The first thing to stand out to me regarding our reading of the Little Mermaid is that the ocean/the realm below is well defined and beautiful. Compared to Melusine, the natural world is beautiful, rather than neutral or worse. The comparative opaqueness—unfamiliarity—is toned down, the world underwater reflects/emulates the surface world through its architecture and flora. The Little Mermaid’s grandmother answers her curiosities about the surface world, and the denizens of the deep have relationships that exist outside of conflict or servicing surface dwellers. Some commonalities with some earlier works include a focus on royalty/people of elevated social status through the Little Mermaid’s royal lineage as well as the prince.

The Little Mermaid’s eldest sister’s recount of her observation of the surface world is an inverse of human’s admiration for the natural world, as she “gaze[d] upon the large city near the coast, where lights were shining like hundreds of stars”, finding beauty in the music, technology, and decorations of humans. 

There’s a portion lifted directly from Undine regarding the mermaid’s lack of souls and the finality of their deaths, which is a driving force behind the Little Mermaid’s desire to deal with the sea witch. It was interesting to also see non-mermaid hybrids within the story. The end of the story is noteworthy due to the presence of an alternative path to heaven, the existence of slavery in the surface world, and the option to kill the prince for what can be perceived as a slight. I feel as though this story intends to act as a mirror for which to appreciate the time in which the story occurs, reconsider the theological and philosophical approaches to dealing with the natural world as well as the non-Christian peoples under control of European and euro-descended empires and colonial systems. This may even be a story with a Unitarian world view for dealing with these new social and environmental situations.

This weekend’s readings of “Undine” and “The Feejee Mermaid Hoax” from The Penguin Book of Mermaids stand out and provide connecting ideas for “Freakshows and Fantasies”. I find “Undine” the most interesting due to the elemental nature of Undine and their kin as well as its depiction of merfolk/water spirits.

Undine describes itself and their kin as beings who appear human and consider themselves human while having the ability to control different natural phenomena—at the downside of temporary existences of little consequence—lacking souls, and leaving now corpses when they die. This explanation of these beings seem to function with Christian cosmology, metaphysics, and potentially racial/cross cultural thinking in mind. I can see parallels between how Europeans and their descendants may have seen other groups of people, non-human life, and the environments they encountered during the ages of reason and discovery. Undine is essentially “subhuman” despite their great talents in much the same way that African, Asian, Indigenous American and Islander groups have been considered amidst the colonial periods. 

Both “The Feejee Mermaid Hoax” and “Freakshows and Fantasies” highlight skepticism, hoaxes, and changes in the public’s perception of merfolk/their place in the world rather than fully commit these ideas to observations that stand on their own. When considering both stories with “Undine”, we can consider mermaids/water spirits to be fleeting but powerful existences which exist under entirely different rules. Spirits that are provided souls by humans become fully human down to the corpse and eternal soul, whereas the forms left by hoaxes represent the not-quite-human forms merfolk were often considered to possess—especially when without their souls.

The chapters Betrayal and Departure connect elements of merfolk and mermaids seen in previously encountered stories: knowledge, the unknown, and the familiar.   Raymondin and Melusine’s heirs while revisiting some cyclical elements from the Melusina story from our previous penguin books. Urian and his brother mingle in the world of power and knowledge, having become monarchs in Armenia and Cyprus while allying themselves with ruling powers across other Old World continents. Even then, they plotted to adventure into newer territories and to gain more knowledge. Their and Raymondin’s accomplishments in such little time inspire unease and desire in Raymondin to pursue further knowledge; to breach his contract with Melusine—by any means. 

The most interesting part of these chapters for me is Raymondin’s reactions to both the mystery of Melusine and his discovery of her true form. He is full of doubt, rationalizes it with his Christian beliefs, attributes her alien-ness to the Devil figure, and uses scripture-adjacent logic to justify his trespasses—such as “one body” referring to marriage. She comforts him—a gendered response women may have under patriarchy, even when wronged—then delivers her farewells and leaves gifts before committing to her exile.

Dion Jones

Prof J. Pressman

ECL 305; Literature and the Environment

14 September 2025

Water and Other Worlds

This weekend’s readings from “The Penguin Book of Mermaids” as well as Steve Mentz’s “Blue Humanities” and “Deterritorializing Preface” focus on other worlds and re-centering our thoughts with that in mind. Current, Water, Flow, Ship, Seascape, distortion, and Horizon each shift language. It alters our perceptions through changing our relationships with/monitoring the relationships our adjusted centers have and the expectations related to them. 

The comparison between terra—the familiar, land centered—and “oceanus”—the “alien”, water centered—connects to ideas of periphery and otherness that have been prevalent in previous readings (Deterritorializing xv). Merfolk—tritons, mermaids—marked new worlds as beings that acted as extensions of alien places for Europeans amidst the ‘age of discovery’.