Psychoanalytic Interpretations
The story has been interpreted as the difficult liminal passage of the girl into the order of speech and social symbolism (power, politics and agency) which is symbolically understood as masculine. The artist Pen Dalton has made use of Laura Mulvey's interpretation of fetishism in art to link The Little Mermaid story to the wearing of fetishistic clothes, and obsessive cosmetic surgery with masculine fears of loss.
The Little Mermaid was written as a love letter by Hans Christian Andersen to Edvard Collin. Andersen, upon hearing of Collin’s engagement to a young woman, proclaimed his love to him. He told him ”I long for you as though you were a beautiful Calabrian girl.” Edvard Collin turned Andersen down, disgusted.
Andersen then wrote The Little Mermaid to symbolize his inability to have Collin just as a mermaid cannot be with a human. He sent it to Collin in 1836 and it goes down in history as one of the most profound love letters ever written.
Most scholars and psychoanalysts concluded that Andersen was bisexual; however, he never acted upon his homosexual drives.
The Little Mermaid, as it was originally written, did not have a happy ending.
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