Trites Reading Response: "The Little Mermaid"

To say that Roberta Trites' piece was just an interesting read would be a gross understatement. Never before would I have pictured myself reading scholarly articles that equate Triton's trident to a phallic symbol of power or Urusula's cleavage to a suffocating perversion of the female body. While it would be easy to just write Trites off as another writer who is just reaching too far in her arguments (which she definitely does at times), I actually found this article not only entertaining but also highly engaging.


In her article, Trites makes the point that Disney changes many aspects of Hans Christian Anderson’s original mermaid tale, thus making the story more sexist (whether intentionally or unintentionally). One of the points that she provides to reinforce her argument is that in the original story, the mermaid is seeking out a soul. “She decides she will risk everything ‘to win him and an immortal soul’” and as a consequence, the mermaid thinks the two go hand in hand. Conversely, Disney’s Ariel is fighting for a man rather than a soul.  Because of this, Trites argues that Disney sends the message that women, in order to become independent of their fathers, must become dependent on another man instead. While Trites goes a little too far with her analysis of Ursula as the representation of Satan who takes advantage of Ariel's dependence, Trite make the important point that Usula is an accurate depiction of the way by which Disney depicts women as objects who don't need to use their voice or personality, but rather their body to get what they want.

Additionally, I found that Trites' point about the superficiality of her obsession with humans to be provocative. I thought it was interesting that she mentions how Ariel has very little idea of how humans actually are, so her obsession with humans becomes increasingly materialistic, as demonstrated by her singing about the "neat stuff" that she assumes represents humankind.

Moreover, while Trites definitely overextends herself in some areas of her agument in the most hilarious ways possible, her piece really does make some valid points about the impact of Disney's influence on Hans Christian Andersen's original tale in making the story sexist and even ridiculous at times.