Thumbelina

All right. A break from Beauty and the Beast today, since I’m starting to run out of steam. A couple hours ago I watched Don Bluth’s Thumbelina, so I thought that would be a good fairy tale to talk about.

It’s weird; I thought I remembered this movie very clearly from my childhood, but it was almost completely unfamiliar. Thumbelina, the character, was exactly as I remembered her. But there were so many things I didn’t recognize at all, and specific things I thought I remembered, like Thumbelina’s mother (younger in my memories) and the ending scene (dozens of fairies emerging from flowers), weren’t there.

So I don’t know what I was remembering. I did some quick research, and there don’t seem to have been any other Thumbelina movies I may have confused it with.

Anyway. This, like The Princess and the Pea and The Snow Queen, is one of Hans Christian Andersen’s few straightforwardly happy stories. I reread it just now, so I haven’t had a chance to really process my thoughts yet; this’ll be a little rambly.

One thing I wasn’t expecting is that Thumbelina’s mom specifically asked for a tiny child. (And got her from a witch for 12¢.) Why would you specifically want a Polly Pocket daughter? She’d be so easy to hurt. You could step on her or knock her off a shelf. You could set a glass on top of her or vacuum her right up.

And, like, what kind of life is this poor kid gonna have? It’s gotta be hard making friends with people 12 times your size. And forget about romantic relationships. This whole story made a lot more sense before I realized that Thumbelina’s size was her mom’s idea.

Everyone wants to marry this tiny girl. A frog, then a mole. Why would they want to marry a tiny human? What’s wrong with other frogs and moles?

I’m a little concerned that Thumbelina never made it back to her mom. Everything starts when she’s taken in the night by a frog to be her son’s bride. Thumbelina escapes that and winds up stuck with a May-fly, until he decides she’s ugly because she doesn’t look like a May-fly. She spends an entire summer on her own in the forest, gets taken in by a field mouse , and spends the entire winter and following summer with her.

That’s a bit of a pattern for Andersen, actually—it happens in The Snow Queen, too. Girl with apparently loving parents takes off, goes on an adventure that takes literal years, no big.

Anyway, she’s supposed to be marrying the field mouse’s neighbor the mole, but ends up running off with a swallow, then meeting a fairy prince just her size and marrying him. And then he changes her name from Thumbelina to Maia. I don’t know what that’s about, exactly, and I haven’t been able to find any analysis in a cursory internet search. A project for another day, I suppose.

Thumbelina was published two years before The Little Mermaid. I’ve talked about The Little Mermaid before, here and here. Specifically, I’ve talked about how Andersen was depressed and felt like an outsider, in part because of his sexuality. Now, Thumbelina and The Little Mermaid are both about young women who are outsiders. But there’s a significant difference.

Thumbelina is desired for her strangeness. A frog, a bug, and a mole all want to be with her, because she is different and beautiful. For a while it seems as if she might agree to marry the mole, who can provide for her and isn't a bad person, exactly, just very, very different from her. But ultimately she chooses to go back out into the sun, and wait for the person she truly belongs with.

The Little Mermaid falls in love, makes incredible physical changes for the man she loves, and still isn't enough. She never finds love or acceptance, and eventually chooses to die rather than hurt the man she loves in order to return home.

So I wonder what happened to Andersen in those two years. He wrote a story about someone who was different and celebrated for it, who persevered and eventually found love. And then he wrote a story about someone who was different, tried and failed to fit in, and died alone.

Overall, I definitely prefer the message in Thumbelina.

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On the Nature of the Mer-Soul: A Question

(Yes, I am here again, and I will wring a happy ending out of this story if it kills me.)

Per her agreement with the Sea Witch, the Little Mermaid was to receive legs and a human soul in exchange for her tongue, contingent on her marriage to the prince. The direct physical exchange, tongue for legs, was made on the spot.

Both legs and the potential soul were cancelled in favor of sea-foaminess upon her unequivocal failure to marry the prince, i.e. his marriage to someone else.

Now, my question regards that potential soul—namely, is it indeed potential, or an item of actual existence? Did the exchange go tongue for legs, marriage for soul? Like a pay half now, pay half when the job is done kind of deal?

In that case the Little Mermaid would be a mermaid with legs until her marriage, at which point the soul would kick in and she would be human.

Alternatively, it may have happened all at once. For the price of just one tongue, you too can experience legs and soul for an unlimited time! (Fine print: Prices and shipping may vary. Only valid at participating locations. Final purchase dependent on successful completion of wedding ceremony. Side effects may include, but are not limited to, death and transformation into sea foam.)

In this case, the Little Mermaid would actually be a Little Human from her arrival on land right up until her untimely demise.

Then the question becomes, if the soul was ever present, when exactly did it depart? Did it cease to exist the moment the prince said “I do”? Or did it happen when the rest of her turned to sea foam?

And then we must consider the nature of the soul itself. The story has confirmed that souls may be created; does this mean that they may also be destroyed? But the text does specify, on multiple occasions, that we are dealing with an immortal soul. So our final question is, if the soul comes into existence at the same time as the legs, does it go poof when things take a turn for the foamy, or does it, true to its immortal nature, go up into Heaven while the body goes down into the sea?

(This is all, of course, being considered in light of the version where the mermaid dies, rather than the one where she becomes a Daughter of the Air and spends a few centuries earning a soul; that version opens up a whole slew of theological issues in regards to faith vs. works. We don’t have time for that. Maybe next week.)

And in the end, it all comes down to what it always comes down to, for me, when we talk about The Little Mermaid. Does she get the better end of the deal? Can we count this as a happy ending?

Zombies, Mermaids, Beasts

So I think I’m writing a movie review? Sort of? At this point I’m willing to write down whatever words manage to pop into my head, so this is what we’re going with. But I promise some fairy tales, too.

Okay. I’ve wanted to watch Warm Bodies forever. Like, since it came out, so for at least three years. And I finally got around to it over Christmas. Warm Bodies, for those of you who don’t remember or never found out, is about an awkward zombie boy who falls in love with a pretty human girl, and wants to make out with her instead of eating her brain. Talk about your star-crossed love.

Zombie Boy—we call him R—kinda eats her boyfriend’s brain. Then he kinda takes her to his zombie home in the zombie-infested airport. They hang for a few days, and then he helps her get home to her family and all the other humans whose brains he hasn’t eaten yet. And throughout this entire process, he’s becoming more and more human.

The movie ends with them finding the cure for zombie-ism, which—spoiler alert!—is the power of love, naturally.

You know, I used to think the power of love was pretty cheesy as far as sci-fi/fantasy problem solving goes. And, okay, I will not be getting over The Swan Princess Christmas anytime soon. (I can’t actually find the clip I’m thinking of here, but this one generally sums up why I think the power of love is kinda cringe-worthy.)

And then, well, I decided to graduate with a paper on the transforming power of love in folk and fairy tales. So. Anyway, we’ll come back to that. Right now, we’re gonna talk about how I ended up writing about a zombie movie.

I'm watching with my brother, is the first thing. And it's late at night and we're both a little sleep deprived. So he asks, you know, rhetorically, why this zombie kid is hoarding all this random stuff like vinyl and crap. And I say he wants to be where the people are. He wants to be part of their world. And I’m just messing around, right? But he says, “He’s a zombie, Jenny, not the little mermaid,” and that’s when I realize, he totally is.

Non-human, hoarding human stuff? Check.

Without a soul? Dead, so probably check.

In love with unattainable human? Check.

Unable to speak? Check.

Guys, this is some straight up Enchanted Bride/Bridegroom stuff right here. I mean, there’s the Little Mermaid checklist. Let’s go through the steps I used in that Beauty and the Beast Paper.

Cursed because of some creepy incest crap? No backstory provided, but we’re gonna put that one down as unlikely. Oh well.

Kidnaps the crush? Check.

Sees error of his ways, gets her home again? Check.

Girl goes back for him? Technically he tracks her down again, but the feeling, on her part, is definitely there. We’ll check it.

Beast turns into cute dude? Check. With a bleeding gunshot wound to prove it.

Or, what about that bit that bothers me most, the thing I always come back to: the Beast that must seem dumb like an animal, that lost little boy trapped inside his head alone forever, never able to express himself, to make the others understand. That, I think, is R's monologue, is what drew me to him so quickly.

Okay, enough with the checklists. My point is—well. I’m not quite sure what my point is yet.  (My teachers despaired, guys. We were supposed to be all about that Socratic thinking, but I am helplessly Aristotelian. We don’t break down the main point here. We start with the small stuff, and we work our way up. And up, and up, until something starts making sense.)

Maybe the point is that the power of love can actually be powerful, that we can use it in fiction and real life. That love matters, that love can change things, that this is a reoccurring theme for a reason, and everything doesn't have to be horrifically cheesy.

Maybe the point is that you guys should watch this movie. Maybe it's that I just like the sound of my own voice. (Or the sight of my own typing, rather.) Maybe it's that R, like Disney's Beast, is actually kinda more appealing pre-transformation. I don't know, guys. I watched the movie. I made the connection. Go make your own point--my work here is done.

The Night the Mermaid Reclaimed Her Voice

The night her prince said yes to another woman

The mermaid sat at the edge of the motel pool

Frozen by a late fall chill

The night he left her

The mermaid screamed into the burnt out streetlights

Testing the voice he’d once tried to steal

The night her prince said yes

She danced on broken ankles

Thinking how he never listened

All those days she used to yell

The night he left her

She plunged a knife in the pool to shatter the ice

She shucked off the trappings of the life he led

And dived naked into the ice cold chlorine

When the prince left the mermaid behind

The mermaid left man

With prayers for another soon-to-be-broken girl

When the prince said yes, the mermaid swam home

And He Became a Handsome Prince Part III: The Release

(Part One)
(Part Two)

            There comes a turning point, in each of these relationships, which makes the ultimate breaking of the curse possible. This happens when the beast, moving past his own hurt to see what he has inflicted, comes to love the beauty enough to let her go.

            By the time the beauties dare ask for an escape, relationships have drastically improved. The beauties are still enamored with the men they meet at night, but in the daytime their relationships are friendly. One might, perhaps, cry Stockholm Syndrome, but the beauties are eager to escape, and often return only from some sense of duty, or, perhaps, an interest in the trappings of captivity, love and devotion coming slightly later. Dreams of princes and lives in palaces, however, are not enough to cure homesickness.

            In The Beauty and the Beast, Beauty begs for a two month visit with her family, promising to return at the end of that time. He responds, “I can’t refuse you anything, even though it may cost me my life” (Zipes 181). He explains that he thinks he will die without her, but though he asks her to return, and though she promises to do so, the matter is left entirely in her hands. He presents her with a wishing ring which can transport her to any location she chooses, and she wishes herself away. He makes no attempt to follow her or summon her back when she passes the two month line, but sits quietly in his castle, dying of sorrow. He has seen that she deserves the freedom he was denied, and he has given it freely, no longer expecting anything in return.

            The heroine of “East O’ the Sun, West O’ the Moon,” too, has expressed some homesickness, “[so] one Sunday the White Bear came and said, now they could set off to see her father and mother” (Asbjørnsen 12). She rides his back to her parents’ home, and he leaves her there, with a promise to return and a request that she not speak to her mother alone.

            Of course, this is only the first act of the story, so things cannot go too smoothly. She does speak to her mother alone, and her mother raises admittedly reasonable concerns about the unseen figure her daughter is sleeping with every night. This will significantly complicate the story arc and the traditional pattern of Release and Return. After the bear sets her free, the Beauty will respond with a betrayal—worried by the conversation with her mother, she will light a candle to see with whom she sleeps at night. This violates the terms of his curse, a curse of which she was never made aware, and sets off a chain of events in which she is once more released. Left to her own devices after he is swept away by his troll stepfamily, she must make a much more serious decision to return to him, described in the following section, in order to set the story back on its natural path.

            The white bear was to last one year without the girl succumbing to curiosity, and failed a month short of the goal. Had he not returned her home for that one month, the curse would already have been broken by that time, but he chooses to put her freedom before his own.

            In Hans Christian Andersen’s “The Little Mermaid,” one can see one of the greatest examples of sacrifice for the beloved. The mermaid—the beast of this story—has already given up her family, home, and voice for a chance to be with her prince, but now her life is at stake. There is no chance for a happy ending with the prince; he has already married another. She has a choice, now, having failed in her mission to win his love. Either she can die, or she can take his life instead. Provided with this escape clause by her sisters, “she looked at the sharp knife, and again fixed her eyes upon the Prince… and the knife trembled in the sea maid’s hands. But then she flung it far away into the waves” (Andersen 558). The mermaid chooses a beauty who cannot even return her affections over herself, and she releases him from any expectations or obligations by sacrificing her life for him.

This section begins with monsters loving in the same way they have been loved: selfishly, possessively, with little concern for the feelings of the beloved. Until they move past this, toward a purer form of love, the story is stalled. The beast must heal emotionally before he can be healed physically, and he must learn to love others not as he has been loved in the past, but as they deserve to be loved, freely and unselfishly. The beast must learn not to act like a monster before any transformation can occur. Then, “[having] truly become himself, the hero or heroine has become worthy of being loved” (Bettelheim 278).

Screw That

Sometimes love hurts. Maybe most times. Maybe all times. Maybe that’s the way it’s supposed to be, the way it has to be. Because love means change, and change is never easy. It’s even harder when you have to change from a monster into a man, and I guess that’s what I was planning to write tonight, but screw that. We’re tangenting. We’re tangenting hard.

Because it isn’t fair. Why should he have to learn to be a man? He never asked to be a man, or a monster. He’s just some poor little boy who got used, and it isn’t fair. And the little mermaid? Screw that prince, girl. You should have stuck that knife in his chest when you had the chance. Girl, you should have lived. He didn’t care about you. He didn’t care about anything. Girl, he killed you long before he said yes to another woman. You fought hard for your humanity, girl. You sacrificed everything you had for it, and he still consigned you to the stupid doggy bed in the stupid hallway. You deserved better, girl. You deserved to live.

So forget about love and all its pain. Screw that. You fight, and you live, and you don’t put everything you have into someone who will never give anything back. That beauty will never see that you were never a beast, boy. She’ll never understand how that fairy hurt you, and no matter what you, she’ll always believe that everything you are is only your fault. So rip her throat out while you have the chance. Those fangs are all you have left, boy. You better fight to keep them.

And stick that knife in him now, girl, now before it’s too late. You loved him, and you gave him your life. And your sisters loved you, and they gave you the chance to take it back. Screw him, girl. All he ever gave you was a pillow outside his door.

You deserve more. You deserve so much more. Don’t let them hurt you. You have to live. You have to fight for what’s yours.

The Little Mermaid

(originally posted on Tumblr)

Mermaids are popular lately. I guess that makes now as good a time as any to talk about Hans Christian Andersen’s The Little Mermaid.

Which desperately needs to be talked about. Seriously, the situation is dire.

(Mermaid, Jenny Prater, 2015)

Everyone knows the Disney version, which I happen to like very much, but it’s a different story, about different things. Starting with the Disney version, we’re all trained to see Prince Charming as the only possible happy ending.

Most people also know that in Andersen’s version, the mermaid dies in the end. And this is where things get difficult. First, there are a lot of picture books that end with her dying, and they have Andersen’s name on the front, so naturally everyone assumes they’re telling the original story.  If you read a twenty page picture book that was just the Disney story condensed, until suddenly it ended with death, you did not read the original.

Also, there’s this idea going around that she committed suicide because the prince didn’t love her. That is not what happened at all, and I don’t know how the rumor got started, but it really bugs me.

So I’ve got a collection of Andersen’s fairy tales in front of me right now, and I’m actually really frustrated because the title page doesn’t name a translator, but it’s got 47 of his stories in it, and my dad bought it in Denmark. The Little Mermaid is 35 pages without illustrations, I have done my research, and I’m fairly sure it’s the real, full story.

On to the summary:

The mermaid’s got a bunch of sisters. They’re all kind of interested in our world, because they’re not allowed to go to the surface until they reach a certain age. But the novelty wears off for the others. Our mermaid, much like Ariel, is a little obsessed. Already, this is about more than a cute boy. The mortal world is something that fascinated her long before she met the cute boy.

And then she saves his life. And she’s got a crush on him. It’s bad. She spies on him a lot. Her sisters help her find his house. But she doesn’t actually do anything. Days pass. Maybe weeks. Probably weeks. And then she talks to her grandma, and finds out that although they have much shorter lifespans, humans have immortal souls.

This is important.  The Little Mermaid is part of a large group of folk and fairy tales with this same basic idea. Humanoid creatures that are not human have human rationality, but lack human souls. It’s terrible, because they have the ability to understand exactly what they’re missing. So these creatures—fairies, elves, trolls, assorted sea beings—have one shot at a soul. Some stories say you only have to marry a human, others say you have to bear his children (sucks to be a merman, I guess).

She’s been obsessed with humanity forever, and she’s totally in love with this guy. But it’s not until she learns about the soul that she does anything. This is about the boy, yeah, but it’s also about the soul, and in the long run the soul is more important.

So she goes to the sea witch—who, by the way, warns her that this is stupid. And the deal is that she can become a human (which will be intensely painful), in exchange for her tongue (she cuts it out), and if he marries her, she gets the soul. If he marries no one, presumably she lives a normal human life, and dies in thirty or forty years with no soul. (The text really isn’t clear here.) But if he marries someone else, then she dies and turns into sea foam (which sounds weird but apparently it’s what all mermaids do when they die). Really, it’s a pretty generous deadline for a witch.

The prince finds her naked on the beach and takes her home, like a stray dog or something. A lot like a stray dog. Seriously. Let’s look at this relationship.

“Everyone was enchanted by her, especially the prince, who called her his little foundling…The prince said she was to stay with him forever, and she was allowed to sleep outside his door on a velvet cushion.”

A velvet cushion. Wow. Talk about your healthy romantic relationships. Not a bedroom. Not a bed. She is allowed to sleep on a cushion in the hallway.

What a privilege. I am so jealous.

Next, he has some boys’ clothes made for her so they can ride horses together.

Is she his pet? Is she is little brother? I have no idea. When I told my mom the story, she said, “So basically what he wants is a pet friend.” I think that sums up the situation pretty nicely.

But wait, there’s more!

“Day by day the prince grew fonder of her. He loved her the way one loves a dear, good child, but to make her his wife did not occur to him at all.

“’Of course I love you best,’ said the prince, ‘for…You are devoted to me, and you resemble  a young girl I once saw but will certainly never find again…She was the only one I could love in this world. But you look like her…and so good fortune has sent you to me. We shall never be parted!’”

Then his parents want him to go meet a princess. He tells the mermaid,

“I cannot love her. She doesn’t look like the beautiful girl in the temple, whom you resemble. If I should ever choose a bride, you would be the more likely one, my mute little foundling with the sparkling eyes!”

And this is where it gets really interesting:

“And he kissed her rosy mouth, played with her long hair, and rested his head upon her heart, which dreamed of mortal happiness and an immortal soul.”

Which she’s never gonna get. Why? Because this guy’s a loser.

You give a girl a nice little doggy bed. You treat her like a boy. You talk to her like a child. You tell her you love someone else. And what do you do next? You kiss her.

This is not Prince Eric. This is not Disney. Reading this story, I don’t want her to end up with this prince. That’s not a happy ending at all. He doesn’t even treat her like a person, and she deserves so much better.

So the prince goes and meets this princess. And the princess ends up being the girl that he loves from the temple. (He thinks she saved his life. Actually it was the mermaid. I’m really curious about what would have happened if he’d learned the truth.)

He’s going to marry her immediately. The deal with the witch says our mermaid dies the first morning after the wedding. She holds the bride’s train. She participates in the wedding that’s going to kill her, because she’s a sweet person who really loves this guy who treats her like a pet, and it is devastating.

Her sisters are also really sweet. They made a deal with the sea witch, too. In exchange for all of their hair, they get a knife, and they tell our mermaid:

“Before the sun rises, you must plunge it into the prince’s heart! And when his warm blood spatters your feet, they will grow together into a fishtail, and you will become a mermaid again and can sink down into the water to us, and live your three hundred years before you turn into the lifeless, salty sea foam.”

His life for a do over. I’d totally take that deal.

Maybe not. But I have a long list of fictional people I would like to slap, stab, or strangle, and he is definitely on it.

Anyway, the little mermaid is a much better person than me, and she’s not gonna kill this guy. She jumps into the sea. I think this is where people get the suicide idea, but the sun is just coming up now. She’s about to turn into sea foam, and being a very considerate sort of person, she’s going to do it in the water, so no one has to clean her up. She is literally seconds away from a natural death. She’s not killing herself. Knowing that she’s going to die regardless, she is choosing a place to die in.

And it’s quote time.

“Once more she gazed at the prince with dimming eyes, then plunged from the ship down into the sea. And she felt her body dissolving into foam.

“Now the sun rose out of the sea. The mild, warm rays fell on the deathly cold sea foam, and the little mermaid did not feel death…she saw the clear sun, and up above her floated hundreds of lovely transparent creatures…The little mermaid saw that she had a body like theirs. It rose higher and higher out of the foam.”

So she becomes a Daughter of the Air. Daughters of the Air create their own souls with good deeds. It takes about three hundred years. So basically she gets to hang around for the length of her normal mermaid lifespan, and then she’ll have a soul and she can go to Heaven. Also she gets to talk again. This is not actually a tragic ending. She wins. She gets the soul. She doesn’t get the prince, but I have a feeling the Daughters of the Air are gonna treat her a lot better than he did, so who cares? She’s going to Heaven.

(Now at the very end Andersen mentions that if the Daughters fly past a naughty child, they’ll get another year added to their 300, but mostly this seems to be a scare tactic for young readers, so let’s just focus on the happy part where the little mermaid does technically die, but also gets eternal life.)

Also, if you want to read more of this type of story, where marriage=soul, you should totally check out Undine, by Friedrich de la Motte Fouqué. It was written before The Little Mermaid, it also involves a sea person, it’s much more painful, it’s a little more explicitly religious, and it is absolutely beautiful. Also it’s free online, and George MacDonald Approved:

“Were I asked, what is a fairytale? I should reply, Read Undine: that is a fairytale ... of all fairytales I know, I think Undine the most beautiful.”