The Little Mermaid, part v

The Princess.

Man in a Black Coat and Two Women Approaching a Temple, Torii Kiyonaga

continued from parts i, ii, iii, & iv; completed in part vi

The prince had not boarded a ship since the shipwreck. A too-clever psychoanalyst, if there had been any back then, might have asked him how much of his reluctance to make the match his parents had planned—how much of his impossible love for his unknown rescuer—might stem from the fact that to meet the princess, he would have to brave the sea. But clever interpretations, those moments where the analyst reveals your unconscious to you like a magician pulling a rabbit from a hat, have surprisingly little therapeutic value. Far more often, what actually changes the patient, what moves them from paralysis to action, is—if the therapist has the discipline to maintain it—silence.

The prince did not have a therapist. But he did have silence.

The prince was too proud to look directly at his own fear of the sea. But we may, and we may find some nobility of character there. He had fallen in jousts or fought in battles, like any prince, & never found himself afterward unwilling to mount a horse or a campaign. What had twisted him up so badly about the shipwreck was not the nearness of death, for he had faced death many times, but that feeling of “I only have escaped alone to tell thee.” Survivor’s guilt was magnified by his authority over the men. He had failed in his duty. His phobia protected him—not from the sea itself, as the fear seemed to on its surface—but from the full weight of what he felt as his fault.

But what he could not identify in himself he could project onto another. He believed that the little stranger feared the sea. And, like a well-trained Freudian listening to a free association, she said nothing to contradict him.

After the ceremony honoring the men he had lost—which itself did much to untangle his sick, paralyzing guilt, transforming it to a living and active guilt—he asked the little mermaid if she would come with him on his voyage to meet the princess. How sadly she looked up at him! He felt he knew why.

He assured her that she did not have to go, that anyone would understand her dread, after all she had lost. But he must go, if only to do the princess the courtesy of telling her in person that they could not be wed, for he could only love his rescuer. And if his little ward could manage he wanted her at his side for the voyage. He felt a sort of happy responsibility for her, and was loath to leave her. He promised that shipwrecks were rare. He told her of his many safe voyages, and he described the great beauties of the ocean, “of strange fishes in the deep beneath them, and of what the divers had seen there; and she smiled at his descriptions, for she knew better than any one what wonders were at the bottom of the sea.”

At her smile, he said, “So you’ll come?” And she nodded. But if he had been paying closer attention to her, instead of projecting, he would have noticed that the sadness had disappeared from her face when he mentioned his true love.

During the middle watch, when most of the sailors were sleeping, she would creep out to the deck & look at the sea. “Then her sisters came up on the waves, and gazed at her mournfully, wringing their white hands.”

When the ship entered the neighbor-king's harbor, all the churchbells rang, and "from the high towers sounded a flourish of trumpets," and every honor was done for the man they thought would be the future husband of the princess. But the little mermaid laughed in her heart, because she knew the prince's firmness of purpose, and that if he said he would wed none but his savior, he would stick by his word.

The irony! When the prince entered the castle's great hall, he forgot all his decorum, and rushed past the line of royal guards with their maces, causing some alarm, with eyes only for the princess. “‘It was you,’ said the prince, ‘who saved my life when I lay dead on the beach,’ and he folded his blushing bride in his arms.”

Those of you who know this story best from the Disney hagiography of our heroine might now be expecting that there is some trick afoot, and that the sea witch had used her glamour to take on the form of the princess, perhaps beguiling her family into accepting the switch. But for what purpose? Someone who had done all the ill that the sea witch had done, would never wish to take the risk of developing a soul. For bliss is not the only end to which a soul can come.

The answer to the riddle is this. The prince's intended had been brought up, like the daughters of many families both wealthy and wise,¹ in the holy place, among the sisters there, studying old works, and performing acts of mercy for the poor and the sick. This was an excellent education for a ruler. Being brought up in court means being brought up among the influential, but also among the hangers on and toadies and flatterers, and never seeing how most of your subjects lived. Those who entered the holy place, whether for a time or for a lifetime, were those of influence and wealth, those of great ability, those of great charity, and those of great need: exactly the four types of people that an effective ruler will deal with the most.

This little princess, who had rarely seen a man before, had desired and pitied and loved the prince. And so the day of their wedding was set.

continued in part vi

1. And the daughters of many families who were uninterested in bringing up their daughters.