Tag Archives: The Little Mermaid

Final Project: The Myth of (Human) Superiority

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In the stories of Hans Christian Andersen’s The Little Mermaid, Agnieska Smoczynska’s film The Lure, and André Lebey’s version of Melusine the characters embark on journeys away from their home environments with aspirations of establishing their lives in new homes and bringing the talents they possess to benefit their new community as immigrants, but they are unable to bridge the social barriers of their new environment because of all they must sacrifice to assimilate. In these stories this rejection from their chosen environments with their designation of “other” preserves the power of hierarchical systems and serves as an allegory of outsiders and immigrants being a threat.

In Hans Christian Andersen’s The Little Mermaid, for the title character “there was nothing she delighted in so much as to hear about the upper world. She was always asking her grandmother to tell her all she knew about ships, towns, people, and animals” (109). The little mermaid idealized and revered the human world like immigrants who dream of joining another community. Her interest in the world above water predated her interest with the prince, making the human world her first infatuation and aspiration. The little mermaid impatiently waits for her access to this land of her dreams and is further enthralled on her first visit to the surface by seeing the human experiences of celebration and mortality. The prince’s birthday party shows new experiences that the little mermaid has not encountered such as dancing and fireworks, “large suns were throwing out sparks…and all these wonders were reflected in the calm sea below” (Andersen 114). This comparison shows how the little mermaid sees the brightness and life of the human world that does not reach into her world.  She stays late into the night, not wanting to let go of this experience and inadvertently becomes entangled in the lives of humans.   

When the prince almost drowns during the storm, she remembers humans’ inability to survive under water like her. This is when the first of her abilities benefit the human world. Not only in the single life of the prince, but also the kingdom he reigns over. The little mermaid’s choice to save him and carry him to shore more than likely saved a kingdom’s power in the political world. The little mermaid saves the prince as an individual, not as a political act but she soon sees in the land-based rescue of him contributing to the happiness of the community around him. “And the mermaid saw that the prince came to life again, and that he smiled on all those around him. But he did not send her a smile, neither did he know she had saved him, so she felt quite afflicted” (Andersen 116). She understands her contribution, how she has added value to the human world, but because she is separate from the space of humans, her contributions are not recognized by the population she hopes to be considered equal to. 

In Andersen’s story the little mermaid believes the possession of an immortal soul is another quality of humans that puts them in higher position than mermaids. Her grandmother explains to her that only the love of a human and a Christian marriage would grant her the same status as a human, “But this will never happen! Your fish’s tail, which is a beauty amongst us sea-folk, is thought to be a deformity on earth…” (Andersen 119). This additionally deepens the little mermaid’s belief that her form and species is beneath humans, making her willing to reject her world to be part of the human world that is depicted as superior.

The cost of having human legs is the little mermaid’s voice, as a stranger to a new land this immediately puts her at a disadvantage. She cannot assert her personality or identity without a voice and much like her grandmother had explained a tail was a deformity, her absence of speech will also be considered another type of deformity to humans. As Pil Dahlerup states, “but, being mute, she, who in her former element was the foremost singer in the whole world of land and sea, cannot express her feelings of love and longing, and her exquisite looks and expressive dancing turn her into a mere pet for the prince” (413). The little mermaid even after having crossed the boundary between being an inhabitant of water and then of land is still considered inferior to the humans around her. Her lack of voice is similar to what immigrants experience in their chosen homes as language and political standing prohibits their participation in the environment around them.

The little mermaid understands the importance of a voice and knows that her voice is one of the talents she could bring to the world of humans, she will have to relinquish not only her tail that made the rescue possible but the voice that is a unique talent. When the Sea Witch asked for it as payment, the little mermaid answers, “but if you take away my voice…what have I left?” (Andersen 122). She is told by the Sea Witch that her new human body will be all that she needs to complete her task and obtain an immortal soul. The human form and status are set up as the ideal that can conquer all obstacles, both to reader and the characters of the story.

When the human form does not negate the little mermaid’s payment of the talents she sacrificed, she is presented with a new moral problem. Through the further sacrifices of her sisters, the little mermaid can choose to resume her own life as a mermaid by killing the prince that rejected her or die herself. With being underestimated by humans in what they determined to be her inferior state she has access to the prince and can easily kill him while he sleeps. This exemplifies the threat some see of the “other” in their community, that the unassuming and subordinate people from outside can cause substantial harm to the people in the community they join.

In The Lure (dir. Agnieska Smoczynska) the threat of the “other” is more evident because unlike the little mermaid, the mermaids in the film do not have to sacrifice their tails to participate in the human world. The mermaids Silver and Golden in the film bounce back and forth between being considered dangerous animals and innocuous sexual objects by the humans around them. They are suspected to be threats and kept in dependent positions in their life and work. Even after their talents have brought money and success to the band they join on land, they are kept under a restricting level of the human’s control. Silver confronts the humans saying, “we can’t go to restaurants or bars. We work, but we don’t get any money,” (The Lure 53:37). The response from the character of a Krysia, a mother-figure and vocalist of the band, infantilizes the mermaids by replying, “You’re still kids. Kids can’t have everything they want” (The Lure 53:50). The treatment and approach to Silver and Golden by humans in the film does not reflect an opinion of the mermaids being kids, but because of their unfamiliarity with the human world they have started to make their lives in, the human band members are able to exploit them with presumed authority.

Reducing them to children makes the humans feel superior to the mermaids, while also being terrified of them. This and other physical impediments make the human world experience muted for the mermaids. Mietek, the love interest of Silver tells her “to me you’ll always be a fish, an animal,” (The Lure 33:59). This causes Silver to see herself through a perspective of not being worthy of the human world. Silver wants to participate fully in the human world so she can enjoy it in the same way as other humans. Golden wants to maintain her mermaid nature as she plans for their current home to be just a visit not a new home. For Golden, the talents her and Silver have of singing and enchantment are a way for them to access the human world, not become members of it. Golden still hunts humans and uses the oceanic language with Silver without the concern of how uncomfortable it makes humans, even after it leads to violence against them.

With this divergence of their approach towards the human world it shows the challenges of maintaining identity in new surroundings with people who do not trust them for being outsiders. Silver hides her power and tries to share it with humans to be accepted while Golden refuses to deny her power or abilities. Golden is considered more of a threat for her unwillingness to accept humans as being superior, reflecting that the “other” or immigrant who does not assimilate is a threat to the community they are residing in.

Visiting the human world does not mean a mermaid has to give up being a mermaid. It is a temporary state that they have the power to flow in and out of, but to assimilate they must cut off their tail like the little mermaid. In the world of the film there are several mermaids on land, all of them aware and most believing that “…if you cut off your tail, you’ll lose your voice” (The Lure 1:09:13). This creates an experience of not being able to truly assimilate into the culture of humans they are living around because they lose their strength and talent to be there. Cutting off a tail isn’t about participating or having a presence in the human world, it’s about joining the human world permanently and cutting themselves off from their mermaid world. It is a transition from visitor to resident. When immigrants are forced to reject or cut off their connection to the lives they lived before, it becomes a loss in identity and truly a loss for the new places they have decided to call home.

Silver choses to cut off her tail so she can be with her lover Mietek, but it comes at the great sacrifice of her voice. Her interactions in the world become strained and as a singer it does take away her ability to participate in all the things she enjoyed as just a visitor. The operation makes her disabled both physically and professionally, without these talents her worth in the community she has joined is diminished. She is unable to bridge the transition to being part of the human world because she had to give up all the talents that granted her entry to the human world. Soon after her transition to human, her lover rejects her and marries a human. This puts Silver in mortal danger as it was for the little mermaid, and she must choose her life or Mietek. 

Silver makes the same choice as the little mermaid. Believing her rejection is justified, she sacrifices herself for a human, keeping the hierarchical system of human superiority over all others in place. While Silver is reduced to sea foam, her sister Golden who did not endorse the system of humans, kills Mietek before returning to her home in the water. The threat of the unassimilated visitor is portrayed as a scarier risk in this story because it is resilient to propaganda of ranked systems. It relies on exclusion to bring a sense of inferiority, pressuring the visitor to commit to the ways and structures of the land they occupy and become the subordinate to the structure or leave. The story in The Lure shows how the “other” or immigrant who does not conform to the model of being inferior can lead to disruption and danger in a new chosen environment. 

In the story of Melusine she is able to bridge the barriers of the human world for a longer span of time than the little mermaid or the mermaids of The Lure. This is in part because she maintains her talents in the human world and is protected through her marriage to Raymondin. Having her talents of magic and political understanding she can create her own secure territory. He gives her residency in the human world with his position as a lord over land and she has more protection with this marital commitment than the other stories’ mermaids. Though eventually her position as an “other” and immigrant ruling over land puts her in the position of a political target when her power is challenged. 

On the first meeting of Melusine and Raymondin he comes to her in a position of weakness. Raymondin “too broken to have any pressing need for the unknown” (Lebey 23). He has killed a family member and fears the retribution of his family, leaving him isolated and ready to flee his homelands. Perhaps becoming an immigrant to different lands himself and understanding his loss in position in the human world. Melusine offers him an alternative to this fate by joining in a marital alliance with him, promising “without me, without my counsel, you cannot escape being accused of murder…if you listen to me, and take account of what I say, I promise to make you the greatest lord of your line and the wealthiest” (Lebey 25). She is offering a partnership that will not only save him from the consequences of his actions but also improving on the position he held before the crime he committed. The little mermaid, Silver, and Golden could not offer this level of power to their suitors because of what they had to give up being in the land of humans. In return Melusine asks for a marriage between her and Raymondin as well as his acceptance of her maintaining a boundary of her body and time. Melusine acts with the power she knows she possesses “these tales offer a catalogue of behaviors that exemplify the power that husbands wielded over their wives and how they were prepared to use it… These are notmutually exclusive desires as both could co-exist, but the presence of the pact shows that the fairy woman did not seek belonging at any cost” (Shaw 113).

When Raymondin does agree to her terms, unlike when he first meets her “he began to feel a man again, full of vigour” (Lebey 26). This alliance has strengthened him, not only in his mind but in his position in the world. Both he and Melusine understand the hierarchical system of humans and place themselves at the top so they may rule and not be subject to it. Instead of believing in a lesser position as an immigrant to the human world like the little mermaid and Silver, Melusine does not subscribe to non-humans being subordinate though most around her will.

Melusine does keep her promise of the alliance. Raymondin and the heirs she births into the world accomplish and conquer many things, pursuing their own journey of the unknown and placing themselves in positions of power around the land. Her talents build and preserve their castle Lusignan, a neutral space. “In Melusine’s case, while she appears to create a third space protected by ownership, once these boundaries are secured, she introduces alternative ways of thinking that trouble traditional understandings of ownership and the boundaries upon which they depend” (Shaw 119). Melusine secures for herself and the people of the land a place where she is not the “other” but connector of community.

Her upholding of their alliance benefits both as well as their family. Still the marriage is not without problems as the children of the ruling couple have various forms of deformities, but Raymondin is still made happy by the marriage and the success it has given him. This shield of power covers both members of the marriage; he does not need to be beholden to any other power, and she maintains the image of being human like her husband and thus not suspected as an “outsider” threat.

Though as time passes Raymondin grows too comfortable in this position of power and forgets the position he once occupied which his wife secured for him with her talents and resources. He has conquered parts of the world as has his sons, which he is reminded of while reading a letter from them before he breaks the boundaries of his wife’s territory. This coupled with the suggestion of his family member about Melusine reignites this desire to conquer unknown territories, because Melusine with her boundary was not entirely his possession like he hoped for when they first met. His family member reminds him of this inadequacy, setting off the events that will lead to the destruction of the marital alliance. As the beginning of The Romance of the Faery Melusine implies humans often go looking for fights when idle, “it seemed that the one existed to give rise to the other, for humans do not show their mettle if left to themselves” (12). With no new lands to conquer Raymondin sets out to prove his dominion over Melusine. 

The power of Melusine’s autonomy was also her weakness, as it conflicted with the human hierarchal system that places husbands in power over their wives. While Lusignan is a neutral space she built, in it are people from other backgrounds that uphold the systems of inequality. When Raymondin is confronted with her Saturday-serpent form, Melusine’s “otherness” erases the image he has held for her for years. “But then saw her husband lying there at her with a look of hatred” (Lebey 138). Raymondin then retroactively blames Melusine for all the lives and actions of their children, “serpent always…you are only a phantom, and so is your fruit! None of those who have come from your cursed womb know how to come to a good end, because of the sign of reprobation with which you have marked them by you sin” (Lebey 139). Now Raymondin has the opportunity to blame the “outsider” for any misfortune as he has now separated his feeling that they were “themselves one” (Lebey 121). This translates to the threat of Melusine or any outsider bringing the pollution of her “otherness” to be inherited down to her children who will inherit the land and position of their father.

This is the perceived ultimate threat of the “other” and immigrant, a continuation in the community containing an outside influence in the form of future generations. Inclusion results in the loss the structure that thrives on categorizing and establishing superiority. In the stories of Hans Christian Andersen’s The Little Mermaid, Agnieska Smoczynska’s film The Lure, and Melusine mermaids joining the human world is a clear reflection of how human communities require the sacrifice of identity and talents to gain access to their environment because they fear their self-designated importance being challenged. The little mermaid was stripped of all the things that made her distinctive and exceptional for the promise of a body that was portrayed as the pinnacle of lifeforms on land and sea, only to be treated as an inferior. Silver had power that was used by others, while they still demeaned her non-human qualities until they shamed her into giving up her advantages so she would be as mediocre as the humans that surrounded her. Melusine shared and used her talents with the support of humans as long as it put them at an advantage, but the first time her magic could not protect she was expelled from the world she had built. These stories demean and vilify the outsider or immigrant as threats to give justification for the exclusion and mistreatment a hierarchal system is designed to prosper on. Assimilation is presented as way to bridge the regulated barriers of inclusion, when it only provides support to the concept of inequality that is built within the myth of human superiority.

Works Cited

Anderson, Hans Christian. “The Little Mermaid”. The Penguin Book of Mermaids, edited by Bacchilega, Cristina, and Marie Alohalani Brown. Penguin Books, 2019. 

Dahlerup, Pil, et al. “SPLASH!: SIX VIEWS OF ‘THE LITTLE MERMAID.’” Scandinavian Studies, vol. 62, no. 4, 1990, pp. 403–29. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/40919202. Accessed 14 Dec. 2025.

Lebey, André, and Gareth Knight. The Romance of the Faery Melusine. Skylight, 2011. 

The Lure. Directed by Agnieska Smoczynska, Janus Films, 2015.

 Shaw, Jan. “Belonging in the Borderlands: Narrative, Place-making, and Dwelling in Jean d’Arras’s Mélusine.” Exemplaria, vol. 36, no. 2, 2 Apr. 2024, pp. 109–130, https://doi.org/10.1080/10412573.2024.2406698. 

Final Paper Proposal

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For my final essay I am planning to write about the parallels between the story of Melusine and Hans Christian Anderson’s The Little Mermaid. Examining the concept of “otherness” to the environments they journey to after psychological and physical expense still does not give them access to the environment of their choosing. Their dehumanization and the infantilization of their bodies by their chosen homes safeguards a concept of superiority by imperialistic and patriarchal systems.

I have been researching my chosen texts and have dropped using The Lure as there has not been much academic mention of it. I believe there could be a connecting point of between the two remaining stories with how hybridity equates monstrosities and aids in the exclusion the characters feel from their chosen homes.

Thesis:

In the stories of Melusine and The Little Mermaid the characters embark on journeys away from their home environments with aspirations of establishing their lives in new homes and bringing the talents they possess to benefit their new community, but they are unable to bridge the social barriers of their new environment. In the stories this rejection from their chosen environments with their designation of “other” preserves the power of hierarchical systems and serves as an allegory of outsiders being a threat. 

Final Project (Essay) To-Do

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For my Final Project (Essay) I need learn more about The Little Mermaid in reference to crossing of borders and the sociopolitical implications. There are a few academic papers I have been reviewing to better understand the more political elements of the story I am not familiar with. I plan to compare the Hans Christian Anderson’s The Little Mermaid to the story of Melusine and possibly to the film The Lure, which has comparable elements of The Little Mermaid’s lore of the lives of mermaids. I also need to learn more about how the story of Melusine is depicted in sociopolitical academic analysis.

Before I begin my Final Project (Essay) I need to reread The Little Mermaid and the Melusine readings. After making my own notes I will research academic papers that address my approach and compose my thesis. I hope peer review will help me better establish my claims. Once that is set, I will select the references that best support my thesis and then compose an outline.

At this point I am not planning to do a visual or alternative media accompaniment to the essay.

The Allure of Power

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            In Agnieska Smoczynska’s The Lure, the mermaid Silver’s human male love interest Mietek’s refusal to touch her mermaid tail depicts a theme in mermaid lore of men’s desire for women being dependent on the control patriarchy exerts over women, rejecting power and strength in feminine bodies. His sexual rejection forces Silver to choose between keeping her power or his love, making her conform to a human dynamic of patriarchy where he will have power over her, leaving her to be entirely dependent on his affection for survival.

The Lure is a modern mermaid story, taking place in 1980s Poland but filmed in the mid 2010s. It operates in a similar vison of the myths and rules of Hans Christian Anderson’s The Little Mermaid. One exception being that mermaids can change back and forth between their mermaid form into a terrestrial form, which includes legs but not genitalia. This changes the position of the mermaids in The Lure as mermaids have more freedom and strength on land. Elements of Anderson’s tale that remain are gaining human legs and genitalia makes a mermaid lose their voice. Additionally, if the human they love falls in love with someone else the mermaid will turn to sea foam. While some of these elements are considered a superstition by some characters, it does demonstrate that on land there are threats to mermaids’ power. 

The scene of Mietek’s rejection begins with Silver transforming from her sexually restricted terrestrial form to her mermaid form in the bathtub while Mietek watches. Silver makes her sexual desires for him known with a direct statement. As he observes her, his expression changes from tantalization to uneasiness. While she does this in preparation for a sexual encounter, Mietek is confronted with truth of her form that reveals her strength and power, which makes him scared and sexually uninterested.

This is stated in his response to Silver’s sexual advances as he says to her “don’t to be angry, but to me you’ll always be a fish, an animal. I can’t do this, as much as I’d like to,” (33:59). While his declaration of her inadequacy for him is the devastating emotional statement, he begins his rejection with admitting to his fear of her physical power. He tells her to not be angry because he understands her anger could be an actual physical threat to him. Her mermaid otherness is a threat to the terrestrial experience he has been part of where human women are smaller and typically are not as physically strong as Silver. 

It is important to note that this includes Silver in her terrestrial form, she is shorter and more petite than Mietek. It contradicts the experiences he has had with her on land to see her in her mermaid form, revealing how powerful she always is but conceals to participate in terrestrial activities. 

Silver understands their contrasting power dynamic bothers him, that his sexual desire is dependent on him not feeling weaker. To soothe his mindset, she offers him a piece of her power in the form of one of her scales. It is a painful action even for her strong body, she shows the pain in her expression and in the blood that is left behind. She promises him power and talent in his music playing with this scale, which he is eager to accept but before he takes it she asks from him a kiss in trade. With the scale almost in his grasp he carefully maneuvers around touching her tail to give her a chaste kiss on the cheek, before accepting this gift. Like the pain she showed in removing the scale, her disappointment in this offer of power to him is expressed.

He avoids her tail in this scene, not out of physical respect but in an act of supporting his comment that she is not human enough for sexual interest to him. In Silver’s terrestrial form he also avoids any touching below the waist before her surgery, even in physically intimate moments. This causes sexual and emotional frustration for Silver because he participates in a physical relationship with her but reminds her of the inadequacies he sees in her.

In contrast to this relationship’s dynamic there is an additional sexual scene between Silver’s sister Golden with a woman. Unlike Mietek’s avoidance of Silver’s tail, Golden and her female lover invite the presence of Golden’s tail in their sexual experience with each other. With the sexual anatomy of mermaids only being accessible when they are in their mermaid form, Golden does not have the same frustrations as Silver and is not motivated to cobble her power or identity. 

The behavior from Mietek of keeping Silver at a distance and lacking in value to him, he resets the power dynamic between them. She is now in the weaker position within their relationship because he does not consider her to be an equal to him. This mirrors the relationship of the Little Mermaid and the prince in The Little Mermaid. The Little Mermaid was a semi-immortal member of royalty, and the prince made her sleep on a pillow outside his door (Penguin, 124). In the situation Mietek frames for her, in ordered to be loved by this human, she must be a human which means up giving not only her power but her identity. 

Silver begins planning to have her fin replaced with a lower half of a human, which she is warned will make her lose her voice and make the terrestrial world her permanent home. The influence of the terrestrial patriarchal system inclines her to be compliant to the will of her love interest. Her experience on land has made her doubt her own power as she has been met with exploitation and violence, but not directly from Mietek. He has been supportive and has enjoyed the profits of her power in song and in his music. Even so, he only appreciates her power when it benefits him. After her surgery with her voice and powers muted, he loses interest in her when she cannot provide these benefits for him and is now repulsed by her in this powerless form.

With his rejection Silver’s life is now entirely in the power of Mietek. She relinquished her power, voice, and strength to contort and conform to his desires. But his desire was never for her, it was always for the power she had that he did not which he pursued. Now he can dispose of her in a way that he never could when she was a mermaid. He has truly achieved the power he always wanted, to not be scared of a feminine body that wanted and loved him.

Works Cited

Anderson, Hans Christian. “The Little Mermaid”. The Penguin Book of Mermaids, Bacchilega, Cristina, and Marie Alohalani Brown. The Penguin Book of Mermaids. Penguin Books, 2019. 

The Lure. Directed by Agnieska Smoczynska, Janus Films, 2015.

The Little Mermaid

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In The Little Mermaid by Hans Christian Andersen, he writes the main character as a young ambitious mermaid that has taken an interest in life on land. Anderson uses the little mermaids ambition to symbolize the desire for self-improvement regardless of the length and sacrifice one must go through by his demonstration of symbolism and character development.

Having only seen a glimpse of life on land from underwater, the little mermaid finds herself enamored by it and decides to replicate what she sees. “…she never claimed anything— with the exception of the red flowers that resembled the sun above—but a pretty stature, representing a handsome youth…”(109) Anderson uses symbolism in this recreation of life on land as a form of manifestation for the little mermaid. To visualize something that you desire everyday can create the reality that you wish for as if it were a vision board. Another point of view comes from her admiration for the flowers and statue can also serve as an altar—used for religious or ritual purposes while performing prayers or sacrifice. After every view in her garden, she romanticized life on land and her praises gave her hope that she would one day bring this to life. Plus  later on in the story we learn that she does end up making a sacrifice in order to be able to walk on land. 

What really picked the little mermaid’s interest came from the discussion with her grandmother. Her grandmother is a strong character in her life because she does not shield information from  the little mermaid and answers her questions, “She was always asking her grandmother to tell her all she knew about ships, towns, people and animals.”(109) This helps the development of the little mermaid’s character and confidence by the encouragement of new information instead of the fear of it. It is noticeable that the little mermaid has a good head on her shoulders and that is why she was able to deal with the disappointment of her outcome in the end of the story as gracefully as she did. 

Going back the the discussion with her grandmother in which she reveals that, “Human beings, on the contrary, have a soul that lives eternally—yea even after the body has been committed to the earth…”(118) The revelation draws the little mermaid in even more thus making her say  “I would willingly give all the hundreds of years I may have to live, to be a human being but for one day, and to have the hope of sharing in the joys of the heavenly world”(118) For her the removal of years of her life is worth bargaining for to have a soul. Anderson uses foreshadowing of the bargain to show the lengths that someone would go just to achieve the life that they desire, even if it means permanent alteration of your current life. 

The little mermaids decision serves a purpose to represent the strong aspiration to change your life into something that can  affect you tremendously. However, after much thought and consideration and through the support of your family you can achieve the goal you aspire to complete.

Discovery #1

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“File:Edmund Dulac – The Mermaid – The Prince.jpg.” 

PREFACE:

Background on the artist Edmund Dulac, his artwork is featured for The Little Mermaid tale from Stories from Hans Andersen by H. C. Andersen published in 1911. He was born in France during 1882 and passed away in the United Kingdom during 1953. According to Diana Frank from Once Upon a Canvas exhibit, his arrival in London helped cultivate his drawing technique. Additionally, a new mass printing method allowed for Dulac to publish his watercolor paintings and he ventured towards “orientally influenced color palette”(Students). During this century, the European obsession with Orientalism started booming and many artists were entranced by exotic visual traits of the east. Therefore, another layer is added to the artwork considering the oriental influence on the Prince’s attire and the intricate pillar design, seen above. 

For my discovery, this artwork critically engages with the patriarchal subtext of Andersen’s ‘The Little Mermaid’. It presents the Prince as a figure embodying the patriarchy– standing tall and powerful, owning the space and towering over the Little Mermaid. The painting promotes reading the story by paying attention to and how the narrative exposes and perpetuates sexist dynamics. 

Noticing an obvious difference between the Prince and The Little Mermaid is the attire. The Prince has oriental royal garments compared to The Little Mermaid’s seaweed-like scraps barely covering her body. Despite them both coming from royal backgrounds, he is heavily clothed with barely any skin being shown and donning a head piece. The Little Mermaid doesn’t have any physical evidence that she is from Mediterranean sea royalty, so it was easy for the Prince to assume he is above her in status. But, also note that in the artwork, the Little Mermaid is lower and cowered inwards while sitting on the steps of the palace. Meanwhile, the Prince is standing with a relaxed stance leaning. He is touching the pillar and his demeanor seems confident and comfortable. He is making a clear connection to his environment. With the following quote, it helps solidify the Prince with a dominant role throughout the story, “She was now dressed in costly robes of silk and muslin, and was the most beautiful of all the inmates of the palace; but she was dumb, and could neither sing nor speak”(Bacchilega, 124). The Little Mermaid isn’t a guest in his palace, she’s a prisoner who is trapped there. She can’t entertain him, and for that very reason she isn’t highly valued in the eyes of the Prince. The Prince assumes The Little Mermaid’s lack of intelligence based on her disability of having no voice is accurate and none can rebuttal that, especially her, since she sacrificed her voice to be on land. Nobody would dare be against the Prince on his domain. 

Revisiting the postures comparison in the artwork and it being a visual representation of the patriarchal hierarchy going on the entire time! This became more solidified with the following quote, “The prince declared that he would never part with her, and she obtained leave to sleep on a velvet cushion before his door”(Bacchilega, 124). The Prince had The Little Mermaid sleeping on the floor by his door, like an animal. It’s clear that the Prince sees her as a disposable toy that has his attention for now. The degrading nature of having her, a mute disabled young girl, sleep without basic human respect. 

In conclusion, The prince is a man at the end of the day, he will become a king, he is a prince. He is gonna look out for himself and make his life easier and benefitting him. The prince is a spitting image of the patriarchy and speaks volumes to what men think of women. That is why this fairytale is timeless.

Works Cited:

Bacchilega, Cristina and Marie Alohalani Brown. The Penguin Book of Mermaids. Penguin Books, 2019.

“File:Edmund Dulac – The Mermaid – The Prince.jpg.” Wikimedia Commons. 20 Aug 2025, 12:27 UTC. <https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:Edmund_Dulac_-_The_Mermaid_-_The_Prince.jpg&oldid=1075432655> 19 Oct 2025, 03:20.

Students in the German Studies course Grimm Reckonings: The Development of the German Fairy Tales (Professor Elio Brancaforte). “Once Upon a Canvas: Exploring Fairy Tale Illustrations from 1870-1942.” Tulane University Libraries , 19 Apr. 2013, exhibits.tulane.edu/exhibit/fairy_tales/. Accessed 18 Oct. 2025. 

Rusalochka: The Soviet Russian Era Little Mermaid

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The Little Mermaid – directed by. Ivan Aksenchuk (1968/Soviet Animation) (ENGLISH & TURKISH CC)

What does it mean, if there was no happy ending for the Little Mermaid, and the memory of her was swallowed up into the sea? The 1968 Soviet Animation of The Little Mermaid, Rusalochka, does not shy away from the mermaid’s tragic fate, and in doing so tells a moralizing story about knowing one’s place, or striving to live through love and compassion. This tragic ending and the interpretation of it is divided between two lenses, the fish who views the little mermaids death as a tragedy and a waste, and a Danish tour guide who considers it a story of love, courage, and kindness, told to a group of tourists. Despite the conflicting views on her death, her fate is nonetheless tragic, but her sacrifice is regarded by humans as heroic, thus this version acknowledges her mark on history through her memorialization, both through sculpture and song. This version allows the exploration of mermaids’ autonomy by giving her a voice and a song, where the book was unable to convey the splendor of her voice. As a children’s story, it becomes a tool to bridge humanity and the soul of the ocean. The little mermaid reaches out to us and teaches humans kindness, love, and compassion, where humanity lacks it despite having a soul.

“The surf beats against the black rocks

Life is hard for humans, this everlasting struggle

But I believe drop by drop, your vitality will return

The first drop will be strength

The second drop will be joy

The beautiful should not perish,

The brave should not perish

They should not, they should not die”

This lamentation is heard when she originally saves the prince; it is her song. It is heard again only after she dies and is reclaimed by the ocean. Unfortunately, she is only briefly mourned by the prince, who mistakes her song as coming from his new bride. This poetic addition brings the focus of the story back to the fact that the Little Mermaid held a bountiful understanding and empathy for human life, culture, and beauty.

The ending differs from the original story by Hans Christiaan Anderson, where her sisters give her a knife to kill the prince and his bride in the book, here she is given a magical shell that has the power to summon a storm that will sink the ship and kill the prince and his bride. Only by unleashing the power of this shell can she return to her life as a mermaid. But when she drops this shell into the ocean, unable to betray her love for the prince, she is swallowed up by a wave, and her song is heard throughout the ship. Perhaps this is an homage to the original ending, as the prince searches for the voice in the sails of the ship and in the birds that fly above the ocean. Though she is not missed by the prince for long, her song is heard by the audience, her story is told by the guides, and it resounds through history. The last scene, is her image imortalized in bronze.

Her fate is lamented by the fish that tells her story to the school of fish, regarding this story as a tragedy and a lesson of knowing one’s place. She is heard weeping tearfully: “And that, my children, is how the story ends. The foolish mermaid wanted to become human, but as they say, everyone should know one’s place.” However, the tourists who gaze upon her statue in the Copenhagen bay view it as a story about kindness, love, and devotion, “a tale of love that knows no bounds, the tale of courage and kindness.” 

This change is all the more impactful, not because it shows her loss of life as a tragedy, but rather because she is given a place of belonging, gazing upon the changing and shifting human world. Her position in the water, her physical memorialization, allows humans to keep in constant communion with the ocean, where her song can be heard in the ocean. Her sacrifice becomes not one born out of spite for her unrequited love, but of her love and appreciation for humanity.

Towards the Sun: Reframing the Little Mermaid’s Sacrifice as Feminist Resistance

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Whether you think of the curious, red-headed mermaid Ariel, or the nameless, innocent mermaid when you hear the story of “The Little Mermaid,” most people think of a weak little girl who only did things in the name of love, never for herself. However, that is not the case for either of their stories. Both mermaids are, despite what the majority think, strong-headed women who desire one thing: to walk on land and experience the world above them. This infatuation with the land above them didn’t start when they met a prince; it started far before that. In the Little Mermaid’s case (from hereon out, references to the “Little Mermaid” will refer to the mermaid in Anderson’s story, not Ariel from Disney), it started when her grandmother told her about how on her fifteenth birthday, she would be allowed to journey up to the surface and experience it for herself. And when every single one of her sisters journeyed to the surface, the Little Mermaid longed deeper and deeper to journey to the surface. Throughout her whole story, I am intrigued by the presence of one specific element described in her longing to go to the surface: the sun. It is described as being the central focus of the garden that she crafts, as each one of the sisters has their own personal garden. Some sisters craft it into the shape of a whale, others into another mermaid. But the Little Mermaid crafts hers to reflect the sun. In “The Little Mermaid,” Andersen uses the mermaid’s fixation on the sun—from her garden’s design to her final gaze as she dissolves into sea foam—as a symbol of her longing for transcendence beyond the physical world. This recurring solar imagery reframes her sacrifice not as a loss for love but as a spiritual awakening, revealing the story’s deeper reflection on identity, immortality, and the soul’s yearning for something greater.

The repeated representation of the sun in “The Little Mermaid” reflects a deeper desire for transcendence and self-actualization. From the start of the story, we are introduced to the Little Mermaid’s infatuation with the land above the sea, specifically the sun. Anderson writes, “[B]ut the youngest planted hers in a circle to imitate the sun, and chose flowers as red as the sun appeared to her” (Anderson, “The Little Mermaid”). Not only does this introduction represent her earlier infatuation with the land before she meets the prince, but it also represents her final gaze towards the sun before she commits the ultimate sacrifice and dissolves into sea foam. The sun itself in this scene also represents a yearning desire for something unreachable, yet radiant—it represents power, freedom, and identity. These are all things that are just barely within the reach of the Little Mermaid, and they are all something she desires deep down, without Anderson having to explicitly state it. In a world that constantly denies female agency, the sun represents it. It is something just barely unattainable, but in certain circumstances, such as when you fight for it, it becomes attainable.

Many believe the Little Mermaid’s sacrifice to be submission to romantic ideals; however, it is completely plausible that her sacrifice was a radical act of self-liberation. In “The Little Mermaid,” we are told that mermaids do not have a soul. Instead, they live for much longer than humans, and when they eventually die, they will become sea foam. However, there is one way to gain a soul—to have a human fall in love with you. This is what sets the Little Mermaid off on her quest to find love. Yet, it is important to note that the primary reason for going above land is not just to attain a soul, it is merely to experience life above the waters. This is represented by her infatuation and obsession with the sun. When the Little Mermaid ventures onto land, she must give up her tongue (and, in turn, her voice) for legs. Still bound by limitation, the Little Mermaid must overcome the burdens placed upon her by the circumstances she was given: first, she must cross the border between sea onto land. Then, she must navigate the trials of making the prince fall in love with her without the use of her voice. Finally, she must decide between sacrificing her prince or sacrificing herself. And in the end, she chooses to sacrifice herself. Her voicelessness and bodily loss in her death deeply contrast with her final spiritual gain when she ascends to the air, joining the daughters of the air. Through her ending, Anderson critiques the cost of conforming to patriarchal ideals, such as giving up voice, autonomy, and identity. In her final gaze towards the sun, the Little Mermaid is a reclamation of agency, as she chooses spiritual immortality with the daughters of the air rather than romantic fulfillment with the prince.

In her final moments alive, the Little Mermaid’s gaze towards the sun marks a shift from romantic longing to spiritual autonomy. Anderson writes, “The sun now rose out of the sea; its beams threw a kindly warmth upon the cold foam, and the little mermaid did not experience the pangs of death. She saw the bright sun, and above were floating hundreds of transparent, beautiful creatures; she could still catch a glimpse of the ship’s white sails, and of the red clouds in the sky, across the swarms of these lovely beings” (Anderson). In her final, dying moments, the one thing that inspired her to venture up onto land, the sun, watches over her as she lies dying in the sea foam. It is beautifully symbolic that the sun watches over her passing into the sea, and soon, into the air, as she then becomes an air spirit—a daughter of the air. Even more, the daughters of the air not only live up to around 300 years, but they also gain an immortal soul after that period of time. It is almost like the Little Mermaid gains the two things she was caught between: living for 300 years and attaining an immortal soul. The way Anderson depicts the death of the Little Mermaid is almost comforting. Particularly, the sun is characterized as warm amongst the cold foam of the sea. The stark contrast represents her relationships with the two different environments at play: the sun and its warmth representing her fondness for land, while the cold waters represent her dissatisfaction with her life in the sea. Additionally, her death is not succumbing to an eternal fate of despair; instead, it is a transformation. The Little Mermaid does not become erased; she is instead reborn, which is much more radical than submitting to the expectations placed upon her.

Works Cited

Andersen, Hans Christian. “The Little Mermaid.” The Penguin Book of Mermaids, edited by Cristina Bacchilega and Marie Alohalani Brown, Penguin Books, 2019. EPUB edition. https://reader.z-lib.fm/read/1a79973ce195b4c2f56cd9e8c208861a317cff610e2868dc8fd38d5107f82fbe/29732523/b88b30/the-penguin-book-of-mermaids.html.

Boundaries and the Poetics of Desire in “The Little Mermaid”

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In Hans Christian Andersen’s The Little Mermaid, the natural world is described as not a static realm of beauty or terror but as a fluid, layered space of constant boundaries and thresholds–between sea and land, body and soul, sight and silence. The mermaid’s journey is not simply about yearning for love or immortality; it is about confronting the boundaries that define her existence itself. From the story’s first line, Andersen creates a world that is so dazzlingly transparent yet unreachable, “…at sea, the water is as blue as the prettiest cornflowers, and as clear as the purest crystal. But it is very deep–so deep, indeed, that no rope can fathom it” (108). This opening image establishes the story’s main paradox: what can be seen cannot always be in reach. In Andersen’s universe, beauty and desire exist behind this glass–something visible and almost tangible, but forever slightly out of reach. His tale becomes a meditation on longing as both an act of vision and a form of suffering. 

Yet Andersen does not romanticize this world that is full of boundaries. His oceanic imagery has both wonder and peril, clarity and concealment. The mermaid’s world glitters with visible barriers such as the “tall pointed windows of the clearest amber” of her father’s palace (108), the “broad flight of marble steps, the last of which reached down into the sea” (117), and the “clear pure air to the bright stars above” (118). These images of transparency invite vision but with a resistance to entry, which evokes the sense of a space where perception is always partial. In a sense, Andersen makes the ocean itself into a metaphor for consciousness–radiant but not clear at its depths. Like the wolves prowling the edge of the forest in the medieval world of “The Great Old Hunter,” the boundaries of Andersen’s sea suggest a moral and spiritual front; a place that both tempts and tests the soul. The Little Mermaid’s desire to cross those borders becomes a spiritual trial in which every one of her acts of seeing the other side comes with pain.

Each transition in the tale turns this metaphor into a physical experience. In the mermaid’s first transformation, turning fifteen, she comes to the surface to see the human world, and she becomes almost like a ghostly spectator. She watches a ship with “gay-coloured lanterns” and filled with music and light, yet she remains invisible to those aboard the ship (113). Her rescue of the prince occurs in the same paradoxical mode; it’s an act of intimacy that once again leaves her unseen. She kisses his forehead and saves his life, but when he awakens, “he did not send her a smile, neither did he know she had saved him” (116). Her desire–her wanting–to be seen turns into an experience of erasure. In this way, Andersen redefines love not as a union, but as asymmetrical. He creates this relationship between the mermaid and the prince to be a longing that can be seen but not touched.

The mermaid’s second transformation–the one that brings her from sea to land–literalizes the pain of crossing these boundaries. The sea witch warns her that every step will feel as if she were “treading upon such sharp knives” (121). This bodily torment turns her desire to be a part of another world into a kind of sacred suffering that echoes the Christian imagery of martyrdom that runs quietly beneath the tale’s surface. In giving up her voice for the mere chance to be with the prince, she trades her speech for silence and her agency for suffering. The loss of her voice, however, does not mute her completely. Andersen writes that her “expressive eyes” could express what her tongue could not (122). Yet this communication through her eyes, through something purely visible, exposes the same problem that controls the story’s imagery; seeing is not understanding. The prince reads her gaze as affection, but he has no understanding of the true pain she has undergone to be on the surface with him. Andersen’s choice to render their language as sight rather than sound only dramatizes the failure of expression across these boundaries–what happens when one world’s meaning cannot translate into another’s.

Even the story’s setting for sound reflects this fracture. The little mermaid’s sisters sing above the waves, but their song is distorted by the storm, heard by sailors only as “howling of the tempest” (112). This moment mirrors the earlier crystal clear imagery: something pure becomes broken or fragmented at the surface to the other side. Andersen uses these recurring distortions–of light, sound, and sense–to show how borders not only separate but also transform. The result is a poetics of a half-understanding of knowledge, where perception is being filtered through glass, water, and air. These are physical barriers that become emotional and spiritual, all while defining the mermaid’s tragedy of always being almost close enough to experience a life she cannot have.

When the mermaid’s journey ends not in marriage but dissolving into the sea, the story reaches its most haunting image of her final transformation. As she throws herself into the sea and becomes foam, she expects only the “pangs of death” (129). Instead, she awakens “amongst the daughters of the air,” the invisible spirits who tell her she has gained a soul, a new way of living, through her selflessness (129). On one level, this conclusion resolves the moral logic of Andersen’s ‘fairy’ tale of virtue and suffering that yield a spiritual reward. But on another level, it reaffirms the same paradox that began the story. Her final transformation–an invisible, airy being–truly embodies pure permeability. She has crossed every boundary, but only by losing her mermaid form. To cross and transcend the limits of vision and voice, she must become the very medium through which others see and hear. Her ultimate price of unionization of the two is almost like she needs to disappear. 

What makes Andersen’s ending so moving is that it refuses the consolations of romantic fulfillment. The mermaid’s transformation into air isn’t a victory but an acceptance that desire itself is the boundary that gives meaning to being. Andersen’s moral vision, like his imagery, is transparent yet unfathomable. He suggests that longing for something isn’t a flaw that needs to be cured but a necessary tension that lies between beauty and loss. Therefore, the story operates as a spiritual allegory–the mermaid’s love for the prince mirrors humanity’s longing for transcendence, a yearning to reach beyond the glass of the material world. Yet that same longing exposes the pain of separation between the visible and invisible, the human and divine.

To conclude, The Little Mermaid asks readers to dwell at the edge rather than cross it. Andersen’s tale, like the crystal clear sea that opens the story, insists that what shines beyond reach is what teaches us to feel, to hope, to mourn. The mermaid’s fate, which is neither entirely tragic nor redemptive, captures the fragile balance between body and soul and between being able to see and being seen. Her transformations show readers a moral map in which every ascension–from sea, land, to air–each movement shows that beauty and suffering are both connected. To live, for Andersen, is to live at the border of what’s possible, to feel both the ache of an incompletion and the holiness of longing. The mermaid’s world reminds us that the boundaries we cannot cross are also the ones that define us, shimmering just beyond our reach like light through the water. Painful, distant, and endlessly alive.

The Little Mermaid, or Aerial

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By becoming an aerial, a daughter of the air, is the little mermaid saved or sentenced to 300 years of suffering? Either way, she has attained a soul at the end of her sentence, a soul that is not tied to a man who treated her like an animal. 

Like most, I grew up watching and loving Disney’s The Little Mermaid, and Prince Eric was the sweetest and most handsome to me. I’m sure you can imagine my surprise when I read how he treated her like a pet, and gave her “leave to sleep on a velvet cushion before his door (124).” It was heart-wrenching to read of her dehumanization by the prince and the way he expected her to be happy at his marriage. 

I can see how Han’s Christian Anderson wrote this story as insight into life as a queer man in a society that punished it through moral and religious doctrine encoded into rule and law. Living a queer existence meant living a life in hiding, and even if love found a way to flourish, it would not be socially accepted. The little mermaid must make constant sacrifices to appeal to the prince and the people of his kingdom, and she is often warned: “Your fish’s tail, which is a beauty amongst us sea-folk, is thought a deformity on earth, because they know no better.” However, I appreciated this clarification and assurance by her grandmother; that humans’ lack of knowledge was not the fault of the little mermaid, and how this was Anderson’s way of commenting on queerness as something beautiful and misunderstood due to the fault of society, not the individual. 

Nonetheless, I can not excuse the actions of the prince in this tale, because he was completely in power, and never under the spell of the sea witch (although I’m not 100% sure what happened with the bride being mistaken as his savior). He had complete autonomy and flaunted it in the face of The Little Mermaid, whom he took advantage of because she could not speak for herself. He paraded her around, essentially kept her as his pet, and likely intended to keep her as his mistress if she had not become a daughter of the air. He was despicable, and I’m glad she got the soul that she wanted without any help from him, but despite him.