The Little Mermaid

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The Danish author Hans Christian Andersen wrote several dozen fairy-tales, many of them having little to do with fairies, as such (in contrast to the stories compiled by the Brothers Grimm), the one that appears to be most popular being The Little Mermaid, helped along by the hugely successful animated feature by Disney.

Hans Christian Andersen's stories are frequently poignant and tragic.  There is the story of the Steadfast Tin Soldier, who loves the ballerina doll.  This story was done beautifully in Fantasia 2000, and is probably the loveliest piece of animation there, reminiscent of the artwork in Snow White, and Pinocchio.




The intended audience of Mermaid, little ladies of around 12, simply adored that movie, though I did not like the representation of the Little Mermaid.  The mermaid in the Andersen story was, as I remember, a lot less self-assured and well-adjusted than the spunky redhead in the Disney feature; she was hopelessly romantic, a typical Victorian teenage heroine.  The celebrated statue in the Copenhagen harbor features a rather big-boned young lady built on rangy Scandinavian lines, but viewed from afar, she made a picture that resonated with several generations of sentimental young men (including myself) of a mermaid pining for the boy she had rescued in a storm.  The most common angle of view of the world-famous sculpture is the one on the right, where the sculptor has got just the perfect angle for the body, expressing hopeless longing.  But you can almost imagine the stubbornness hidden there, the plans being considered and rejected, the sheer persistence of teenage infatuation.  If you've never experienced that desperate desire to possess the forbidden object of your love, it is both a blessing and a curse!

It seems very much as though Andersen understood youthful obsession very well.  One of his other fascinating stories was Snow Queen.  This story of epic proportions scaled-down to teenage size, is of a girl who falls in love with a beautiful boy, who is seduced by the visiting Snow Queen, and taken away to her frozen domain in the arctic snows.  The devastated young girl undertakes a search for the boy, and enlists the help of a robber girl, a rough and rude young lady from essentially a gangster family.  The gangster gal's heart is melted by the sad story of our little lovelorn lady, and the unlikely pair renew the hunt for the boy.  I will let you find out how it all ends, but suffice it to say that the story is so rich and fascinating that it is the basis for at least a couple of modern fantasies, notably one by Joan D. Vinge, a two-part science fiction fantasy consisting of The Snow Queen and The Summer Queen.

The Robber Girl provides a whimsical counterpoint that was quite unexpected in the Anderson story, and at least one of the modern versions of the story I've read has the Robber Girl in it as well.

We have come to expect fairy tales to be fantasy creations, but in many of them there are morals as well.  Morals of redemption and loyalty are welcome, though one wonders whether children should not be taught that mindless and unjustified loyalty does not make sense.  Loyalty for its own sake was a feudal value that society has done well to jettison.

There are other interesting Anderson fairy tales that make less sense to me; for instance the Little Match Girl.  (The girls are generally little, for one reason or another.  You sort of expect the Snow Queen to be little, but then she would be a lot more sympathetic than she deserves.)  I have to wonder whether there was some sort of hidden political message in The Little Match girl.

Arch, who thought he had a lot more to say about this subject than it turned out in the end...