, we're basically looking over the same story if I reviewed the both at once.
One noticeable difference is in the family, where Hoffman features the Stahlbaum family while Dumas renames them the Silberhaus. The first is said in genealogy.com to mean "steel tree", whereas the latter "silver house"[2]. And it's not too hard to see that plenty of German influences are in the ballet, such as the inclusion of "Grandfather Dance" in the libretto, itself a traditional German dance done to signal the end of a gathering (making its place as the end of the Christmas Party scene right).
The heroine of The Nutcracker is not named Clara, unlike what the ballet has, but Marie Stahlbaum / Silberhaus. Marie is a variant of Mary, a French and German variant mostly (though The Sound of Music taught us German speakers could also use Maria). This name connection, as well as the way she holds the Nutcracker, invokes the image of the Virgin Mary holding the Christ Child. In a way of avoiding the actual motherhood, Drosselmeier, her eccentric godfather, gives Marie the Nutcracker doll that he made himself and she protects the doll like a mother protects her baby. Like any mother, she discovers that there are other things to come between her and her doll, which was originally to be shared with, but Herr Stahlbaum / Silberhaus deemed it to be in Marie's care. First case is when Fritz breaks the Nutcracker while trying to crack nuts. Later, she finds him being threatened by the mice.
The theme of protective motherhood shows in the differences between Marie and her brother, Fritz, in treatment of the Nutcracker. Fritz, like any boy, just sees the Nutcracker as a toy to play with; another hussar to command. He even tries to crack a really hard nut with it and it breaks the jaw. Marie weeps over the injury of the Nutcracker while Fritz considers him not a good soldier. By every right, Fritz should have gotten a good spanking for that but he was lucky that time. Instead, his father makes him ashamed of his treatment of a soldier, since Fritz is in to toy soldiers. This protective mother stage goes to the Mouse King's advantage when he threatens to chew him up if she doesn't appease him with sweets. The Mouse King, of course, uses this for extortion.
When Drosselmeier comes on the scene, we learn alot of the man from the start. Godpapa Drosselmeier, as he is called in the story, is Fritz and Marie's godfather, a special sort of relation in Marie's life: he is there to rear the children should their parents die, as according to his role when they were baptized. Drosselmeier is described as a little man with wrinkles in the face and some long hair, plus a black patch over his right eye. Looking at him, you would think of the Norse god Odin, trading in his wanderer robes for that of a clock maker. The appearances are just about the only connection to Norse mythology that Drosselmeier appears to have. His whole name is Christian Elias Drosselmeier. If you look at the name, you notice the two instances of "el" being used, especially in Elias.
Drosselmeier is a strange sort. Though he is good natured and friendly, I couldn't help but notice he could be a jerk at times. When Fritz breaks the Nutcracker, he sides with the boy. Later, he scoffs at Marie figuring out who the Nutcracker really is, and tries to show her false. Yet, when he presents his nephew in the end. There are times that Drosselmeier is someone who knows more than what he is saying, which makes him the most unpredictable of the characters.
On Christmas Eve night, Marie sneaks into the toy room to check up on her nutcracker doll (stored with, along with other toys, a doll that is named Clara) and that is when the mice arrive. Mice were a common pest in Europe for centuries, along with their cousins, the rats. The reason is because mice and rats were considered carriers of the Plague (ironically, a family of rats is also called "plague"). Mice also like to get into food and will eat anything left out, as evidenced in the story where the mice bother the queen to have some lard. They also get in people's hair, nibble on exposed skin, crowd in clothes, and leave stains on floors and walls. So, based on this knowledge it's no surprise to see the mice as villains.
The worst among them is as big as a hamster with the attitude of a shrew. He has no name but is called The Mouse King. Now, the ballet productions portray the Mouse King as a conventional mouse with a crown on his head, with the animated film The Nutcracker Prince making him seem rat like (perhaps playing off on Professor Ratigan from The Great Mouse Detective), but Hoffman's story describes him as a large mouse with seven heads. The image is also in Dumas' version. The seven headed rodent invokes the image of the Dragon and the Seven Headed Beast described in the Book of Revelations (both cases are described wearing a diadem on each head). The reason most productions didn't use the original image is practicality; you just can't create a seven headed mouse mask and put it on the body of a man, and they are yet to use today's puppetry like they are with King Kong. One thing scary is real life rodents in Germany have been recorded bounding together into a bigger menace, usually because they are stuck together by sticky substances. Rat kings, they are called, and they could consist of up to thirty-two rats stuck together as one body.
Reading over the battle with the mice seems like that of a miniature version of Armageddon. The Mouse King is the Beast, Whore of Babylon, and Satan himself rolled into one while the Nutcracker and the dolls become the angels defending Earthly paradise from the Armies of Darkness. Mostly the toy soldiers, along with international dolls, while the girly dolls hide in the rear; yet I am positive in this day, you could have some of the most popular toys taking part in the action (even Barbie dolls taking on the mice). In the first battle, the mice appear to win near the end as the Nutcracker seems outwitted as a commander and then the toys get literally help from above. Marie throws a shoe at the mice who scatter and then everything goes black (The Nutcracker Prince takes it a step further by having the Mouse King land on his candle and run off screaming "MY TAIL'S ON FIRE!" and later winds up in the fire place, sort like the Devil tossed into the Lake of Fire).
Another biblical allusion is presented in the story Drosselmeier tells to Marie and the children. The core of The Nutcracker is the story of a literal tough nut to crack, the Crackatook Nut, which is introduced as a cure to a curse. In the story, which is never used in the ballet, a king and queen of an unspecified kingdom have daughter named Pirlipat, presented as a beauty with good teeth. At least, she was until Dame Mouserinks comes on the scene.
Dame Mouserinks, aka the Mouse Queen, starts out extolling the Queen for food, such as the lard used in making sausages, resulting in them not tasting well (it's strange how the King faints when he discovers "too little fat"). Once more, the fact mice were a problem in the past is illustrated and the King has it decreed they are to go. Drosselmeier is shown in the story working with the Court Astrologer in taking out the mice plague with mousetraps, with only the Mouse Queen escaping and vowing revenge.
She does so by biting Pirlipat, turning her into an ugly thing. The King is angry and tells Drosselmeier to find a cure. When he couldn't, the King almost has him executed, but spares him at the urging of the Queen, sort of a play to scene of Bathsheba petitioning to King Solomon, only streamlined. Instead, when Drosselmeier brings up the Crackatook Nut, he is sent on a quest with the astrologer to find it.
Besides the occult theme with magicians involved in the court, one thing that seemed queer is how the Princess is examined. Drosselmeier is said to take her apart as one would take apart a machine to examine for repairs, making one wonder if she were a girl or a puppet. It's likely a metaphor for a body examination, which makes it seem creepy (I don't think someone other than the court physician would be permitted to examine a princess' body like that). Anyhow, they realize they need not only the nut, but also someone who hasn't shaved yet and never worn boots, and the man turns out to be a youth who is also named Drosselmeier.
The theme of virginity is shown in the younger man in various ways: he has not shaved yet nor has he worn boots. It's an interesting symbolism of virginity as shaving and wearing boots were considered the trademarks of manhood and boys generally don't do one or the other (it was once a rite of passage for a boy to put on a collar on the top of his shirt and cuffs at the end of sleeves, while also putting on trousers). Since I grew facial hair before age fifteen, it does seem strange for the youth to not be shaving at age fourteen, but some boys at that age have only peach fuzz. The boots part is understandable since such were hard to come by that could fit and fourteen is when boys go through growth spurts in the legs and feet that would make it hard to have the right size. Yeah, you might be wondering what do those things have to do with it? Let's say it's a cultural thing to compare male virginity to boyhood, since people believe men cannot be virgins.
With this theme, this makes the younger Drosselmeier the one who can crack the nut. He cracks it and gives it to the Princess, sort of how in the Last Supper, Christ takes bread, breaks it, and gives it to His disciples. He then walks back seven steps (as if to mark the days of the week, if not Creation). However, the Mouse Queen comes in once more to avenge her broken spell by biting him in the ankle, turning him into a Nutcracker, thus turning the Young Drosselmeier into a Christ figure (think Genesis 3:15), taking Pirlipat's curse away and upon himself. The Mouse Queen pays for the bite with her life, but upon transformation, the Nutcracker is rejected by the princess he cured, which brings to mind how the people of Israel rejected Christ. Instead of crucifixion, the Nutcracker, Drosselmeier, and the Astrologer are banished from the kingdom.
Just now, I was thinking it over and see that the Blessed Trinity in the three men: in this case Uncle and Nephew play Father and Son, with the Astrologer as the Holy Spirit. Considering the Bible also has kings rejecting God, it should be no surprise when they are banished from the kingdom after the Princess is cured. It is also a sad twist, considering how Pirlipat fell for Young Drosselmeier on first meeting, when he was at his height, only to reject him when at his lowest. I should add on that that the Brothers Grimm were arranging their fairy tales around the same time Hoffmann was writing his. In a sense, Hoffmann had satired the Grimms' fairy tales where a beautiful and pure princess is paired with a handsome and noble prince, by showing beauty to not mean good. It's at that point, we return to the story proper.
After the first battle with the mice, Marie's role as mother ends and she becomes less like the Virgin Mary and more a princess guarded by a prince. A psychologist would consider this progression a case of Freud's Oedipal attraction in reverse, where instead of the son being attracted to the mother figure it's the mother attracted to the child figure. The fact that the child is actually a man makes this sort of thing taken to another level. How is it a man? The Nutcracker comes to life that night (not in the Toy Story sense) and we hear of a story from Drosselmeier of how a nephew of his was turned into a Nutcracker. Marie figures it out and starts calling the Nutcracker by his name, even refraining from the Pieta pose that she had earlier. The Nutcracker tells her to stop sacrificing her things for him and requests a sword, which he uses against the Mouse King.
At this point, I should point out that the story takes on a turn similar to most fairy tales and folk tales with dragons. The common image has them guarding things, and sometimes a princess, and the man would slay it to rescue the latter. In this case, the dragon is played by the Mouse King. Without us seeing it, he slays it, wakes up Marie, and takes her to Toyland. From this, we see the Brunhilde legends being referenced as well as "Sleeping Beauty" and "Snow White."
Finally, Marie becomes the perfect bride. She is presented a fairy tale marriage when the Nutcracker takes her to his kingdom. She does wake up from this and goes to the Nutcracker to make a vow to be not like Princess Pirlipat. This vow results in the Nutcracker taking human form at last and Marie finds a handsome suitor presented to her by his uncle.This kind of transformation follows that of the Beast in Barbot de Villeneuve's fairy tale, "Beauty and the Beast" where the girl makes a solemn vow of love and it breaks the spell that was holding the man in another form. In this case, it's as a nutcracker doll.
One final Biblical allusion comes when the Nutcracker takes Marie to the Doll Kingdom, shown as a magical world where toys and sweets live and every Christmas tree known grows. The set up of this fantastic world is meant to resemble Heaven, and Marie sees it twice. First the Nutcracker shows her the place after slaying the Mouse King. The second is after the Nutcracker becomes human again and takes her there upon hearing she would love him regardless.
In the final chapter, Marie tells everyone of it but no one believes her. Her father even threatens to throw her toys away if anymore talks of it come. But, Marie keeps faith and says the magic word. In the end, all are happy. That ending is preferable to the Baryshnikov production of the ballet that ends with Clara back in the living room and wondering if the whole thing was just a dream.
Notes.
1. Fantasia. Disney Pictures. (1940) (Classicalmpr has an article on the movie's use of the suite in better detail).
2. genealogy.com. (accessed in 2018).
