Tales as Moral Lessons When most people think of fairy tales, they usually imagine a beautiful princess that needs to be rescued, a valiant prince that rescues her and a happily ever after involving a wedding between the prince and princess. People imagine monsters and witches, but sometimes, when they read a fairy tale they may notice an underlying moral to the story that teaches us to do good deeds rather than bad. I read The Little Mermaid by Hans Christian Andersen several years ago and was amazed at how different it is from the Disney version we all know.
In the Disney version, as with all Disney movies, there is a happy ending where the girl gets the prince. This is not so in the original version by Hans Christian Andersen. His happily ever is when the little mermaid gets a soul and gets to go to heaven because of her good deeds not marrying the prince and living happily ever after. Hans Christian Andersen’s story tells of six mermaid princesses and centers on the youngest, much like the Disney version, but that is nearly the only thing that is the same.
She is different from her sisters; she is quiet and thoughtful. Her garden is different from her sisters in that it is shaped like the sun and features a statue of a handsome boy, foretelling her love of the surface world and a human boy. She sees a handsome prince celebrating his birthday on a ship. Later that night a storm capsizes the ship and she saves him from drowning. She places him on the shore near a religious house where he will be found and taken care of.
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Later we are told that she hears sailors speaking of “so many good things about the doings of the young prince, that she was glad she had saved him. ”(Andersen, par. 16) She learns where the prince’s castle is and spends every night watching him and falling more deeply in love with him. After hearing from her grandmother that mermaids have no soul and are simply turned into sea foam when they die, unless they marry a human that loves them more than their parents, she makes up her mind that she must marry a uman so that she may obtain a soul. Since she is already in love with the prince, she goes to the evil sorceress who mixes a potion that will give her legs so that she can go on land and try to win the prince’s heart, but the sorceress’ price is the little mermaid’s voice. The sorceress cuts out the little mermaids tongue and gives her the potion. The little mermaid goes to the shore, drinks the potion and gets her legs, but, like the sorceress said, it is incredibly painful to walk on her legs.
She is discovered by the prince after she has drunk the potion and obtained legs, but she cannot talk after having her tongue cut out by the sorceress. Regardless of the fact that she cannot talk, she wins over the prince with her beauty and grace, but the prince believes that a girl at the religious house was the one who saved him and is in love with her. The little mermaid thinks she can still marry the prince because the girl he thinks rescued him and is in love with is in a religious house studying to be a nun.
We see this example of teaching people to do good rather than evil most clearly at the end when the little mermaid dies. She joins the “Daughters of the Air” and is told that she has been given a soul and may go to heaven after 300 years. Not only does she obtain a soul and a chance to go to heaven, but she will have her 300 years reduced by one year every time she finds a good child who brings joy to his or her parents. On the other side, every time she sheds a tear from seeing a child do something bad, she will have one day added to her 300 years.
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Just like other fairy tales, the girl gets a reward at the end, but in The Little Mermaid, it is the reward of a soul and heaven because of her good deeds that make the happy ending, not marrying a prince and living happily ever after. This story is clearly influencing people that their good deeds will be rewarded, not that they will have a happily ever after, but they will win peoples’ hearts and go to heaven if they do good. It also invites children to be good with the thought that they would be helping a mermaid get to heaven.
Andersen originally ended the tale with the mermaid dissolving, but then later added the “daughters of air” coda, stating that it was his original intention and, in fact, the working title of the story. The daughters of the air say they can earn souls simply by doing three hundred years’ worth of good deeds, but Andersen later revised it to state that all this depends upon whether children are good or bad. Good behavior takes a year off the maidens’ time of service while bad behavior makes them weep and a day is added for every tear they shed.
This has come under much criticism from scholars and reviewers, stating that, “This final message is more frightening than any other presented in the tale. The story descends into the Victorian moral tales written for children to scare them into good behavior. P. L. Travers, author of Mary Poppins and noted folklore commentator, says, ‘But a year taken off when a child behaves and a tear shed and a day added whenever a child is naughty? Andersen, this is blackmail. And the children know it and say nothing. There’s magnanimity for you’ (Travers 1979).
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We see too in other parts of the story examples of approved behavior being rewarded. When the little mermaid, who is the most beautiful girl in the world, hears sailors always saying good things about the prince she saved from drowning, it makes her glad all the more that she rescued him and fell in love with him. This is another example of good deeds being rewarded, because the prince wins the heart of the little mermaid with his good deeds. There is the integral element of an evil being in the story; the sorceress that gives the little mermaid a potion that will give her legs so that she can be with the prince she loves.
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The sorceress cuts out her tongue in payment for the potion, which is a very tragic thing to happen especially because the little mermaid has the most beautiful voice of all. The little mermaid suffers the loss of her tongue and the pain that accompanies her magically created legs with the utmost grace. She ignores the pain in her feet and legs, because it is better for her to suffer in silence and be with the prince she loves than to eliminate the cause of suffering and be unable to be with her prince. Here, again, we see an example of virtue. In Disney’s version of The Little Mermaid, it is completely different.
They change the end so that the little mermaid marries the prince. This version does not teach people to do good, it only teaches young girls that they should look for Prince Charming to sweep them off their feet and take them away to a castle to live happily ever after. Conclusion After reading The Little Mermaid and all the fairy tales in our text book, Writing and Reading Across the Curriculum, and having grown up watching Disney movies, it is my belief that most fairy tales were written with the intention of impressing upon people the importance of being good and virtuous.
We see this clearly in Hans Christian Andersen’s The Little Mermaid where we are taught how great a reward you will receive for good works and the penalty for bad deeds. Works Cited Andersen, Hans C. The Little Mermaid. Copenhagen: 1837. Print The Little Mermaid. Dir. Ron Clements. Perf. Jodi Benson, Samuel Wright. Disney, 1989 Travers, P. L. Mary Poppins. London: 1934. Print Behrens, Laurence and Rosen, Leonard J. Writing and Reading Across the Curriculum 12th Edition. London: 2012. Print
