I know in my last post I said I was going to do The Fisherman and His Soul.  However, when I started re-reading it to refresh my memory, I changed my mind and have decided to do it in chronological order.

The Little Mermaid was written in 1837, a little over 25 years after Undine; The Fisherman and His Soul was written in 1891, over 50 years after The Little Mermaid. The reason I had wanted to do The Fisherman and His Soul first was because I didn’t want anyone to forget noble Undine’s quest for a soul, as well as the kindly priest, which are so at odds with the characters in Oscar Wilde’s The Fisherman and His Soul.

But more importantly, I didn’t want to write about The Little Mermaid because everyone knows the story.

Well, parts of it.  I’d bet most don’t know the nobility of our Little Mermaid, nor the tragic twist at the end.  But the beginning is also full of “lessons” to explore about mermaids…and ourselves…

The Beginning of the Tale

The beginning of The Little Mermaid is simply wonderful!  Anderson goes out of his way to describe a veritable Eden under the sea;[1] why would anyone want to trade that sort of life for a dry life on land?

Well, the youngest daughter of the king does, loving the sun and a stone statue of a “handsome boy” that had sunk to the bottom of the sea.[2]  She has five older sisters, and when each turn 15, they are allowed to go up to the surface any time they want (which is a huge difference in the Disney tale!).  When they came back, they told of all sorts of unimaginable, wonderful things.  And since the Little Mermaid “could not go near to all those wonderful things, she longed for them more than ever.”[3]

Interestingly, Anderson associates storms with several of the sisters’ appearances at the surface, including the Little Mermaid’s.[4]  When she finally goes to the surface, she sees a ship celebrating a prince’s birthday, along with fireworks and dancing.  She loves the prince almost at once.  And then the storm comes.

The Beginning of Idolatry

But the Little Mermaid saves the prince, carrying him to shore where a young girl finds him.  “But to [the Little Mermaid] he sent no smile; he knew not that she had saved him.  This made her very unhappy, and when he was led away into the great building, she dived down sorrowfully into the water, and returned to her father’s castle.  She had always been silent and thoughtful, and now she was more so than ever.”[5]  

Her only solace was to “fling her arm round the beautiful marble statue which was like the prince.”[6]  Her sisters take pity on her, and show her where the prince lives.[7]

At this point, the Little Mermaid begins stalking the prince.  I mean literally.  It’s actually kind of creepy.  But that’s what an idol does to you: corrupts your heart so that you are controlled by it entirely.

The Making of Idols

Yes, the Little Mermaid has an unhealthy obsession.  She has literally made an idol out of the prince, complete with a graven image.  Then again, don’t we all, with something?  We have a hard time believing in idols in our culture; after all, very few worship graven images, as our culture has been saturated with Judeo-Christian morals.

But, as John Calvin said, we are, in fact, idol factories.  We churn out idols faster than we can stop our worship of them.  Some of them are evil, and have no place in our hearts.  But many of them are good things that we have placed inappropriately before God, such as spouses, children, hobbies, vacations…The list could go on and on.

For it is to idols that we turn for our identity.   That’s why as “godly mermaids” – free and wild in Christ’s love – we must find our identity in Christ, and not in the idols we cling to…or else we are no different than the “worldly mermaids” around us.

The Beginning of my Idolatry

I remember pinning with longing to be in a romantic relationship when I was younger.  I just wanted to be swept off my feet, get married, and have beautiful babies.  It’s all I wanted, ever since I was about 12 (possibly before, I just don’t remember).

This is a good longing – but I placed it before God.  I let it become my identity.  And then God asked me to give the idol over.  The method?  By breaking up with my longtime boyfriend.

I did it…and lost my mind.  You see, the idol had trapped me, defining me.  Who was I now?

In my mind, I thought God “owed” me for giving it up, and I expected to meet my future husband within six months.  That was my demand to God for making me give up my idol.

I wouldn’t have put it in those words then, but that’s what it was.  And when my prince charming didn’t come, I truly lost myself.  I had worshiped an idol for so long, I didn’t know how to function without it.

But slowly, God brought me back to Himself.  The longing was still there, and it certainly struggled to become an idol once more.  But it didn’t.  I constantly laid it down at God’s feet.

And when I met my husband, he was all I wanted and more.  Better than any idol I had worshipped – but only because I had let go of my idol to begin with.

Now, I still struggle with idolizing Andrew.  He is absolutely perfect in my mind.  But I’m aware of it, and so there is hope.  Unlike our poor Little Mermaid, who is literally hopeless in her idolization of the prince.  Hopeless until she discovers something better than her idol…

 

Sources

[1] The Little Mermaid by Hans Christian Anderson in Heidi Anne Heiner’s Mermaid and Other Water Spirit Tales from Around the World (Nashville, TN: SurLaLune Press, 2011) 422.

[2] Ibid., 423.

[3] The Little Mermaid, 424.

[4] Ibid., 425-426.

[5] The Little Mermaid, 427.

[6] Ibid.

[7] The Little Mermaid, 428.


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