The Dark Origin Story Of The Little Mermaid

In Disney's version of "The Little Mermaid," the prince in the story is named Eric, but in Hans Christian Andersen's version, he's unnamed. Eric is handsome and dashing — unsurprising given Disney's storytelling style — while in Andersen's version, he watches enslaved girls dance, according to a translation of Andersen's story by the Hans Christian Andersen Centre at the University of Southern Denmark. Among the girls is the mermaid, after she seals the deal with the sea witch to emerge on dry land.

A prince watching enslaved girls dance is clearly offensive to modern sensibilities. What's more, in Andersen's version, the mermaid's relationship with the prince is pretty toxic, and he never seems to have any intention to marry her. Which brings up another significant difference between Disney and Andersen: The original fairytale mermaid doesn't even get the prince. He ends up with someone else, and the mermaid dies in what amounts to suicide, unable to stab the prince asleep next to his new bride.

As consolation, the mermaid doesn't become sea foam once she's dead. According to Andersen, mermaids have no soul. Instead, she goes on to live among the "daughters of the air," fragile airborne-based creatures, who, like mermaids, "do not have an immortal soul either, but they can earn one by their good deeds," as Andersen wrote it. This works out, because in the Danish author's version, when the mermaid makes her land-based excursion, she can never go home, anyway.

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