The article “the Mermaid” featured in the “Penguin Book of Mermaids”, originally published by the New York Herald in 1842, detailed mermaid sightings from the 18th and 19th century. This article, which was made in response to the sensation of P.T Barnum’s Fiji mermaid, marked a period in which the fascination with mermaids coincided with the conflicting politics of racial superiority, scientific advancement, and imperial colonization. This is seen in the articles juxtaposition of description between two detailed sightings, The “negro” mermaid in 1758 France, and the Asiatic mermaid in 1775, London, as well as the author’s prefatory emphasis on the theory of evolution, for the possibility of mermaids, as de-evolved humans, existing. This is relevant in understanding that the Feejee mermaid hoax, and others like it, were believed because of the United States and Western Europe’s involvement in imperialistic colonization throughout the globe, as well as the enslavement of Black Africans in the south; as a result of the trans-atlantic slave trade. Due to these involvements around the globe, the public was primed to believe in these hoaxes and supposed sightings. The combination of new-fangled science and mythos characterized the close of the Enlightenment and the beginning of the Romantic era in which this fascination with the freakshow mermaid took place, and western nations capitalized on the public interest of the exotic and oriental to assist in the support for imperialism and subjugation of people of color, by continuing the public’s regard of black and non-white people as backward, and exotic, through the mermaid.
Two of the mermaids described were living freakshows, unlike Barnum’s Feejee mermaid mummy. In 1758 a black mermaid was “exhibited at the fair of ST. Germain” and is described as such: “It was female, with ugly negro features. The skin was harsh, the ears very large, and the back parts and the tail were covered with scales(p.243).” Besides this physical description, the mermaid was kept and fed in a tank where it swam with “seeming delight(p.243)” despite its being caged.
The second live exhibition described took place in London 1775: “It was therefore an Asiastic mermaid. The description is as follows: –Its face is like that of a young female– its eyes a fine light blue– its nose small and handsome– its mouth small– its lips thin, and the edges of them round like that of the codfish–its teeth are small, regular and white–its chin well shaped, and its neck full …it’s breast are fair and fall …the belly is round and swelling(p.243-244)
The sheer difference in these two descriptions makes a stark comparison between the races of these two creatures, one is black and the other is assumed to be white or asian (from the Aegean sea). Despite both being hybrid creatures, there is a clear preference in regard to beauty, which mirror European beauty standard of whiteness, thinness, and desired sexuality (having small breasts). However, The negro mermaid is described as ‘ugly’ and harsh, where the asiatic mermaid is described as ‘handsome.’ Although both creatures came from the deep, the description of their features clearly maps onto them human ethnicities, and mirrors the societal beliefs that different ethnicities are the result of a species divide.
Science at the time was motivated, along with global expansion and imperialism, by the difference between races or ethnicities to categorize and validate the subjugation of other humans. Such explanations of racial difference would have come from the understandings of science at the time, such as phrenology and naturalism, which heavily favored whiteness. The connotations of the negro mermaid are also discussed by Vaughn Scribner who states that this article’s descriptions were influenced by the sentiments on biologically supported racial difference: “early modern Europeans concentrated on African women’s supposed ‘sexually and reproductively bound savagery’ – especially notions of their abilities to constantly suckle their various children – in order to ultimately turn to ‘black women as evidence of a cultural inferiority that ultimately became encoded as racial diference(115).” Thus, the author of the Mermaid continues to perpetuate the black mermaid’s sexualized features as vulgar in comparison to the petite and elegant description of the Asiatic mermaid.
To preface the arrival of the Fiji mermaid in England, where “our citizens and the professors of natural history especially” would have had the opportunity to verify the existence of “this animal,” the feejee mermaid, The author suggests that the mermaid may be the “connecting link between fish and the human species(241)” in the same fashion that the “ourang outang” was discovered to be the “connecting link between the human and animal race (241).” Although the Theory of evolution would not be published by Charles Darwin until over a decade after this frenzy, scientists at the time were still concerned with ideas of evolution and human and animal history, specifically the divide or ‘missing link’. Vaughn Scribner writes in his book “Merpeople: A Human History”, about freakshows and fantasies, and the scientific and philosophical discussions that framed the obsession with freakshow mermaids during the 18th and 19th century: “As with other creatures they encountered in their global travels, European philosophers utilized various theories – including those of racial, biological, taxonomical and geographic difference – to understand merpeople’s and, by proxy, humans’ place in the natural world.” Naturalism favored the missing link theory, and along with Phrenology, worked to provide context to the biological superiority of white people over people of color.
The juxtaposition of descriptions of the mermaids in “The Mermaid” article, points to a cultural shift in the mermaid’s symbolism in popular culture as no longer strictly a myth, but as a means of discussing racial differences. As ideas about racial superiority expand with the shifting boundaries of race relation in the west, so do views on the wilderness. The insecurities of western society become mapped onto the bodies of its mermaid, just as the needs of an increasingly industrial society become mapped onto the ‘wilderness’. This shift between fear and admiration of nature is discussed by William Cronon in “The Trouble with Wilderness Or, Getting Back to the Wrong Nature.” Cronon discusses this shift in consciousness during the eighteenth century, wherein the wilderness goes from the sidelines of what is considered civilized to the new found call to protect nature from human influence, and keep it in pristine condition:
“As late as the eighteenth century, the most common usage of the word “wilder-ness” in the English language referred to landscapes that generally carried adjectives far different from the ones they attract today. To be a wilderness then was to be “deserted,” “savage,” “desolate,” “barren”-in short, a “waste,” the word’s nearest synonym. Its connotations were anything but positive, and the emotion one was most likely to feel in its presence was “bewilderment” or terror(10).”
By the nineteenth century however, with the increasingly romantic notions about the preservation of the wilderness, “even as it came to embody the awesome power of the sublime, wilderness was also being tamed-not just by those who were building settlements in its midst but also by those who most celebrated its inhuman beauty(12).” Wilderness, though it came to be valued in all its glory, and preserved within national parks and reserves, still existed as a space experienced and altered by humans and their proximity, thus even within these spaces wilderness is not truly wild.
This perspective of the wilderness as valuable is included in conversation with the freakshow, negro, and asiatic mermaid, because they represent the divide in what comes to be considered good and bad and ‘other’. A wilderness devoid of humans created a space in which only the wealthy and privileged were able to afford interacting with nature, conveniently after Europeans had colonized and removed indigenous populations to secluded reservations. The exclusivity of wilderness retreats, and reserves, excluded Black and indigenous people of color, and coincided with the way mainstream western society implemented segregation between white and BIPOC communities. The mainstream media influences what is considered valuable, and just as the romantic interest in the sublime declared the wilderness as valuable, it also positioned white mermaids(white women) as more desirable, beautiful, and civilized, in comparison to black mermaids (black women, people of color). Wherein the asiatic mermaid was positively regarded despite being a hybrid creature; it’s supernatural qualities and beauty being emphasized, the negro mermaid was diminished and othered through it’s blackness.
This account of mermaids is a reflection of its time, and the beliefs of mainstream society influenced how non-human creatures were regarded based on desirability, racism, and the limitations of knowledge and science. ‘The Mermaid’ presents a documentation of the social upheaval experienced during the 18th and 19th century, and this article on mermaid sightings in which the race and gender of these mermaids are emphasized was a means of not only sexualizing the female body, but of using the exotic and the supposed vulgarity of African women to uphold racism and white superiority, at the expense of and subjugation of black bodies, viewed by the masses in freakshows as a pass time.
Works Cited:
Bacchilega, Cristina, and Marie Alohalani Brown. “The Mermaid.” The Penguin Book of Mermaids. New York, New York, Penguin Books, 2019, pp. 241-244.
Scribner, Vaughn. “Three: Enlightened Experiments.” Merpeople, Reaktion Books, Limited, 2020.
William Cronon, “The Trouble with Wilderness” (1996)