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The Meaning of Tears in The Little Mermaid

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The first thing that struck me and intrigued me in Hans Christian Andersen’s The Little Mermaid was the motif of tears and one’s ability, or lack there of, to cry. When the little mermaids’ sisters rise “up arm-in-arm through the water, the youngest would stand alone, looking after them, and felt ready to cry; only mermaids have no tears, and therefore suffer all the more” (113). Symbolically the absence of tears represents the mermaid’s separation from humanity, or what makes something human. Though she can internally feel sorrow and longing she cannot externally express those emotions. Furthermore, there is an irony to her environment; the sea, which is made of endless water, surrounds her and contrasts her inability to cry tears. Externally, she is surrounded by water, yet lacks inner “water” of empathy or a soul. Andersen uses this moment to depict that suffering without expression (tears) is cursed pain, and it is with this awareness of her lack of tears (emotional expression) that the little mermaid starts to yearn for a soul. 

By the end of the story the little mermaid is able to transcend with the daughters of the air, marking the turning point in her journey. As one of the daughters of the air welcomed her as an “aërial spirit,” “the little mermaid lifted her brightening eyes to the sun, and for the first time she felt them filled with tears” (130). Her tears are now symbolic of her “true” humanity and capacity for moral and emotional depth. As she looks up at the “sun” she becomes spiritually enlightened, the sun represents her transcendence to having a divine soul. Suggesting that emotional pain, when expressed and understood, is the way to immortality. Her tears are a literal presentation of her invisible soul.

Moreover, the daughters of the air explain that “when [they] see an ill-behaved or naughty child, [they] shed tears of sorrow, and every tear adds a day to the time of [their] probation” (130). The story ends with the tears not just being a representation of having a moral soul or a pathway to immortality, tears now carry a moral consequence. Andersen’s motif of tears is used to define humanity. Tears, in this case, transform ones suffering into a sort of salvation, without tears or the ability to cry there is no hope of such salvation.   

Undines Speech and Christian Essentialism

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In “The Day after the Wedding, from Undine,” found in The Penguin Book of Mermaids, religious imagery stands out thematically, driving the chapter’s narrative. As Undine gives her speech to Huldbrand she confesses that her kind “vanish into dust, and pass away, body and spirit, so that none of the stage of us remains behind; and when you mortals hereafter awake to a purer life, we remain with the sand and the sparks and the wind and the waves” (105). This elemental imagery of dust reflects that of Genesis 3:19 “for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.” The scripture from the Book of Genesis is supposed to be a reminder that there is no amount of human achievement that can defy human destiny. Allusions to such scripture heavily frames the context in biblical cosmology, where there is one divine order that holds the power to determine what life holds value. Yet Undine had referred to this process of returning to “dust,” “sand,” “sparks,” and “wind”  as a sort of “evil.” The prevalent hierarchy of the divine order and the soulless is represented syntactically where the divine mortals “awake to purer life,” while the soulless nature spirits “remain” in the material world, one with the elements. The chapter’s biblical imagery depicts the ways in which Christian essentialism is legitimized falsely naturalizing religious teleology. 

Undine’s speech to Huldbrand lays the ground for the idea that all beings aspire to have and desire a divine soul, under the notion that moral advancement is dependent on Christian faith. In the following quote from that stated previously Undine goes on to say that water spirits “have no souls; the element moves [them], and is often obedient to [them] while [they] live, though it scatters [them] to dust when [they] die; and [they] are merry, without having aught to give [them] […] but all beings aspire to be higher than they are” (105). The environment and its elements, in this case, are personified—“the elements moves us”—making nature both animated and simultaneously passive. Nature is alive yet lacks free will. The water spirits are depicted as beings without divine agency, very much alive but not sanctified. The elements “move” them, yet are “obedient” to them, making Undine and other water spirits paradoxically passive and active in life. It lays a foundation for ideology that believes if a being “has no soul” then they are drifters in life and the environment. The final line presents that theological claim generalizing that “all beings aspire to be higher than they are.” It essentially claims that all life strives toward salvation because that is part of the order of life. 

The chapter sets the narrative that these “soulless” beings may be joyful but they are incomplete. By doing this Christian essentialism is put onto the pedestal as divine and part of natural evolution. That everyone must be incomplete and therefore feel the need to aspire to a “higher” way of life. Depictions of religious teleology is a way to dictate rhetoric of moral and cultural superiority. 

Sexual Metaphor and Ecocritical Violence in Melusine

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In chapter 19, “Betrayal,” of André Lebey’s version of The Romance of the Faery Melusine there are continuous metaphors and euphemisms of sexual innuendos, more  specifically sexual assault. Throughout the chapter the audience gets a third person limited perspective into Raymondin’s thoughts as he enters into Melusine’s private space. Significantly, Raymondin views his relationship with Melusine as the two of them being “the same and ever one flesh, […] At one with the earth, […] its meadows and woods, its sweet and fruitful soil.” (121). Here, their relationship is merging together as “one flesh” and also to nature being “one with the earth.” Their relationship is a physical joining to each other and to the environment that surrounds them. Though this merging may superficially seem beautiful with words such as “sweet” and “fruitful,” the diction is actually a euphemism for something more sinister. The word “sweet” for example is a pretense for the seductive nature of the scene, and “fruitful soil” equates to fertility. The metaphors and euphemisms strewn throughout the chapter can be seen through a feminist ecocritic lens where female bodies and land are seen as commodities to be explored and exploited. 

This notion is apparent through Raymondin’s persistence in trying to get through the door to Melusines (metaphorical and literal) private place. As Raymondin has now discovered where Melusine goes on Saturdays, he is inexorable in leaving well alone. His intrusion is described as follows: “The blade entered [the door] a little, so slowly that he almost began to despair. But he forbade himself to think what he would do next, for he could not, he saw, fully part the adjacent boards. But he might make a crack wide enough to see through! He would soon find out something, no matter how!” (122). The imagery is more explicit in its violent forced entry with the blade opening the entry. The violence does not lie in his brute force but in the way that he chooses to try and enter. Raymondin could very well just knock on the door but instead takes a knife out and jimmies it in and “forbades” himself to think of the wrong he is doing. On that, the blade is a euphemism for penetration, it no longer is an instrument of survival but a tool of destruction. Which would mean that the door and “crack” are symbols of barriers to consent and bodily autonomy as Raymondin does not care for what is right as long as he finds what he seeks “no matter how.” Feminist ecocriticism presents the interconnection of conquering both feminine and environmental nature. This chapter evidently examines this concept through how Raymondin both sees and treats Melusine, something less than human. In this case, both land and women’s bodies are disrespected, pierced, and exposed for knowledge and profit.

Sacred Serpent: Melusina and The Fall of Man

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What caught my attention most after having read Thomas Knightley’s summary of “Legend of Melusina” in The Penguin Book of Mermaids was the religiously charged symbols of feminine power and male transgression. The story integrates many aspects of medieval Christianity ambivalence towards female agency and nature. One way this can be seen is from Melusina’s curse of transforming every Saturday into a hybrid snake-woman which highly reflects Christianity’s mistrust in female agency.

Melusina’s hybridity and curse draws many parallels to that of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. Like Eve, Melusina falls short on transgression of obedience. For Eve it was being tempted by Satan (in the form of a serpent) to eat from the Tree of Good and Evil and in turn she and Adam are banished from Paradise. For Melusina, she “took the king[, her father,] and all his wealth, and, by a charm, inclosed him in a high mountain, called Brandelois” for which her mother “condemned Melusina to become every Saturday a serpent from the waist downward” (87). Both Eve and Melusina’s transgression and fates align with medieval Christian conceptions of the Fall of Man as the result of female agency. These parallels of serpent imagery correlate with duplicity and evil. Satan as a serpent in Eden and Melusina’s hybridity being duplicitous. As a liminal figure, Melusina is a representation of religious binaries: God/Satan, man/woman, good/evil. Often in Medieval perspective, hybridity see’s these binaries as dangerous, suggesting a sense of impurity and crossing of boundaries. On top of Melusina being an impure hybrid, her curse is somewhat of a ritual happening every Saturday or Sabbath, something unholy happening on a holy day. This can be seen as female impurity especially in relation to menstruation something natural yet taboo. With that, Raymonds is in violation of “the taboo” and commits a sin of curiosity, much like Adams sin of disobedience.

While Medieval Christianity views her transformation as a mark of shame, I view it as more of breaking of trust on Raymonds part. Much like many men in this time he ventures into and violates lands and people that are not his, under a sense of religious authority. Yet it is her suffering and departure that leave behind, not destruction but, a mark of sanctity. She leaves her footprint in stone (307), and becomes symbolically a martyr of mans ambition and an example of feminine agency. Her Saturday transformation is something sacred that when crossed exposes human kinds desire for dominance over that which they cannot comprehend.

The Poetry of Water in Odysseus and The Sirens

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What is intriguing about poetry is its fluidity. It is a genre of writing that has subgenres so vast and so up for interpretation. In “A poetics of planetary water” Steve Mentz states that “The term“poetics” […]functions as a singular concept: a poetics of planetary water aims to clarify the relationships between humans and water in all its forms and phases” (Mentz 139). Using a poetic lens in literature, especially in reference to water, not only deepens our understanding of water in human and planetary life, but it complicates it too. Using Mentz insight, The Sirens portion of The Odyssey water is not just background or a mere setting, it becomes an active force that shapes human fate and meaning. 

Water may be material that sustains life but it has throughout time and place carried symbolic and poetic meaning. Homer wrote about Odysseus’ journey through the ocean, and at one point Odysseus encounters Siren seas described as: “Sunk were at once the winds; the air above, / and waves below, at once forgot to move” (Penguin 11). Homer does not simply use the water as a means of transportation or material environment but instead uses it as a metaphorical threshold. The imagery creates a feeling of stillness that is both eery and enchanting. A poetic style, in this case, does what prose cannot; with a poetic style the sea is used to embody human vulnerability and temptation, as it shifts between calm and chaos. Whereas with prose you can use imagery but the rhythm and rhyme that helps support that shifting may get lost. 

Beyond the symbolic meaning poetics can help us connect natural phenomena, like water, with cultural meaning. We see in The Odyssey that elements of earth, wind and water, are personified: “Some demon calm’d the air and smooth’d the deep, / hush’d the loud winds, and charm’d the waves to sleep” (Penguin 11). When talking about elements—earth, air, wind, fire—one usually thinks of Science. Something that provides people with all the answers. Yet, this moment in The Odyssey may be scientifically calm, but poetically it is full of imagery of the supernatural and the unexplainable. It has even more personification of the elements which goes against black and white thinking that humans crave so deeply. In this case human imagination transforms water into a source of narrative, intrinsically linking myth and environment together.

Merpeople as Bearers of Knowledge in Myth

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Merpeople, specifically mermaids, have been known to be seductive sea monsters who lure sailors to their death, and that has well founded symbolism in of itself. Yet there has also been depictions of merpeople that are valued for the knowledge they bring to humans. This dichotomy of symbolism of sea creatures is beguiling and nonetheless makes sense. In The Penguin Book of Mermaids introduction, Christina Bacchilega and Mari Alohalani Brown explains “that everything we need to survive, in one way or another, depends on water, it is unsurprising that peoples across place and time have ascribed religious significance to water and developed water symbolism” (xiv). In light of this it is clear that these crosscurrent myths would have their own symbolism not just for water but for the creatures that live in it. Focusing on the merpeople whom are valued and symbolic of knowledge, myths such as “Oannes” and “Odysseus and the Sirens” depict such symbolic knowledge and concurrently portray water spirits in different lights.

“Oannes” is described as something of a messenger of knowledge, a god that educates humans; the deity was something that was praised and attractive in its mythology. Oannes knowledge and education consisted of “convers[ing] with men; but took no food at that season; and he gave them an insight into letters, and science, and every kind of art […] so universal or his instructions, nothing material has been added by way of improvement” (4). In Babylonian mythology Oannes, whether he be a messenger or a god, was not feared but revered for what he gave humans. He came to the humans and gave them his knowledge without wanting or needing anything in return. Now in Babylonian culture water often symbolized the potential for creation and order, and Oannes is an exemplary folktale of such symbolism. A literal entity that brings the humans of Babylon order and civilization amongst their chaos. 

In Homer’s Odyssey, the Sirens in all technicalities are thought to be seductive, though surprisingly their alluring song is not one of destruction but one of wisdom. The book explains that “Odysseus is subject to erotic temptation more than once in the course of his homecoming, but the Sirens’ lure is of a different kind. Homer Sirens’ sing a song that promises knowledge— a wisdom that bridges worlds— instead of pleasure” (10). Thus, these sirens may be stereotypically the “monsters” originally thought to be, yet in reality they wish to provide Odysseus with a different point of view on life. Just like Babylonian mythology, Greek mythology  water is symbolic of creation and transformation, The sirens knowledge may not be one of facts or educating on order, but they want to get Odysseus to stay and learn from the wisdom they have to give.