Everyone knows Disney’s tale ‘The Little Mermaid.’
Ariel dreams of joining the world above and a perhaps unhealthy obsession with the human world. When she saves Prince Eric and falls in love with him that is the final straw for King Triton. Ariel goes to see Ursula, becomes human, loses her voice and they all eventually live happily ever after.
Sounds like a great fairy tale for kids, right? I say, WRONG! This only seems to teach young girls that to be happy you need to fall in love with someone rich and all your problems will be solved and everyone can live happily ever after.
A Hans Christian Andersen original fairy tale that takes a look at the coming of age. When you read ‘The Little Mermaid’ as Andersen wrote it, one gets a different perspective on how the young mermaid feels. The tale is darker than the happy go lucky Disney version. The little mermaid has more tests that she must pass in order to get what it is she wants. This is a tale of finding yourself despite what others say you should be. It is also a tale of sacrifice.
The little mermaid has no name, even so, she stands out from the others from the beginning. Her small garden is bare except for a statue that she pulled from a wrecked ship and flowers in reds and yellows that remind one of the sun. Like her sisters, she longs for her chance to see the human world, but unlike her sisters, she would rather stay there than on the ocean floor. She doesn’t want live three hundred years to just become sea foam and disappear. She wants a soul to partake in the afterlife like the humans.
When she is told it is impossible, she persists in finding a way to join the human world. Finally, her grandmother tells her that the only way for her gain a soul is that he a human must fall in love with her and marry her. After rescuing the prince from a drowning in the sea and watching him from afar for some time, the little mermaid decides to take action. She goes to visit the evil sea witch, who in her own way helps the little mermaid to get what she wants. In order to become a human, she must sacrifice her voice and more. The potion splits her fin into two legs, but she feels as though she is always walking on pins, eternal pain to try to seduce the prince into falling in love with her and gaining a soul.
We later find out that the prince loves someone else. The other stipulation of the potion was that if the prince married another, then on the night of the wedding the little mermaid would become sea foam and fade into nothing. Her sisters find a way to save her and allow her to come back and join them. All she has to do is kill the prince on his wedding night. When she cannot murder him, she throws herself into the ocean, sacrificing herself for the love of her life and her dream.
Here Andersen leaves the story open for further interpretation. The little mermaid does not die and become foam, but instead becomes a daughter of the air. She is then told that after three hundred years she can gain a soul and join the humans in the afterlife. This is done by a process of attaching to children, bad children lengthen the time it takes to gain a soul and good children can lessen that time.
So does the little mermaid ever really attain her goal? Here’s where Andersen has twisted the fairy tale genre. There is not giver and as far as the reader knows the little mermaid is unsuccessful in her quest to gain a soul, or is she? The decision is up to you.
