This story is most widely perceived as a fairy-tale version of Andersen’s perception of his own life; doomed to be misunderstood and mocked for his ungainliness (Andersen was a remarkably ugly man), he feels a misfit.  Note how much of the duckling’s treatment reflects various kinds of snobbery and self-satisfaction on the part of his tormenters with their own positions.  In the barnyard, the other birds - who are initially opposed to the entire brood because they will overcrowd the pond - specifically attack the ugly duckling because "He's big and he doesn't look like everybody else! . . . and that's reason enough to beat him."  Even his mother tells him to pay proper obeisance to the old duck, who has noble blood and is therefore due enormous distinction and respect, regardless of what she does.  As Andersen's aristocratic patrons tried to make him over through education, the old duck wishes the ugly duckling could be re-made.
        The wild ducks are more accepting of him, but wish to retain a proper social distance; they say they don’t mind his ugliness “so long as you do not marry into our family” - another echo of Andersen’s feeling toward the Collin family and to the various women who rejected his interest.
        The hen and the cat at the old woman’s house think themselves “the better half” of the world and specifically devalue the duckling’s ability to swim in favor of their own values, purring and egg-laying.  While egg-laying might at least be defended as more utilitarian than swimming, it is hard to choose between purring and swimming as positive attributes; the distinction appears to be simply between what they (the established leaders of society) like versus what the duckling (the lower-class boy from Odense) is able to do. They suggest to him that he ought to be grateful to them even if they, like the aristocratic old duck in the barnyard, treat him uncivilly, and advise him not to try to rise above his station, just as the social elite of Copenhagen constantly reminded Andersen of his plebeian origins.
        The duckling’s final transformation into a swan is of course the success of the ugly duckling Andersen at last - but even here, it has required that he leave his home and achieve recognition elsewhere in the world, just as Andersen's recognition was most evident outside of Denmark.  And it is instructive that the swan's success is purely aesthetic, accepting rather than challenging the standards by which he was initially judged to be inadequate.
        If "The Ugly Duckling" can be understood in terms of Andersen's personal story, however, it also has a strong appeal to readers who know nothing of his life.  Bettelheim notes that the tale has affinities to the "true" folk tradition, e.g., the fact that the duckling is a traditional "youngest child" (the last to hatch) who succeeds despite an unpromising beginning; however, he sees the tale as "not helpful to the child" because it encourages the reader to identify success through passive waiting to grow into one's rightful nature rather than through real achievement.  Clearly, Andersen's tale touches the sense of outsiderhood or non-belonging that most children will experience at one point or another, and specifically enacts the family romance - that is, the imaginative compensation that “this is not my real family” but an alien group into which I have been accidentally placed.
 
 

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