Originally, I was not going to have a blog post ready for this week. That is one of the reasons this post isn’t up on the usual Monday. I just did a photo shoot with my new photographer this weekend, and I was going to wait until I had the photos back before I posted something new. However, I changed my mind after finishing one of my reading assignments for a class I am taking this quarter. While I may be an economics major, I like to have at least one class in my schedule per quarter that is a little random. I am grateful to have that flexibility in my schedule, but I think it is just a smart move for personal and academic growth. At what other point are you going to take a class on interpersonal dynamics, dinosaurs, or ancient art? While yes, I have taken all of the above at one point or another, this quarter my “fun class” is Scandinavian short story. The class just started, and we have only had two lectures so far, but in preparation for that third class, we were instructed to read Hans Christian Andersen’s version of The Little Mermaid. Upon seeing this on the syllabus, I was equal parts excited and nervous. Disney’s version of The Little Mermaid was my favorite movie as a kid. I had Disneyland passes growing up, and at the time, I was going to Disneyland so often that the Ariel character even knew me! She would hold up my pigtail braids and address me by name whenever I saw her. All of this only added to my love of the story. My personal attachment to the tale is rooted in it’s importance to my childhood. As with most fairytales, the original versions are often less lighthearted and magical as their Disney counterparts. For this reason, I was nervous about potentially ruining my favorite childhood story all for a class assignment. However, I found the story to be particularly interesting for a number of reasons, and wanted to compare the two versions of the tale in this week’s blog post.
For starters, there were a great deal of things that Andersen’s original and Disney’s adaptation have in common, including major plot points like the mermaid saving the prince in a shipwreck, wanting the prince to fall in love with her, and seeking out the sea witch’s help to accomplish her goal. Even some of the smaller details are consistent between the two, such as the mermaid being the youngest of her many sisters, her mother not being in the story (Andersen explains that her father was a widow), and the mermaid possessing and cherishing a statue resembling the prince. Disney even included details about the mermaid’s encounter with the sea witch into their classic film, such as the sea witch having two eels (Disney named them Flotsam and Jetsam), scenes being depicted in the smoke of the cauldron’s potion, and sad, but creepy, polyps that were far more aggressive in Andersen’s original than Disney’s cartoon.
However, there are a number of striking differences as well. One of the more prominent ones being the terms of the exchange between the mermaid and the sea witch. Because she wanted to go to land and have a life with the prince, the mermaid sought out the help of the sea witch. In exchange for a potion that would give her legs, the mermaid had to lose her voice. This much is consistent between both stories. Where Disney deviates from Andersen’s original is that the sea witch cut out the mermaid’s tongue to take her voice away, and getting her legs was supposed to be a painful process. Andersen often chose to compare the feeling to a sharp knife cutting her tail into two legs, and that each step the mermaid took with her new limbs would also feel like stepping on knives. In the children’s movie, Ariel is not in pain at all. However, the mermaid in Andersen’s tale pushes through the pain for her love of the prince.
One place where Disney completely deviates from Andersen’s original is the ending. Typical of Disney, Ariel and Eric get their happily ever after moment, and evil is defeated. The ending of Andersen’s version is certainly less joyful, for the mermaid is unsuccessful in her pursuit for the prince’s love, nearly kills him to get her mermaid life back, and died at the end by turning into one of the daughters of the air, which almost feels like a mermaid purgatory for those who attempted to obtain an immortal life for themselves beyond a life in the sea. Completely unprepared for this version of the end to the story, I was definitely happy that there is at least some hope that the mermaid’s actions were not all for nothing. Typically, I am always rooting for a happy ending. It is well known that the original tales Disney based their movies off of do not have the happily ever after Disney chose to employ, so I was rather relieved that the original The Little Mermaid did not have as melancholy of an end as it could have.
After reading all of this, you might be wondering why I keep using “the mermaid,” “the sea witch,” and “the prince,” instead of “Ariel,” “Ursula,” and “Prince Eric.” The reason is that Andersen never explicitly names the characters! Honestly, that helped a lot with not ruining my favorite childhood story. However, the biggest aid to preserving what my four-year-old self holds dear was that the story just felt so different. You can easily see where Disney added their magic to produce a happier story for that happily ever after conclusion and their young audience. Hans Christian Andersen’s original version of the tale was missing so many important details from the Disney movie that it didn’t feel like the same Ariel and Eric. They felt like different people who shared a strikingly similar storyline. In a way, I am incredibly grateful because I am able to differentiate the stories from each other and treat them separately as such.
This was my first time reading the original version of a story that Disney based one of their famous films off of. I expressed how apprehensive I was about reading Andersen’s version, but now that I have read it for myself, I am curious to read some of the other originals. The Disney cartoon versions are so different from the folk tales that I am able to read the originals without feeling like I am ruining my childhood. Perhaps I will be able to read more as part of my class. If we do, I will be sure to share more comparisons between the two versions.
xx
Emily
