Long Live the Pumpkin Queen: Tim Burton's The Nightmare Before Christmas

Long Live the Pumpkin Queen follows the archetypal maiden’s story arc that appears in many fairy tales, particularly those featuring princesses such as Snow White, Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, Rapunzel, the Little Goose Girl, and countless others recorded by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm. A handful of the best-known versions of the Grimm stories have been adopted and popularized by Disney Studios, which produced their first princess story, Snow White, in 1937. Disney hired Shea Ernshaw to write Long Live the Pumpkin Queen, so it makes sense that the story should take the form of a traditional fairy tale.

The broad outline of the story is a quest: The protagonist is confronted with a need; she goes forth, seeking tools, information, and allies and confronting lesser challenges on her way to overcoming the final obstacle. Sally begins by going from world to world, seeking help until she finally realizes that she alone has the power to overcome the monster afflicting her world. She returns home, armed with that knowledge, and rescues her kingdom.

Protagonists are most often children, youths, or maidens. Fairy tales of the maiden-coming-of-age type usually feature a princess or girl from some other high-status family reduced to the role of a servant as Sally (the governor’s daughter) was when Doctor Finkelstein kidnapped her. Usually, this is because the mother has died, and the girl’s weak father has replaced her with a devouring stepmother. In these stories, the princess, like Sally, is confined to a role imposed on her by someone else. “Snow White,” “Cinderella,” and “The Little Goose Girl” are typical examples.

Sally’s quest to rescue Jack reverses the magical sleep trope seen in stories like “Snow White” and “Sleeping Beauty.” The magical sleep from which the Princess is awakened by the embrace of a prince is often read as female passivity. However, in symbolic terms, it represents a period of metamorphosis while the Princess incorporates the active “masculine” attributes necessary to play an adult role. Examples are “Snow White,” “Sleeping Beauty,” and “Little Red Riding Hood.”

In Long Live the Pumpkin Queen, rather than the princess falling into an enchanted sleep, it is the prince and the entire kingdom who are put to sleep while the princess must complete her character arc, moving from the role of maiden to queen before she can wake her kingdom. Modern readers tend to prefer to see female protagonists engaging in the same kinds of quests that used to be more typical of boys in fairy tales, although there have always been stories of more active heroines, for example, Gretel in “Hansel and Gretel,” who rescues her brother by destroying the witch (by employing the traditionally feminine tools of cooking).

Fairy tales often use wild, dark, and dangerous forests to represent the chaos of change and transformation. The protagonist leaves a safe and familiar setting and enters a forest, representing the special world of the adventure. While in the forest, they encounter a primal menace, e.g., a witch, wolf, or wicked huntsman who must be overcome, usually by wit rather than brute force. This is what Sally does when she first enters the grove, then goes deeper into the darker, wilder part of the forest to discover the hidden door to the ancient realms and her own origin.

The protagonist then receives a talisman—which may be either a useful item or merely a new maturity and understanding (in a coming-of-age story, this includes a leap of understanding into the adult world)—and returns to the ordinary world where he/she becomes a queen/king, often represented by marriage with a prince or princess symbolizing the transformation from one role to another. In Sally’s story, the new role is imposed on her at the outset when she marries Jack, and she must go on a quest before claiming it for her own.

Sally undergoes the archetypal transformation from Maiden to Queen. The role of the maiden is to individuate from her family, which may also represent the wider community. The fairy tale Maiden often goes from childhood to adulthood by falling into a metamorphic sleep and emerging fully formed when she incorporates the masculine energy of the Prince and makes it her own. The magical sleep might also be represented by confinement in a womanlike space, such as imprisonment in a tower, a wolf’s belly, or a witch’s oven. On the other hand, Sally combines individuation with a hero’s quest, achieving the goal of her quest by claiming adulthood.

Sally completes her quest by assuming the role of Queen. The archetypal queen is the guide, guardian, and protector of the younger members of her kingdom. She is more than a mother; she doesn’t attempt to confine her children to childhood but gently pushes and guides them toward adulthood.

Critics sometimes protest that archetypal characters and story arcs are restrictive and result in predictable and stereotyped stories. However, the strength of archetypal stories is that they arise from universal experience. Thus, the use of commonly-encountered tropes gives the story a sense of familiarity. Although the author of this narrative introduces more subtleties of character and inner conflict than are found in the traditional fairy tale, the reader has a sense of the rightness of the story.