The Little Mermaid
Disney’s version of this classic fairy tale was a huge hit and loved by children and adults the world over. And surely a large part of its success was down to the fact that the cartoon movie left out big chunks of the version penned by Hans Christian Anderson many years before. The Dane’s tale was no all-singing and all-dancing affair under the sea, but rather quite a grim story of the sacrifices some people are prepared to make in the name of love.
In the original version, the Little Mermaid does indeed save the prince from drowning. She also goes to see the sea witch and ask for legs so that she may find him again. However, from this point on, the tale is much darker than the “Disneyfied” version. The sea witch warns her she will die if she fails to get a kiss from her true love. Tragically, the prince meets someone else and marries her. In a cruel twist, the witch gives the Little Mermaid one last chance: if she kills the prince, she will be allowed to get her tail back and return to life under the sea. In the end, she can’t bring herself to murder her love. She jumps back into the sea, to certain death. She ends up as sea foam.
While the Hans Christian Anderson version might seem sick and twisted to the modern reader, at the time it was seen as both tragic and uplifting. Indeed, the Danish writer wanted to show how noble self-sacrifice could be – though he undoubtedly also used the tale to warn his young readers about the dangers of having unrealistic dreams and even trying to break out of the social class you were born in.