A New Take on The Little Mermaid
On authenticity vs. attachment, and the female sacrifice
The Little Mermaid, conceived by Hans Christian Andersen, is a character that perhaps every living soul in the world knows about, even if they haven’t read the book or watched the films based on the original fairy tale.
The Little Mermaid was made popular by Disney’s 1989 animated feature, with a “happily-ever-after” ending that sharply differs from the original tragedy-turned-redemption ending.
I first came to know The Little Mermaid through a coloring book when I was in kindergarten in Hong Kong. In Chinese, the translation for The Little Mermaid is “Beautiful Lady Fish.” I didn’t really know about the intricate story line until much later, when I watched the Disney film during my first year in America as a college student.
Despite my blurry memory of the story, one plot point stood out for me: The Little Mermaid trades her mesmerizing voice for a pair of human legs, so that she could walk toward the Prince’s palace in the hope that he would fall in love with and marry her.
Well, after some major plot twists for drama and suspension, Ariel the Mermaid and Eric the Prince do end up tying the knot. This ending seems to suggest — to girls — that making a handsome guy fall for you and then marry you is the ultimate prize in life worth sacrificing an essential part of yourself for.
This sacrifice has perplexed me since I was first exposed to the story as a young girl.
Why is romantic love so alluring that its pursuit supersedes the need to keep your own voice?
How can a couple be happy if one of them – the woman – is mute and therefore cannot be understood by the man?
Isn’t it terribly sad to become disabled even if you win love?
All these questions swirled around in my young mind. But eventually, my own inquisitive voice was squashed by the feel-good ending. That typical, happily-ever-after ending that sends a clear message to all girls that love is worth all the trouble after all.
Decades later, as I’m reclaiming my voice after a disastrous marriage and romantic partnership, the image of The Little Mermaid giving up her voice suddenly popped up. I have a hunch that Andersen did not write this fairy tale just to encourage little girls to chase after handsome guys in a faraway land by giving up a part of themselves that they treasure — their voice.
I decided to look up the original version and found that the plot was vastly different than the Disney version in many ways. As I moved along the plot, I found many parallels between the Little Mermaid’s life and mine within the context of my search for love in a foreign land and the sacrifice of my identity for the sake of romantic love.
In addition, having acquainted myself with the heart-wrenching stories of hundreds of women who have devoted themselves to their husbands and ended up sacrificing who they are in exchange of thanklessness and deep betrayal, I consider The Little Mermaid a cautionary tale for anyone who are conditioned as people-pleasers and by default abandon their needs and wants in exchange for the prize of attachment and belonging.
Here’s a comparison of the original plot of “The Little Mermaid” and my own relationship trajectory.
In the original story, published in 1873 as part of a collection of fairy tales for children, The Little Mermaid recounted the journey of a young mermaid princess who is willing to give up her life under the sea to obtain a human soul.
As a little girl, the Little Mermaid is fascinated by the human world. Her obsession leads her to gather “trinkets” about human beings in her grotto. There, she keeps a statue of a human boy, which she admires.
As a little girl, I was fascinated by the Western world. After watching a Japanese animated series “Candy, Candy,” I became obsessed with the image of a blond prince riding a white horse. The protagonist Candy falls in love with this prince and is saved by him. The idea of being rescued by a handsome blond guy one day might have entered my subsconscious.
Teenage Little Mermaid feels lonely and alienated from her family, and she yearns to explore the world above the ocean.
Teenage me felt extremely lonely and alienated. I had trouble fitting in at my secondary school, and my high-conflict family made me feel unmoored. I longed to leave my home and hometown to explore foreign countries. I did leave my hometown as a teenager and had my eyes on foreign men due to my own sexual trauma with men of my own culture.
When the Little Mermaid turns 15, she has a chance to rise to the surface of the ocean to take a peek at human life. It happens that she catches a glimpse of the birthday celebration of a handsome prince onboard a ship. She falls in love immediately. But a storm breaks out and sinks the ship. The prince is drowning. Being the sea creature that she is, the Little Mermaid saves him and brings him to shore. She drops him off at a nearby temple, and waits until a lady at the temple finds him. Sadly, when the prince comes to, the Little Mermaid is already gone. He doesn’t know it was she who rescued him.
There isn’t a straightforward parallel of my romantic journey and this plot point, but I resonate with the act of rescue, and have seen it in action in countless women’s relationships as well.
You see, if you come into contact with a “vulnerable narcissist” (defined by Ramani Durvasula PhD in her book “It’s Not You”), you are likely charmed by his ways or his looks, or both. When he notices that you have laid eyes on him, he would mirror your preferences so you immediately feel as if you’ve met a soulmate. Then he feigns vulnerability to evoke your empathy. This tactic works most effectively if you are a highly empathetic person. He might tell you his psychological wound or some misfortunes in life, to see if you play along with his hook-and-bait game. If you show him sympathy, voila! He’s got you. Then he continues to groom you and it’s just a matter of time before you start to save him from his own misery. You’d be listening to his gripe at length, helping him, fixing his problems, and heck, even moving in with him and taking care of his everyday chores, hoping that your actions will show him your love and devotion and “win” his love. But alas! At the end of the day, he’s only concerned with having his own needs met and getting undivided attention and adoration from you. He doesn’t appreciate all the hard work you’ve put in to make his life better and easier. He doesn’t really see you.
Unrecognized by the prince, the Little Mermaid is saddened. But she is undeterred in her desire to become a human, not only to be with the prince but also to possess a soul that will live forever in heaven. Mermaids, by contrast, will become seafoam when they die, even though they can live up to 300 years.
Notice how this original version emphasizes the Little Mermaid’s fascination for the eternal life that she believes only humans are privileged with. Through my lens of love, I interpret this as an aspiration for the spiritual and transformational quality of true intimate love between two people. It was how I envisioned romantic love to be, the essence of which transcends death and is everlasting.
In her extreme yearning, the Little Mermaid visits the Sea Witch, who warns her about the doomed fate of her attempts to win the prince’s love. But being an opportunist, the witch offers a potion that will grant the Little Mermaid human legs. The price: her voice — the most enchanting in the world. The offer is a one-way ticket. Once she drinks the potion and becomes a human, she can never go back to the sea as a mermaid. More conditions follow: the Little Mermaid can only get a human soul if the prince falls in love and marries her. Their conjugal union will ensure a part of his soul flows into her body. If she fails, and he marries someone else, the Little Mermaid will die with a broken heart and turn into sea foam.
This high-stake pivotal point in the story is mirrored in my own relationship trajectory. Whenever I committed myself to a relationship in the past, there was a voice in my head tempting and urging me to abandon myself and my own identity. Why? For the sake of obtaining a “divine union” with all its idealistic promises. The witch in my head implores: “You want to keep your tongue? Then you’ll risk losing a harmonious relationship with your man. Isn’t that all you’ve ever dreamt of having? Don’t you want to run away from all the screaming and cold wars in your childhood home and fix that with a perfect romance? But, if you swallow your tongue and keep quiet about who you really are and what you really want, then you’ll be rewarded with a lasting loving partnership – heaven on earth!”
Such is the sad story of countless women who stay in relationships where their true self is unseen, and their voice is unheard, because their wounded inner children, like mine, are conditioned to believe that trading their authentic self for the sake of connection is worth the whole world.
In the original story, we are told that drinking the potion makes the Little Mermaid feel the sharp pain of a sword cutting through her body. (Disney sanitized the pain.) Besides, the pain from the loss of her tail will always stay with her. With each step she takes, she can feel the pain of sharp knives piercing her feet.
This is a great analogy of how it feels when a woman loses her identity in a marriage or romantic partnership, especially one with a narcissist. The constant diminishing, dismissiveness, manipulation, lying and gaslighting are akin to a thousand paper cuts on our psyche.
Because the pain is excruciating, the Little Mermaid passes out after drinking the potion near the prince’s castle. When the prince finds her, he is enchanted by her beauty and elegance. He asks her to dance for him, and she does that while bearing the cutting pain at every step. Her pain seems to pay off, as the prince warms up to her and takes her in as his favorite companion. Because she’s mute, the prince finds her a wonderful confidant and shares his thoughts and feelings unbridled. Sadly, he is not in love with her. He treats her more like a pet than a romantic partner, and makes her sleep on the floor outside his bedroom door.
This is a poignant scene for me, and for millions and millions of women whose love for their partners are neglected, abused and unreciprocated because their men aren’t “in love” with them — they are “in love” with the women they are having affairs with. All the domestic services women provide to their partners, all the companionship and emotional support, even the child-rearing, don’t mean a thing. Not even their beauty and grace — as in many cases, the affair partners actually look less attractive. We are considered “wife appliances” just as the Little Mermaid is regarded as a “pet.” Heck, we don’t even get to sleep in the same bed as our partners, who are too busy sleeping in someone else’s bed.
Now the fairy tale is near the climax, where we brace for the unfolding of the Little Mermaid’s fate. Will she succeed in getting the prince to marry her?
She waits and waits only to find that the prince’s parents have arranged for him to marry a princess in the neighboring land. At first the prince doesn’t want to marry this princess because he doesn’t love her. He wants to marry the temple lady whom he thinks has rescued him. But the temple lady turns out to be the neighboring princess. A royal wedding is thus announced.
Here, my jaded eyes see how women are pushed aside by their cheating partners to hook up with someone else. They are abandoned as their men don’t even realize it’s their wives who have been sacrificing themselves to “rescue” them from misery. They mistakenly think that their extramarital love interests are their “true love.”
As the prince and princess tie their knot on a ship, the Little Mermaid's heart breaks. Flashbacks of all her sacrifices and all the pain she has endured for the prince appear in front of her eyes as she gasps for her last breaths. All of a sudden, her four sisters rise from under the sea, and hand her a dagger that the Sea Witch has given them in exchange for their long, beautiful hair. They tell their sister that if she kills the prince, she can return to her family under the sea as a mermaid, and end her suffering once and for all.
With her tender and empathetic heart, the Little Mermaid just can’t bring herself to kill the prince, who is asleep with his new wife. She drops the dagger and plunges into the water. The dawn breaks, and her body turns into sea foam. But miraculously, she hasn’t disappeared into thin air. Instead, she has transformed into a sylphid, a luminous and invisible spirit of the air. As the Little Mermaid rises into the sky, she is greeted by other sylphids. They welcome her and tell her that she has become like them because she strove with all her heart to obtain an immortal soul.
The Little Mermaid’s hard work doesn’t end there. Apparently, she has been granted an opportunity to do good deeds for the remainder of her 300-year life span. At the end of her life, she will finally receive her soul and rise to heaven.
Poor Little Mermaid! She endures pain and suffering, loses her voice, is unseen, abandoned and betrayed. Yet she is too good-hearted to take revenge on the man for whom she has made a tremendous amount of sacrifice. Even as she makes her final sacrifice — of her own life, and is saved from an imminent demise, she still has to work hard and sacrifice some more to obtain a seat in heaven.
Well, having listened to the stories of hundreds of women who have been cheated by their spouses after marriages of all lengths (sometimes up to 50 years), I can say with confidence that the Little Mermaid’s suffering is an accurate and apt reflection of their — and my — suffering.
As for the long wait to ascend to heaven, well, even that part is true for a great percentage of us, who have to wait patiently for the Karma Train to arrive.
What message did you get from The Little Mermaid when you first read/saw it? I asked my fellow Ponders and here are some interesting answers (click on the note below to expand to see the comments). Thank you,
, , and for sharing your unique perspectives:If you are in a marriage or romantic partnership, do you find yourself suppressing your voice or tamping down your true self for the sake of preserving harmony in your relationship? Do you ignore gut feelings that something is “off” in order to maintain your attachment with your loved one?
There’s nothing wrong or shameful about wanting a harmonious relationship or maintaining a secure bond with the one you have committed your love and life to. It’s a natural human need. But if that need is achieved at the expense of your authenticity, the consequences can be the loss of your own unique voice and your sense of true self.
I invite you to watch this short video of Dr. Gabor Maté on the subject of authenticity vs. attachment:
No matter how your story has turned out so far, it’s never too late to reclaim your authentic voice and sing to your fullest potential. I’m learning how to do that. Will you join me?
Well done! I appreciated how you threaded your personal experience, the Disney version and the original Anderson version of the story. You've inspired me to research what Carl Jung's analysis was and how he views the archetypes. I can only imagine it is more empowering than the Disney message.
Great take on a story whose message is, to me, a bit insidious. Even in the Disney version, to give up one's voice is no small thing--certainly nothing we should be encouraging little girls to aspire to. And I really enjoyed being taken back through the original Hans Christian Andersen, alongside its parallels to your own stories and that of others. Thanks for sharing, my friend!