Man is not an animal, at least so the stories of man tell us. The hybridity of a human with an animal in stories is often depicted as unnatural and threatening. Outside the interspecies dating element, it challenges the belief instilled in humans of a superiority on Earth compared to the other creatures that inhabit it. Reinforced within mermaid lore, the animal hybridity with humans is to be avoided or at least conquered to support this human superiority. In the introduction section of The Penguin Book of Mermaids, it is often in stories of mermaids that the human society is characterized as the ideal—being far removed the wilds of nature. This concept is a denial of humans’ own position as an animal on Earth and their part in nature, not a ruler of it.

A line from the reading that caught my attention about the distinction of animal from man is, in referencing mer-marriages, “when the wife is instead an ‘animal bride’ transformed fully into a human, the marriage fails because her domestication as a human wife and mother does not succeed in eradicating her ties with her water kin, or her desire to be in her own skin and element” (xix). To be part of the human society described in mermaid myth means to leave the natural world behind, to deny the animalistic parts of our nature that religion and social norms forbid. Any desire to stay connected to this natural world outside of society will only lead to disappointment, so it is best to avoid those who embrace the parts of themselves outside the alleged morality and ideals of man.

Attraction to this animal nature in others, that is personified in the mermaid, is not a transgression against the society on its own. Only when this desire is not reformed into human societal ways does the human admit their subservience to nature’s power. Part of humans’ development over thousands of years is to block humanity from the power of nature, but with that protection comes obligations of compliance and denial of what some think as animalistic behavior. The chaos humans interpret from their environment frames their idea that the nature of humans is capable of control over all things, that their order will withstand the power of the natural world.