The original version of The Little Mermaid was written by Danish author Hans Christian Andersen. A prolific writer who wrote not only fairy tales, but also novels, poems and plays, Andersen intended The Little Mermaid to teach young children a moral lesson. While some elements of Disney’s animated classic The Little Mermaid are easily traced back to the story, there are plenty of details the story omitted or changed for its audience.
The original tale
The story begins in the Ocean Kingdom, hidden deep beneath the waves, further than any man can venture and deeper than any anchor can touch. The beautiful city is made of coral with amber windows and spires decorated with muscles that open with the waves to reveal pearls. The kingdom is ruled by a widower king with six daughters, and his dowager mother. The beautiful young princesses had a wonderful life, they played in the waves all day and were told stories by their grandmother about the lands above and tended lovely gardens. Each daughter was beautiful, but none so much as the youngest, a quiet and thoughtful young mermaid.
The daughter would tend gardens, decorating them with undersea flowers and shaping them like the things in their world, save for the youngest and most beautiful mermaid, who designed hers like the sun and built it around the marble statue of a handsome prince. She loved to hear about the land above the waves and desired the chance to see the strange land, but it was forbidden until she turned 15. Every time one of her older sisters visited the surface, they would recount all the ways their grandmother had so poorly described it to them, and as each sister got the chance, the little mermaid grew more desperate to see the world above. She would fight back tears on the stormy days her sister would go to the surface and sing a siren song to the sailors, welcoming them to their father’s kingdom, though no man ever reached the palace alive.
When she finally turned 15, the princess swam to the surface, where she saw fireworks heralding the 16th birthday of a prince so handsome she immediately fell in love. Long after the party, a deadly storm ripped the ship apart. Risking her life, she dove for the prince. When she found him, he was near death, but she kept his head above water and stroked his noble brow, one that looked so much like her beloved statue in the garden. Taking him to land, the mermaid left him on the shore and watched as he was discovered. She was happy for he was safe, but sad for he would never know it was she who had saved him. Returning home, she could not help but tell her sisters, and before long, they located the palace where the prince lived. She visited him regularly and began asking her grandmother about the nature of humans.
Mermaids, her grandmother told her, did not have souls like humans. Instead, they could only achieve an afterlife if a human man would share their soul with a mermaid though marriage, and only if they chose her above both their mother and father. Sensing the potential danger, her grandmother tried to distract the little mermaid with parties in her gorgeous undersea home, but the little princess couldn’t stop thinking about her handsome prince. Even as her subjects and sisters complimented her incredible singing and great beauty, she still wished for another life on the land.
One day, as she was lamenting the distance between herself and her prince, the little mermaid heard the sweet peal of a bell. Following the sound, she made her way though a strange murky forest, where she found a dark chasm. Within the crevasse, she saw ghastly grey polyps and entangled in their fingerlike tendrils the remains of men, ship wreckage and the body of a strangled mermaid much like herself. The sea witch on the other side was accompanied by two bulbous water snakes, her “Chickabidies”.
The witch knew of the princess’ desire to be a human, and, for the price of her beautiful voice, brewed a potion that, once drank, would turn the mermaid into a human woman. However, if the mermaid should fail to win the prince’s affection, the day after his wedding, she would turn to sea foam. The mermaid took the potion and went to the prince’s castle, where she drank it and changed into a human.
The prince found her eyes captivating and quickly clad her in the finest silks he could offer. Though she had no voice, she moved so gracefully that she was even more captivating than the finest singer. The prince took her everywhere with him; they climbed mountains, rode through the forest, and he even made her a satin pillow that she could sleep on outside of his door. She was happy with him, though her heart ached for his love. Her sisters came every night to visit her and tell her how much they missed her, but still, she would not leave.
The mermaid stayed by the prince’s side, and though he knew she loved him most of all, he did not think to wed her. It was soon announced that the prince was to wed the beautiful daughter of a foreign king. A great ship was made for the voyage and the prince took the mermaid with him to meet his potential wife. He spoke of his desire to marry the mermaid, his silent foundling, rather than a bride chosen by his family, and for a moment, she was happy. Her sisters followed the ship and nightly appeared to show her concern, but she waved them away, sure that her prince would choose her.
But when the prince met the foreign princess, she was lovely with dark hair and purple eyes, and he immediately felt she was the woman who had saved him. Their wedding was announced that morning and by the evening, they were wed. All the while, the little mermaid was by his side, holding the brides train and hiding her broken heart. As the party carried into the night, she danced and celebrated, though she could feel her death imminent. Long after the prince and his bride retired for the evening, the mermaid stayed on the deck of the ship, awaiting her death at dawn’s light. Off the prow of the ship, she spied her sisters, all shorn of their long hair. They offered her a dagger, telling her they had visited the witch to help her, and that all the she had to do was run the knife into the breast of her beloved prince. Once his blood touched her hands, the little mermaid would be returned to her mermaid self, and free to return home.
Knife in hand, the mermaid went to her love’s room. As she stood over him, she realized she could never kill him, and, throwing the knife into the waves, the little mermaid threw herself into the ocean just as the red light of dawn touched the water’s surface. The prince and his bride look for the mermaid the next morning, but having seen her leap from the deck, know she is gone.
As her body turned to foam, an unknown voice declared her a daughter of the air, saying the little mermaid would spend the next 300 years bringing rain and breezes to dessert lands. For every good child she saw, she could remove a year of her sentence, but for every bad child, she had to add one for each tear shed.
What did it mean
And there you have it, the short version of Hans Christen Anderson’s the Little Mermaid. The mermaid sacrifices everything for the prince. She leaves her home, her title, her sisters and even her voice, her greatest asset. Perhaps Andersen was trying to impart the wisdom that great rewards can come with change; it is through leaving everything that she is given the chance at a mortal soul. In the modern era, it reads more like a cautionary tale. By leaving everything for the prince, the mermaid traps herself, and there is no halfway for her. Either she gets the man, she dies, or he dies. Either way, it’s only through her suffering that she is able to gain life under humanities restrictions. Even after she is given the chance to gain an eternal life, the little mermaid has to contend with the actions of others instead of her own merits in order to gain her afterlife. We can only hope that whatever changes Disney makes to their animated classic, they make sure to add a little bit more to the cautionary aspect of leaving everything you’ve ever known behind for a man you’ve never met.
