Re: Hans Christian Andersen

Okay, here's the other one. I'm having trouble getting the whole thing to paste in. Hopefully third try is the charm. Otherwise, I'll post in two parts….

Psychoanalytic Studies, Vol. 2, No. 2, 2000

The Trident and the Fork: Disney’s

‘The Little Mermaid’ as a male construction

of an Electral fantasy

LAUREN DUNDES, Western Maryland College

ALAN DUNDES, University of California

Most of the tales written by Hans Christian Andersen were not taken from oral tradition.

Although he occasionally borrowed motifs from such tradition, the greater portion of his

so-called fairy tales were strictly literary creations. The distinguished Danish folklorist

Bengt Holbek claimed that of some 156 ‘fairy tales and stories’ published by Andersen,

‘only seven of them are manifestly taken from Danish oral tradition’ (Holbek, 1990,

p. 165), a number con rmed by Grönbech (1996, p. 221). On the other hand, Elias

Bredsdorff in his splendid biography of Andersen suggests that ‘nine tales were based

on folktales Andersen had heard’ (1975, p. 311). Whether the number is seven or nine,

there can be no question that the percentage of authentic traditional tales in Andersen’s

total corpus is small.

In the parlance of folkloristics, the academic study of folklore, such literary creations

are usually referred to as ‘Kunstmärchen’ as opposed to ‘Volksmärchen.’ There is a huge

body of such literary or art tales, many of which have become a staple in the canon of

children’s literature. One of Andersen’s literary tales that has received such hallowed

status is his classic ‘The Little Mermaid’ (1837). In one of his letters, Andersen

acknowledged proudly that whereas his rst tales were ‘mostly old ones’ he had ‘heard

as a child,’ the later ones that were his ‘own creations such as “The Little

Mermaid” … were the most popular’ (Bredsdorff, 1975, p. 165).

In ‘The Little Mermaid,’ Andersen utilizes two major folklore motifs. The rst is the

very gure of the mermaid, a young girl whose lower parts consist of a substantial sh’s

tail. The gure is listed in the six-volume Motif-Index of Folk-Literature as ‘Motif B81.

Mermaid. Woman with tail of sh. Lives in sea.’ The mermaid is not universal—no

motif, for that matter, is universal in the sense of existing among all peoples past and

present. It is not found in native North and South America, for example. There are many

accounts of female supernatural creatures inhabiting watery domains (Moog, 1987;

Róheim, 1948), but most of them do not refer to demonic beings with sh-like lower

extremities. Although not universal, the mermaid or some early form thereof is well

attested in classical antiquity (Deonna, 1928; Faral, 1953; Shepard, 1940) and is

signi cantly represented in ancient, medieval (Almendral Oppermann, 1992; Broendsted,

1965; Goodman, 1983; Leclercq-Marx, 1997) and modern (Liberati, 1995) art.

There is some confusion of the mermaid gure with the siren (Marót, 1958;

Rachewiltz, 1987) and apparently the evolution of the mermaid from the siren involved

a shift from ornithomorphic to pisciform features. Just when the siren lost her bird-like

1460-8952 Print/1470-1049 On-line/00/020117-14

Ó

2000 Taylor & Francis Ltd

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appearance and obtained her sh-tail to become the ‘modern’ mermaid is in dispute

(Benwell and Waugh, 1961, p. 48; Burnell, 1949, p. 201). One authority claims that the

earliest mention of a sh-tailed siren occurred around the turn of the 8th century

(Phillpotts, 1980, p. 32), while another indicates the 6th century (Touchefeu-Meynier,

1962, p. 450). There have been numerous alleged sightings of mermaids (Waugh, 1960)

as well as repeated attempts to display fake mermaid specimens in circus freak shows

(Bondeson, 1999, pp. 36–63). Though few now believe in the existence of actual

mermaids—one scienti c parody deplores the absence of mermaid skeletons, which

might have been used as an index of mermaid population statistics (Banse, 1990,

p. 151)—the popularity of the mermaid gure continues unabated in modern literature

(Roebling, 1991), movies (Bouillet, 1958), as well as in jokes and cartoons (Johnson,

1987).

The second motif as identi ed in the standard international Motif-Index of Folk-Litera-

ture mentioned above is K1911. The false bride (substituted bride). An impostor takes

the wife’s place without the husband’s knowledge. This second motif, though critical for

an understanding of the plot of ‘The Little Mermaid’ has not received much attention by

students of either Andersen’s 1837 story or Disney’s 1989 feature-length cartoon

adaptation. In Andersen’s narrative, the mermaid saves the prince from drowning in a

shipwreck caused by a storm. But later having forfeited her voice (by having her tongue

cut out) to the sea witch in exchange for having her sh tail replaced by human legs, she

is unable to reveal her identity to the prince. The prince mistakenly believes the princess

of a neighboring kingdom was the one who had saved him. In the Disney version, it is

Ursula, the sea witch, who transforms herself into a beautiful young woman and who,

armed with the mermaid Ariel’s exquisite voice, persuades Prince Eric that it was she

who saved him thereby causing him to seek to marry her. (The seductive power of

Ariel’s singing voice is an echo of the original siren gure.) As we shall see, the failure

to take account of the false or substituted bride motif has greatly impeded the analysis

of the underlying symbolic content of Disney’s ‘The Little Mermaid.’

The various interpretative essays devoted to the Disney lm include structural

(Thomsen, 1990), moralistic (Hastings, 1993), feminist (O’Brien, 1996; Trites, 1990–

1991), and psychoanalytic (Soracco, 1990; Tseëlon, 1995) approaches among others

(Nybo, 1990). Folkloristic treatments (Bendix, 1993; Ingwersen and Ingwersen, 1990)

emphasize Disney’s utilization of folktale formulas, e.g. the traditional happy ending.

Not all discussions of Disney’s transformation of Andersen’s plot are equally sophis-

ticated. Tseëlon, for instance, argues that the Disney version has changed the character

of the story by turning ‘the myth into a folktale’ (1995, p. 1026). Calling Andersen’s

story a ‘myth’ reveals a serious error in genre identi cation. A myth, de ned in concrete

technical terms, is a traditional sacred narrative explaining how the earth and humankind

came to be in their present form. Andersen’s ‘The Little Mermaid’ is not a traditional

narrative; it is mostly a literary product of his creative imagination. It is not sacred as

it does not explain how the earth and humankind came to be in their present form.

Tseelon’s claim that it is a myth is based upon her mistaken notion that ‘a myth is a story

which involves supernatural beings’ (1995, p. 1018), but the vast majority of stories

involving supernatural beings (such as fairies, ghosts, vampires—and mermaids) are

legends. A legend is a narrative told as true and set in the post-creation world.

Andersen’s ‘The Little Mermaid’ would thus be more correctly classi ed as a ‘literary

legend.’

It is true that the Disney transform of Andersen’s literary legend has elements of a

folktale, but it would be more accurate to specify the particular kind of folktale. Folktales

Male Construction of an Electral Fantasy

119

are ctional narratives and they include animal tales, cumulative and other formula tales,

and jokes. The particular form of folktale relevant to the Disney lm is the so-called

magic or wonder tale (misleadingly labeled in English as ‘fairy tale’). In the standard

canonical index of Indo-European folktales, tales of magic or fairy tales are limited to

Aarne–Thompson tale types 300–749 (Aarne and Thompson, 1961, pp. 88–254). There

are very few fairies found in fairy tales and most accounts of fairies are told as true and

would accordingly therefore be more appropriately classi ed as legends, not folktales.

One of the characteristics of fairy tales is that they typically end with a marriage as the

Russian folklorist Vladimir Propp so brilliantly demonstrated in his pathbreaking

Morphology of the Folktale, rst published in 1928. The nal function of the sequence

of 31 functions or units of plot action identi ed by Propp in his corpus of 100 Russian

fairy tales is labeled ‘Wedding’ (1968, p. 63).

In Andersen’s original story, the little mermaid does not marry the handsome prince

and this sad story of unrequited or unful lled heterosexual love has been linked to

Andersen’s own personal life (Bredsdorff, 1975, pp. 280–282, 348; Golden, 1998,

p. 100; Grif th, 1984; Lederer, 1986, pp. 169–172) and what appear in retrospect to be

his latent homosexual tendencies. As a small boy, Andersen played with dolls even to

the extent of sewing dresses for them; as a youth he studied brie y at the Royal Ballet

in Copenhagen in an abortive attempt to become a ballet dancer; one of his principal

life-long hobbies was making amusing paper cut-outs; never married, he appears to have

had a long-standing ‘crush’ on his patron Jonas Collin’s son Edvard to whom he wrote

many ‘love’ letters; and as an old man, he invariably invited one of Jonas Collin’s young

grandsons to accompany him on his many travels abroad (Bredsdorff, 1975, pp. 19, 22,

85, 303). The question of whether or not Andersen was a repressed homosexual remains

moot, but it has been the subject of much debate (Hansen, 1901; Helweg, 1927, 1929;

Lederer, 1986; Ringblom, 1997; von Rosen, 1978–1981). Certainly, Andersen seems to

have identi ed with his mermaid creation. As one critic phrased it, Andersen ‘is the little

mermaid, the outsider who came from the depths and was never really accepted in the

new world into which he moved’ and Andersen himself confessed that the story was one

of only two of all his works that moved him deeply while writing it (Bredsdorff, 1975,

pp. 275, 125).

In any case, Andersen is given credit or rather blame for transforming the traditional

seductive, aggressive mermaid gure into a passive self-effacing heroine who sacri ces

her own goals and ful llment for the sake of the happiness of an unattainable male

prince (Golden, 1998, p. 99; Stuby, 1992, p. 109). A female psychiatrist begins her book

entitled Sweet Suffering: Woman as Victim with a report of one of her patient’s rst

analytic sessions in which the patient recounted the story of Andersen’s ‘The Little

Mermaid.’ The psychiatrist comments: ‘This story is a nearly perfect parable of

masochism, for it expresses the self-punishment, the submission to another, and the sense

of suffering that lie at the heart of masochistic behavior’ (Shainess, 1984, pp. 1–2). It is

perfectly true that the pre-Andersen mermaid was a very different creature, a danger-

ously seductive combination of voluptuousness and voracity. One description may stand

for many. In 1601, a Portuguese priest living in Brazil wrote the following vivid account

of ‘Mermen, or men of the Sea’:

The female are like women, they have long haire and are beautiful … In Port

Secure are some seene, which have killed some Indians alreadie, the manner

of their killing is to embrace themselves with the person, so strongly, kissing

and grasping it hard to it selfe, that they crush it in pieces remaining whole,

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and when they perceive it dead, they give some sighings in shew of sorrow,

and letting them goe they runne away, and if they carrie any they eate only the

eies, the nose, the points of the ngers and toes, and privie members, and so

ordinarily they are found on the sands with these things missing. (Tristaon

1601, p. 1315)

In Disney’s adaptation of Andersen’s story of a passive mermaid, the addition of the

nal wedding scene has further incurred the wrath of feminists who see it as an insidious

continuation of a patriarchal conspiracy to keep women enslaved. The Little Mermaid is

initially controlled by her father Triton, the king of the sea, who eventually hands her

over to her husband Prince Eric. Never really free, Ariel is allowed only to transfer her

allegiance and abode from one male to another. (The patronymic tradition in Western

culture supports this metaphorically as a woman is expected to exchange her original

father’s last name for that of her husband. Also American wedding ritual typically

requires the father—not the mother—to escort his daughter–bride down the church aisle

to formally give her away to the groom.) Moreover, the fact that Ariel is unable to speak

means that she is quite literally ‘dumb.’ Feminists feel, with some justi cation, that this

further con rms the male chauvinist ideal of a woman who is beautiful but dumb, in this

case not just unintelligent, but mute (Golden, 1998, p. 140; Tseëlon, 1995, p. 1022).

Feminists further complain, again with good reason, that Disney has continued the

tradition begun by Andersen by making the alleged ‘heroine’ of his lm a very passive

creature who relies on the assistance of a number of animal allies, all of whom are male.

She does not kill the evil sea witch Ursula (the only powerful female portrayed); Prince

Eric does so (cf. O’Brien, 1996, p. 173; Trites, 1990–1991, pp. 150–151). She can

remain human and marry Eric, not by kissing him, but by inducing him to kiss her. Even

in Andersen’s story, the mermaid in search of a soul can obtain one only if the prince

allows his soul to ‘ ow’ into her body—the receiving body aperture is not indicated in

this sublimated image of coitus (Dahlerup, 1990, p. 420). In contrast, in true oral fairy

tales, the heroine is the active agent. So in Hansel and Gretel (the very naming of this

tale re ects a male bias … It is Gretel’s story, not Hansel’s), Gretel kills the witch, a

double of her mother who was the original instigator of the plot to dispose of the

children by abandoning them in the woods. (It was only after the fourth edition of the

Kinder- und Hausmärchen that the Grimm brothers changed the gure of the mother to

‘stepmother’ no doubt in an effort to avoid further besmirching the image of motherhood

in traditional German culture.) When men retell women’s tales, the tales are often altered

to conform to male ideology. So in the oral versions of Little Red Riding Hood, the

heroine escapes from the wolf (or tigress in the Chinese, Japanese, and Korean versions)

by her own cleverness and ingenuity. This is not the case in the male retellings of the

tale. In the Perrault version, she is eaten up by the wolf and also in the Grimm version,

where unable to rescue herself, she must await a passing male huntsman to save her (cf.

Zipes, 1993, pp. 29, 79). In this context, it is not totally unexpected that the Disney

version of ‘The Little Mermaid’ continues the passive female tradition, even if this is

clearly disappointing to feminist critics. On the other hand, Ariel does defy her

controlling father by visiting humans and in her unrelenting single-minded quest to win

the love of Prince Eric.

What is most striking about the Disney adaptation of Andersen’s ‘The Little Mermaid’

is the remarkable series of symbolic representations of a young girl’s coming of age and

her successful, if conventional, resolution of the Electra Complex. Several studies of the

Andersen story have concentrated on the process of individuation (Engel, 1988; Mäeen-

Male Construction of an Electral Fantasy

121

pää-Reenkola, 1989; for another Jungian study of the story, see Nyborg, 1962, pp. 68–88

and the polemic dialogue it generated: Baggesen, 1967a, b; Nyborg, 1967). It was

actually Jung who rst proposed the term ‘Electra Complex’ for the female counterpart

of the Oedipus Complex in a series of lectures on psychoanalysis that he presented at

the Fordham University medical school in September of 1912. Speaking about the

Oedipus Complex, he said, ‘The con ict takes on a more masculine and therefore more

typical form in a son, whereas a daughter develops a speci c liking for the father, with

a correspondingly jealous attitude towards the mother. We could call this the Electra

complex’ (Jung, 1975, p. 72). The fact that it was Jung who coined the term may explain

in part why Freud opposed its adoption, preferring instead to employ the label ‘Oedipus

complex’ for both son–mother and daughter–father constellations: ‘I do not see any

advance or gain in the introduction of the term “Electra complex”, and do not advocate

its use’ (1920, p. 155, n. 1). On the other hand, from a feminist perspective, it seems

inappropriate to use a male-centered folktale—Oedipus is tale type 931 in the standard

index of European folktales; see Aarne and Stith Thompson, 1961)—to describe a female

psychological con guration. However, Freud’s succinct description of the complex in his

lecture on ‘Femininity’ in his 1932 New Introductory Lectures on Psycho-Analysis

would certainly seem to be applicable to Disney’s ‘The Little Mermaid’: ‘ … in the

Oedipus situation the girl’s father has become her love-object, and we expect that in the

normal course of development she will nd her way from this paternal object to her nal

choice of an object’ (1932, pp. 118–119). Ariel must shift from loving her father to

loving her husband-to-be Eric.

Ariel’s mermaid image itself contains a basic paradox. As a young girl, she is quite

literally divided. Her lower ‘human’ half is denied. This division is paralleled by the

dichotomy between the lower world, under the sea, and the upper world where human

libido is permitted to function. Ariel’s father, King Triton, assumes she will marry a

merman who, like other merfolk, lacks genitals, whereby permanent virginity may be

guaranteed. (It remains a mystery as to exactly how mer-people manage to reproduce.)

As Dorothy Dinnerstein correctly observed in writing in 1967 about Andersen’s story,

the mermaid’s renunciation of her tail for human legs ‘means sudden human-sexual

availability’ (1967, p. 106). (It is interesting in this connection that inasmuch as sh are

apodal, it is their caudal n or their ‘tail’ which replaces the normal female lower limbs

in mermaid anatomy. Ariel must lose her ‘tail’ to become human.) On the other hand,

the mermaid has to pay a price for gaining human sexual parts. Through a curious form

of upward displacement, she is obliged to let the sea witch cut out her tongue. In other

words, she is forced to give up her upper part in order to have her lower part. In the

Disney version, this is softened so that she loses only her voice. The voice, however, is

also a sexual component as it is what attracts Eric in the rst place. Dinnerstein interprets

the tongueless mouth as the male perception of the woman as a mutilated (castrated?)

male. She terms it a horrible wound, a nightmare vagina, ‘an empty hole created by

excision’ (1967, p. 108). Other critics also see the cutting out of the mermaid’s tongue

as a form of castration (Consoli, 1974, p. 87, 1980, p. 80; Duve, 1967, p. 141; Johansen,

1996, pp. 219–220; Soracco, 1990, p. 408; Tseëlon, 1995, p. 1023). This castratory

incident should, however, be viewed in the total context of the tale where it can be seen

as part of a larger struggle between males and females as to who shall nally possess

power as symbolized by a phallus.

The idea that a mermaid is to be destroyed or transformed is signaled early in the

Disney lm. Eric’s ship has on the cutwater of its prow a mermaid gurehead. When he

explains to his counselor Grimsby that he expects to fall in love one day as if struck by

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lightning, through the magic of his words and the ‘omnipotence of thought’, lightning

suddenly strikes the ship and the mermaid gurehead is roughly dislodged from its

privileged position on the bow. The resulting jagged edge of the ship will play an

important role in the denouement of the plot later on.

Also early in the lm, Ariel is seen exploring the interior of a sunken ship where she

is searching for human artifacts to add to her collection of such objects which she stores

in a secret place. Remembering that ships are commonly regarded as female (and

referred to by means of female pronouns), it is of symbolic signi cance that she is

investigating the interior of a ship. While rummaging about, Ariel is suddenly threatened

by a hostile shark. She is saved only when the shark in an attempt to attack her (and her

animal companion) gets his head caught in the upper ring portion of an anchor. (The ring

with its descending shank and horizontal stock clearly suggest the standard symbol for

a female, commonly referred to as Venus’ hand mirror.) The phallic shark is thus

rendered harmless and impotent by being tightly wedged in a female enclosure.

In the ship, Ariel does discover several objects, one of which is a fork. She does not

know what it is for and when she subsequently asks a friendly but befuddled seagull

about it, he informs her that it is a kind of comb. Later on land while at dinner with

Prince Eric, Ariel makes a fool of herself by attempting to comb her hair at the table

using a fork. The fork may be contrasted with the trident possessed by her father Triton,

the king of the sea. The trident is also a kind of fork but it is much larger and endowed

with magical power. Both Ariel’s fork and Triton’s trident are trifurcated (whereas the

dinner fork of Prince Eric’s advisor Grimsby has four tines). The fork is signi cant in

terms of both its form and its size. Its form includes tines located at its bottom. Tines

may perhaps suggest the bifurcation of the mermaid’s tail into human legs. Ariel must

learn to use a fork properly just as she must learn to walk on two legs. Her placing of

the fork in her hair could allude to her grappling with her newly found sexual parts

(which include pubic hair) created by the bifurcation. The seagull advising Ariel had

mistakenly informed her that the fork was a ‘dingle-hopper,’ a curious seemingly

nonsensical word which may or may not allude to the slang term ‘dingle’ meaning penis

(Spears, 1990, p. 51) wherein the sexual implications of learning to handle a ‘penis’

hopper, that is, someone who hops on a penis, would be obvious.

The size of the fork (when compared to the trident) emphasizes the differential

proportions of adult and child. Both Triton and the villainous sea witch Ursula are huge

gures whereas Ariel is small. The adjectival pre x ‘Little’ placed before ‘Mermaid’

serves to infantilize Ariel. This is similar to the same device in the name of ‘Little’ Red

Riding Hood. (In French, it is Le Petit Chaperon Rouge and in German the suf x -chen

signifying diminutive in Rotkäppchen accomplishes the same result.) Of course, if we

remember that fairy tales are always told from the child’s perspective, then giants are

nothing more than the child’s perception of adults. Relativistically speaking, the child

does not see him or herself as small but rather adults are perceived as larger versions of

the observing child.

Ariel’s initial family situation is revealing. Her mother is absent (Leadbeater and

Wilson, 1993, p. 472) and we are told nothing about her. King Triton lives with his six

daughters of which Ariel is the youngest and obviously his favorite. In female-centered

fairy tales, the mother is often absent or killed thereby leaving the father and daughter

alone. This is parallel to male-centered fairy tales, where it is the father who is absent.

An example would be ‘Jack and the Beanstalk’ where Jack lives alone with his mother.

Following adventures in which Jack successfully hides in the giant’s wife’s oven, he kills

the giant by cutting down a huge stalk with an ax handed to him by his mother with

Male Construction of an Electral Fantasy

123

whom he ends up living happily ever after (Róheim, 1953, pp. 358–359). As male-

centered fairy tales present Oedipal plots where sons castrate or kill fathers, so

female-centered fairy tales present Electral plots where daughters triumph over mothers

or mother surrogates such as witches or wicked stepmothers.

In Disney’s ‘The Little Mermaid,’ the mother substitute to be defeated is clearly

Ursula, the sea witch (Leadbeater and Wilson, 1993, pp. 477, 478). When Ariel feels

thwarted by her father in her quest to pursue Prince Eric, she goes behind her father’s

back, turning to the mother substitute for assistance, just as children often turn to the

other parent when the rst one refuses to help. In the Electra Complex, the daughter

competes with her mother for the attention (love) of her father. According to Freud’s

Oedipal theory, a girl wants to marry her father or a substitute for him just as a boy

wants to marry his mother or a substitute for her. The same-sex struggle may be

transferred to the parental substitute or parent surrogate. In the case of Disney’s ‘The

Little Mermaid’, Ursula competes with Ariel for the prized Prince Eric. It is Ursula, the

mother gure, who is the false or substitute bride. She is the older mother who envies

her young daughter’s beauty. She wants to be young and attractive like her daughter.

Through magic, she succeeds in transforming herself into a beautiful young woman and

with the aid of Ariel’s voice that she has obtained, she is able to dupe Eric into agreeing

to marry her instead of Ariel.

Ursula is a gross and grotesque caricature of a femme fatale, another aspect of the

original siren gure and her seductive powers are considerable. At one point near the end

of the movie, having gained possession of Triton’s trident, she stirs up the waters

suf ciently so as to raise Eric’s sunken ship from the bottom of the sea to the surface,

a notable symbolic resurrection. This eventually leads to Ursula’s downfall as Eric deftly

uses the jagged prow of his ship to ram Ursula and this frontal attack succeeds in

penetrating Ursula suf ciently to destroy her. As she meets her death, images of

cemeterial crosses formed from masts of the ship are prominent in the background. The

phallic nature of Eric’s improvised weapon has been recognized by several critics

(Leadbeater and Wilson, 1993, p. 475; Trites, 1990–1991, p. 150). A more overt and less

symbolic testament to Ursula’s feminine charms lies in a very controversial, if brief,

moment in the lm. On board ship when Eric is about to marry Ursula (before the

ceremony is interrupted at the last minute by Ariel’s various animal helpers), the minister

performing the marriage service is depicted as having an erection barely concealed by

his pants. Since he is male, his arousal is presumably caused by the sexual allure of

Ursula. This incident is so brief that it is dif cult to see without stopping the lm.

Perhaps it was meant to be an inside joke by the Disney studio personnel who worked

on the lm although Disney’s response was that some viewers misinterpreted a perfectly

innocuous movement of the minister’s knee. Another possible inside joke consists of a

seemingly overtly penile-shaped turret centrally located on the castle depicted on the

illustrated case cover of the original videocassette. Disney’s apparent response was to

replace this illustration on the cover of later releases of the video, totally removing all

traces of a castle.

Ursula whose name derives from Ursa or bear—is there a play on a sexually mature

woman’s ability to ‘bear’ children?—has the identity of an octopus. The word octopus

consists of ‘octo’ meaning ‘eight’ and ‘pus’ meaning foot. (The latter is, of course, the

same morpheme contained in the name of Oedipus which means literally ‘swollen foot’

or symbolically an erection.) Trites suggests that ‘Ursula seems to be an inverse Medusa

gure. The snake-like appendages also make Ursula a perversion of femininity; her

tentacles could be interpreted as eight phalluses’ (1990–1991, p. 150). Her two male pet

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eels, Flotsam and Jetsam, who have visible sharp teeth and to whom she is very attached,

also have phallic signi cance (cf. Otero, 1996, p. 270). But it turns out that Ursula’s

‘penis envy’ is not satis ed by her eight feet. Instead, she ‘covets the powers of the male

phallus’ as is suggested when she ‘lovingly caresses Triton’s trident while he is holding

it’ stroking one of the tines with her ngers (Trites, 1990–1991, p. 150). It turns out that

Ursula’s agenda includes more than competing with Ariel for Eric. She is also engaged

in a battle of the sexes with Triton.

When Ariel fails to get Eric to kiss her within the prescribed three-day period, she

must, according to the legally binding contract she signed with Ursula, revert to being

a mermaid. Her father Triton, realizing the sincerity of Ariel’s love for Eric, decides to

sacri ce himself for her sake and to take her place in the contract. Ursula is delighted

as apparently she was more interested in unmanning Triton than in defeating Ariel.

Triton reluctantly uses his trident to seal an agreement to trade places with Ariel. He then

Re: Hans Christian Andersen

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eels, Flotsam and Jetsam, who have visible sharp teeth and to whom she is very attached,

also have phallic signi cance (cf. Otero, 1996, p. 270). But it turns out that Ursula’s

‘penis envy’ is not satis ed by her eight feet. Instead, she ‘covets the powers of the male

phallus’ as is suggested when she ‘lovingly caresses Triton’s trident while he is holding

it’ stroking one of the tines with her ngers (Trites, 1990–1991, p. 150). It turns out that

Ursula’s agenda includes more than competing with Ariel for Eric. She is also engaged

in a battle of the sexes with Triton.

When Ariel fails to get Eric to kiss her within the prescribed three-day period, she

must, according to the legally binding contract she signed with Ursula, revert to being

a mermaid. Her father Triton, realizing the sincerity of Ariel’s love for Eric, decides to

sacri ce himself for her sake and to take her place in the contract. Ursula is delighted

as apparently she was more interested in unmanning Triton than in defeating Ariel.

Triton reluctantly uses his trident to seal an agreement to trade places with Ariel. He then

hands over the trident, the symbol of his power, whereupon he immediately shrinks into

a shriveled shadow of himself to join other captive souls in Ursula’s garden. The loss

of the trident would constitute symbolic castration while the dramatic shrinking would

appear to be symbolic detumescence. At this juncture all seems lost. The father king is

trident-less and the villainous mother- gure Ursula is in complete control.

The castration theme is also repeated in subplot detail. Sebastian, the Caribbean crab,

whom Triton originally assigned to watch over Ariel but who eventually becomes

sympathetic to her desire to become human, is at one point chased by Prince Eric’s

French chef Louis who holds a huge cleaver, and later attacks the crab with a full arsenal

of glistening sharp knives. Fortunately, he does not succeed in chopping off either of

Sebastian’s claws. He is shown, however, hacking the heads off sh and the castration

imagery is thus dramatically intensi ed by the sight of dozens of decapitated sh

surrounded by countless disembodied sh heads.

Ursula quickly utilizes her new-found power by rising up to gigantic proportions

whereupon she emerges from the water, with a phallic projection from a now oversized

crown driving apart Ariel and Prince Eric who are huddling together (Leadbeater and

Wilson, 1993, p. 475). As a result of Ursula’s expansion, Ariel gets sucked down into

a vortex that with its cavernous form resembles her hidden cave under the sea. That is,

Ariel is rendered helpless by being trapped in a womb-like enclosure (Johansen, 1996,

p. 216) whereas Ursula, once in possession of the trident, becomes instantly masculine,

even to the extent of acquiring a deepened, clearly manly voice. Thus, the only powerful

woman in the story ful lls her desire for supreme power by becoming masculine, both

in actual presentation and symbolically (by gaining possession of both the crown with

its unmistakable crenellated circle of vertical projections ending with sharp points and

the potent trident). Ultimately, however, her usurpation of the male role is all for naught

and the ‘unnatural’ situation is ‘recti ed’ by her fatal re-feminization through a dramatic

impalement.

One might well ask what is the thematic relationship, if any, between the gure of the

mermaid and castration? Recall that in the original Andersen story, the sea witch cuts out

the mermaid’s tongue which feminists have correctly interpreted as symbolic castration.

Dinnerstein suggested that the woman is perceived essentially as a castrated male, that

is, as a human lacking the male penis; but there is another possible explanation for the

linkage between the mermaid gure and castration. One could argue that the mermaid

represents the fear of feminine power in general and the fear of unbridled sexual appetite

in particular (Johnson, 1987, pp. 73–74). Certainly in Mediterranean cultures, the female

is perceived as possessing a vagina which is threatening (sometimes portrayed by the

Male Construction of an Electral Fantasy

125

addition of teeth—vagina dentata) which coupled with her presumed voracious sexual

appetite constitutes a castratory danger to males. Narratives which include so-called

‘Poison damsels’ (Motif F582; see Penzer, 1952), ‘Serpent damsel’ (Motif F582.1), in

which a woman has a serpent inside her vagina which comes out and kills her

bridegrooms, or the ‘vagina dentata’ (Motif F547.1.1; see Creed, 1993; Otero, 1996)

play on this male fear. The lm Jaws (1975) is another tale of a vagina dentata lurking

in the sea.

Inasmuch as the mermaid has no vagina, with or without teeth, she is no threat. The

phallic Ursula is, in contrast, a castrating female. Ursula as vagina dentata is signaled

by a detail noticed by several feminist critics. ‘Ursula’s palace is entered through the

mouth opening of a skeletal animal, and the swimming entrant must traverse the long

neck of the animal before penetrating the womb-like inner chamber where Ursula

resides’ (Trites, 1990–1991, p. 149). ‘To visit Ursula, Ariel must enter through the

toothy jaws of a gigantic mouth, and swim through womb-like caves’ (Sells, 1995,

p. 184). In contrast, Ariel has a body innocent of any dental threat. The only hint is her

mistaking a fork for a comb. The comb, along with the narcissistic mirror, traditionally

have been the standard accoutrements of mermaids (Benwell and Waugh, 1961, pp. 137–

139; Higgins, 1995, p. 40). As a comb, the fork’s tines become metaphorical teeth placed

in her hair, but Eric and his dinner companions soon civilize Ariel by teaching her the

true nature of a fork. The sexual innuendo of the fork as comb would have been

transparent to the Romans. The Latin word for comb ‘pecten’ also meant the female

pudenda (Phillpotts, 1980, p. 10) or pubic hair (Adams, 1982, p. 76).

There is another possible interpretation supporting the notion that Ariel must be

castrated in order to become Prince Eric’s bride. The mermaid’s shtail is not only a

denial of the vagina, but it could symbolize a penis (Lederer, 1986, p. 251; Róheim,

1948, pp. 22, 33). If this is so, then Ariel’s phallic attributes are somewhat analogous to

those of Ursula with her serpentine octopus lower body tentacles. For Ariel to transform

into a viable human female, she must lose her phallic shtail. The castration of Ariel is

further con rmed in the original Andersen story by the cutting out of her tongue. (Even

though this detail was omitted from the Disney version, Ursula tosses a tongue of

unknown origin into her brew designed to rob Ariel of her ability to speak, a witty

literalization of the metaphor referring to the likely adverse effects caused by a ‘loose

tongue’.) Even the loss of Ariel’s voice could be similarly construed according to

Bunker’s essay ‘The Voice as (Female) Phallus.’ Bunker does mention sirens and

mermaids (1934, p. 411) but without reference to Andersen’s ‘The Little Mermaid.’

One could speculate that the male fear of castration by a female is transformed

through inverse projection to the castration of females by males. The story in which the

mermaid’s tongue is cut out was, after all, written by a male Hans Christian Andersen

and the Disney script was also written by men. The male bias of the Disney studio has

been well established by feminists. The history of the male domination of women

includes a series of imposed restrictions designed to curb female sexuality ranging from

chastity belts to keeping unmarried girls under virtual house arrest behind secure walls.

Another striking illustration of the male’s fear of female sexuality is perhaps provided

by the widespread practice of female genital mutilation, particularly prevalent in Africa.

It is justi ed in part by the claim that the genital mutilation allegedly reduces women’s

sexual desire which purportedly would otherwise be out of control. The excision of the

clitoris is sometimes followed by in bulation, which means that the initiate cannot have

sexual intercourse until the stitched vagina is cut or torn open. One critic in speaking of

the mermaid in the Andersen story even goes so far as to suggest that ‘her loss of a

126

L. Dundes and A. Dundes

tongue may be the symbolic displacement of clitorectomy’ (Dahlerup, 1990, p. 427). So

since the mermaid imago herself is a male ideal of sexual allure without the dangerous

castratory vagina dentata, it is not surprising that such an overt castration theme

permeates the ‘The Little Mermaid’ lm. The thematic linkage between mermaid and

castration is explicit in a striking bit of American material culture. In the late 1920s, a

curious shing lure appeared as a novelty item. As reported by the late Gershon Legman

(1975, p. 433), it consisted of ‘a naked-breasted mermaid with a three-pronged hook

emanating from her pubis.’ In gleefully thinking of her prospective triumph over King

Triton, Ursula speaks of looking forward to seeing ‘him wriggle like a worm on a hook.’

The phallic nature of sh caught by sh hooks continues to be obvious as indicated by

the bragging of shermen who carefully measure and weigh their trophies, sometimes

even mounting them over replaces in their game rooms. The repeated vandalism of the

famous statue of ‘The Little Mermaid,’ the veritable symbol of the city of Copenhagen,

also con rms the association of castration with the mermaid. For the vandalism,

presumably carried out by males, often involves decapitation, an act that not only

connotes castration but which may also suggest de oration, that is, destroying a virginal

maiden head.

Whereas a young girl can be controlled by female genital mutilation or by depicting

her as mermaid, the mature female remains a threat. When Eric succeeds in penetrating

Ursula with the jagged prow of his raised ship, this not only destroys the evil sea witch,

but results in her dropping the trident which fortuitously falls to the bottom of the sea

right near the shriveled Triton. Symbolically, Ursula has been so utterly feminized, not

to say decimated, by Eric’s phallic attack, that she can no longer retain possession of the

powerful trident. Triton regains his trident, swells to attain his previous imposing and

muscular build, and is then empowered to set everything straight.

The role of the trident in Disney’s ‘The Little Mermaid’ has not been suf ciently

noted by critics. The word literally means ‘three teeth’ and both the number three and

teeth have phallic signi cance (Freud, 1915–1916, pp. 163–165). The trident turns out to

be crucial in terms of the male reworking of an Electral fantasy. Early in the lm when

Triton learns about Ariel’s secret grotto where she stores her human artifacts, he visits

her there and destroys the chamber and its contents with his powerful trident. Symbol-

ically speaking, a secret chamber or garden or other hiding place of a young girl is an

obvious representation of her vagina. The entrance to the chamber is a tubular tunnel

marked by striations that would appear to resemble the transverse ridges of a vaginal

wall. Inside the chamber Ariel irts with and sings to a lifelike statue of Prince Eric

(Leadbeater and Wilson, 1993, p. 474), commissioned for Prince Eric from Grimsby,

which was salvaged from the wreckage of the destroyed ship. (It is curious that the statue

of ‘The Little Mermaid’ in Copenhagen harbor was sculpted by Edvard Eriksen that

might partially account for the choice of the name Eric for the prince.) The statue of

Prince Eric, intended as a nuptial gift, portrays him as about to draw his sword,

presumably suggesting the impending penetration following marriage. King Triton later

obliterates the statue with his trident, just as the mermaid gurehead on Eric’s ship was

destroyed by a stormy sea. The discovery and wholesale destruction of her secret hideout

foreshadows her eventual loss of virginity. As Triton wields this instrument symbolic of

male power, it becomes illuminated, perhaps even implying heat. The illuminated trident

is somewhat reminiscent of the remarkable extensible light sabers utilized in Star Wars

for Oedipal father–son duels.

The ‘hot’ trident reappears near the end of the movie when Triton relents and agrees

to allow Ariel to leave his watery domain to join the world of humans on land. Still a

Male Construction of an Electral Fantasy

127

mermaid, Ariel needs human legs and the requisite interstitial female genitals in order

to become Eric’s bride. Triton accomplishes this transformation with one ick of his

mighty trident. Poof! The mermaid’s tail disappears and is replaced by human legs. It

is the father who gives his daughter, his favorite daughter, the necessary sexual parts

which will allow her to marry Eric, and consummate the marriage properly. One may

recall that when Ariel returned ‘in love’ after her initial encounters with humans

(including Prince Eric), she presented a ower to her father. This blatant pre guration

of de oration is thus a de nite daughter–father matter. Just in case the audience should

miss this oral sign, it is immediately followed by Ariel’s plucking petals in a version

of the well-known divinatory custom ‘He loves me, he loves me not’ (Mieder, 1985).

Completion of this literal and symbolic de oration ritual ends with Ariel picking the last

petal exclaiming triumphantly ‘He loves me.’

The essential Electral nature of the entire plot is con rmed by the very last words of

the lm. After nally being kissed by Eric at the conclusion of the marriage ceremony,

Ariel embraces her father and whispers intimately, ‘I love you, Daddy.’ While smiling

tenderly at him, she slowly backs up and then blows him a kiss. The nal scene shows

Prince Eric and Ariel’s ship sailing off towards the arc of a rainbow, a rainbow

magically produced by father Triton with one sweep of his illuminated ‘hot’ trident. The

ship’s entrance into the semi-circular image is yet one more sign of consummation of the

marriage on the wedding night. Another such symbol is the French chef’s cutting the

white wedding cake into two halves with his cleaver. A white wedding cake is a standard

symbol of a virginal bride and the plunging of a knife (often nowadays a joint venture

involving the hands of both bride and groom) into the cake symbolizes the nuptial

de oration (Charsley, 1992, p. 126). In American wedding ritual, the knife poised for the

initial insertion into the usually round white cake is typically one of the principal

post-wedding photographic highlights. In the Disney lm, the bifurcation of the cake into

two halves could also represent in microcosm the successful transformation of Ariel’s

monolithic sh tail into two legs.

We can well imagine that readers hostile to psychoanalytic thought will say that they

saw Disney’s ‘The Little Mermaid’ and that they never once thought of most, if any, of

the symbolic elements discussed above. Perhaps the Disney staff members who worked

on the lm might respond similarly. Disney lms are on the surface conspicuously

wholesome family entertainment with nary a hint of sexuality. Mickey and Minnie

Mouse never have sex; nor do Donald and Daisy Duck (Berland, 1982, pp. 96, 103). But

our analysis is concerned with the latent and not the manifest content of the ‘The Little

Mermaid.’ We would argue generally that Disney’s choice of plots for cartoon treatment

is almost certainly made without awareness of unconscious symbolic elements. Why

would Disney have chosen to make a movie, for example, about the masturbatory

rubbing of a magic lamp that produces a wish-granting genie? (Aladdin is Aarne–

Thompson tale type 561.) For that matter, the Electral plot has proven itself in earlier

successful Disney lms. ‘Snow White’ (Aarne–Thompson tale type 709) tells of a

wicked stepmother’s attempt to kill the heroine and there is a competition between them

as to who of the two is the most beautiful. Similarly, ‘Cinderella’ (Aarne–Thompson tale

type 510A) involves a girl’s struggle with a stepmother and in some versions (AT 510B)

a motif in which a father wants to marry his own daughter, a clear inverse projection of

a daughter’s wish to marry her own father. In Disney lms subsequent to ‘The Little

Mermaid’, the Electral component continues: ‘Beauty and the Beast’ (Aarne–Thompson

tale type 425C) and ‘Mulan’ both concern a father–daughter constellation in which the

daughter, against the father’s wishes, insists on imperiling herself to protect her father.

128

L. Dundes and A. Dundes

Indeed, as ‘Pocahontas’ concludes, she elects to sacri ce her romantic relationship in

order to stay in her village and assist her father in maintaining peace.

Disney has found a sure- re formula for success, namely a cartoon-rendering of the

Electra Complex. We suggest that the ‘The Little Mermaid’ is just a modern version of

this tried and true plot, with male chauvinist patriarchal values superimposed upon it. A

sexy young girl who wears a shell bra which reveals more than it conceals (Bendix,

1993, p. 287; O’Brien, 1996, p. 173) is given female genitals by her father so that she

can marry a prince who has destroyed her rival mother surrogate by a heroic act of

penetration. So the girl enjoys the Electral fantasy of seeing a mother gure eliminated

and wedding the man her mother surrogate was about to marry, but at the same time the

power of the trident (and a ship’s prow) remains the exclusive property of males (Triton

and Eric).

The fact that ‘The Little Mermaid’ is readily available on videotape has greatly

increased the dissemination of this psychologically loaded narrative way beyond its

original movie-theater audience. Accordingly, this male-constructed Electral fantasy,

with its powerful embedded patriarchal overlay, is likely to continue to in uence the

emotional development of all the young girls who see it and identify with Ariel. At the

same time, it may also impact upon little boys. Although the story is certainly nominally

about a female mermaid (Johansen, 1996, p. 220), the recurring themes of castration and

the fear of the phallic female no doubt re ect the unconscious anxieties of the males

(Andersen and Disney writers) who created the story. In that light, Disney’s ‘The Little

Mermaid’ would appear to encapsulate critical emotional issues for both girls and boys.

This may serve to help explain the enormous popularity of such a unique male

construction of an Electral fantasy.

Correspondence: Lauren Dundes, Assistant Professor of Sociology, Western Maryland

College, 2

College

Hill,

Westminster,

MD

21157–4390,

USA

(e-mail:

ldundes@wmdc.edu" target="_blank">ldundes@wmdc.edu); Alan Dundes, Kroeber Hall, University of California, Berkeley,

Berkeley, CA 94707, USA.

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