| "The Little Mermaid" | |
|---|---|
| Author | Hans Christian Andersen (2 April 1805 – 4 August 1875) |
| Original title | "Den lille havfrue" |
| Country | Denmark |
| Language | Danish |
| Genre(s) | Literary fairy tale |
| Published in | Fairy Tales Told for Children. First Collection. Third Booklet. 1837. (Eventyr, fortalte for Børn. Første Samling. Tredie Hefte. 1837.) |
| Publication type | Fairy tale collection |
| Publisher | C. A. Reitzel |
| Publication date | 7 April 1837 |
| Published in English | 1846 |
| Preceded by | "O. T." |
| Followed by | "The Emperor's New Clothes" |
"The Little Mermaid" (Danish: Den lille havfrue) is a literary fairy tale by Hans Christian Andersen about a young mermaid willing to sacrifice her life in the sea and her identity as a mermaid to gain a human soul and the love of a human prince. Andersen was familiar with traditional and literary lore about mermaids and other water creatures but the tale is completely his invention . The strongest influence upon the tale was Friedrich de la Motte Fouqué’s Undine.
"The Little Mermaid" was first published with "The Emperor‘s New Clothes" in Copenhagen, Denmark by C. A. Reitzel on 7 April 1837 as the third and final installment of the first collection of Andersen's Fairy Tales Told for Children. The tale was an instant success and made Andersen an international celebrity. It has been variously interpreted since its initial publication, and has been adapted to musical theater, animated film, and other media. The Little Mermaid statue in Copenhagen harbor is a national monument and a "must-see" for most visitors to the city.[1]
Contents |
Plot
The Little Mermaid lives far out to sea with her sea-king father, her grandmother, and her sisters. One day, she rescues a human prince from a shipwreck and falls in love with him. She consults a sea-witch about obtaining his love, and buys a potion that will give her human legs. The price is steep however – she must forfeit her voice. She can gain a human soul, too, if the prince loves and marries her, but, should he marry another, she will die. The mermaid drinks the potion, loses her voice, gains legs, and becomes the prince's platonic companion. She is happy, but the day comes when the prince marries another, and the mermaid suffers great heartbreak. Her sisters rise from the waves and offer her the opportunity to save her life and return to the sea by killing the prince, but she refuses and dies. The mermaid becomes a daughter of the air and is assured of gaining a soul by doing good deeds for a period of three hundred years.
Sources
Andersen was familiar with traditional lore about mermaids and water creatures who marry mortals, and had toyed with the idea in an early poem "Agnete". He knew works by Ingemann, Tieck, and Oehlenschlager on similar subjects and themes. The greatest influence on his tale however was de la Motte Fouque’s Undine (1811), a German medieval-style romance about a knight torn between a mortal woman and a water sprite. When rejected, the sprite disappears into the waters.[2]
Andersen closely identified with his tragic heroine's predicament and his anguish over his unreciprocated homoerotic love for Edvard Collin, the son of his first benefactor in Copenhagen, likely coloured the tale. In 1836, when Andersen began the tale, he was staying on the island of Fyn to avoid the Copenhagen wedding of Collin. For years, Andersen tried to express what he felt for Collin but was not allowed to do so. Just as the prince in the tale has no erotic feeling for the mermaid so too Collin never considered Andersen an erotic possibility, and the poet suffered emotional, sexual, and mental frustration as a result. Andersen believed his bisexual nature placed him outside outside humankind, just as the mermaid is an outsider in the prince's world. In a letter he never sent, Andersen fancied himself and Collin united "before God" and his notion is mirrored in a deleted passage from the mermaid's tale: "I myself shall strive to win an immortal soul [...] that in the world beyond I shall be united with him to whom I gave my whole heart." Atypical of mermaid lore and literature, Andersen separated the mermaid's goals of a human love and a human soul and rewarded her with immortality as compensation for her frustrated sexual desires – just as Andersen viewed his literary immortality a consolation prize for his lifelong sexual loneliness and frustrated relationships.[3]
Composition and publication
When Andersen began writing "The Little Mermaid" in 1836, he was the well respected author of a hugely popular novel, The Improvisatore, and seven fairy tales that had received a less than lukewarm critical reception. On 13 May 1836, he wrote in a letter that "The Daughters of the Sea” (the tale’s working title) would soon be finished. However, he continued to work on the tale through the remainder of the year.
The tale was completed on 23 January 1837 and in February Andersen wrote a friend that the tale was better than "Thumbelina". He indicated that he was deeply affected by the tale, and that he shared his characters' moods, whether good or bad, and suffered with them.[4] On March 9, he wrote a friend that "The Little Mermaid” and "The Emperor’s New Clothes" would be published together.[5]
"The Little Mermaid" was first published with "The Emperor’s New Clothes" by C. A. Reitzel in Copenhagen, Denmark on 7 April 1837 in the third and final installment of the first collection of Andersen's Fairy Tales Told for Children. The story was first published in English in 1846, and republished in Denmark in collected editions of Andersen's tales in 1849 and 1862.
Commentaries
The tale has provoked a host of interpretations since its publication. It has been viewed as a tragic narrative about the permanency of female love versus male fickleness. It has been interpreted as a psychological coming-of-age story about a young woman's budding sexuality and her fears regarding it with the blood and pain involved in becoming a human for the mermaid possibly representing the onset of menstruation.[6] In 1907, Hans Brix, Andersen's first biographer, thought the tale a drama of the social outsider with the bottom of the sea representing the lowest social class from whence Andersen arose and the prince's land palace representing the highest strata of Copenhagen bourgeosie society to which Andersen aspired. Feminists have interpreted The Little Mermaid as a warning about engaging in relationships with males and a misogynistic tale in which self-sacrifice and silence are offered as ideals of female behaviour. The amphibious Little Mermaid has been viewed as a homoerotic character.[7] The end of the tale, with its disciplinary suggestion to children that an outside and invisible force monitors their behaviour, has brought some fire from critics. P. L. Travers considered it "blackmail".[8]
Adaptations
References
- Footnotes
- Works cited
- Andersen, Hans Christian; Wullschlager, Jackie (Ed.); Nunnally, Tiina (Transl.) (2004), Fairy Tales, New York: Viking, ISBN 0-670-03377-4
- Andersen, Hans Christian; Tatar, Maria (Ed. and Transl.); Allen, Julie K. (Transl.) (2008), The Annotated Hans Christian Andersen, New York and London: W. W. Norton and Company, Inc., ISBN 978-0-393-06081-2
- Wullschlager, Jackie (2000), Hans Christian Andersen: the Life of a Storyteller, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, ISBN 0-226-91747-9
External links
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Wikisource has original text related to this article: |
- "Den lille havfrue" Original Danish text
- "Den lille havfrue" Original manuscript (Odense City Museum)
- "The Little Mermaid" English translation by Jean Hersholt
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