''Elisa is guided by the queen of the fairies to gather stinging nettles in graveyards to knit into shirts that will eventually help her brothers regain their human shapes. Elisa endures painfully blistered hands from nettle stings, and she must also take a vow of silence for the duration of her task, for speaking one word will kill her brothers.''
1815, makes his sister savior, Eliza, endure more than any of her literary predecessor. To redeem her brothers, Eliza most overcome silence, persecution and the painful labor of spinning stinging nettles into shirts for her brothers.../At the same time, Andersen is one of the
nineteenth-century's darkest fairy-tales writers, and, even as he enhance Eliza's Christ-likeness, he makes it clear that her work is incomplete; one shirt is unfinished, leaving one brother with a swan's wing in place of his arm."
