Most of you probably know the basics of this story, since it was adapted into, y’know, one of the most beloved films in Disney’s animated canon. A lot of you probably also know that the original story was a great deal darker and sadder than pretty much any Disney movie is allowed to be.

So let’s discuss “The Little Mermaid,” written by Hans Christian Andersen and published in 1837.

We start off with the Sea King, his mother, and his six daughters, all living in a grand palace under the sea.The most beautiful of these daughters is, of course, the youngest. The youngest daughter, like her film counterpart, does seem to have a bit of a fascination with the human world, and has a statue that she dredged up decorating her garden.

Now, there’s a tradition among the merfolk where, whenever one of them turns 15, they head up to the surface so they can kinda check out the human world from a distance. Being the youngest, the titular Little Mermaid has to wait another five years to go up after her oldest sister turns 15, which she’s a bit bummed out by. But she waits her turn, listening intently to her sisters’ stories about what they see.

Eventually, she turns 15 herself and gets to check all that out. While she’s on the surface, she sees a ship, with a handsome prince celebrating his 16th birthday. Naturally, she falls in love with him basically instantly. This is about when a storm happens, and the prince is knocked overboard. It’s OK, though, because the Little Mermaid saves him and manages to drag him back to shore.

Thing is, he’s unconscious pretty much the entire time, and doesn’t really get to see her because some girls stream out of a nearby convent and she hides. From her hiding spot, she sees a girl run up to the prince and start calling for help. This is about when he wakes up.

So the Little Mermaid heads back down, happy that she was able to save him, but kinda bummed that she can’t really be with him. She visits the surface pretty often to try and find him again, but naturally he’s not where she left him. Eventually she tells one of her sisters what’s going on with her, and that sister tells the rest, and they tell their friends, and one of the friends actually knows where the prince lives. So her sisters show her the way to the palace, and she visits the area every now and then.

At this point her interest in the human world turns into a flat-out obsession, and she really wants to live among them. She talks to her grandmother to ask if that’s possible; she says not really, mostly because mermaids don’t have immortal souls. Instead, when they die, they just turn into sea foam. They can live for up to 300 years, though, and the grandmother thinks this is a pretty good exchange.

This prompts the Little Mermaid to ask her grandmother how she can get one of these soul thingies. The grandmother says the only way she could really get one is is if someone were to love her more than their own parents, to the point where they’re willing to marry her, and thus impart a part of their own soul to her. The grandmother, again, tells her that’s not really possible, though, because her tail would probably freak people out. Then she tells her to cheer up, since there’s a big ball happening.

So she goes to the ball, and has herself a pretty good time, but the mood doesn’t last very long. At this point, she decides to sneak out to pay a visit to the local sea witch to try and get herself some legs. Who lives in a super, super creepy lair. It turns out that the witch already knows why she’s there, and is perfectly willing to help her out, but there are some caveats.

The first is that it’s going to hurt like a bitch when her tail gets split in two. The second is that while she’ll be ridiculously graceful, every step she takes will fell like she’s walking on knives. The third is that if she fails to win the prince, she’ll die of a broken heart at sunrise the day after he’s married. And then there’s the price, which is her most prized possession: her voice. The Little Mermaid balks at this a bit, since how’s she supposed to get to know the prince if she can’t talk to him, but the sea witch is like, “What do you need your voice for? You’re hot.”

Anyway, she decides that this is worth the price, and agrees to the witch’s terms. She doesn’t do the whole “stealing voices with magic” thing like in the movie, though. Nope, she just cuts out the mermaid’s tongue, before making the potion using her own blood and handing it off to her and telling her to go somewhere on land before drinking it.

So the Little Mermaid heads on up to the palace and drinks the potion. Her tail splits in two and becomes legs, and it hurts about as much as the sea witch said that it would. It’s about this point that the prince finds her, and his first reaction to the naked, mute girl that just showed upon on the beach is to take her home with him.

He gives her some clothes, and she charms everyone with her dancing. In fact, she dances for the prince pretty much all the time, despite the horrific pain in her feet, sometimes to the point where they start bleeding. So she’s won the prince’s affections, but said affections don’t seem to be all that romantic, at least not at first.

Things come to a head when rumors of the king of a neighboring kingdom has a hot daughter, that people think the prince should marry. The prince isn’t super sure about this marriage, but goes anyway out of duty, and tells the girl that he’d much rather marry her. He brings the Little Mermaid along with him because, again, he’s quite fond of her, and go to the other kingdom by ship.

It’s here he realizes that the princess he’s supposed to marry is the girl who’d found him on the beach, who he thinks was his rescuer.

Now the prince is super stoked about marrying this girl, and they marry pretty quickly after that. So there’s a big wedding party on the ship, during which the Little Mermaid puts on a brave face, but on the inside is pretty messed up knowing this is her last night on earth. The party ends, the couple retire to their private room, and the Little Mermaid stands on the deck waiting for dawn.

At this point, her sisters come up. It turns out they’d heard about her plight, and sold their hair to the sea witch for a dagger. Basically, if she kills the prince with it, she’ll turn back into a mermaid and can live out the rest of her three centuries. She takes the knife then goes into the prince’s room, but finds that she can’t do it. At this point, the sun starts to rise and the Little Mermaid throws herself over board before turning into sea foam.

That’s not the end, though, because she actually turns into an air spirit, which gives her the opportunity to get herself a soul if she does her job for three hundred years. However, if a child is good, that takes time from her sentence, whereas naughty children add to it. So the moral her is to be a good kid so a mermaid can get a soul.

Now, we can already see numerous differences between the story and the movie. The biggest one is the ending, which was unambiguously happy in the 1989 film. The ending to this one is significantly more bittersweet; she doesn’t get the boy, but will get to earn the soul she desperately wanted if she works hard enough (and if kids aren’t being little shits).

The sea witch character is also a bit different. While not exactly benevolent, she’s not really malicious either. For one thing, unlike Ursula, she doesn’t actively try to screw the Little Mermaid’s chances with the prince, and also gives her an out when things don’t go that well (albeit for a price).

The main theme here seems to be wanting something that you can’t really have. This is interesting in the context of Andersen’s love life, which was largely him pining after a number of unattainable people. Some of those people were also dudes, so he may have been bi, but his journals also indicate his distaste for the concept of sex. Then again, plenty of asexual people still desire romantic relationships, so there’s that.

I mean, his love life could have been a lot weirder.

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