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The Little Mermaid’s “Salvation”

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]

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The Little Mermaid Longs for a Soul

“‘Why have not we an immortal soul?’ asked the little mermaid mournfully; ‘I would give gladly all the hundreds of years that I have to live, to be a human being only for one day, and to have the hope of knowing the happiness of that glorious world above the stars.’”[1]

Some scholars (especially those who delve into the psychology of tales) associate the Little Mermaid with lust.[2]  From what we’ve seen of the story so far, I would agree.  But knowing the rest of the story, it’s absolute hogwash.

You should not listen to such ignorant people.  In fact, you should be downright insulted.  Yes, the Little Mermaid idolizes the prince inappropriately.  But it is not lust that makes her go to the Sea Witch.

No.  It is something far more wonderful…

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The Little Mermaid’s Idol

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…

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