Melusine’s story reflects so much of life from its introduction: discussions of the fluid nature of opposing concepts, patriarchal structures and their implementation within relationships, and of course, the need to hide deep secrets from those we love in order to protect ourselves. This then spills over into one of the most realistic parts of the story in my opinion: the use of mermaids as a vessel for fate, and how that plays a role in romantic ideology for women.

Emotionally, it’s made incredibly apparent how his betrayal of her boundaries, a concept all too well fated to modern societies and relationships, becomes a point of vulnerability for her. The moment her image of their love seems to unravel, she crumbles: “the fate that was now imposed on her, she felt everything uncertain, herself, her future, as if her heart was breaking, and she fell to the ground as if she were dead” (Lebey, 140). Emphasis on fate, how this was inevitable, begins this narrative of how love stories are considered written as a part of our lives. Life as we know it in the 21st century often means marriage, the nuclear family; it is destined regardless of women’s desires for their future. In Melusine’s, her one explicit desire only lies in being loved, and seen as more than the curse she’s been fated to. She truly represents how destiny plays a role in women’s reality, how escaping the circumstances placed upon them is something they so deeply crave, and that is often found in love in literature. His respect of her boundaries for so long implied reality in these desires finally being fulfilled, in this escape of her unfortunate through the power of a soul-crushing love that’s so often depicted to women, making his betrayal so impactful.

Seeing it from a holistic perspective, it’s apparent how being betrayed by someone she loved shatters her world view beyond love. It resonates deeply with those who’ve experienced that first major love heartbreak, to consume yourself so completely within another human being only to be so earth shatteringly devastated at their disappearance, and faced with the reality that you and this other are not intertwined forever. Mermaids being seen as these powerful and divine creatures that build upon womanhood’s principles, only for Melusina to become so distraught by the loss of a man shows how integrally incorporated love becomes as a part of womanhood. Despite being a figure of supposed vanity, and caught in a moment of “narcissism”, his betrayal wrecks her so deeply, it feels like a death of such a major piece of her. It humanizes her, equating the way so many girls and women react to losing a partner they invest themselves within to her, as well as paints how in a patriarchal society, natural state, hers being a mermaid, ties women to the inevitability of whatever their situation may be.