"The Little Mermaid" (), sometimes translated in English as "The Little Sea Maid",Mary Pitcairn, unpublished unique manuscript, retrieved 02/12/2023 from Abebooks.co.uk is a literary fairy tale written by Danish author Hans Christian Andersen. Originally published in 1837 as part of a collection of fairy tales for children, the story follows the journey of a young mermaid princess who is willing to give up her life in the sea as a mermaid to gain a human soul.
The original story has been the subject of multiple analyses by scholars such as Jacob Bøggild and Pernille Heegaard, as well as the folklorist Maria Tatar. These analyses cover various aspects of the story, from interpreting the themes to discussing why Andersen chose to write a tragic story with a happy ending. It has been adapted to various media, including musical theatre, anime, ballet, opera, and film. There is also a statue portraying the mermaid in Copenhagen, Denmark, where the story was written and first published.
Plot The Little Mermaid lives in an underwater kingdom with her five older sisters, her grandmother, and her father, the Sea King. She is fascinated by the world above the sea and human beings. When a mermaid turns fifteen, she is permitted to swim to the surface for the first time to catch a glimpse of the world above. One by one, the Mermaid's sisters visit the upper world and share their observations with her. They dislike the world above and are content to remain in the sea.
When the Mermaid turns fifteen, she rises up to the surface, watches a birthday celebration being held on a ship in honor of a prince, and falls in love with him. When a violent storm sinks the ship, the Mermaid saves the prince from drowning and delivers him unconscious to the shore near a temple. There, the Mermaid waits until a young woman from the temple finds him. The prince never sees the Mermaid or realizes it was she who saved his life.
The Mermaid asks her grandmother if humans can live forever. Her grandmother explains that humans have a shorter lifespan than the 300-year lifespan of mermaids, but that they have an eternal soul that lives on in Heaven, while mermaids turn to sea foam when they die. The Mermaid, longing for the prince and an eternal soul, visits the Sea Witch, who offers her a potion which will give her legs but silence her voice. The Witch says that once the Mermaid becomes a human, she will never be able to return to the sea, and she will constantly feel like she is walking on sharp knives, with her feet bleeding terribly. In addition, she will obtain a human soul only if she wins the prince's love and marries him, for then a part of his soul will flow into her. Otherwise, at dawn on the first day after he marries someone else, the Mermaid will die with a broken heart and dissolve into sea foam, ceasing to exist.
The Mermaid takes the potion and swims to the surface near the prince's castle. She drinks the potion, which feels like a sword piercing her body, and she passes out on the shore. She is found by the prince, who is mesmerized by her beauty and grace. After recovering, she becomes his favorite companion. She dances for him, despite suffering excruciating pain with every step. He shares his deepest thoughts and feelings with her but does not fall in love with her.
When the prince's parents encourage him to marry a neighboring princess, he tells the Mermaid he will not because he does not love the princess. He says he can only love the young woman from the temple, because she rescued him. When the prince learns that the princess is the woman from the temple, he declares his love for her, and the royal wedding is announced at once.
The marriage is celebrated aboard a ship, and the Mermaid's heart breaks. She despairs, thinking of the death that awaits her, but before dawn, her sisters arrive and give her a dagger from the Witch. If the Mermaid kills the prince and lets his blood drip onto her feet, she will become a mermaid once more, all her suffering will end, and she will live out her full life in the ocean with her family. However, the Mermaid cannot bring herself to kill the prince, and she throws herself off the ship and into the ocean.
The Mermaid's body dissolves into foam, but instead of ceasing to exist, she turns into an ethereal earthbound spirit, a daughter of the air. While ascending into the atmosphere, she is greeted by other daughters, who also strove to obtain an immortal soul. Because of the Mermaid's sacrifice, she is given a chance to do good deeds for all her life. When her life ends, she will receive a soul and rise up into Heaven.
Publication "The Little Mermaid" was written by Hans Christian Andersen in 1836 and first published by C.A. Reitzel in Copenhagen on 7 April 1837 in Fairy Tales Told for Children. First Collection. (), a collection of nine fairy tales by Hans Christian Andersen.
The story was republished on 18 December 1849 as a part of Fairy Tales. 1850 (), and again on 15 December 1862 as a part of the first volume of Fairy Tales and Stories ().
Critical response
The ending with the mermaid's death and resurrection caused debate and critique. On the fact that children are told that their good behavior will help the mermaid earn her soul more quickly, but their bad behavior will add days to her time of service, P. L. Travers, author of Mary Poppins and noted folklore commentator, wrote, "a year taken off when a child behaves; a tear shed and a day added whenever a child is naughty? Andersen, this is blackmail. And the children know it and say nothing. There's magnanimity for you."
Other scholars like Jacob Bøggild and Pernille Heegaard notice the ending's shift away from tragedy as well. They point out that the events leading up to the mermaid's death should culminate in tragedy, but that the sudden twist allows the narrative to finish on a hopeful success. Bøggild and Heegaard argue that this disjointed ending was not the result of Andersen's sentimentality and religious beliefs—to which have been attributed his choice to stray from the tragic path in the rest of the narrative. Rather, a conscious choice for ambiguity stemmed from Andersen's skepticism towards idealized physical and religious symbols.
However, other critics including Søren Baggesen and James Massengale have argued that the ending is not tacked on but is a natural part of the story's structure as a religious narrative. The working title of the story was "Daughters of the Air", which are spirits who, as Andersen conceived them, can earn souls by doing three hundred years' worth of good deeds. At the end of the story, one of these spirits explains to the Little Mermaid that they do as many good things for humankind as they are able so that at the end of those years they can receive an immortal soul and "take part in the happiness of mankind". The spirits also explain that because the Little Mermaid refused to kill the Prince and has spent so much time in pain while still doing good things for men, she has "raised [herself] to the spirit-world" and can participate in the three hundred years of good deeds alongside the Daughters of the Air.
Andersen was influenced by Undine, another story of a mermaid gaining a soul through marriage, but he felt that his ending was an improvement. In 1837, shortly after completing his manuscript, Andersen wrote to a friend, "I have not, like de la Motte Fouqué in Undine, allowed the mermaid's acquiring of an immortal soul to depend upon an alien creature, upon the love of a human being. I'm sure that's wrong! It would depend rather much on chance, wouldn't it? I won't accept that sort of thing in this world. I have permitted my mermaid to follow a more natural, more divine path." Andersen was concerned that the story's meanings would appeal best to adults but wrote in the foreword to Fairy Tales Told for Children, "I dare presume, however, that the child will also enjoy it and that the denouement itself, plainly considered, will grip the child."
Themes and interpretations
In Maria Tatar's The Annotated Classic Fairy Tales, the transformation of the little mermaid from sea creature to mermaid in human form, and then to a creature of the air, is believed to reflect Andersen's constant engagement with mutability and changes in identity.Tatar, Maria, The Annotated Classic Fairy Tales (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2002), pp. 308. Tatar also suggests that the Little Mermaid did not give up everything for love alone. Tatar's interpretation of the tale is one that presents a rare heroine with an investigative curiosity which is shown through the mermaid's fascination with the unknown, the forbidden, and her intent on broadening her horizons from the start. Even before she sees the prince, she displays an intense longing to visit the world above the sea through her actions such as: arranging the flowers in her garden into the shape of the sun, listening to her grandmother and sisters' stories of the surface, and peeking in through the window of the prince's cabin during his birthday celebrations. Tatar argues that the mermaid wants, above all, to explore the world and discover things that are beyond what she already knows. The world above seems larger than her own and holds a greater range of possibilities to exercise her adventurous spirit. This is demonstrated in some versions of the story when the prince has a page boy's costume made for her so that she may ride on horseback and explore the land with him. Here, her willingness to cross-dress implies a willingness to transcend gender boundaries and take risks to be able to see the world. Tatar feels this also comments on Andersen's interests in changes in identity.Tatar, Maria, The Annotated Classic Fairy Tales (New York, NY: W.W. Norton & Company, 2002), pp. 305,311,315,320,323.
In her analysis, Virginia Borges concludes that the story contains a theme about love and self-sacrifice and the dangers of accepting abuse or inconsiderate treatment in the name of love.Borges, Virginia, , article in Journal of Mythic Arts Summer 2007, webpage found 15 May 2007.
Alienation, or feeling like an outsider, is also a theme of the tale. The Little Mermaid feels isolated throughout the story and struggles to find her place in the world. She feels that she does not belong in the world under the sea and is disconnected from her own people, but she does not belong in the human world either, where she constantly suffers agonising pain and is treated as an animal or an amusement by the prince.
Susan White interprets the story as the difficult liminal passage of the girl into the order of speech and social symbolism (power, politics, and agency) which is symbolically understood as masculine.White, Susan. (1993) Split Skins, Female Agency and Bodily Mutilation in The Little Mermaid. In Collins, J & Radner, H (Eds.), Film Theory Goes to the Movies. New York: Routledge.
The artist Pen Dalton has made use of Laura Mulvey's interpretation of fetishism in art to link The Little Mermaid to the wearing of fetishistic clothes, and obsessive cosmetic surgery with masculine fears of loss.Mulvey, L. (1973) Fears, Fantasies and the Male Unconscious or You Don't Know What is Happening, Do You Mr Jones? Spare Rib Magazine, reprinted in Laura Mulvey, 2007, "Visual and Other Pleasures"