Is “The Little Mermaid” a Tragedy?

Tiffany Sun

May 9 2025

When you hear the term “The Little Mermaid,” is the first thing that pops up in your head Ariel? Prince Eric? Ursula? Or maybe it’s true love and treasures and lobsters and fish. Or maybe it’s the lyrics to “Under the Sea” because we all love the catchy little tune. But what if I told you half the stuff I just listed isn’t actually true?

“The Little Mermaid” was written by Hans Christian Andersen alongside other fairy tales such as “The Ugly Duckling” and “The Princess and the Pea.” However, in contrast to Andersen’s other fairy tales, “The Little Mermaid” has been transformed by Disney into a love story that overcomes barriers of nature. In reality, Andersen’s original rendition of “The Little Mermaid” has a much more tragic and realistic note to it.

In “The Little Mermaid,” a mermaid princess falls in love with a human prince while saving him from drowning; the similarities in plot to the Disney movie end right about here. The princess finds a Sea Witch and trades her beautiful voice and tail for a pair of human legs, except every step the princess takes will feel like daggers digging into her feet. The princess must earn the complete and utter love of a human and become bound by marriage in order to gain a soul. On the flip side, if the prince marries another woman, the mermaid princess will dissolve into sea foam. Surprisingly, the Sea Witch is not the antagonist of the story with a devious plot of overthrowing the Ocean King; instead, the Sea Witch warns the mermaid princess against the consequences of this bargain. However, the princess is adamant, and the deal is struck.

Without her voice, the mermaid princess still charms the prince, and yet ultimately the prince falls in love and marries a human princess of a neighboring kingdom. Surprisingly, again, the human princess is not portrayed as the antagonist. The night of the wedding, the mermaid princess’s sisters came to the princess with a special dagger that they’d traded their hair for with the Sea Witch. The mermaid princess must stab the Prince in the heart and have his blood splash her feet before sunrise in order for her to become a mermaid again and live out the rest of her life under the sea. However, when the mermaid princess approaches the Prince in his sleep, who is lying next to his newly wed bride, she just kisses his forehead and throws the dagger into the sea. Then, she promptly jumps into the ocean and dissolves into sea foam.

Fortunately, the story does not quite end there, as the mermaid princess’s selfless actions moved those in the realm of the air, and she becomes a daughter of the air, where she can earn an immortal soul through good deeds.

Disney’s retelling of “The Little Mermaid” has its charm and caters perfectly to its younger audience. On the other hand, Anderson’s original story holds its own beauty, as it does not follow the conventional trajectory of a happy-ever-after and teaches readers different lessons on love—one could say it’s a lesson about love more grounded in reality.