Reading Notes: Hans Christian Andersen, Part B

This week, we are reading from the European unit, and I was immediately attracted to the option to read Hans Christian Andersen's fairy tales, adapted from his Fairy Tales and Stories. I have always heard that his original Little Mermaid is nothing like the Disney version with which I grew up, and was eager to discover those differences for myself. As such, I made the unconventional choice to read Part B of the unit first, which included the entirety of The Little Mermaid. Tomorrow, I will start again at the beginning and read Part A.

The Little Mermaid Statue in Copenhagen, Denmark

While Andersen's Mermaid certainly has darker themes than Disney's retelling, the hype surrounding the story had me expecting something particularly heinous. While I would argue that the fairy tale is not the most suitable for children, the story is not a miserable as I had anticipated. If I were to write my own story from the original Little Mermaid, I would definitely work to create something dark, yet meaningful and moving.

The Little Mermaid
The little mermaid is a princess, the youngest of the widowed king's daughters. She has been raised primarily by her grandmother, and spends her days tending to her garden and waiting her turn to travel to the surface. On her fifteenth birthday, the little mermaid is finally allowed to journey above the waves, and witnesses a shipwreck that results in her meeting the prince. The mermaid saves him from drowning, delivers him to shore, and then returns home, only to dream of how she might see him again. The mermaid's grandmother tells her that she may obtain a human's afterlife, but only if the prince loves her completely and shares a part of his human soul. The princess eventually visits the sea witch, who promises to grant the mermaid human legs, so that she may visit the prince in his world. In exchange for these legs, the mermaid agrees to a lifetime of pain in her feet, and allows the witch to cut out her tongue as payment.
As a human, the princess is cherished by the prince, but he does not love her romantically. This poses a significant problem - if the prince marries another, the little mermaid will be turned to sea foam immediately. After years of considering the mermaid his closest friend, the prince meets a bride. The mermaid's sisters attempt to rescue the mermaid from her fate, trading their hair for a knife from the sea witch. With this knife, the little mermaid is to kill the prince, thus sparing her own life. Instead, the mermaid tosses the knife back into the sea. For her kindness as a human, the mermaid is transformed into a daughter of the air, where she must serve another 300 years before entering the kingdom of heaven.