Love, Loss & The Mermaid

by sara cleto & brittany warman

While almost every story about a mermaid is a love story, they tend to end with heartbreak rather than a happily ever after. In folklore, mermaids are beautiful, dangerous, threatening, alluring… and impossible to hold on to. Like sirens, they are creatures that can never be fully domesticated or integrated into human society, though they’re often less overtly bloodthirsty than their siren cousins! A mermaid is not inherently sinister—she might rescue a drowning sailor just as easily as spelling doom for a ship with her mere presence. She can be a symbol of hope or destruction, but either way, she is something that can never be wholly known or controlled. Mermaids represent freedom—freedom from the rules and constraints of society—but that freedom comes at the steep cost of alienation and loss.

These creatures from legend have crept into our fairy tales (thanks, Hans Christian Andersen!), but they bring their legendary baggage with them.