((okay frances, just for you, story time with ash again))
the red shoes is this story about this little girl who’s very poor and never has shoes in summer, and in winter has to wear these awful uncomfortable wooden shoes. a shoemaker in the village makes some shoes out of red cloth for karen - that’s the girl’s name - and they’re not great shoes but it’s the thought that counts, and karen’s like, ‘woah, red shoes! that’s totally rad i love how they’re red’. a while afterwards her mother dies and after the funeral she gets adopted by this old lady who looks after her well but throws her shoes away because she thinks they’re ugly.
one day karen sees the princess travelling through the country, and, oh gosh! she happens to be wearing some nice red shoes! they’re way nicer than the ones karen had but they have just as much significance for her because of the colour, and when karen is a bit older and ready for her confirmation she needs some new shoes and she finds in the store these red shoes exactly like what the princess had worn. karen’s a bit sneaky here because red is not the colour of shoes you wear to church but the old lady’s eyesight is fading so she doesn’t realise the colour of them and karen is so enchanted with these shoes that she ends up getting them, and she wears them for her confirmation. at church everyone stares at her shoes and later they all tell the old lady what karen did, and the old lady gets angry at karen and tells her she must never wear them to church again.
next sunday karen’s like ‘whatevs i do what i want’ and she wears the red shoes again, and outside the church they come across an old bearded soldier who asks if he may dust her shoes, and when she sticks her feet out he taps her sole with his hand and says ‘what lovely dancing shoes, they’ll stay on nice and tightly while you dance!’ (or something along those lines). now ofc the old lady may be blind as a bat but everyone else isn’t so once again they all stare at her shoes, and when they leave the old soldier taps her feet again and remarks on how the pretty dancing shoes and suddenly she starts to dance. she dances all the way home until she can kick her shoes off and only then do her feet stop moving.
now one night there’s a ball and karen decides to wear her red shoes only when she starts dancing her shoes carry her all the wrong way, and eventually she dances all the way out to the forest where she meets (surprise!) the old soldier, who it seems has cursed her shoes to stick to her feet and make her dance forever.
she goes to the church, hoping for mercy, but an angel stands in front of the door and tells her that she will dance till she dies, as a lesson for conceited children.
karen decides her only option is to have her feet cut off with her shoes still on them, so she asks an executioner to do so and her feet dance off without her. she tries to go to church a few times over the next few weeks but every time her entry is blocked by the red shoes, still with her feet in them, eternally dancing. sitting on her bed one day karen begs god to give her mercy and he finally takes her up to heaven where there is no mention of red shoes.