This is actually our last day with Anderson’s Little Mermaid. That being said, I hope the ending stays with you. It has certainly stayed with me. It is, I think, the most tragic of all the Mermaid stories I’ve read…
The Little Mermaid in Love
Yes, our Little Mermaid is able to meet the prince, and all who see her are taken with her. She is beautiful, and dances so gracefully! And yet, the prince only “loved her as he would love a little child, but it never came into his head to make her his wife.”[1]
This is bad. For if the Little Mermaid cannot get him to marry her and he marries another, she will “dissolve into the foam of the sea.”[2] That was the deal she’d struck with the Sea Witch, after all.
But then the prince’s parents wish him to marry a princess from another kingdom. The prince does not want to, for he was in love with the girl who had saved him long ago – a girl…who was a nun at the abbey where he was rescued from his shipwreck.[3]
But, if he could not have that girl, he says he will take the Little Mermaid as his wife. And so “she dreamed of human happiness and an immortal soul.”[4]
Loved Second
The prince, the princess, and the Little Mermaid met on a ship between the two nations. Lo and behold, the princess was none other than the girl who had saved him long ago! Her parents had only sent her to the abbey to learn, not to join it!
Before you begin to hate this girl, Anderson makes it clear she was the best of women. For the Little Mermaid “had never seen a more perfect vision of beauty. Her skin was delicately fair, and beneath her long dark eye-lashes her laughing blue eyes shone with truth and purity.”[5]
The marriage was conducted quickly, and the Little Mermaid knew it was her last night. But as the darkness set in, the Little Mermaid had a visit from her sisters. They had traded their hair (although it seems like it was simply cut – they’d get it back) to the Sea Witch in exchange for an enchanted knife. If the Little Mermaid killed the prince and let his blood spill on her feet, she would regain her mermaid tail.[6]
But the Little Mermaid could not bear to kill her love! And so, as dawn came, she threw herself into the sea…
The Little Mermaid’s “Salvation”
But she “did not feel as if she were dying. She saw the bright sun, and all around her floated hundreds of transparent beautiful beings….The little mermaid perceived that she had a body like theirs, and that she continued to rise higher and higher out of the foam.” (This should remind you of Huldbrand’s swans).
One of the air spirits explains what is happening to the Little Mermaid:
“the daughters of the air, although they do not possess an immortal soul, can, by their good deeds, procure one for themselves….After we have striven for three hundred years to all the good in our power, we receive an immortal soul and take part in the happiness of mankind. You, poor little mermaid, have tried with your whole heart to do as we are doing; you have suffered and endured and raised yourself to the spirit-world by your good deeds; and now, by striving for three hundred years in the same way, you may obtain an immortal soul.’”[7]
She floats over to the prince and his bride, and “unseen she kissed the forehead of her bride, and fanned the prince, and then mounted with the other children of the air to a rosy cloud that floated through the aether.”
And then one air spirit tells her something else, a caveat to this “salvation” by works: for every good child they find, a year is subtracted from their sentence; but if they find a naughty child, they cry, “and for every tear a day is added to our time of trial.”[8]
The Tragedy of the Little Mermaid
I think most people focus on how the Little Mermaid doesn’t get the prince in the end. Who cares? She really just wanted a soul, anyway. No one talks of this terrible, works-based salvation.
Indeed, this is the true tragedy of the story.
But that’s how the world thinks, isn’t it? They think that if they are good enough, if they are kind enough, if they do enough, then they can get into heaven. They don’t realize sin keeps them from entering heaven, even after all their striving.
In fact, their good deeds are worthless. The Bible makes it clear: our good deeds amount to nothing. They are like “polluted garments” (Isa. 64:6). I think the Hebrew does a better job of describing it than English: our “righteous acts” are like “menstrual” garments.[9]
Our good deeds are like bloody, foul smelling, disgusting, used pads. (Sorry to my guy readers!)
And so we know what the Little Mermaid doesn’t: there is no hope of heaven in her deeds. Not in this world. Even in fairy-land, there is little hope; after all, all children are naughty at times. And we cry many tears at a time, which means the chance of her adding to her sentence is greater than diminishing it.
But there is hope for us, if not for our Little Mermaid. We don’t have to rely on our deeds, but upon the deeds of Jesus the Messiah. He fulfilled the law, so we can rely on His purity when we mess up (Matt. 5:17). He paid the debt of sin – debt we all owe – on the Cross (Rom. 5:8). And He rose again, conquering death and the grave for those of us who believe in Him (1 Cor. 15:55-57).
Thank God – literally – that you are not the Little Mermaid. Thank Him for the salvation He offers through Christ. But most of all, thank Him that you don’t merit based on works.
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) 433.
[2] Ibid.
[3] The Little Mermaid, 434.
[4] Ibid.
[5] The Little Mermaid, 435.
[6] Ibid., 436.
[7] The Little Mermaid, 437.
[8] Ibid.
[9] Footnote, https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Isaiah+64%3A6&version=HCSB
