Cassandra Golds on Little Mermaid

I have to draw your attention to this exerpt from Cassandra Golds' entry on Little Mermaid over at Seven Miles of Steel Thistles (albeit a bit late...). Over and over recently I've been struck by how things that seem anti-feminist to us now were actually relatively liberal for their time, and not to say that this was Andersen's intent, but I really enjoyed this take on Little Mermaid:

Honor C. Appleton

"Many people seem to think that this story of Andersen’s is deeply anti-feminist. I think that is a profound misreading. I’m not arguing that he was a feminist in our terms or that he was anything other than a man of his time. But it astonishes me that such people haven’t noticed that he has identified himself completely with his female hero — she’s not the Other (as women continue to be for so many male authors), she is himself. Furthermore, she is doing something completely atypical of traditional fairy tale heroines (or at least those belonging to the canon of the best known) — she is the lover, not the beloved, the active, not the passive one. Indeed, it is she who saves the prince from drowning in a feat that would take almost impossible strength and stamina, even for a mermaid. She’s only a fifteen-year-old girl with a fishtail, after all, and yet she holds the insensible prince above the waves during the entirety of a terrible storm at sea, which has wrecked his ship, and which rages all night. Then, as the story develops, she pursues him — but, lacking the voice she has given in payment to the Sea Witch for the magic that will split her fishtail into legs (and less obviously but just as importantly, being a foundling with no family or earthly breeding) — she is unable to win his love. (And incidentally, what an unforgettable character the Sea Witch is — laughing in scorn at romantic love, and cutting, with the Little Mermaid, one of the most chilling devil’s bargains in literature. And the Little Mermaid’s grandmother — what a marvelous creation! — with all her wise counsel against reaching too high, and being discontent with what she believes to be the pretty good wicket of mermaid-hood.) It is also crucial to note, not only that the Little Mermaid makes her own independent choices, creates her own destiny, throughout the story, but also that in the overwhelmingly powerful denouement, which is to some extent a twist, the Little Mermaid beats the Sea Witch and even the strictures of the story itself, at their own game. Two possible endings have been laid out for her by others; instead — by staying utterly true to her self, her principles and her conception of genuine love — she invents her own."

Was the Little Mermaid after the Prince or a Soul?

I was asked in the comments after I shared the poem "The Mermaid Sets the Story Straight" whether I agreed that Andersen's Little Mermaid was really as desperate for a man as Debra Cash made her out to be.

I had to reread the Andersen version, because the Disney is so prevalent it can be easy to fill in the blanks of what I've forgotten with the details found in Disney.

In Andersen's tale, the youngest mermaid sister is not the only one with a fascination with the world on land-all of her sisters eagerly await their turn (at age 15) to finally visit the surface. They all enjoy collecting items from shipwrecks, and the littlest sea maid is actually unusual in that the only human relic she has in her garden is a statue of a handsome boy. The sisters are not given any prohibition not to show themselves to the humans-in fact, one sister swims over to a group of children, who all ran away from her in fear. In general I think the reader of fairy tales can identify with a fascination with Otherness, and it can be entertaining to think of our own culture through the eyes of a different species.

The elder sisters took on characteristics of sirens as well-"many an evening hour the five sisters took one another by the arm and rose up in a row over the water. They had splendid voices, more charming than any  mortal could have; and when a storm was approaching, so that they could apprehend that ships would go down, they swam before the ships and sang lovely songs, which told how beautiful it was at the bottom of the sea, and exhorted the sailors not to be afraid to come down. But these could not understand the words, and thought it was the storm sighing; and they did not see the splendours below, for if the ships sank they were drowned, and came as corpses to the Sea King's palace." Already we see mermaids in quite a different light than Disney's Ariel-there is a darker and dangerous side to them, as they don't have particular regard for human lives.

This is what makes the youngest mermaid stand out from her sisters-her concern for the Prince, when she saves his life. From then on, she does sort of stalk him...she finds out where he lives and watches his palace from the sea. In her defense, it's not totally love at first sight-she overhears fisherman speaking good of the Prince, and began to care about people in general.

Also, the mortal/immortal issue in Little Mermaid is kind of confusing: according to Andersen, mermaids can live to three hundred years, but once they die, they simply cease to exist; whereas humans, although they live shorter lives, has an immortal soul. It when she learns this that the mermaid desires an immortal soul herself, and asks if there were any way she could win one herself, and learns that "only if a man were to love you so that you should be more to him than father or mother; if he should cling to you with his every thought and with all his love, and let the priest lay his right hand in yours with a promise of faithfulness here and in all eternity, then his soul would be imparted to your body, and you would receive a share of the happiness of mankind."

From then on it seems her desire for the Prince and for the soul are equally her two passions, although she never sought such drastic measures until after she learned about the soul, so you could argue she never would have risked so much just for the prince. (Recap of what she gave up: not only her voice, but her tongue was cut out; the pain of her fins becoming legs would feel as if a sword cut through them and each step would be as if walking on sharp knives. To top it all off, if she didn't win the prince's love she would not only lose her chance at an immortal soul but never have a chance to become a mermaid again.)

The Prince, may I add, is a total player. He tells the mermaid that though he must see the Princess for his parents' sake, he does not wish to marry her and would rather have the former mermaid for his bride, and "kissed her red lips and played with her long hair, so that she dreamed of happiness an of an immortal soul." He marries the other Princess pretty much immediately though, because she was beautiful and he thought she was the one who saved him from the shipwreck.

The Mermaid knew she would die at sunrise. She was given a chance to kill the prince and return to her mermaid form and live out her three hundred years, but declined. It was because of this that she became a spirit, who would gain an immortal soul in three hundred years.

So: Do I agree with Debra Cash? I don't think so-I think she definitely missed the emphasis put on the soul, although the Prince was definitely more than a means to obtaining her immortality. Maybe Cash's poem should have read, "Disney lied." It's kind of sad that the Andersen version should be so tainted by our perceptions of the Disney version, which is my least favorite of all the fairy tale Disney movies...

I have to say-this is one of the fairy tales I've changed my mind about over time. I used to look down on the mermaid for her obsession with a man she hardly knew, but that was before I had been in any relationships of my own. I'm definitely guilty of having watched other people and saying, "I would NEVER lose my head over a guy like that," only to do the exact same thing I'd sworn I would never do. So I have more sympathy for the little mermaid now...although it's still a good reminder to guard your heart, as much as possible, for not every romance turns out the way we'd like it to.

Illustrations: Edward Matthew Hale, Jennie Harbour, Howard Pyle, W. Heath Robinson

The Mermaid Sets the Story Straight

Excerpt from a poem by Debra Cash:

"Hans lied. He simply couldn't imagine
I would want to shed the blubbery tail
dragging behind me like a torn bridal gown,
that I would prefer to stand on my own two feet
and walk on my own, love or no love.

Hans lied. He didn't know the prince was just an excuse
for me to change my life, to stop being a sister, a daughter."

Warwick Goble

Edmund Dulac eye candy

It's more difficult to find online information on fairy tale illustrators than authors. Edmund Dulac (1882-1953) is one of the most well known fairy tale illustrators, for good reason. Was he personally drawn to the source material, or did his style just happen to suit it well and he complied with commissions? It's hard to believe from these gorgeous images that he wasn't at least a little inspired by the stories. He started his career illustrating some other favorite literature of mine, Jane Eyre and Edgar Allen Poe poems. Later in his life he even designed banknotes and stamps for France.

Princess Shoes

Beauty from Beauty and the Beast
Mai Lamore


The following three are from If Style Could Kill, designers unknown:

The Little Mermaid

Odile (The Black Swan)

Cinderella (her shoes weren't always glass, but some sort of precious metal)

The Twelve Dancing Princesses

Urban Outfitters

Snow White

Modcloth

As worn on Rebecca of The Clothes Horse

Karen of The Red Shoes would need something classic but fabulous to wear day after day

Christian Louboutin


The Witch (any witch really, but I think Disney's Snow White's witch is most often associated with skulls)

Kermit Tesoro

Superheroes vs. Fairy Tales

Sometimes I wonder if superheroes are our generations contribution to, or extension of, the fairy tale genre. They have some basic things in common-the possibility of the supernatural, the battle between good and evil. Although, as far as the supernatural goes, superheroes often have scientific explanations as to how they got their powers.
But that got me thinking about the differences and similarities between superheroes and fairy tales. One thing I find interesting about the heroes is that there are so many different versions, like fairy tales. Even among the comics themselves, there are so many issues, and different authors who keep creating tales for the heroes, not to mention the various tv shows and movies that have been so popular. This is most interesting to me because there is still a definite "authentic source" for them, yet that doesn't stop people from creating their own versions. With fairy tales, even our "authentic" sources are really just well-known ones but not at all authentic. The Grimms just collected (and altered) tales they heard. Even "The Little Mermaid," whose plot is attributed to Hans Christian Andersen, contains basically the same plot as Friedrich de la Motte Fouque's "Undine," which came out 26 years before Andersen's tale, in 1811.


It's normal for books to be made into movies, but superheroes have a whole host of media attributed to each of them, much more so than other popular book characters.


But one of the main differences between superheroes and fairy tales is that superhero stories revolve around the character, and mainly, their power. Fairy tales revolve around plot. Any story about an underprivileged girl who rises out of her situation is a Cinderella story, and romance where someone is loved by someone else who is "out of their league" is a Beauty and the Beast story. The traditional fairy tale characters are pretty vague, and all heroines are pretty much the same, just as all villains and parents tend to fit the same profiles from story to story. So modern versions of fairy tales explore and deepen the characters while keeping the plot the same, and versions of superhero stories keep the characters the same while adding new plot elements.

Yet both of these genres have the element of longevity. Fairy tales have been around as long as humans have, and some of the same ones we love today were loved-though in different forms-hundreds and thousands of years ago. Superheroes are much newer, but several are household names even years after they first came out, and I really don't expect to see Superman or Batman go out of popularity anytime soon. Who knows-in the future they may be categorized with classical fairy tales the way several children's books of the Victorian period are (like Peter Pan and Alice in Wonderland).

There are two little-known Grimm fairy tales called "The Six Servants" and "Six Soldiers of Fortune." Each of the named characters possess an unusual ability-one who can hear any sound from any distance, one who basically has laser vision, one whose body feels the inverse of the actual temperature, a tall man who can continue to stretch as as high as a mountain, one who can see anything in the world, one with perfect aim, a fast runner, one who creates frosts, a strong man...etc. Each of the men is able to use their gift to solve problems or save the lives of the rest of the group. When I first read these, I was all excited that I had discovered the forerunner of X-Men: a group of people with unique abilities who work together creatively to achieve their goals. Even some of the powers are the same ones we see in modern superheroes-laser vision is Cyclops, the fast runner is Pietro, the frost man would be Iceman...

Kay Nielsen

Kay Nielsen, 1886-1957, was a Danish illustrator of fairy tales. I have to admit, before I started blogging I didn't think too much about fairy tale illustrators and only knew the artists of a few of the most famous illustrations of Beauty and the Beast. But since looking for images to accompany posts, I've discovered several artists I really love, one of them being Kay Nielsen.

I totally assumed Kay would be a girl, but you pronounce it "Kigh," and he was a man. I was curious as to what led him to illustrate mainly fairy tale scenes, but it seems he just happened to receive commissions to illustrate fairy tales.

A little Disney tie-in, from the Kay Nielsen Biography:

"Nielsen's designs were featured in the "Ave Maria" and "Night on Bald Mountain" sequences of Fantasia, but in 1940 he was laid off. He was brought back to work on designs for a Fantasia sequel that was discontinued after the disappointing showing of the original at the box office. He did some drawings for a version of The Little Mermaid, a film that had to wait almost 50 years to be made. Nielsen was given a posthumous screen credit as one of the designers"

Eras of Disney

Disney can be quite controversial. Some people love Disney and everything about Disney-others despise it/him. Since Disney has made many many movies over almost a hundred years, and the characteristics of the movies are very different depending on when they're from, let's distinguish within Disney itself. For the sake of simplification, I'm only discussing Disney Princess movies.

Walt Disney himself died in 1966. Before he died, he had created 3 complete Princess movies- Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937), Cinderella (1950), and Sleeping Beauty (1957.) Disney had been a leader and innovator in the world of animation. It's these three Princesses that are often accused of having the most negative female stereotypes-evil female villains and helpless heroines. Yet I have to say, these movies adhere the closest to the plots on which they are based. And some people have attacked Cinderella for being made more helpless than the Grimm version, but Disney didn't base his Cinderella off of Grimm, but on Perrault's (and either way, whether Cinderella got help from talking mice and a fairy godmother, or a dead mother's spirit, she always has help in SOME form.)

There was a long break from Princess movies. Then Disney had another golden age in the late 1980s- early 90s, with The Little Mermaid (1989), Beauty and the Beast (1991), and Aladdin (1992). Feminism had spread and filmmakers were more conscious of how they presented females. Ariel, Belle, and Jasmine definitely have more spunk and sense of adventure than their predecessors (although, as I've pointed out before, Ariel is reeeeally desperate to marry a guy she's never actually met. Interesting that the next two heroines on the scene are anything but anxious to marry just for the sake of marrying or for looks), but the plots of the stories differ more greatly from their sources. Interestingly, none of the movies created during this time were based on Grimm stories. And yes, Pocahontas and Mulan are in there somewhere, but they were never as popular. I say, Pocahontas is a travesty because they completely alter a true, historical story, which is different than altering a version of a fairy tale that isn't exactly authoritative on its own. Mulan should probably be more popular, but there's just only so many Princesses you can fit onto a t-shirt, you know?

Then there's Tiana from Princess and the Frog, and supposedly Rapunzel's coming. In the grand scheme of things they should probably be lumped together with the second batch of Princesses, except that Michael Eisner is no longer CEO of Disney. You could say that they've continued and expanded the trend of taking creative liberties, since Princess and the Frog hardly even pretends to be a retelling of The Frog Prince. And I think of the older movies differently in my mind because I was very young when the above came out, and not so young any more. Plus, so much has changed about Disney since then too. The Disney channel has just regressed so far. The popular shows and movies may sport good messages, in theory, but the scripts and acting are just TERRIBLE. Everybody knows that, since the second Golden Age of Disney, Pixar became the new Disney, and they have stayed away from Princessy fairy tales or anything that centers too much around romance. So they might suffer a little in the 4-6 year old girl department, who will forever request birthday presents from the Disney store, but overall their reputation spikes. (Not to bash the Disney store. I should open a museum for all the Belle products I own. Including a lamp in the shape of Belle, in addition to a glow-in-the-dark Beauty and the Beast lampshade. Why light your room with anything neutral when Disney products are available? I kid, but only sort of.)

So the next time someone bashes Disney, ask them to define which part of Disney they mean. And you could point out that taking creative liberties is exactly what the brothers Grimm and other major fairy tale collectors did too. But then you can criticize the particular creative liberties they took, and their reasons for them. But to classify all of Disney as one large entity is almost like lumping all fairy tales together. Well, bad example-people do that, but they're misinformed.

Underwater symphony

A gorgeous piece of music, "Aquarium," from Camille Saint-Saens' Carnival of the Animals:

Saint-Saens depicted underwater life as mysterious and ethereal.

Does it remind you of anything else?

Some people think Alan Menken was influenced by "Aquarium" when he composed the introduction to Beauty and the Beast. They do sound similar.

Menken (and Sebastian) took underwater life in a different direction in The Little Mermaid:

And one more underwater masterpiece. The Moldau, by Czech composer Smetena, describes:
"the course of the Vltava, starting from the two small springs, the Cold and Warm Vltava, to the unification of both streams into a single current, the course of the Vltava through woods and meadows, through landscapes where a farmer's wedding is celebrated, the round dance of the mermaids in the night's moonshine: on the nearby rocks loom proud castles, palaces and ruins aloft. The Vltava swirls into the St. John's Rapids; then it widens and flows toward Prague, past the Vyšehrad, and then majestically vanishes into the distance, ending at the Labe (or Elbe, in German)."

This video starts at the section that describes the mermaids. Definitely more on the ethereal side of water life, like Saint-Saens.

The Little Mermaid

Image from this post at Once Upon a Blog

"The Little Sea Maid" is a fairy tale written by Hans Christian Andersen. Though inspired by mermaid folklore, it is an original story, not a reworking of oral tales.

http://www.surlalunefairytales.com/ has an annotated version of the full tale.

I'm trying not to start every post by comparing a fairy tale to the Disney version, but Disney is so prevalent in our culture's thinking about fairy tales as well as my own personal knowledge of fairy tales, so it's hard to avoid. So, Ariel is officially my least favorite Disney princess (aside from Pocahontas, who doesn't even count. I have a friend who wasn't allowed to watch Pocahontas or Anastasia as a kid because they were historically inaccurate, which I find simultaneously sad and awesome).

The Disney version comes across as saying: a) don't listen to your parents, they're old and narrow-minded and don't know what they're talking about. b) not only is love at first sight true, but you should risk everything--including your safety, your future, and your family, to pursue your first crush.

The Andersen version starts very similarly, with the Little Sea Maid growing lovesick over a human prince, and eventually seeking the Sea Witch to give her legs. But not only must she give up her voice, but entered into a state of constant pain ("every step you take will be as if you trod upon sharp knives, and as if your blood must flow") and give up all chances of being a mermaid or seeing her family again. She is expected to woo the prince with her "beautiful form...graceful walk, and speaking eyes." And she doesn't succeed. The Prince isn't put under an evil spell to fall in love with the witch in disguise, but some other nice and pretty Princess. Given the chance to kill the Prince to save her own life, she declines. In the end she jumps into the sea, becomes sea foam, and then joins the "daughters of the air."

Critics have pointed out that this is more of a reward for her steadfastness than a punishment, since she enters into the afterlife, but I never read it that way (even though I do believe in the afterlife). Yet I find this ending much more satisfying than the stereotypical happy ending. She made a stupid decision as a young girl and paid for it, yet there is a glimmer of hope. It may seem that, after a broken relationship, there's nothing to live for any more, but life does go on, even if it can never be quite the same as it was before. I take the fairy tale as a message against becoming passionately attatched to someone prematurely.

Which is interesting, because at the beginning of the story, when the Sea Maid reaches her fifteenth year and is finally allowed to go above the surface of the sea, oysters are attatched to the Princess' tail, to show her high rank. The Sea Maid protested, "But that hurts so!" but the reply is, "Yes, pride must suffer pain." Later, the Sea Maid endures much more pain because of her love for a human. I don't know if I would call lovesickness "pride," per se, hers is more foolishness than anything else, or the fact that she was forced to wear oysters, for that matter. Andersen had his own moral agenda, which Maria Tatar elaborates on more in this book.

To be honest, I think the main reason Ariel is so popular among little girls today is because she is a mermaid, and mermaids are cool, not so much because of her story. Lore about sea maidens generally tells a very different story--sirens who lure men to their deaths, or women kidnapped and forced to marry mortal men, but who escape as soon as they recover their seal skins. Mermaids have been made innocent and harmless much like fairies have.

The anatomy of a Disney Princess

Before I say anything else, I love Disney princesses. I will myself point out the ironies of Disney versions of fairy tales (more on that some other post) but get very defensive of Disney when someone else attacks him.

Also, the whole thing about Barbie dolls and their inhuman proportions--I'm glad people are aware of this, I guess, but honestly, when I was a kid, I didn't notice her hourglass figure or feel any pressure to look like her. In fact, all my Barbies were Belle barbies, and I just made up stories with her and my Prince that turned into a Beast.

But, this Valentines Day, my roommate and I were joking about the sparkly Disney Princess valentines I had bought (my excuse is, they were for the little girls I babysit), and I noticed that Ariel's figure is a bit questionable...

Namely, just one of her boobs is the same width as her waist. Well, maybe a boob is 1/2 centimeter and her waist is 6/10ths of a centimeter, but still. Does she not have organs? Imagine if she ate an orange. The orange would be as big as her stomache.

Btw, the other princesses have slightly more attainable figures; Ariel's is the most exaggerated.