We all think we know The Little Mermaid. You probably picture a bright red-haired girl singing about forks, or maybe the recent Halle Bailey version that sparked a million internet debates. But if you actually go back to the source—Hans Christian Andersen’s 1837 fairy tale—it’s not a fun musical. It’s a brutal, existential nightmare.
Honestly, it’s kind of a shock.
In the Disney version, Ariel gives up her voice, gets the guy, and they sail into the sunset. In the original? Every single step she takes on human legs feels like she’s walking on sharp knives. Literally. Her feet bleed constantly. And the Prince? He doesn't love her back. He thinks she’s a cute "foundling" and lets her sleep on a velvet cushion at the foot of his bed like a pet dog.
It’s dark.
The Knife-Edge Reality of Hans Christian Andersen
Hans Christian Andersen wasn't writing for "happily ever after." He was writing about unrequited love and the agony of trying to belong to a world that doesn't want you. When the mermaid visits the Sea Witch, the deal is much more gruesome than a simple contract. She has to have her tongue cut out. Not just "losing her voice" through magic—she undergoes a physical mutilation.
And then there's the pain.
People forget that the mermaid’s transformation was a sacrifice of total physical agony. Andersen describes the feeling of the transition as if a "two-edged sword" was passing through her body. He wanted the reader to feel the weight of her choice. This wasn't a teen crush; it was a desperate gamble for an immortal soul. See, in the original folklore, mermaids live for 300 years and then turn into sea foam. They don't have souls. To get one, she has to make a human love her.
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She fails.
Why the Disney Changes Actually Matter
When Disney released the 1989 film, they basically saved the studio. The Little Mermaid kicked off the Disney Renaissance. But to make it work for a 20th-century audience, they had to gut the philosophical core of the story. Howard Ashman and Alan Menken turned it into a "I Want" musical.
Ariel became a symbol of teenage rebellion.
But look at the H2: The Little Mermaid as a cultural mirror. Every time we remake this story, we change what she’s fighting for. In 1837, it was about the soul and religious salvation. In 1989, it was about female agency and breaking away from a restrictive father. In 2023, the conversation shifted toward representation and what it means to see yourself in a classic myth.
The Prince in the original book is actually a bit of a jerk. He marries a princess from another kingdom because he thinks she was the one who saved him from the shipwreck. Our mermaid can't tell him the truth because she has no tongue. She has to dance for him, even though every step feels like needles piercing her soles, just to keep his attention. It's a devastating metaphor for trying too hard to please someone who will never truly see you.
The Ending That Traumatized Generations
If you haven't read the original, brace yourself. On the Prince's wedding night, the mermaid’s sisters rise from the ocean. They’ve sold their hair to the Sea Witch for a magic dagger. They tell her: "Kill the Prince. Let his blood drip on your feet, and you'll become a mermaid again. You can come home."
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She can't do it.
She looks at the Prince sleeping with his new bride, throws the dagger into the waves, and flings herself into the sea. She dissolves into foam.
Wait—it gets weirder.
Andersen added a weirdly religious coda. Instead of just dying, she becomes a "Daughter of the Air." She has to do 300 years of good deeds to earn a soul. It's a bit of a "participation trophy" ending that many literary critics, like Maria Tatar, have argued feels tacked on and confusing. It changes the tragedy into a strange lesson on piousness.
Real-World Impact and the "Copenhagen Curse"
If you go to Copenhagen today, you’ll see the bronze statue of the mermaid sitting on a rock. It’s small. It’s constantly being vandalized. It has been decapitated, had its arm sawn off, and been covered in paint more times than anyone can count.
There’s something about her that provokes people.
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Maybe it’s because she represents the ultimate outsider. She’s the person who gave up everything—her family, her identity, her physical comfort—to be somewhere else, only to realize that "somewhere else" doesn't have a place for her.
How to approach the story today
If you're a fan of the movies, you should definitely check out these versions to see how deep the rabbit hole goes:
- The 1975 Toei Animation film: This Japanese version is actually much more faithful to the book’s tragic ending. It’s hauntingly beautiful and incredibly sad.
- Metamorphoses by Ovid: If you want to understand the "sea creature" mythology, this is the root of it all.
- The Surface Break by Louise O'Neill: A modern feminist retelling that leans into the horror elements of the original tale. It’s not for the faint of heart.
The real lesson of The Little Mermaid isn't about finding a man. It’s about the cost of change. Whether you're looking at the 1837 text or the 2026 cultural landscape, we are still obsessed with the idea of "becoming." We want to know if the sacrifice is worth the reward. Most of the time, the story tells us it isn't, but we keep watching anyway because the longing is so relatable.
Next time you hear "Part of Your World," just remember: in the original version, she would have been bleeding all over the floor while she sang it.
To really understand the legacy here, start by reading the Hans Christian Andersen version without any internal Disney filters. Notice the specific way he describes the sea—not as a playground, but as a vast, terrifying graveyard of "white bones of men who had perished at sea." Then, compare that to the 1989 concept art by Glen Keane. You'll see exactly where the two worlds diverged and why the "Disney-fication" of fairy tales became such a massive talking point in literary circles.
Check out the archives at the Hans Christian Andersen Museum online. They have digital scans of his original manuscripts. Looking at his handwriting makes the story feel much more human and much less like a corporate franchise. It’s a raw, painful piece of art from a man who often felt like an outsider himself.