“Damsel in distress” is a key trope throughout “The Day After the Wedding, from Undine” passage . The beautiful and spirited Undine is “saved” by knight Huldbrand because she isn’t complete without a man saving her and removing her from her natural environment. No female heroine is found in this story, just shows how men are “complete” human beings that “need” to save a woman who are born “incomplete”. “She really loves him, and after the wedding she reveals to him she is really a water princess who, thanks to their marriage, now has a soul”(penguin 101). A water princess is in need of saving by a mortal man? This is a perfect depiction of how men paint women as helpless and innocent, no matter their upbringing. In the eyes of a man, every hero needs to be a male to help enforce the patriarchal gender norms that help men thrive and keep women deprived. Notice the phrase, “thanks to their marriage”, Huldbrand is the key to Undine’s salvation, that even her father, a Mediterranean Sea water prince, wished for her to marry a human. Undine is automatically portrayed as “baggage” to Huldbrand, despite him willingly marrying her and accepting her as she is or was. Undine was never able to save herself by gaining a soul on her own, her life was set to be doomed without a human man involved. How does the environment come into play? Well, in correlation to the quote and the passage ,the author is assigning nature as feminine. Hence, the nickname “Mother Nature” and the incessant need of man invading her space, in the name of “bettering” her. Our natural environment won’t be left alone as long as man lives.
Mermaids: Literature & the Environment
ECL 305. Fall 2025. Professor Pressman
Great point here: “A water princess is in need of saving by a mortal man?” Can you prove that the story makes you think this second part?: ” This is a perfect depiction of how men paint women as helpless and innocent, no matter their upbringing”? Does the narrative at all present self-reflection and critique? Keep going!
Jazmine you make an insanely interesting point about how a man winds up being the one to save her from this wretched fate, and it’s truly just nature’s inevitability. It feels like a real nod to how chivalric romance from the earlier period relied on this ideal of men saving women from the difficulties of life, like their sovereignty as human beings. It plays into this idea of how women alone are believed that they cannot survive. That thereby connects to nature, and how man believes it must make the decisions for it, must control it in order for it to thrive. In reality, both thrive in solemn, but cannot help this manipulation under a more powerful figure. Your perspective was so intriguing.
Hi Jazmine,
I think you really examined how the story itself contains so many signals of propaganda of proper societal conduct of the time. I love how you mentioned “This is a perfect depiction of how men paint women as helpless and innocent, no matter their upbringing”, it doesn’t matter how capable and powerful a woman is, she will be seen as less heroic than a man. I also loved how you pointed out the term Mother Nature being connected to being invaded to be improved. In another class (Gender in Science & Technology) we discussed this feminization of nature and how it set the perception of nature being (hu)man’s place to conquer.