Tag Archives: The Little Mermaid

Week 7: The Little Mermaid

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Hans Christian Anderson’s “The Little Mermaid” covers a lot of what he have learned about different mermaid myths so far. The first thing I have noticed is how a connection between mermaids and sirens were made in the text, “Like her story ancestors, the Sirens, this little mermaid has the most beautiful singing voice, but she trades it for legs so she can be with the prince in the human world, and entertains him by dancing” (p. 107). Giving up something which is quite literally defining herself shows us a lot about what it means to be a mermaid and what it could mean to become human like, which is why I think that this part is definitely one of the strongest metaphors in this tale I want to elaborate more on.

The Little Mermaid wants to transform herself to find a sense of belonging in a human like environment. She is willing to give up her whole identity to find love and affection of the Prince and believes that she could not assimilate into human society without doing that. The question now is, whether that now has to be seen as a sacrifice for what we now understand of romantic love or whether it rather is a sacrifice. More possibly the metaphor shows us a hierarchical structure of natural beings on our earth showing that humans are believed to most powerful with everything else being inferior. But is it really worth to give up everything and not find happiness in what you are? I felt like this part of the story has definitely have to be read as some part of cautionary tale.

Week 6: Anthropocentrism in Undine and The Little Mermaid

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Something I noticed within the stories of Undine and Hans Christian Andersen’s “The Little Mermaid” are how anthropocentric these stories can be, especially when it comes to seemingly-simple concepts like tears and the human soul.

Undine tells Huldbrand that “there is one evil peculiar to [nature spirits]” (103) and this “evil” refers to the fact that nature spirits like her have no soul. Because of this, when they die, they are simple reborn back into the cycle of life on Earth rather than passing over into the afterlife, as human souls do. Undine goes on to say that while it is a satisfactory existence to live through, “all beings aspire to be higher than they are,” (103) which is essentially what drives her father to seek out a human for her to be wed to and thus gain a human soul in order to become a higher being than that of a spirit.

Anthropocentrism refers to the ethical belief that humans alone hold intrinsic value and hold power and importance over everything else in nature. Much of European/Western thinking tends to be very anthropocentric, especially with the ideas of “conquering the land” and seeing nature as something to be tamed rather than worked with. The concept of humans alone possessing souls and animals and nature possessing none is also an idea upheld by the Christian church. By placing the possession of a human soul as being above that of a powerful nature spirit, the character of Undine directly promotes these anthropocentric, Christian ideas.