The Little Mermaid: Of Lust, Loss, and Immortality

     Under the sea, in an idyllic and beautiful garden, stands a statue of a young man cut out of cold stone – for the Little Mermaid who knows nothing but the sea, the statue stands as an emblem of the mysterious over-world, a stimulus for imagination and sexual desire, an incentive for expansion of experience, and most predominately, an indication that something great and all-encompassing is missing from her existence. Traces of curiosity and a vague indication of the complexities of adult desires mark the child mermaid; in such a stage of development, the statue will suffice. However, as the Little Mermaid reaches puberty, the statue must allegorically come alive in order to parallel the manifestation of her new-found adult desires – the statue must become a prince in his world of adulthood above the sea. Thus, powered by an insistent and ambiguous longing for self-completion, the Little Mermaid embarks on a journey of self-discovery, and, to her ultimate misfortune, prematurely abandons her child-like self as sexual lust and the lust for an adult life takes hold of her.

      The paradisiacal kingdom under the sea is symbolic of childhood. At the onset of the story, the sea kingdom is described: “where the waters are as blue as the petals of the cornflower and as clear as glass, there, where no anchor can reach the bottom,” and where “[one] would have to pile many church towers on top of each other” in order to reach the surface (Andersen 217). The sea describes the deep consciousness of the Little Mermaid as a young child, which is characterized by emotion, beauty, imagination, purity and innocence - representative successively of the water, flowers, the imaginative similes of the two, and the religious symbolism of the church. The young mermaid is also marked by separation and disconnection from the realms of adulthood, as represented by the deepness of the sea and the inability for the anchoring effect of adult awareness and desires to take hold on the fluidity of joy in youth.

     However, because childhood and adulthood never exist completely separate from the influence of one another, the sea kingdom of innocence and joy is tinged with glimpses into the adult domain – glimpses which grow in frequency and intensity of curiosity as the Little Mermaid grows older. The Little Mermaid has shaped her garden to look like the sun; the sun has connotations with the over-world as well as with “son” or man (Dahlerup). The statue of a young man in her garden verifies this semblance. Such indications of another world are not given birth on its own, but rather are spurred by the figure of the grandmother, who serves as both an otherworldly messenger, as well as an embodiment of the sea world. The grandmother acts as a mother figure to the mermaids, as a center and a sustainer of a child world; however, the twelve oysters on her tail shows her to be “a little too proud of her rank” and instantly places her as an adult with desires and manifestations of such desires that extend beyond the simplicity and ignorance of childhood (Andersen 218). The grandmother’s stories and descriptions of an ulterior reality power both imagination and curiosity – and the Little Mermaid longs for the day she is “old enough” to give tangible form to her imagination and ease to her curiosity, the day that she reaches puberty. The repetitious and sequential episodes of her sisters reaching puberty and resultant discovery of the adult world come to symbolize the Little Mermaid’s own progressive nearing of the state of adulthood (Easterlin 4). 

     It is when the Little Mermaid breaks through the waters of the sea, and symbolically encounters adulthood in a visceral form for the first time in her life that she is faced with the desire to make the leap from childhood to adulthood permanent; however, the leap itself is a daunting and destructive task, and the exchange for one mode of self for another requires a degree of maturity the Little Mermaid is not yet ready for, but prematurely aims for nonetheless. The duality of the internal struggle between the maintenance of childhood until a future date and the desire to throw oneself unprepared into adulthood is manifested in the figures of the grandmother and the sea-witch (Cashdan 164).  The stimulus of such a struggle takes place with the sight of the unconscious prince and touch of her lips to his; her need to satisfy her sexual desires suddenly becomes a driving force in her life. Seeking advice in relation to her newfound struggle, the Little Mermaid speaks with her grandmother, who tells her that in the human world, or adult world, there is immortality, while there isn’t any in the sea world, or child world. However, her grandmother affirms that the child world is much more joyous and that the Little Mermaid should be satisfied for now in the sea.  Immortality stands as a symbol for purpose and meaning in an adult life – and such can be reached through marriage and sexual satisfaction. The Little Mermaid voices desire for this immortality, and instead of heeding her grandmother’s indirect advice to wait until she is more mature, summons the sea-witch, or the lustful part of her nature that will grant her immediate and irreversible access into the adult world (Cashdan 165).

     The sea-witch channels the Little Mermaid prematurely into the adult world of sex – but at the high cost of the inability to return to the refuge of childhood and the cost of the maturity required to be a thoroughly active and successful participant of the adult world. The sea-witch knows what the Little Mermaid wants – “you want to be rid of your fish’s tail, and have legs so the young prince may fall in love with you” or in other words, the Little Mermaid wants legs because “legs part to reveal the female genitalia,” a necessity for sex  (Andersen 229, Cashdan 165). The witch gives the Little Mermaid a potion that will allow for the separation of the fin into legs. This potion includes amongst its ingredients the witch’s blood, which connects the psyche of the sea-witch with that of the Little Mermaid. This connection is further strengthened by the fact that the consumption of the witch’s blood “re-creates the commingling of the mother and child’s blood in the womb” (Cashdan 167). The pain invoked by the separation of the fin that “feels as if a sword were going through [the mermaid’s body], the irreversibility of the process, and the fact that “blood must flow” symbolizes the loss of virginity - and more importantly, the loss of innocence and childhood (Andersen 230). Immediately following the encounter with the sea witch, the Little Mermaid wakes up at the castle naked with legs, and “[feels] a burning pain” while the prince “[looks] at her with his coal-black eyes” (Andersen 231).  It can be inferred that the sexual act implied by such a scene was taking place while the Little Mermaid was visiting with the sea witch, or the lustful side of her nature. The cost of premature exposure to the world of sex, of course, is great – the Little Mermaid must give up her voice to the witch. Voice acts as a medium for the expression of one’s personal identity; because her voice is allegorically robbed from her, the Little Mermaid’s process of identity-making and development of personal agency is suspended, put on hold, unrealized.

     It is the very thing the Little Mermaid relinquishes in order to have immediate sexual fulfillment – her voice – that robs the Little Mermaid of her ultimate goal of immortality, or self-actualization and purpose through marriage. The prince comes to regard the beautiful and dancing Little Mermaid as a play thing, a sweet diversion, but never a marital possibility (Collins). He simply uses her for sex. Instead, the prince marries a woman who has an adult voice, indicative of both sexual and emotional maturity (Collins). The fact that the women he marries is beautiful with “long dark lashes,” (long lashes being associated with seduction) and had been “educated in the holy temple” where she learned “virtues” portrays a higher level of maturity (Andersen 234).

     The murdering of the prince as a means back to the sea may represent the Little Mermaid’s revengeful thoughts for his ultimate betrayal with his marriage to another woman. The proposed murder, or the shedding of the prince’s blood in bed by a knife, a phallic object, symbolizes the sexual process, but because it is conducted in a highly unnatural manner – whereby the Little Mermaid is forcibly and violently penetrating into a married man – it better represents a rape. The sexually-charged scene of possible murder stands as a reversal of the loss of virginity: once the knife cuts into the prince, and “warm blood sprays on [the Little Mermaid’s] feet,” her feet “would turn into a fishtail and [she] would be a mermaid once again” (Andersen 236). The prince had seized her virtue and voice, or means to self-development, by sleeping with her when she was much too young for the responsibility, and by having no intention of marrying her. The prince was much older than the Little Mermaid, and thus knew better; this age gap is indicated by the pet name “my little foundling” the prince gives to the Little Mermaid (Andersen 232). Thus, through the figurative murder/rape and reversal of the loss of virginity, the Little Mermaid could grant fulfillment of her own needs through the act of seizing by a violent revengeful force what was taken from her in the first place.      

     However, for true recovery and redemption to take place, the Little Mermaid must change her ways, let go of the wrongs of the past, forget the prince, and go on with her life. The casting of the knife, a phallic object, into the sea and the sea turning red like blood where it touches parallels her loss of virginity, but it also symbolizes an act of cleansing or purification through the rejection of her past of meaningless sex with the prince. As a result, the Little Mermaid is set back on the path towards immortality, or self-discovery and purpose; she becomes an air spirit, representative of the lightness of her redeemed soul.

     The Little Mermaid’s struggle with growing up, her sexual desires and her quest for self-actualization and purpose in life resonates with all of human kind. She acts as a prototype of the pubescent youth. Her premature exposure to sex and the painful ramifications of arrested development and a broken heart act as a warning to the youth, while the possibility of psychological redemption from an agonizing mistake offers hope.

Works Cited:

 Anderson, Hans Christian. “The Little Mermaid.” Folk and Fairy Tales. 3^rd ed. Eds. Martin Hallett and Barbara Karasek. Toronto: Broadview, 2002.

Cashdan, Sheldon. The Witch Must Die: The Hidden Meaning of Fairy Tales. New York: Basic Books, 1999.

Collins, Emily. “Nabokov’s Lolita and Anderson’s The Little Mermaid.” Nabokov Studies 9 (2005): 77-100. 10 Oct. 2006. http://muse.jhu.edu.login.ezproxy.library.ualberta.ca/journals/nabokov_studies/toc/nab9.1.html

Easterlin, Nancy. “Hans Christian Andersen’s Fish out of Water." Philosophy and Literature 25 (2001): 251-77. 6 Oct. 2006.
      http://muse.jhu.edu.login.ezproxy.library.ualberta.ca/journals/philosophy_and_literature/v025/25.2easterlin.html

Pil, Dahlerup. “Splash! Six Views of ‘The Little Mermaid.’ Scandinavian Studies 62 (1990): 403-429.