In this weeks reading of “The Penguin Book of Mermaids” by Cristina Baccheliga, I was mainly interested in the idea of Undine, a water goddess, needing to marry a powerless mortal man in order to gain a soul. The reason I was fixated on this idea is because the story seems to create this logic that women are soulless beings that absolutely require a man in order to be complete. I don’t know if I interpreted the reading correctly, but it almost feels like Undine’s significant power was being undermined and overshadowed by the need for a man. This story was written by a man in 1811, and that context tells me that this was a subconscious thought that was shared by men in these decades. True feminist movements wouldn’t begin until about 150 years after this was written.
Despite the unfortunate context of the story, I did appreciate the overall happy ending, as those have not been very common so far. Huldbrand fully “embraced her with the most heartfelt emotion and love” after she revealed that she was not human. Undine was able to keep her new soul but gave up her power as a body of water. While I will admit that the pretext confused me a bit as it seems to contradict the contents of the story, it was an interesting parallel to see how this semi-human entity reacted to a man compared to the sirens with Oddyseus or Melusine with Raymondin. One difference that I found between this story and the others is that Huldbrand seems to be a completely well rounded man, whereas Raymondin was unintentionally a murderer that did not pay the price for his wrongdoings. My theory is that God, or the universe, made an effort for Raymondin to pay for his sins by making him ruin his relationship with Melusine. Huldbrand, on the other hand, has committed no wrongdoings and so he gets to live happily with his wife who shares similar characteristics as Melusine. This would make sense as Christianity was huge in the 1800s and the idea of sinning was taken a lot more seriously than it is today.
Hey Rigo,
I found your perspective on the link between Christianity and Undine pretty informative. After reading it, I wasn’t too sure about what the religious aspect is. After reading your post, I think the presence of a soul was a major theme in the story which can be parallel with Abrahamic religions as the soul is the center of consciousness. I just found it interesting how Fouque illustrated Undine as strange but not necessarily morally flawed.
Good insights here. I would suggest that you continue to work to develop your ideas out of the quotes rather than bring your ideas to the quotes. In other words, explicate and explain what you see in the quotations and why it matters. (Also, feminism actually begins around this time!)
Hey Rigo, I agree with your statement that it seems women are soulless beings that absolutely require a man to be complete. I find this concept in both Undine and Melusine as Melusine traveled to Cambiers to seek out a man (Raymond). I’m sure this concept is no coincidence and is portraying that women should be dependent on men, during that time. Although we didn’t get the full story of Undine, the ending ends in Huldbrand marrying a mortal woman after Undine, and when Huldbrand dies, Undine turns in to a body of water that encircles his grave. Not sure what this means, but after reading this I found Undine to be extremely loyal to Huldbrand and instead of doing what Melusine did (leave), Undine stayed til his death.
Hi Rigo! This was such an interesting analysis of both Undine and Melusine’s stories! I appreciate how you so articulately acknowledged the demeaning subtext of the narrative that communicates women are inherently incomplete without a male counterpart. That statement very accurately coincides with the accepted societal norms of the time, where women in Europe were not allowed to own land or anything in their own name; all of their entitlements were held by the man they were married to or their father. That detrimental belief of a woman’s incompleteness communicated through literature was truly manifested in the real world. I also appreciated your comparison of Huldbrand to Raymondin, and how the stories contrast in the way they treat their differing male protagonists with an underscore of Christian values. That would have never came to mind for me unless you pointed it out. Thank you so much for this breakdown of the stories!