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.
Literature and the Environment: Mermaids
Professor Jessica Pressman. Spring 2024
Hi Ana,
I am focusing on the second paragraph of your post because my attention was also drawn to these details while I was reading this story. It strikes me that she calls her lack of a soul evil. Particularly because the story gives us no indication that the place that she comes from is evil in nature. Rather we are constantly told of how good of a woman that she is. She is all a man could want. I looked up the etymology of the word evil and according to the Online Etymology Dictionary, the word could also signify misfortune. Misfortune seems like the more appropriate term within this story because all that would happen to her is that she would go back to being a part of nature but I don’t consider that to be inherently bad. Rather it is a misfortune that the lack of a soul would not allow her to aspire to be more than what she is, by this I suppose it means that she would not have a place in heaven as is the Christian belief.