The Little Match Girl by Hans Christian Anderson is a short story about a young girl who is forced by her family to go out on the cold streets to sell matches in order to provide a form of income so there can be bread on the table and a roof over their heads.  She lost the only slippers she had because they were much too large so the young, freezing child does not have proper shoes, nor does she have proper winter clothing. She has but her dress and bundles of matches.   The concepts of premature death and poverty go hand in hand in The Little Match Girl as a little girl dies on a cold New Year’s Eve night because her family cannot afford to provide her with proper clothing for the winter so she must go out and sell matches to help put bread on her family’s table.  She is not the first child to be heard of that has suffered a premature death due to the lack of proper care and nutrition. Premature death and poverty have been issues throughout human history, and are still two of the most prevailing issues in today’s world.  Images pop up almost every week of starving children in Africa who often face death much too early in life, but there have been children dying all over the world, not just in Africa, because of poverty for several decades. There are children just down the road that are freezing because their parents cannot provide the proper living conditions for them.  Many schools are seeing more and more free lunch cases because their parents cannot afford to buy them enough food for proper nourishment.   The Little Match Girl is more than a short story, however, but a warning from Andersen that more people are going to face a premature death if something is not done about the gap between the classes. 

In the late evening, the little girl sits against in the corner between two buildings to hopefully use her body heat to warm herself from the harsh December cold.   She does not dare go home for she has not sold a single match.  Seeing as her body heat is not helping in warming her up, she lights a match in an attempt to warm her bare hands and feet.  She then lights another one and in the glow of the small flame, she sees a feast laid out complete with the beautiful serving dishes and the roast goose who hopped down from the table with the carving ware still in its breast before her until it disappears with the flame.  Again she lights a match and sees a beautiful Christmas tree all lit up, and then the flame once again dies.  She lights one more of her matches and to her great surprise, the little girl sees her late grandmother in the glow.  The girl begs her grandmother to take her with her to heaven, “’Grandmother!’ cried the little one. ‘Oh, take me with you!”, but to her despair the grandmother disappeared with the light of the flame just like the other visions.  Frantic and almost desperate, the little girl lights a whole bundle of matches and places them in the snow around her just to see her grandmother again.  Lo and behold, her grandmother returns and takes her freezing granddaughter in her arms and up to heaven; “She took the little maiden, on her arm, and both flew in brightness and in joy so high, so very high, and then above was neither cold, nor hunger, nor anxiety--they were with God,” (Andersen).  The next morning people gather around the frozen body of the little girl.  They figure she used the matches as a source of heat for the cold night, but the little girl’s smile knows the matches were worth much more than a bit of heat. “No one had the slightest suspicion of what beautiful things she had seen; no one even dreamed of the splendor in which, with her grandmother she had entered on the joys of a new year,” (Andersen).

The tragic death of anyone is hard to swallow, especially when they pass on before their time.  The death of the little match girl was a very hard thing to read; my heart broke for her helpless, frozen body that sit in the snow on a cold New Year’s Eve.  In the article Population geography II: Mortality, premature death, and the ordering of life, James A Tyner talks about the concepts of mortality, premature death and the ordering of life in the context of human geography.  “Simply put, premature death is as ‘preventable risk’.” (Tyner).  In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries “A wide assortment of physical signs and tests of death were developed and utilized.” (Tyner).  But the death of children is not something new. In their book Child Mortality in Late Nineteenth-Century America Samuel H Preston and Michael R Haines develop just why the child mortality was so high in the late nineteenth century in America. In fact, prior to the late nineteenth century, some very harsh diseases were claiming the lives of great amounts of children to the point where “Nearly two out of every ten children died before reaching their fifth birthday.” (Haines 1).   The Death Registration Area (DRA), formed in 1900 “covered only an unrepresentative 26 percent of the population”, which is not statistically representative of the entirety of the American population at the time (Haines 1).  However, this is the only data that is available to represent the cause of children’s deaths in 1900.   According to the data, over one-hundred thousand children, newborn to the age of fifteen, died in 1900, and of those, over one-thousand were of unknown causes.  Most of the other deaths recorded were due to selected diseases and different malformations from premature birth to atrophy.  Diseases and malformations did account for many deaths of children under the age of fifteen, however, the income of the family also played a significant role in a child’s survival.  According to a study done in 1908 in New York “66 percent needed medical or surgical attention or better nourishment,” (Haines 5).  The Children’s Bureau did a study in 1915 on literacy in the home as well as income of the household against child mortality.  It showed that there was no significant linkage between the mother’s English literacy and the child’s death.  It did, however, show a linkage between the father’s annual income and the infant mortality rate in the home; “The infant mortality rate was 167 per 1000 livebirths for families in which the father’s annual income was less than $450, and only 59 per 1000 for families with father’s annual earnings in excess of $1250.” (Hanes).  The little match girl’s economic condition would most likely fall under the former income of $450 or less annually since she is out in the streets at the end of December selling her bunches of matches to help feed the rest of her family and her cause of death would fall probably fall under the category of “Causes unknown” in the data taken in 1900 by the Death Registration Area because all that is known about her cause of death from what Andersen tells us is “sat the poor girl, with rosy cheeks and with a smiling mouth, leaning against the wall—frozen to death on the last evening of the old year,” therefore, we do not know whether the girl had a disease that killed her along with the cold.  The little girl’s death is considered premature because it could have been prevented only if she and her family had a proper income to be able to afford proper housing and clothing for her to wear as she sold her matches.  The point is, she was living in poverty and that was the cause of her premature death.    

Poverty has stricken the vast majority of people from the time of King Henry the eighth of England to today’s one percent versus the ninety-nine percent in America. In his book Poverty, Emigration and Family: Experiencing Childhood Poverty in Late Nineteenth-Century Manchester Steven J Taylor talks about some of the things children’s homes tried to do for the children of Manchester and how corrupt some of them came to be.  In Manchester, England in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, some people “thought that removing [the children] from the city saved them from an inevitable life of vice and immorality,” (Taylor). However, “not all children found their way to the charity from deviant or criminal background and that parents cared for and were concerned about the welfare and upbringing of their offspring,” (Taylor).  The Bourgeoisie loved these houses because they believed that the programs “’permanently saves the children by removing them from their old degrading surroundings,’” (Taylor.  But their conditions were not good at all in most cases, “Children that were institutionalized outside of the Workhouse often struggle to maintain contact with their parents.  Private institutions, such as orphan homes, did not allow parents a legal right to remove their children,” (Taylor) Poverty did not just prematurely take the lives of children however; many women were faced with a premature passing especially in childbirth (Fuchs). Rachel Ginnis Fuchs describes the struggles of women, especially those of the lower class, in the nineteenth-century in her book Gender and Poverty in Nineteenth Century Europe. Childbirth is a hard and traumatizing thing for women to go through today and it was much harder, and a lot less sanitary, in the nineteenth century.  If they had the money, many women would either “have had a doctor deliver the baby rather than a midwife,” (Fuchs).   However, “If a woman could not afford to pay a midwife… she might go to one of the free maternity hospitals for the poor that existed in several cities of Europe,” and deliver their baby (Fuchs).  With the shoddy hospital however, came more deaths of mothers during or soon after giving birth to the child.  Some of it was because of the trauma, and some of it was because of the unsanitary conditions they were faced with and “Not until the end of the nineteenth century did doctors in hospitals realize that it was deadly to go from performing an autopsy to delivering a baby without disinfecting their hands” (Fauchs).  Granted the girl in The Little Match Girl was not going to a hospital to give birth to a child, however Gender and Poverty in Nineteenth-Century Europe shows that things were harder and often times less sanitary for those who did not have the money.  The young child died because of the poverty she was living in.  She “walked on with her tiny naked feet… She carried a quantity of matches in an old apron,” (Andersen).  The girl did not have the right garments to be out in the streets at the end of December in the snow to sell matches.  If she lived in England, the little girl could have been sent to one of the orphanages in order to at least have a roof over her head.  Granted she most likely would not be allowed to see her family again, but it would have been better than having to go out on the streets to sell matches.  It was never said what her parents did to make money for the household as well, but it can be assumed it was not enough to provide sufficient funds to make a better home and life for their child.  There are children out in the world today that are living in conditions similar to the little girl’s home, no heat, little food, and possibly even unemployed parents.  Not much has changed in how some people are forced to live.  

The Little Match Girl is not just a sad short story about the tragic death of a small child written in the nineteenth century by some Dutch author.  It was, and still is, a warning to those people in society that have the ability to support those in need that if nothing is done, people, children, are going to die because they did not have the proper supplies in order to avoid a premature death, a death that could have been prevented.  There is an obvious link between poverty and premature death throughout history as seen by the data and other sources of information given.  Hans Christian Anderson seems to be giving people in the late nineteenth century a wake-up call with The Little Match Girl.  This sad story of a young girl who is forced to go out in the cold December air by her family to sell matches in order to put food on the table and minimal clothing on their backs is pretty harsh.  For this family, though, it is a necessity and the best that they can do at this point.  The family does not have enough money to purchase shoes or proper nutrition for the girl and therefore must do what they can to make ends meet, even if that means risking their child freezing to death.  When the little girl lights the matches and sees images of grand feasts and large, decorated Christmas trees, that is when Andersen really hits his point.  This little girl is using a match to try to keep warm on the cold New Year’s Eve night while many others who can afford nice furs and a warm fireplace to sit by and stay out of the cold are doing nothing.  He is saying that there is such a gap in the economic status of families in the late nineteenth century and that those who have money are not doing much, if anything at all, to help those who do not and that if nothing is done, more people, more children, are going to die due to lack of food and proper clothing for the elements.  The little girl was afraid to go home and have her father angry at her because she had not sold a single farthing worth (according to today’s currency exchange four pennies worth) of matches that entire day.  Not one person could spare even four pennies to buy some matches from the poor girl. The last thing is the way that the little girl died; “in the corner, at the cold hour of dawn, sat the poor girl, with rosy cheeks and with a smiling mouth, leaning against the wall--frozen to death on the last evening of the old year. Stiff and stark sat the child there with her matches, of which one bundle had been burnt” (Anderson).  The little girl was smiling when she died, not because she was having fun playing in the snow or the minimal warmth from the snow, rather she was happy because she is now going to spend eternity away from the hunger and cold she was experiencing with her grandmother and God.  The little girl was smiling in the freezing street because she saw that death was better than life.  There are people even today that see death as better than the life they are living; they may not have a home, food to eat or clothes to wear to protect themselves from the elements they are sleeping in.  So, to escape the hardships they are facing they pass on whether by their own hands or natural causes.  Anderson’s warning can still, sadly, apply to today.  One can walk down Main Street in Columbia, South Carolina on any given day and be asked by many people of all ethnicities and backgrounds for a dollar or two by several people in order for them to simply purchase a hot coffee or something for them to eat so they do not freeze or starve.  Today there are many organizations, such as the Salvation Army and soup kitchens, that are able to provide aid to those who either do not have a place to stay or are not able to provide proper living conditions for themselves let alone their family. However, there are some people that believe that they do not have to put in the work or give to those organizations because they are too good for it or they think someone else will do it or they do not believe that their small donation can make the world of difference to someone.  But if everyone starts to think that way, then nothing will be done to help those that are in need.  Nothing was done to help the little match girl get some proper clothing or escape the cold and she died slowly in the cold.  These kinds of deaths can and most likely will continue to come about if no one does anything to prevent them.  
