After hearing from Taiwo on Wednesday, we’re officially celebrating Mermaid for Danger, The Little Mermaid, and merfolk weddings this month! . . . And so, naturally, today’s “fun fact” post is all about daggers.

Does that sound strange? If so, Disney may be the problem. 😉 Listen, I love Disney movies as much as the next person, and The Little Mermaid was definitely a second-tier favorite growing up (maybe not as favorite as Beauty the Beast, but still up there, haha). But Disney’s “The Little Mermaid” and the original “The Little Mermaid” might as well be entirely different stories.

We hear that a lot, of course, about all kinds of classic fairy tales. But the reason I think it’s especially important to note about The Little Mermaid is that unlike other tales such as Snow White, The Little Mermaid is relatively “new,” and it was written by an actual author, not someone cataloguing regional tales. Hans Christian Andersen wrote The Little Mermaid in 1837, and while it is recognized as a “literary fairy tale,” to him it wasn’t exactly about true love and innocence triumphing over evil.

I’m about to spoil the original Little Mermaid story for you, if you haven’t read it (you can find it here). The mermaid does fall in love with the prince and make a deal with a sea witch in order to be close to him, but that’s where the resemblance ends. In Andersen’s version, the prince is actually in love with a human girl, and has no interest in the mermaid. The mermaid is given an ultimatum: kill the prince and be granted the power to return home, or die herself. Her sisters make their own deal with the witch in order to get her a dagger. And though she comes very close to killing the prince, she can’t do it–so she flings herself into the sea and becomes sea foam.

Now, the dagger here is just a means to an end, a symbol for the choice the mermaid must make. It’s that choice that has always troubled me, personally. Why should anyone need to die over a mixed up love affair? There’s a popular but unconfirmed theory that Andersen wrote “The Little Mermaid” as a metaphor for his own feelings for a man who went on to marry a woman. Certainly there’s a feeling in the story that even in a beautiful world, tragedy is inevitable, and love can make people walk too far down paths they never imagined. (On feet that hurt with every step.)

A very different feeling from the Disney version, of course. My own story, Mermaid for Danger, stays mostly on the light-hearted side of things–it is a cozy, after all. But this question of love becoming deadly is still a central one in the mystery. In my book, though, that love isn’t just romantic; it also manifests as devotion to a family legacy and dedication to a business venture, among other things.

I’ve gone on quite a bit already, so I’ll just wrap up by saying you can find Mermaid for Danger on my site or wherever you buy books online! And please, think twice before making deals with sea witches. 😉

Selected Sources

In case you missed it above, here’s a link to a transcription of the original “The Little Mermaid” online. And if you’re curious about Andersen and his reasons for writing the story, Snopes recently did an article on it! It’s a pretty good summary, along with some commentary on the new live action Disney movie.