How does Elsa make the journey into reality in Frozen?

The older of the two sisters in the story ‘Frozen’, Elsa has always been given the responsibility of doing the ‘right thing’. Even from a very young age, she is put into the difficult position of having to protect those around her above her own needs. This has enormous ramifications that seep into every part of her being and affects the way in which she behaves for the best part of the story.

From her early forays into her mystical powers to the delight of her younger sister Anna, Elsa is at first proud of her ‘strengths’ – she is the ‘perfect first born’ and she relishes the opportunity to impress her sister with her ever growing mystical powers and form a close sisterly-bond whilst they are still little girls. But, when these powers lead to an unfortunate incident where Anna is left in a life-threatening state owing to a blunder on Elsa’s part, Elsa’s guilt is magnified. Her misguided display of her magical powers that lead to Anna’s injury was an accident, and although her parents accept this reality, a trip to the trolls secures in both her parents’ and her own mind that she must be as restrained as possible. From this young age, she is imminently aware of the need to ‘conceal don’t feel’ and this is backed up by her father’s advice to ‘be the good girl’. 

Before this incident, where she nearly lost her sister, Elsa relished in testing out her new skills just as an older child might begin to test the waters of what they are capable of as an individual rather than as simply a child, Elsa perhaps should have been given the opportunity to work through her unique qualities and make them a part of her personality, but the reality is quite different. Before the Anna accident, she could be heard giggling and playing with her sister, afterwards, she is so afraid of her own abilities, she self-imposes quarantine behind locked doors where she becomes a shadow of her former, giggling and confident personality. This suggests an Elsa within adolescence – but whereas her sister is given free reign to be herself and play, be a teenager, Elsa has to be the ‘good girl she always had to be’. And with this is a sense of responsibility to her sister. As a child and adolescent, Elsa doesn’t have the self-awareness that would enable her to harness her super-powers yet – she needs to grow up and feel part of her own world for this to be possible, and unfortunately circumstances have caused the opposite to happen: She is more alone than ever, trapped within her powerful and changing body with talents that, from her point of view, make her a lesser human being who could have killed her sister. So, she conceals. She doesn’t feel. She just keeps herself locked (literally) in her bedroom, and avoids growth of any kind. But this keeps her trapped in the trauma of her sister’s near-death experience. She cares too much about Anna to dare to bring those previously impressive strengths to the fore but even this is not enough to keep her powers completely hidden, and every day she is so stricken by the realities of her own capabilities that she tries to thwart these by wearing gloves to limit her strengths, to little avail.

When the girls’ parents are killed, of course the responsibility of the monarchy goes to the eldest child, and after the initial trauma of their disappearance, the sisters are forced into facing their own sovereignty and authority. For Anna, this is straight forwards. Ultimately she is the Prince Harry to the Prince William. She knows that she can relish in the celebrations of the crowning of the new queen, and ultimately, she can enjoy the event. Of course, Elsa’s experience is inconsistent with Anna’s; she feels the weight of responsibility heavy on her shoulders. She is the eldest child and must do the right thing at all times. But at the same time, she has never allowed herself to grow up; she has never become ‘at one’ with her potentially positive super-powers. So, even on the day of her coronation, she wears a pair of gloves to protect herself (as much as anyone else) from any inadvertent acts of magic which she knows she is capable of.

Of course, the reality of this is that she can’t control it. She hasn’t accepted her differences, merely ‘concealed’ these for as long as she can remember. And she’s done this for the right reasons – she doesn’t want to harm her sister; she wants to be the eldest child and she wants to do the right thing – but of course, when faced with the realities of the events that unfold, she simply can’t control the damage and untamed powers that she is capable of.

Whilst she prepares for the coronation, she is without a doubt anxious, but she also has a clear notion of how she should appear:

            

Don't let them in
Don't let them see
Be the good girl you always have to be
Conceal
Don't feel
Put on a show
Make one wrong move
And everyone will know
But it's only for today

And this continues. Whilst Anna’s excitement mounts and ultimately leads her to her ‘first true love’ and future prince, reflective of her impulsive approach to life as it’s thrown at her, Elsa feels bound. She must ‘put on a show’ and not dare to step a foot out of line. Ultimately, Elsa is thwarted by her sister’s rash falling in love with Hans. This comes as such a shock to Elsa, her volatile response exposes that which she had been trying to conceal. She doesn’t know how to control the emotions that she has kept bottled up for so long, and they cause her to unleash her mystical powers upon Arundel, much to the shock and fear of the other citizens. And it goes further than this. Once the secret is out of the bag, her years of concealment and repression give way to a purging of everything - previously bottled up - upon Arundel. She goes from being ‘the good girl you always have to be’ and she catapults herself into a new way of being with no foresight.

Of course, there are plenty of people who also cannot deal with her exposure. They call for her dethroning and worse, but she rises beyond their cat-calls and ‘gives in’ to her previously incarcerated magical prowess and then escapes. She runs away, completely unaware of the consequences of her actions. In many ways she is still a child with no awareness of what she is capable of if her powers are harnessed accordingly. Her departure throws Arundel into disarray – it becomes an ice-kingdom, but for Elsa, ‘For the first time in forever nothing’s in my way!’ – she is free. She can be Elsa complete with all the powers she has previously concealed and she no longer has responsibility for an entire nation, when she still feels like a naughty child inside.

By running away, Elsa finally allows herself to be Elsa. She embraces her super-powers and is, ultimately, free:

It’s time to see
What I can do
To test the limits and break through
No right, no wrong
No rules for me
I’m free!

‘For the first time in forever’ Elsa is free of the constraints she has imposed upon herself, and she is able to “be Elsa” with no rules or rights or wrongs. For once, she is not afraid to test the limits and break through:

My power flurries through the air into the ground
My soul is spiraling in frozen fractals all around
And one thought crystallizes like an icy blast
I’m never going back
The past is in the past!

As her frozen palace takes shape, Elsa realises that ‘the cold never bothered me anyway’ – perhaps her first acknowledgement of her own identity and what makes Elsa Elsa. It is a tiny footstep into the realm of positive self-esteem rather than the self-critical and incapacitated Elsa that existed locked up behind closed doors concealing rather than feeling. 

The consequences of this are enormous – and indeed throw the whole of Arundel into frozen anguish – and as Elsa has essentially ‘run away’, she has no concept of how her actions may have had a greater magnitude for her citizens and her sister. But then she is, in many ways, still a young child, concealing herself behind a door to protect others from what she sees as her weaknesses.

Indeed, even when Anna comes to find her, Elsa is equally separate from what is going on in Arundel whilst being caught up in the consequences of her actions which she remedies by escaping to a ‘frozen’ palace of her own making, with its own terrifying monster to scare away anyone who might threaten Elsa’s new identity. But in this separation and retreat from life, into her own ‘safe’ world, Elsa is also at risk of losing that which has always been precious to her – her remaining relative, Anna.

For all of Anna’s faults, she is unwavering in her love for Elsa and her desperate need for that sisterly bond in such a challenging time. She knows that her sister has ‘run away’ from the problem in hand, and that they both have responsibilities that they need to live up to, but whereas Elsa is battling the demons in her head and literally running away, Anna is desperate for the sisterly bond to rescue her. Despite the monster created by Elsa’s incredible strength, Anna doesn’t give up. She knows that only Elsa can resolve the permanent winter imposed upon Arundel.

The accidental ejection of yet more magic brings her sister to the brink of death once more, and this forces Elsa to reconsider her priorities. It throws her relationship into sharp relief; yes, Elsa needs to ‘find herself’ but she also needs her sister to be able to do that. 

Ultimately it is Anna’s love that brings Elsa back to Arundel, and it is only then, feeling that love, that she can begin to resolve the bigger issues facing the wider community. 

And it is that love that resolves the biggest trauma of the story. Her sister is at death’s door, the ‘true love’ of her sister’s suitor has fallen flat upon its face and there is nothing left to restore her sister’s being. Nothing, that is, except true love. And it is that true love, that wrapping of her arms around her sister that brings her back to life and at the same time makes Elsa aware of her own importance. Because love is not one sided, she realises how much she truly loves her sister, and how that love surpasses anything else – including the utopia she has created for herself in the icy distance. With this, Elsa softens; she becomes a sister once again. Not trapped behind a door, wearing gloves or in an icy parallel universe, but a sister – there and in the moment. Love has rescued both of the sisters and love thaws the ice that has threatened to destroy the land in which they grew up.  

Ultimately, the end of the story illustrates how Elsa feels for the first time since she was a small child. And with that feeling, she finds a way to begin to control those other emotions and super-powers that have otherwise controlled her. Instead of hiding from and shielding others from her super powers, she begins to acknowledge their positives as well as their potential to wreak disorder if not properly acknowledged and dealt with. She embarks once more upon her journey to adulthood, and ultimately her life as queen of Arundel – and the journey makes her a better person for the role. She has a history; it’s not all positive. Indeed, it’s traumatic at points, full of twists and turns, but eventually, this is what makes Elsa Elsa – she is the makeup of her journey and a better queen, sister and human for it. She is, for once, real to herself, and once she is that, she can only grow stronger and happier.