Ana Dilan

ECL 305

Professor Pressman

9 May 2024 

The Little Mermaid/Ang Munting Sirena

As a child, one of my favorite stories was Hans Christian Andersen’s The Little Mermaid. I didn’t mind that the original contents of the story and its ending were sadder than the Disney adaptation. All I really cared about was the fact that there were mermaids in the story and, coming from a culture that depended on the ocean and rivers for much of its commerce and ways of life, that this story meant mermaids exist. Now that I’m older, I can see the tragedy of the little mermaid and how her pain reflects a generational wound that goes beyond her identity as a figment of a European fairytale and my own as a first-generation Filipino immigrant. I was born, raised, and educated in the Philippines until I was 10 years old. A large part of my education was the country’s history, which, from what I can remember, mostly focused on the Spanish colonial era which lasted till the 19th century, the Japanese occupation during World War II, and the American occupation into the 1950s. There was an egregious gap in my education on the identity of a Filipino before its many eras of colonization and before the country and its people were called the Philippines and Filipinos, respectively. Through the little mermaid’s story, I saw how the generational wound of a colonized identity revealed itself through the loss of the little mermaid’s voice and tail and saw how it reflected on my understanding of pre-colonial Philippine identity through the loss of crucial parts of our national identity and change in our country’s history. 

Viewing The Little Mermaid as a story of colonization adds a facet to the story through the concept of transactions, the changes and exchanges that occur during colonization. By recontextualizing The Little Mermaid through the context of Philippine colonization, we can see how Hans Christian Andersen’s story itself is as much a process as well as a product of colonization, its origins and associated images altered over and over again in the same way that the people and their identities are altered over and over again. Using Helen Stratton’s illustrations as a base for these redrawn illustrations, as well as adding color to the originally-colorless illustrations and referencing clothing from a specific time period, challenges the universality and “timelessness” of the story. Altering these images to a specific place and time period adds a new intersection to the little mermaid’s identity; she is not oppressed just because she is a woman, but she is also oppressed as an individual–an indigenous person–who must assimilate by altering not just her body but her identity to fit into the colonizing culture in order to avoid persecution.

To reframe the story of The Little Mermaid through the lens of colonization, we must first see the little mermaid’s rescue of the prince as an instance of first contact. In anthropology, the term ‘first contact’ refers to the meeting or the meetings that take place between two cultures that have never come in contact yet. (Evers) The prince lying unconscious on the shore is dressed in 16th-century Spanish clothing while the woman who discovers the prince after the little mermaid’s rescue is already dressed in the colonial fashion of the Philippines worn during the 16th to 18th century. The crucifix around her neck also aligns with her counterpart in Andersen’s story, as she takes up residence in a church. (Bacchilega, et. al. 114) The presence of a church on land also carries the implication that the Spanish colonization of the Philippine islands and the spread of Christianity amongst the native Filipinos is well underway. Setting the story during the beginning of the Philippines’ colonization creates historical context and the consequences that will inevitably follow. 

The second illustration is meant to portray a Filipino value that has still carried over from the pre-colonial days: filial piety and responsibility and respect for elders. (Stanford Medicine Ethnogeriatrics) In this story, the little mermaid’s grandmother acts not just as a matriarch or a motherly figure but also as a babaylan, a shaman who presides over customary ceremonies and healing rites and acts as a medium and guide to the spirit world. (Babaylan Studies) In Andersen’s story, the little mermaid’s grandmother also acts as a sort of shaman, dressing her granddaughters on their fifteenth birthdays for their first times visiting the surface and possessing much knowledge about humans and the transference of human souls to them. (Bacchilega, et. al. 117) The little mermaid’s dependence on her grandmother’s advice and knowledge is a reflection not just of Filipino family values and dynamics, but also of the roles of women and the elderly not just as disposable members of Filipino society but as central to society’s knowledge and wisdom. The little mermaid risks leaving behind the well of knowledge and wisdom her grandmother possesses, should she choose to become a human and pursue knowledge of the human world.

In this illustration, the little mermaid has already changed significantly. The little mermaid bears two legs instead of a tail and her clothing has drastically changed to Spanish colonial clothing, wearing a three-piece variation consisting of the camisa, tapis, and saya instead of the simple baro’t saya that her pre-colonial counterparts wear. Her purple tapis and her green saya reflect her former royal status as a princess of the sea.The moment illustrated in the book references her nightly ritual of dipping her feet in the water to ease the pain she feels whenever she takes a step, at one point spotting her father and grandmother looking out at her amongst the waves. (Bacchilega, et. al. 123) The pain that the little mermaid feels with every step she takes acts as a reminder of what she left behind because of her decision to leave her underwater kingdom. The loss of her voice also acts as salt to the wound. Historically, the priests that settled in the Philippines decided against teaching native Filipinos Spanish, believing that they were superior to them and that teaching them these languages would cause them to rebel. (Stevens) The loss of her voice can be interpreted as the loss of the little mermaid’s ability to speak her native language and to speak for herself, as well as her inability to even learn the colonizing language that would enable her to communicate with anyone, a crucial part of her identity or her ability to form it taken away from her.  

In the fourth and final illustration, we see the scene where the little mermaids’ sisters beg for the little mermaid to kill the prince after his wedding to the princess, their hair cut short in exchange for the dagger that will turn their sister back into a mermaid once she stabs him in the heart with it. (Bacchilega, et. al. 127) The sisters are dressed in an array of pre-colonial Filipino clothing, particularly inspired by Tagalog, Ilokano, and Visayan groups recorded in the Boxer Codex, the same groups of people that have mermaid stories within their respective mythologies. (Bacchilega, et. al. 213) The sisters begging for the little mermaid to kill the prince, in a colonial story, acts as a plea for the little mermaid to get rid of the colonizing power in order to return to her original form. By killing the prince, there is a sort of misguided hope that killing the person in charge will end the system and return the country to its pre-colonial roots. However, as the little mermaid comes to know, the transformation that occurs during colonization is irreversible. In the same way that the country itself cannot return to its previous glory before colonization, the little mermaid herself cannot return to her previous identity as a mermaid. 

Works Cited

Andersen, Hans Christian. “Fairy Tales of Hans Andersen : Andersen, H. C. (Hans Christian), 1805-

1875 : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming.” Internet Archive, Philadelphia : Lippincott,

archive.org/details/fairytalesofhans00ande2/page/258/mode/2up. Accessed 9 May 2024.

Bacchilega, Cristina, and Marie Alohalani Brown. The Penguin Book of Mermaids. Penguin 

Books, 2019. 

“Cultural Values.” Geriatrics, Stanford Medicine Ethnogeriatrics, 6 Jan. 2024, 

geriatrics.stanford.edu/ethnomed/filipino/fund/cultural_values.html. Accessed 9 May 

2024.

Herrera, Dana  R. “The Philippines: An Overview of the Colonial Era.” Education About Asia: 

Online Archives, Association for Asian Studies, 23 June 2023, 

www.asianstudies.org/publications/eaa/archives/the-philippines-an-overview-of-the-colonial-era/

National Geographic Society. Edited by Jeannie Evers, First Contact in the Americas, National 

Geographic Society , 22 Jan. 2024, 

education.nationalgeographic.org/resource/first-contact-americas/. Accessed 9 May 2024. 

Stevens, J. Nicole. “ The History of the Filipino Languages.” The History of the Filipino 

Languages, 30 June 1999, linguistics.byu.edu/classes/Ling450ch/reports/filipino.html. 

“What Is Babaylan?” Babaylan Studies, 

www.centerforbabaylanstudies.org/history#:~:text=Philippine%20indigenous%20commu

nities%20recognize%20a,therapies%20such%20as%20hilot%2C%20arbularyo. Accessed 

9 May 2024. 

Redrawn llustrations made on ProCreate with Apple Pencil and iPad. Original illustrations illustrated by Helen Stratton for ‘Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen.’