The Little Mermaid

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

For the 1989 Disney animated film, see The Little Mermaid (1989 film). For other uses, see The Little Mermaid (disambiguation).

The Little Mermaid (Den lille havfrue) is a fairy tale about a young mermaid who is willing to give up everything to gain the love of a prince and an eternal soul. The story was written by the Danish author Hans Christian Andersen, and was first published in 1872.

1 Story overview
2 Discussion
3 Adaptations of The Little Mermaid
4 The Little Mermaid statue
5 External links

[edit] Story overview

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

The Little Mermaid lives at the sea bottom with her father the Sea King, her grandmother, and her five older sisters, born one year apart. When a mermaid turns 15, she is allowed to swim to the surface to watch the world above, and as the sisters become old enough one of them visits the surface every year. As each of them returns the Little Mermaid listens longingly to their descriptions of the surface and human beings.

When the Little Mermaid turns 15 she ventures to the surface. She sees a ship with a handsome prince, and falls in love with him from a distance. There comes a great storm, and the prince almost drowns, but the Little Mermaid saves him and she delivers him unconscious to the shore near a temple. Here she waits until he is found by a young girl from the temple. The prince never sees the Little Mermaid.

The Little Mermaid asks her grandmother whether humans can live forever if they do not drown. She is told that no, humans have an even shorter lifespan than mermaids. Mermaids live for 300 years, but when they die they turn to sea foam and cease to exist. Humans, on the other hand, have a short lifespan on earth, but they have an eternal soul that lives on in heaven even after they die. The Little Mermaid spends her days longing for the prince and for an eternal soul. At last she goes to the Sea Witch who sells her a potion that gives her legs, in exchange for her tongue; the Little Mermaid has the most intoxicating voice in the world. But drinking the potion will make her feel like a sword is being passed through her, and walking on her feet will feel like walking on knives. And she will only get a soul if the prince loves her and marries her, for then a part of his soul will flow into her. Otherwise, at dawn on the first day after he marries another woman, the Little Mermaid will die broken-hearted and turn to sea foam like other merfolk.

The Little Mermaid drinks the potion and meets the prince, who is attracted to her beauty and grace even though she is mute. Most of all he likes to see her dance and she dances for him even though it feels like dancing on knives. The prince loves her like one loves a child.

The time comes when the king decides that the prince is to marry the neighboring king's daughter. The prince tells the Little Mermaid that he will not marry the princess because he does not love her. He can only love the young girl who once saved his life, the girl who unfortunately belongs to the temple. He also tells the Little Mermaid that she is beginning to take the temple girl's place in his heart. However, it turns out that the princess is the temple girl; she had only been sent to the temple to be educated. The prince loves her and the wedding is announced.

The prince and princess are married and the Little Mermaid's heart breaks. She thinks of all that she has given up in order to be with the prince and to gain an eternal soul - her beautiful voice, her wonderful home, her loving family, her life - and of all the pain that she has suffered; all without the prince ever having a thought thereof. She despairs, but before dawn her sisters come to her and give her a knife that the Sea Witch has given them in exchange for their hair. If the Little Mermaid slays the prince with the knife she will become a mermaid again and be able to live out her full life under the sea.

But the Little Mermaid cannot bring herself to kill the sleeping prince lying with his bride and, as dawn breaks, throws herself into the sea. Here her body dissolves into sea foam, but instead of ceasing to exist, she feels the warmth of the sun; She has turned into a spirit, a daughter of the air. The other daughters of the air tell her that she has become like them because she, like them, strove with all her heart to gain an eternal soul. As a mermaid her gaining a soul was dependent on another, the prince; but as a daughter of the air she will earn her own soul by doing good deeds. When 300 years have passed she will have earned her soul and will rise into the kingdom of God. This time can be shortened: With each good child she finds she subtracts a year, while she adds a day for each tear she must shed over a wicked child.

[edit] Discussion

Many critics considered the last episode with its happy end to be rather "stuck on", with the tale's natural dramatic ending being the moment of supreme tragic renunciation when the Mermaid chooses to die irrevocably rather than kill her beloved prince. Debate on this point has been a continuous topic in Andersen scholarship more or less since such scholarship existed, and is likely to continue. (See [1])

From a dramatic standpoint, the Little Mermaid could have logically ended one of three ways: as it is shown above, as her turning into sea foam rather than face the hardship of killing her beloved (denoting sacrificial love), or as a third ending which is not mentioned. Her refusal to kill her beloved may have won for her a soul, since she proved she possessed human love and compassion, thus it could also end realistically as her not turning into sea foam but instead becoming a real human.

[edit] Adaptations of The Little Mermaid

In 1957, the French composer Germaine Tailleferre (of Les Six) wrote a three-act opera version of "The Little Mermaid" (called "La Petite Sirène" in French) on a libretto adapted by Philippe Soupault. It was broadcast on French National Radio in 1959.

One of the earliest animated films, based on the fairytale, was the Soviet one, entitled Rusalochka (The Little Mermaid), which was released in 1968. In 1976 a live action film, entitled Rusalochka, a joint production by the USSR and Bulgaria, was released.

In 1989 the fairytale was made into an animated film by the Walt Disney Company; see The Little Mermaid (1989 film). The ending of this version was much happier than that in the original book, since the mermaid (named 'Ariel' here) did survive her ordeals and married the handsome and feisty Prince Eric. Ariel has become one of the most popular Disney heroines so far, due to her tomboyish and impulsive personality, and has been featured in the Disney Princess series.

Disney's adaption of The Little Mermaid is the most recognised film adaption of the novel and which most people generally associate with.

In 1987, Shelley Duvall produced a version of the story for her highly acclaimed Showtime series Faerie Tale Theatre. This version featured Pam Dawber as the title character, Treat Williams as the handsome prince, Helen Mirren as the prince's fiance, Brian Dennehy as Neptune, the Mermaid's father, and Karen Black as the sea-witch.

Golden Films adapted the story in 1992 and the film was distributed into video and years later into DVD by GoodTimes Entertainment. This version stays between the original tale and the Disney version, for GoodTimes' The Little Mermaid featured an only semi-happy ending.

The 1984 Ron Howard film Splash starring Tom Hanks and Daryl Hannah was loosely based on the same premise.

In the late 1990s, HBO's fairy tales series, "Happily Ever After," did an episode based on "The Little Mermaid", with an Asian twist. The mermaid was portrayed as a black-haired girl named Mija with dark skin and a yellow tail. She is most likely one of the few mermaids to be fully dressed when not in human form, since as a mermaid she is wearing a yellow dress.

In Thomas Mann's Doktor Faustus, the mad composer Adrian Leverkühn claims to have taken the little mermaid into concubinage. Her name, he says, is Hyphialta. The parallels (and reversals) between the Faust legend, in which a man of genius sells his soul to the devil, and the story of the Little Mermaid, are thus made manifest.

In 2004, the animated TV series "Hans Christian Andersen The Fairytaler" had an episode telling the story of The Little Mermaid. This version stayed true to the original story, without changing the sad ending. The Fairytaler at IMDB.com

The Royal Danish Ballet commissioned Russian American composer Lera Auerbach to create a modern rendition of this fairy tale. It was choreographed by John Neumeier and premiered on April 15, 2005.

The musical Once on This Island is based on the novel My Love, My Love by Rosa Guy, which is a retelling of Hans Christian Andersen's The Little Mermaid.

In 1991, the 26-episode TV series Saban's Adventures of the Little Mermaid, an English dub of the Japanese/South Korean co-production Ningyo Hime Marina no Boken (The Adventures of Mermaid Princess Marina), briefly ran in North American syndication after having aired originally on Japan's NHK.

In Japan, the 1970 Toei Animation TV series Mahou no Mako-chan (Mako-chan's Magic) was inspired by the story. Screenwriter Masaki Tsuji (alias "Shinobu Urakawa") moved the setting to modern-day Japan. Mermaid-turned-human Mako Urashima attends school while pining for the handsome Akira, whom she rescued from a shipwreck, and helping others with her magic pendant, the "Mermaid's Tear." French, Italian, Spanish and Polish dubs were made of this series, which remains unreleased in English.

Tomoharu Katsumata directed the 1975 feature-length film アンデルセン童話にんぎょ姫(Anderusen Dowa Ningyo Hime) (Andersen's Story: The Mermaid Princess) for Toei Animation, which depicted the mermaid as a blonde named Marina. The film followed the plot of the original story more faithfully than Disney's version, including the sad ending, although Toei, like Disney, added a comic-relief sidekick (in this case, Fritz the dolphin). Dubbed into English, it was released on video in the United States in 1979.

The story plotline somewhat showed in the Japanese drama "Heaven's Coin III". When the main male character, Kazuki, runs out of air while scuba-diving, the main female character, Mahiru, sees Kazuki's friend, Mizuki, yelling for help. Mahiru jumps into the water and rescues Kazuki. Mahiru kisses the unconscious Kazuki in order to give him the "kiss of life". When she sees Mizuki, she runs away. Later, when Kazuki rescues Mahiru from her abusive stepfather, Mizuki quotes that Mahiru was the "real mermaid" (Mizuki lied earlier that she was the one that saved Kazuki). Like the mermaid when she became human, Mahiru can't talk either because she's deaf. There are other similar things from the story throughout the series.

In 2003-2004, Mermaid Melody Pichi Pichi Pitch aired on TV Tokyo. It, too, was inspired by The Little Mermaid.

Caitlín R. Kiernan's short story, "Tears Seven Times Salt" (Tales of Pain and Wonder) is a modern day retelling of "The Little Mermaid," set in New York City in the early 1990s. A young girl named Jenny Haniver believes that a race of mermaids inhabits the sewers and the longs to join them. This dark fantasy story draws heavily on Andersen's original version of the fairy tale. The title is taken from Shakespeare's play Hamlet. The character Jenny Haniver also appears in Kiernan's story "Glass Coffin," an urban fantasy retelling of both "Snow White" and "Sleeping Beauty."

In an episode of the Japanese animated series .hack//SIGN, Morganna (the villain) recounts the Hans Christian Anderson story, focussing on the sad ending to discourage Tsukasa (the hero) from leaving the online world.

Episodes 9 and 10 of the anime Kaleido Star dealt with the production of a stage version of The Little Mermaid, including changes such as incorporating a happy ending into the story.

In 1992, Sade (band) used The Little Mermaid story for the No Ordinary Love video.

Danish director Lars Von Trier's 1996 film Breaking the Waves seems to use The Little Mermaid as a basis for its plot and explores many of the same themes of freedom, love and sacrifice.^{[citation needed]} It tells the story of Bess, a young, innocent girl from an isolated, religious community in the Scottish Highlands who falls in love with an outsider, Jan a Danish oil-rigger. During the film he is severly injured in an industrial accident but her love for him is such that she misguidedly commits a series of sacrifices believing that God will heal him in return. The film's story, themes, Danish provenance and obvious use of ocean imagery lend credence to the idea that this is a retelling of Anderson's story.^{[citation needed]}

[edit] The Little Mermaid statue

The Little Mermaid is a famous tourist attraction

A statue of the Little Mermaid sits on a rock in the Copenhagen harbour (at 55°41′34.39″N, 12°35′56.59″E). This small and unimposing statue is a symbol of Copenhagen, and a major tourist attraction.

The statue was commissioned in 1909 by Carl Jacobsen, son of the founder of Carlsberg, after he had been fascinated by a ballet about the fairytale. The sculptor Edward Eriksen created the statue, which was unveiled on 23 August 1913. He used his wife Eline Eriksen as the model.

This statue has been vandalised several times, but has each time been restored. On 24 April 1964, the statue's head was sawn off and stolen by politically oriented artists of the situationist movement, amongst them Jørgen Nash. The head was never recovered and a new head was produced and placed on the statue. On 22 July 1984, her right arm was sawn off. The arm was returned 2 days later by two embarrassed young vandals. In 1990 another attempt was made to cut her head off, which resulted in an 18 cm deep cut in the neck. On 6 January 1998, she lost her head for the second time, the culprits were never found, but the head was returned anonymously to a nearby TV station, and on 4 February the head was back on.

Red paint has been thrown on her several times, including one episode in 1961 where her hair was painted red and a bra was painted on her. On 11 September 2003, the statue was blasted off its rock, possibly with dynamite. The Little Mermaid was also draped in a burka as a statement about Turkey joining the European Union. On March 8, 2006, a dildo was attached to the statue's hand, green paint was dumped over it, and the words March 8 were written on it. It is suspected that this vandalism has something to with International Women's Day (which is on March 8) and that it was committed by anti-feminists. [2] On March 3, 2007, the statue was again covered with pink paint. Recently, Copenhagen officials have announced that the statue may be moved further out in the harbour, as to avoid vandalism and tourists climbing onto it.

The relatively small size of the statue typically surprises tourists visiting for the first time. The Little Mermaid statue is only 1.25 meter high and weighs about 175 kg.

There are similarities between the Little Mermaid statue and the Pania of the Reef statue on the beachfront at Napier in New Zealand, and some similarities in the Little Mermaid and Pania tales. The statue of a woman diver (titled "Girl in a Wetsuit" by Elek Imredy) in Vancouver, Canada was placed there when, unable to obtain permission to reproduce the Copenhagan statue, Vancouver authorities selected a modern version.

An undamaged copy of the statue is located in Solvang, California.