Tag Archives: little mermaid

final essay proposal + my thesis

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tbh I don’t know where to post this because I forgot if it was better to either email you directly or just post it here so I’m posting it here.

The Pisces is an unconventional love story that turns the standard tropes in the mermaid story on their heads, displaying how the stereotypes and gender roles presented within the mermaid story are a product of their time, this one being more relevant to the modern day, and ultimately turn the traditionally patriarchal, misogynistic view of the mermaid on its head and upend that view. The unconventionality of The Pisces centers female sexuality, as opposed to stories such as The Little Mermaid and Melusine, who neglect the female. The Pisces is special because the woman is not the sexual object, but it also doesn’t objectify the merman. These two characters are allowed to mess up and be messy, and therefore portray more realistic experiences.

Week 7: The little Mermaid

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This week’s reading focused on Hans Christian Anderson’s “Little Mermaid” folktale. I have never read the original story of the little mermaid and found so many similarities to the Disney adaptation of it. What I found that Disney kept the most similar in the adaptation was the fact that this is sort of a coming of age story. It seems like there’s always a theme to each of these mermaid stories that the mermaid is just a symbol for something larger; they’re always meant to teach us, and that brings me back to the roots of the word monster having meanings of teaching. In this folktale specifically, it seemed like a coming of age story mostly, sprinkled in with Christian values and expected gender roles. The grandmother in the story makes this tradition around the 15th birthday as when “[they] have accomplished your 15th year” (page 109), they were able to go up and see the world above. The 15th birthday held much significance in this story as that was the age the young mermaids were allowed see the entire world for the first time. This tradition reminds me of the Mexican tradition, where on your 15th birthday you’re basically seen as an adult as a young woman, and have a Quinceañera. I can see a lot of history, sort of repeating itself within the stories and everyone as a society having the similar culture just in different fonts. I think that significant because it really shows how similar we are as human beings, regardless of where we come from and when we came from. This notion of you vs the unknown really goes away when you realize our similarities even when it is portrayed through something so different, such as a mermaid.

(posted before 6pm, just edited a typo)

Week 7: Little Mermaid

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So I read “The Little Mermaid” for the first time, and I was blown away from all of the imagery, to be honest. The way that things get described, like the ocean kingdom, it was very breathtaking. “The soil produces the most curious trees and flowers, whose leaves and stems are so flexible that the slightest motion of the water seems to fluster them as if they were living creatures. Fishes, great and small, glide through the branches as birds fly through the trees here upon earth.”(page one hundred and eight)*

This was what intrigued me, as well, because here we see the connection between human and nature. We can establish here that, at this point, we would imagine merpeople to have a similar sort of world as our own, given how the merpeople have things such as trees and flowers. We see the comparison between them and us, drawing similarities and parallels. Some things are done differently, of course, but when we imagined the merpeople, we imagined them similar to us. Granted, you can say that maybe the trees are different, but we don’t GET any of that. What this is giving is that its giving “they’re more like us”.

Ok then I want to talk about the last bit, where the little mermaid goes to Heaven(?)/ascends after her death. First of all, she’s way better than me. Second of all, the ending felt really weird to me. So she’s told, “You have suffered and endured, and have raised yourself into an aerial spirit, and now your own good works may obtain you an immortal soul after the lapse of three hundred years.” (page one hundred thirty). and THEN she’s also told that her 300 years is contingent on children???? Is this supposed to be like religious propaganda or something? Does this mean that nothing matters???

*my number one key on my laptop is sticky so I had to use the actual word for the numbers.