What The Little Mermaid Did For Disney Princesses

 Through the movie, The Little Mermaid (1989), Disney took a bit step forward in the way they presented women in their movies. Although Ariel's main focus was to date and marry a guy she just met, I do kind of understand Sebastian and her dad’s point on this one, she had a lot more personality than any Disney princess who came before her. The princesses who came before Ariel, Snow White, Cinderella, and Aurora, had little to no personality at all. And while Disney still had the archaic perception of a woman's only motivation being a relationship, this time Ariel was more than just a glorified animated prop to be in a relationship.

In the movie, Ariel is extremely curious about the lives humans lead, WAY before she even meets Eric. She is a closer representation to what young girls actually can be like, as she was rebellious against her father and curious as to the world around her. This helped advance the portrayal of women in Disney princess movies, as it showed a young girl (VERY young at 16) making decisions for herself, and even rebelling against decisions men had made for her. However, she still very clearly fell in ‘love’ with the first (human) man she even kind of interacted with and the entire movie’s plot was centered around how she was going to get with him, and what she was willing to give up to be with him, while he gave up nothing.

After this movie, Disney still had a LONG way to go to making a movie with a Disney princess that wasn’t centered around her relationship, but it was an important first step in the right direction to fully flesh out and give personality to a Disney princess.

Hans Christian Anderson's Tragic Love Life

Hans Christian Anderson, the author of many famous tales such as The Snow Queen and The Little Mermaid, was a Danish author (who is rumored to have possibly been an illegitimate member of the Danish royal family, but of course that has never been substantiated) who is most famous for his fairytales, but many of the themes in these stories were inspired by his own personal life.

Hans Christian Anderson had a very tragic love life, and this can be seen reflected in many of his stories. He had strong romantic feelings for a man in his life, Edvard Collin, and wrote him many letters about longing to be with him as if he was a girl, saying "My sentiments for you are those of a woman," among many other things. However, unfortunately, Edvard, who was the son of Hans Christian Anderson’s patron who supported his art, did not return his sentiments, leaving the famous author devastated. 

This theme of unrequited love and heartbreak is most clearly reflected in Hans Christian Anderson’s story “The Little Mermaid''. In this story the young girl loves the prince so much she would do anything for him, and at first loses her voice and lives in excruciating pain just to be around him. But the prince only ever views her like you view a younger sibling, and never truly loved her, much to the devastation of the young mermaid. Eventually the prince meets his true love, and the young mermaid would so much rather see him happy and alive than to kill him and live herself, so she accepts her fate of death. This is a clear allegory to the love life of Hans Christian Anderson, who had to live in excruciating pain of knowing that Edvard did not love him the same way, but still choosing to be around him and watching him marry someone else. Hans Christian Anderson was not only doomed to fall for someone who did not love him back, but doomed to fall in love with a man in a very non-accepting society, and these are the themes that are reflected in “The Little Mermaid.”