The Daughter of the Sea

My two-year old daughter Lianne has developed the habit to listen to recordings in the car. Whenever she gets on her safety seat, she would say, "Daddy, play "The Little Red Riding Hood." Her father would put the CD on, and we would all listen to the tale with her. Somehow,that tale often fails to stay with me while the next one, "The Little Mermaid," always does. Whenever I hear the latter, I cannot help being deeply touched by the tragic life of the daughter of the sea, and I always have the urge to rewrite the tale so that it will convey different notions about gender.

Whether it registers male fantasy of what a woman should be or reflects certain historical truths about women, the tale presents a woman's life as extremely miserable. In order to be able to stay close to the prince, the mermaid has first to lose the freedom to swim in her own kingdom and to walk with such pain as if there were a knife pierced into her heart. She also has to lose her tongue so that she can never really speak to the prince about her feelings and thoughts. She is to save the man only to be forsaken by him. She tragically collapses down to bubbles while he happily starts his honey moon. Can there be more personal miseries than hers?

If Anderson is laudable in having some insight into the tragic elements in the life of a woman, he is not so in idolizing a woman who willingly submits to all the miseries and turns herself into a heroic martyr. He is being whimsical in letting the mermaid choose to die for the man instead of having his blood. What historical and male psychological needs does it satisfy to imagine a woman of such great obedience and such huge capacity to sacrifice?

Indeed, the little mermaid does not have to die. She should take up the witch knife and wield it carefully on the man. Drops of blood will incur pain but not death to him. Pained, the man will, hopefully, see the woman as she is for the first time. For the first time, then, the man may learn to live with the woman--rather than an image of her--or his.

For my daughter, I will have the tale rewritten.