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Hello and welcome to Storytime for Grown Ups. I'm Faith Moore and this is Summer Session. Normally on Storytime for Grown Ups, we read classic literature a few chapters at a time with a few notes along the way. Like an audiobook with built in notes. But during the summer, we switch things up a little. From now until September, we will be in Summer Session, which is sort of like a college class, only fun. This summer we're exploring fairy tales and their relationship to the books we've read this year on storytime and storytelling more broadly. We'll do this in once a week episodes, which will drop on Mondays. If this doesn't sound like your thing, don't worry. Storytime will be back with a new book in September. But for now, brew a pot of tea, find a cozy chair and settle in. Class is in session. Hi, everyone. We made it. This is the last episode of Summer Session. I cannot believe it. I really feel like this summer has just flown by and there's a lot of reasons for that, but one of them is how much fun it has been doing fairy tales with you. It's been, it truly has been a fairy tale summer. And I am so grateful to you for being a part of it and for joining me with this and just coming along for this ride and, and enjoying all of these fairy tales right along with me. So thank you, thank you for being here for Summer Session. Thank you for putting up with the once a week format while I stayed at home with my kids and did summer things. I really appreciate that and I appreciate your understanding. But we're here in the week where we go back to twice a week episodes we have today. This is going to be our final episode of Summer Session. And then this Thursday, so September 4th, we're going to start Frankenstein. We're not going to actually read any Frankenstein, but we are going to have an intro episode, which we do. Every book that we start, we have an intro episode where I just kind of give you a little bit of context to help you go into this book so that you, you are prepared. And we're gonna do that on Thursday and then on Monday, September 8th, we're starting the book. So it's happening, everyone. It's all happening. We made it. We made it through the summer and we're going back to twice a week. So today is the final episode of Summer Session. So I'm not going to read any more stories today, but I do have a lot to talk to you about. So today's episode is going to have kind of like three segments. And I hope that by the end of it all, you'll feel like we've kind of wrapped everything up. We've been talking about a lot this summer. We've read a lot of fairy tales. We've talked about a lot of ideas, a lot of thematic ideas, a lot of symbolic ideas. We've had conversations with amazing other people who have given us their time and their expertise to talk about these fairy tales as well. And so what I hope to do in this episode is just kind of wrap that all up, sort of remind us of the various things that we talked about, and send us away into September, into Frankenstein, feeling like, okay, yeah, we put a bow on that. We're ready to move on. And each of these three segments was sort of spurred on by your questions and comments. And so at the start of each segment, I'm going to read some questions and comments. So we're going to have a lot of questions and comments today. The first segment is going to be a sort of general one. I have some great questions about. About kind of the interpretations that we've been doing of fairy tales. We're going to start there. The second segment is going to be about the Little Mermaid. We haven't talked about that yet, and we're going to talk about it kind of extensively. There's a lot to say about the Little Mermaid, so we're going to do that. And then the third segment is going to be about those three additional fairy tales that we heard last week. And hopefully all of that will kind of bring everything together, wrap it all up, and we'll move on. So that's what today is going to be. So before we get into that, just a couple of housekeeping things. This is a great time to leave review if you haven't done that already. I would love it if wherever you're listening, you would just leave a positive review or. And. Or tap the five stars, wherever you're listening. If you haven't done those things yet, this is a great time to do it. You've just finished up summer session. You can give us your thoughts about that. So I would love it if you would do that. It's also a great time to tell a friend, we're starting a new book. So this is a great time. Anybody that you think might enjoy the show, this is a perfect time to be like, hey, a new book is starting now. You're going to be able to listen in real time. Here's a link to this show. I would really appreciate it if you would do that. That would be amazing. A couple of other ways to support the show, if you are willing and able. I do have a tip jar. You can make a financial donation. If you scroll into the description of this episode, you'll find a link to that. The page is called Buy me a coffee. I always say you're buying me a tea because I drink tea, not coffee. But that's a place that you can make a donation to support the work I do, or you can also do join our online community, which is called the Drawing Room, as in the withdrawing room in an old Victorian house, where we go after the show to chat about all kinds of things, including the books we're reading on the show, but also just life in general, books in general, all kinds of things. It's amazing over there. I love checking in. You can also become a member of that. We have a couple of different membership tiers. It gets you a few different things. You can scroll into the show notes again and click the link and it will tell you all about that and you can decide if you'd like to do that. You can also buy merch. We have merch merchandise. So you can pick up a T shirt or a mug or a tote bag and wear that around and hopefully people will see it and wonder what Storytime for Grown Ups is and you can tell them all about it and they can come and join us. So those are all some ways that you can support the show, if you're able or interested. And I really do thank you so much to all of you who have done that, already done some of those things, done all of those things. You guys are amazing. This show is nothing without you. Nothing at all. And I'm just so humbled and thrilled and grateful every day for all the things that you guys do to support the show. So thank you for doing all of those things. And if you haven't done them yet and you'd like to, I invite you to do that also. Please subscribe so that you get all the Frankenstein episodes and you don't miss a thing. Okay, enough of that. Let's move into this episode. So, as I say, there are these three things that I would like to talk to you about today. And each one of those things is going to be preceded by some questions from you. So we're going to jump right in. So. So this is the first section that I would like to cover and I have two questions to read to you. All right, so this first one comes from Michelle Staddle. I hope I'm saying that last name Right. Sorry about that. I've been listening to you for a while now, and I love storytime for grownups. This summer session has not been my favorite because I am not sure that I agree with what you're saying about the meaning behind fairy tales. Where does this belief in the hidden meanings, allegory, metaphor, symbolism of fairy tales originate from? I've heard you read quotes from books and learned people, but why is it a common belief that the deep dark forest has a hidden meaning, etc. I know that Narnia is an allegory, but it was deliberately written to be so. What about Snow White, Cinderella, etc. Where does the belief in the symbolism of fairy tales originate? Okay, and the second one comes from Shanna. She writes, is there any way you can explain symbolism in fairy tales a little more? How do I know what is symbolism and what's literal? Okay, so I've been getting a few questions, like these, right? Questions about how we know what these various fairy tale elements represent or whether they really do represent what I'm saying that they represent, or why we should go beyond what's on the page at all. And so I think it's worth addressing these. And this final episode, I think, is a good place to do it. Because one of the things that I've been trying to convey this summer is this idea that these stories, these fairy tales are not just stories about princesses and resourceful little boys and princes disguised as bears and all of this, but they're also allegories. They also hold symbolic meaning underneath the literal events of the story. And the reason I've been trying to convince you of this is that, at least in my opinion, and in the opinion of, like, fairy tale scholars and mythographers and people like that, in my opinion, the fact that these stories are. Are allegorical in many instances is what makes them one of the building blocks for storytelling. Okay. And that's another thing I've been trying to convey this summer as well, right? This idea that the themes and motifs and tropes that we encounter in fairy tales are also all over the place in other stories, in the movies that you watch, the books you read, the songs you listen to, they're everywhere. And that when you encounter these fairy tale elements in these other places, whatever symbolic resonance they hold in the fairy tale tale, they're going to hold in whatever place you're encountering. So maybe it's just a faint echo of that resonance, or maybe it's the full on thing. But my point is, my point this summer has Been that the symbolism you encounter in a fairy tale, this kind of symbolic shorthand, right? Where a spindle, let's say, means the same thing from story to story. That symbolism resonates wherever you encounter it. If the place you encounter it is fictional. Okay? Like, a spindle in a store that sells spindles is just a spindle. But if you're writing a story about a store that sells spindles, you have to understand that you're at least setting up a situation which codes as if it's going to have something to do with girls becoming women or whatever it is. But it is fair to ask where all of this is coming from. Like, I would say that probably most people read these stories and don't pick up any of the symbolism. Okay? I would say that's probably normal for people, not, like, studying fairy tales in school or whatever and not really thinking about anything other than reading some cool stories. And honestly, that's how it should be, okay? The best and deepest stories don't advertise their depth. If you're reading a novel and the author is going out of his way to, like, hit you over the head with whatever symbolism he was trying to put in there, that's a bad book. It's boring. It takes you out of the story. It makes you annoyed at the author, and you're probably going to put it away before you finish it. But stories do have themes and big ideas that go beyond what's on the page, right? Classic books in particular have this, because classics become classics when they speak to something universal that we can all understand, that goes beyond the specifics of the events and the characters of the book. And those themes can bubble to the surface if you want them to, or. Or you can ignore them if you don't want them to. We talked about this a lot last summer when we were reading Jane Eyre, and that episode is still there, if you're interested. It's the very first episode of last year's summer session, and it's all about whether books are meant to be analyzed at all. But my point is, books or stories that hit you over the head with their, like, metaphorical meanings aren't good books or stories. So it's no wonder that fairy tales don't advertise that they're allegorical. They wouldn't have lasted this long if they had. Okay, but then, of course, we're back to the question of, well, then how do you know they even have symbolic meaning? So all I can do here is tell you my own answer for this, okay? Because now we're in the realm of, like, literary interpretation. And interpretation is exactly that. It's interpretation. There is no definitive, like, scroll somewhere that states that every time you see a maiden fall into a magical sleep in a fairy tale, a defense definitively means that she's transitioning to womanhood. That doesn't exist. So all of this is just people's interpretation, right? So feel free to take it or leave it if you want. But if I had to answer this myself, I would say a few things. Okay? The first is the repetition. When you read these stories, the same stuff keeps coming up. The stuff we've been talking about all summer, right? People who are beautiful pitted against people who are ugly. Wicked stepmothers, the woods, princes disguised as animals, items related to spinning and sewing, enchanted sleep, and on and on. There are these repeated elements right from story to story. And when you look at the stories where one of these elements repeats, you'll find that it's often under similar circumstances. Like the girl is falling asleep right around the age of puberty, for example, or the girl is waking up with a man. The girl is in conflict with a mother figure, et cetera, et cetera. You notice similarities both between the elements and items, but also between the plot points in the stories that involve those elements and items. Okay? So that's one thing. You've got all these repeating items and plot points. But another thing is that a lot of these stories don't actually make any sense. Okay? Like, you're literally dead for years and years because a piece of apple is lodged in your throat. But when it comes out, you can come back to life. That makes no sense. Like the little girl, she looks into the face of a literal wolf and thought that maybe. Actually, yeah, it could be her grandmother. A princess who can presumably have whatever she wants, is willing to do anything for a golden carding comb. I mean, if you had written a short story with these elements in it and you brought it to me for editing, I would tell you that we need more explanation here, at the very least, right? I would say this isn't believable. I can't get into this story because you're leaving out a lot or making a bunch of logical leaps that aren't actually logical. Not only that, the characters aren't believable. Like, a bear shows up at your house and asks for your youngest daughter and you, a loving father. You're like, yeah, sure, go for it. If you wrote that in a novel, I would tell you you had to go back and fix it. It's not believable. Right. Or the king who sleeps with the princess while she's asleep and then is somehow the good guy. No, sorry, not believable. So the stories don't make any sense when you take them literally. They're super weird. And you could say, well, yeah, these are just a bunch of really weird stories. Maybe they were written by weirdos. There's a lot of weirdos in the world. What's so implausible about that? But remember, these stories have survived for, in some cases, thousands of years. Stories don't survive thousands of years if they don't resonate for some reason, if they don't make sense, if they have nothing to say say to us, if they don't speak to us in some way. So they must have some kind of universal value, except on the surface, they don't actually make any sense, which tells me at least, that we have to look below the surface. Okay, so the fact that these stories don't really work literally, coupled with the fact that they've survived for generation upon generation and so therefore must have something to offer tells me that there must be something else going on. And the repetition of various elements appearing in similar places in each story alerts me to look at those elements and plot points and see if I can draw, like, a through line. Now, of course, you can interpret fairy tales or any type of literature badly. Okay? You can insist that there are through lines where there are none. But smart people, and all of you are smart people. So smart people can tell when someone's full of baloney in this way. Like when I tell you that these maidenhood stories are about girls going through puberty, girls becoming women, and I show you the ways that the various elements feed, fit into that. I assume that most of you at least go, okay, yeah, I can see that. Right. You might think it's a coincidence. You may wonder where I got that idea from in the first place. But my guess is you're thinking, all right, I see where you're coming from. But if I were to tell you that all these maidenhood stories are about how Taylor Swift would one day be born and be the greatest pop star ever, my guess is you would, like, I don't know, have me commit it or something, and not just for saying that Taylor Swift is the greatest pop star ever, or if I tried to tell you that all these stories that feature the deep, dark wood are about how lumberjacks need to unionize, you'd probably feel like that wasn't really what generations of people have been trying to convey for the last thousand years. So that's basically my take on this. These stories are universal. They've stayed relevant for centuries. When taken literally, they don't make much sense. Stories that don't really make sense tend not to last for centuries. When you go looking beneath the surface of them, you notice these repeating elements. When you look at the repeating elements, you notice similar plot points. When you try to draw a plausible through line, you can, okay, that's it. And you can take that or leave that. But that's my thinking on this. And if you're saying, yeah, but I liked these stories even before I knew all about this symbolism stuff, my answer to that would be, yeah, because they were packed with all this symbolism stuff. That's why you liked them. They're rich and relevant and universal, these stories. You don't have to analyze them to death to know that. You just feel it. And that's why it's important to know about this if you're a writer or even if you're just like a discerning reader. Because when these various elements and themes show up, like I was saying a minute ago, now you know what they might be conveying to you or to your readers if you're a writer, even if your readers never actually know that that's what they're getting out of it. Okay, So I felt like that was worth discussing as kind of a way to wrap up our discussion on fairy tales, because it kind of hits on most of the points that I've been making this summer, and it also hopefully addresses some of these really valid questions that I've been getting about interpreting and analyzing these stories. Okay, so what I'd like to do now is do some interpreting and analyzing now that you have this explanation fresh in your mind. We have several stories that we haven't discussed yet. Like I was saying at the beginning, we've got the Little Mermaid by Hans Christian Andersen. And then we've got those three additional Brothers Grimm stories from last week. We've got Rapunzel, Rumpelstiltskin, and the Frog King. So what I'd like to do is read you some more questions I got about these stories and then discuss them a little, using the various ideas and themes and things that we've been discussing all summer. And then that'll be a wrap on Summer Session. I cannot believe it, but it will. And at the very end of this episode, I will talk a little bit about what to expect from the coming season and beyond. So I'm going to focus mostly on the Little Mermaid because I think of all the stories we've read since our last discussion, that one is the most confusing and the most difficult to get a read on. So we're going to start with the Little Mermaid and then we'll touch briefly on the other fairy tales from the Brothers Grimm after that. So let's start with a few questions from you guys about the Little Mermaid. The first one comes from Hudson. Hudson writes, gah Anderson's Little Mermaid was so good and then the ending ruined it. It feels like it was originally a wonderful tragedy before some editor or publisher insisted on tacking on that cheap ending with the spirits of the air. And the bit about good and bad children. Maybe what counts as a cheap ending has changed. The next one comes from Megan Pack. Meghan writes, the Little Mermaid was sadder than I thought it would be. I thought it was going to be a reverse Beauty and the Beast where the prince was going to have to see past her muteness to who she truly was. But sadly no. Still very interesting though. I definitely got some woman in white vibes. The sea witch reminded me very much of Count Fosco. She with snakes slithering on her and he with his mice crawling over him. And also the feeding of their little pets. Super creepy in both cases. Also, when the Little Mermaid was mute, the prince saw her as a child so he couldn't marry her, which was like when Laura was so childlike and Walter knew he couldn't marry her in that state. Very fun to see some similarities. And this last one comes from Michael C. Rockwell. He writes thank you for reading the Little Mermaid. When I read it as a boy, I thought it beautiful. The tale conveyed love can be painful, a sacrifice, and not something you possess or destroy if it doesn't go well. Alright. So I think the first thing to remind ourselves of when it comes to analyzing the Little Mermaid is that it's an original fairy tale. So. So it uses the various symbolic elements that we've been talking about and some of the fairy tale plot points that we've been exploring, but it wasn't passed down generation to generation. So it doesn't necessarily hold the same symbolic resonance. In other words, Hans Christian Anderson can choose to have these fairy tale elements and plot points mean what they've always meant from time immemorial. Or he can not right his story exists as he chose to craft it, not as generations of storytellers have chosen to craft it and hone it over centuries. So when we're looking at the various elements that exist in this story, and trying to interpret them. We're doing a sort of like a meta interpretation. We're saying, like, okay, well, this element usually means this, but does it here? And if not, why not? What is Anderson doing with it? And how does that change the narrative and change the meanings of these various fairy tale elements? So that's the first thing to remember. And later in this episode, we. We'll look at the Grimm's fairy tales we read last week, and we'll come at them from the much more traditional angle of the fairy tale symbolism that has come down to us over time. So we can kind of compare these two different ways of looking at stories that use fairy tale elements. Okay, but that's the first thing to remember. This is a story written by one man, and that man had a personality and beliefs and made stylistic choices and things like that. So we're going to look at a story like this differently than we might look at another sort of fairy tale. But I think the thing that's most startling to us about the Little Mermaid is the ending. So I'd like to just sort of address that. First part of this, I think, is the fact that so many of us are familiar with the Disney version, which has a happy ending. And we may not have had any exposure to the Anderson version maybe until I read it to you a couple of weeks ago. So part of the shock of the ending is in comparison to that movie, we expect the mermaid and the prince to live happily ever after, and instead of, she first, like, dies and then turns into a sort of weird do Gooding ghost or something. So that's a shock. But even if you've never seen the Disney version, the ending might still be a shock because of what we've learned about fairy tales. Right, which is that a large portion of the time, they end happily. We talked about this in our interview with Spencer. Right. These stories often operate with an immoral worldview that necessitates that the good guys win and the bad guys lose. So the girl gets the guy, the bad father sees the error of his ways, the witch is vanquished, and all of this. And since the Little Mermaid uses so many of the fairy tale tropes that we've been discussing this summer, we assume that this is a fairy tale like any other, and we're waiting for the moment when the prince realizes that the mermaid is his rescuer and not the random convent princess or whoever she is, and they get married and the mermaid lives happily after with her prince and her immortal soul and all of that. So Even without the Disney movie, this story goes against our expectations. And that's why the fact that she doesn't actually get the guy, and not just that, but that she actually dies. That's why it's so shocking. But then there's this additional piece about the daughters of the heir. And I agree with Hudson. It really does feel sort of tacked on at the end to, like, give the story a moral or something like that. It feels like this very twee Victorian sentiment about good little boys and girls and what on earth is it doing there. But in reality, it is not tacked on at all. And in fact, Anderson felt very strongly about including it. Of course, that doesn't mean that we have to like it, and it doesn't mean that we have to feel that it fits with the rest of the story. We can disagree with Anderson if we want to, but let's just first go back and take a quick look at the various fairy tale elements that Anderson is using in this story and try to figure out what, if anything, is going on with them and whether we can pull anything thematic or more universal out of this story. But I do want to just first say that this story generally baffles, like, scholars, and there are various interpretations, but there isn't, like, one definitive analysis. And I don't pretend to have one definitive analysis either, or to know for sure what Anderson was trying to say, if he even was trying to say something. So what I'm going to do now is try to point to the various places where parts of the story relate to the various fairy tales that we've read this summer and try to give you my thoughts on how it all hangs together and what the ending does to these various elements. But remember that this is my interpretation, and you can do your own interpretation or not even try to interpret it at all, which is also totally valid. Okay, so let's dive in. We begin with a very recognizable fairy tale idea, right? The idea of the beautiful princess. She's the youngest of several sisters. We've seen that before. She's friends with animals. We've seen that before. She's the maiden, as we've learned to recognize and appreciate her, right? So we probably immediately have several thoughts about her without even realizing it. We think she's on the cusp of womanhood. We think her story is going to be about the transition from girl to woman. We think that the man, when he appears, is going to be the symbol of her. Her burgeoning womanhood. And we see that in some ways, like the other Maidens that have come before. She's being held back from moving forward with her life. She wants to go to the surface, but she's not old enough yet. She's not ready. So it's not. It's not like a wicked stepmother or something like that. But it's reminiscent of those other stories where the heroine has to break free of some influence that's holding her back. And so we imagine that she's going to have to go through some trials, but that eventually she'll emerge on the other side, ready for womanhood with the man who helped her get there by her side. But of course, the first thing that tells us that maybe this is not actually what's going to happen is that this maiden is not actually a girl, right? She's a mermaid. She's not a human being. And we're told that as a mermaid, she doesn't actually operate within the boundaries of humanity. She doesn't have an immortal soul. She lives for far longer than a human being would. But when she dies, she just turns into seafoam, meaning she stops existing, right? It's like what a person without any kind of religious or spiritual belief system might think happens to us when we die. There's nothing. That's it. The end. Seafoam. And the other thing she doesn't have. And you know, make of this what you will, but the other thing she doesn't have is human genitalia. So much of the maidenhood stories have to do with this new ability to reproduce. We've talked about this a lot, right? These are stories about the fact that when girls go through puberty, they become able to make babies with a man. And that's where all the symbolism of the prince comes in, like we've been discussing for several weeks now. But the little mermaid actually can't make babies, at least not in the same way that humans can. And she certainly couldn't make a baby with the prince that she falls in love with while she's still a mermaid. So as opposed to the maidens in the maidenhood feature fairy tales who are following the, like logical and inevitable trajectory of their own biology and their own soul's purpose. In order to get what she wants, the little Mermaid has to actually change the logical and inevitable trajectory of her own biology and her own purpose, which is to eventually die and become seafoam. So not the same as becoming like a wife and mother. So it's an interesting setup, right? It looks like the beginning of a maidenhood fairy tale, but it's actually something Else, it's. But what that something else is is kind of open to interpretation. But to my mind, there does seem to be a kind of theme here of upending the natural order of things. This question of whether we should break out of the path that's been set for us into something new or stick with the hand we've been dealt. And I also think there's something going on about what we give up when we break out of our path and whether we can ever truly be something that we aren't. Another thing that we probably recognize from other fairy tales that shows up in this one is the witch, right? Usually the witch is trying to stop the protagonist from growing up, right? She's either trying to stop the natural progression of the maiden's journey to womanhood by killing her before she gets there, like the stepmother in Snow White or the wicked fairy in Sleeping Beauty, or she's trying to literally ingest the children to try to stay young herself, like the witch in Hansel and Gretel and. Or the various trolls and ogres and the other stories that we've read. But this witch is actually different. This is a witch who has something to offer. And like Megan points out in her letter, she's truly terrifying. She's really gross and creepy in the same way that Fosco is gross and creepy. I love those connections that Megan made to the woman in white. So she's clearly not the good guy. We're clearly meant to be wary of sea witch and of what she has to offer our heroine. But she does have something to offer. And what she has is the fulfillment of our heroine's wishes, right? The good merpeople, the grandmother, the sisters, they can't help our heroine. They have no way to help her to become a human. Or more specifically, no way to help her to get an immortal soul. And the grandmother, who seems like one of the good, wise women that we've met as well, right? The wise old crones from east of the sun, west of the Moon. Or the fairy godmother from Cinderella. The grandmother is like, no, you're better off staying a mermaid. It's better to be a mermaid. We get to live a really long time, and that's great. And then we become sea foam, which is fine because we're tired by then, or whatever. The only way to get an immortal soul is to marry a human man. Okay, here is what the grandmother tells her. This is a quote. Unless a man should love you so much that you were more to him than his father or his mother, and if all his thoughts and all his love were fixed upon you, and the priest placed his right hand in yours, and he promised to be true to you here and hereafter, then his soul would glide into your body and you would obtain a share in the future happiness of mankind. He would give to you a soul and retain his own as well. Okay, so this is a really beautiful image, right? And it's basically the image of human marriage. We say that when two people get married, they become one flesh. Somehow these two people become one person. So if a human man married a mermaid, then they would meld and his soul would become part of her, and presumably some elements of her would become part of him, though it doesn't say that. And then her merness, right, meaning her non soulness, would transform through union with a man into soulness. And that's a lot like the maidenhood fairy tales, right? She'd unite with the man and together they would become this new entity, a couple. And in doing that, the mermaid gets a soul because she becomes one with her partner. But listen to what the grandmother says next, okay? She says, but this can never happen. Your fish's tail, which among us is considered so beautiful on earth, is thought to be quite ugly. They do not know any better, and they think it necessary, in order to be handsome, to have two stout props which they call legs. Okay? So on the one hand, the grandmother is saying, don't even think about this option, because men don't like mermaids. They only like actual maids. And this makes sense in the context of fairy tales, right? Because human men can't make babies with creatures that don't have human genitalia. But, and I think this is really important, on the other hand, what the grandmother is saying implies that if a mermaid were somehow to cause a human man to fall in love with her as a mermaid, then they could get married. And in getting married, the mermaid would become one flesh with her husband and through this magical process, get an immortal soul. I don't know. We're not told whether this would involve becoming human as well, or if she would stay a mermaid. But some essential change would occur that would allow the mermaid to change from a being who lives for 300 years and then becomes foam to a being who lives for a shorter time, but then lives eternally as humans do, according to Anderson's worldview. And what all this means is that there is a way for a mermaid to gain an immortal soul without altering her mermaidness, without changing the natural order of things. And in that way of getting A soul. The mermaid would come into this new version of herself via the love of a man, just the way any maiden in a fairy tale comes into the new version of herself. And then perhaps there might be some way for the mermaid and the man to reproduce, even either because now the mermaid has been made human via the union with the man, or through some other magical means. So it's important to realize that there was another way for the little mermaid to try to go about this other than going to the sea witch and making this awful deal. She could have revealed herself as a mermaid to the prince, explained that she was the one who saved him from the shipwreck, explained that she's a mermaid, and then kind of just gone from there. But because the grandmother tells her that a man could never fall in love with a mermaid, she doesn't give it a try. So in that way, the grandmother is kind of the one holding her back and not letting her grow up, or at least grow right. So she ends up at the sea witch. And what does the sea witch want? She wants the thing that will make it impossible for the mermaid to get the prince to fall in love with her. She wants her voice. And what is your voice? Right? It's the thing you use to express who you truly are. Your ideas, your personality, your feelings. All of this. All this is conveyed via your voice. And that's what the sea witch wants. Okay? To me, the voice here is clearly representative of the mermaid's inner self. The way that Cinderella's ball gown allows her inner beauty to be made manifest on the outside, or the way a princess in a fairy tale signals to us that she's good on the inside simply by virtue of being a princess. Okay? The mermaid's voice is that inner beauty. It's the her of her. Her essence, the thing that makes her her. And the witch wants it because she knows that without it, the mermaid is just flesh. The sea witch reduces the mermaid to her physicality. She makes it so that the prince must rely on lust. And while lust is involved in the process of turning girls into women in fairy tales, lust alone cheapens the whole equation, right? The reason the guys in these fairy tales are usually princes is because a prince means that they, too, are beautiful on the inside. They are good men. The princess's inner beauty calls out to the prince's inner beauty, and they are united. But the mermaid's inner beauty can't call out to the prince's inner beauty because she's lost the ability to call, which is exactly what the sea Witch intended. And the sea witch makes it agony for the mermaid to be a human. Right? Every step she takes feels like knives and needles are being stabbed into her feet, which to me, implies that this was the wrong way to become a human. If the very fact of her existence is painful, then perhaps this is not the way she was meant to exist. Perhaps she was meant to exist in some other way, like as a mermaid. Because a mermaid is actually what she is. I think it's fair to say that agreeing to the sea witch's terms was the wrong thing to do. Okay, the witch is clearly a bad guy, and doing what the bad guy tells you to do is never a good plan. So I think we're meant to feel that this whole situation is not what the mermaid should have done. And even if we think she should have, it doesn't work, right? The prince never figures out that she's the one who saved him. Just like Megan said, he treats her the way Walter treated Laura when she couldn't remember anything in the Woman in White. He treats her like a child. Why? Because she doesn't have her voice to show him who she truly is. So the prince doesn't know who she truly is. He mistakes the other princess for his rescuer and marries her instead. And here, of course, is the more traditional fairy tale ending for those two, right? The prince and the princess united in love, going to bed together on their wedding night. But unlike a traditional fairy tale, there's this other person hovering around the wedding chamber, right? This mermaid who wanted to be the princess but couldn't. Who wanted to be human but was actually a mermaid. Who maybe could have been the wife in this scenario had she not tried to pretend she was something that she wasn't. Had she not given up her voice, her true self. And so Sleeping Beauty stays asleep. Snow White never wakes up. Cinderella doesn't go to the ball. Because instead of being who she was meant to be, Right? Instead of guarding her inner beauty, no matter what hardship came to challenge it, she gave it away. She didn't show her true self to the prince. She showed him a lie. And he never saw her true self, and he married someone else. And then, in that moment, the mermaid is given the choice to dig in deeper, right? Her sisters have gone to the sea witch and exchanged their beautiful hair for a knife, which the mermaid could use to kill the prince and become a mermaid again. He's got to die. Or she does. Why? Well, to my mind, it's because as a human, he's her other half. She was meant to unite with him and become one flesh. But she didn't. She couldn't. So now she's extraneous. She's half of something. So in order to become whole again, she's got to get rid of this other part of herself that she wasn't able to integrate into herself. Or she's gotta go, because he's chosen someone else to join together with. And she's the extra piece that doesn't belong. But she refuses to do it right. She won't kill the man she loves because he is the man she loves. He hasn't done anything wrong. It's not his fault. He didn't see her for who she truly was. She didn't show him who she truly was. But now, for better or worse, she is this hybrid thing, this hybrid creature. Not a mermaid, not a human, but she is still herself. And she's not going to kill the person she loves. And so she's willing to die. She can't be with the man she loves. She can't go back to her natural state without going against her nature and killing the man she loves. So she chooses to sacrifice herself. And in sacrificing herself, she chooses to allow this union between the prince and the princess to stand and presumably for it to bear fruit in the form of children. She refuses to cut short the line of the prince and instead allows it to grow and flourish. And it is at the this moment that she is given the weird, seemingly tacked on ending where she gets to actually earn an immortal soul, after all, if she does good deeds for humans, and in which children and their good behavior hold the power to shorten or extend her time in what's essentially purgatory. And I still agree that it's weird, and I do actually think this story would still work without it. But I think that in a sense, that moment at the end where the mermaid sacrifices herself is the moment when the mermaid regains her true form. It's the moment where she allows herself to be her true self again, instead of this borrowed Persona she got from the sea witch to try to win the prince. And in that moment, she's allowed this second chance at a soul. And that change is wrapped up in the idea of children, right? Just a way that the maiden's transition from girl to woman is wrapped up in having children. The mermaid couldn't be a human woman and go through the transformation that way, but she does, in the end, get to have what a human has, an immortal soul. And the pathway to that is still wrapped up in children in some way. I will just add here that I think it's worth noting that Hans Christian Andersen, like I mentioned in the Little Mermaid episode, he had many unrequited romantic feelings, some of which were for men. Men who didn't share these feelings and in fact, ended up marrying women. So this idea of wanting to be something that you're not wanting to be with someone that you can't be with, it does seem relevant to Anderson's own personal story, and it may be the influence for this story, if not entirely, then at least in some way. Right. So take that for what you will, but those are essentially my thoughts on the Little Mermaid and the ways that the story does and doesn't jive with with the fairy tale symbolism that we've been discussing this summer. But as I say, there's no definitive read of this story, and there are lots of other interpretations that you could make and that people have made so you can come up with your own. And as long as there is actual evidence in the text itself to back it up, you won't be wrong. Okay, but that's my take. So now I'd like to move on to the Grimm's fairy tales that we read last week and talk about them, as I said, just for a little bit. So I'm going to just read one question that I got about these, and then I'll respond to that, and then we'll wrap this whole thing up. Okay, so here's the question. It's from Elizabeth. She writes, okay, so I know this wasn't actually a college class, and I know that those three fairy tales weren't actually the final. But if it was a class and if that was the final, I think I would have aced it, which shocked me. I knew nothing about the symbolism of fairy tales before this summer, but listening to those three stories, I. I was seeing connections all over the place. And I feel like I could speak at least semi coherently about what each story means. Thank you. Okay, so, yes, that's basically exactly what I was hoping for by reading you these three additional stories, like I was talking about way back at the beginning of this episode. One of the reasons you know that there is more to these stories than what's on the surface is because of how many themes and elements and images repeat from story to story, and they repeat in very similar ways, and they kind of don't make much sense unless they have some kind of deeper meaning. So that's what I was going for with sharing those three Grimm's Brothers stories. So I'm just going to point out a couple of things from each one to sort of give you, like, an answer key of sorts to the final or whatever. There's tons that you could say about all three of these, but I'll just point to a few of the tropes and themes that we might recognize, and then we'll move on. So the first woman that we read was Rapunzel. So in this one, we get the couple who longs for a child, just like we see in Sleeping Beauty. And just like in Sleeping Beauty as well, the couple finally does have a child, but then the child is taken away from them by a wicked sorceress. Not just a wicked sorceress, but a sorceress who has been wronged in some way, Right? In Sleeping Beauty, she's been wronged by not being invited to the party. In Rapunzel, she's been wronged because the father came stealing the Rapunzel plant for his wife to eat. We also have the sorceress who wants the child and then wants to remove the child from the world, right? I think this fits in with the wicked stepmother idea of older women who want to somehow steal the youth of the younger women by removing them from society, or even by eating them and trying to ingest their youth. In Rapunzel, the sorceress wants Rapunzel, and she says that she's going to raise her as her own daughter. But then she doesn't allow her to grow up. She strands her in this tower with no door. So she's being the mother who won't let her daughter grow up, which we now recognize from lots of fairy tales that we've read. Right? We also get the very real depiction of Rapunzel's burgeoning womanhood in that we're told that she gives birth to twins, which, if we extrapolate backwards, means that she and the prince weren't just talking and, like, brushing her hair or whatever up there in the tower. So she was locked away, and the witch tried to keep her from growing into a woman. But womanhood in the form of the prince and what the prince means symbolically, womanhood showed up anyway. And this is what I was talking about a minute ago with the Little Mermaid. Womanhood and sexuality and the ability to bear children and all this is an inevitable fact for human women. So you can lock her up in a tower that literally has no door, and she's going to somehow become a woman anyway. And then the last thing to point out about Rapunzel, or at Least the last thing I'll point out about Rapunzel right now. There is lots more that you could say about Rapunzel, but the last thing I'd like to say is that you also get a hardship that must be endured before adulthood can commence. In this case, it's being cast out into the wilderness, but it might be falling asleep for a super long time, or it might be being forced to be a scullery maid in your own house, or it might be kind of an epic journey where you have to go to find your boyfriend who you thought was a bear. Whatever it is, growing up is hard to do. So you'll usually find some kind of stuff, symbolic trial or hardship happening before complete adulthood is achieved. Okay, so the next story that we read was Rumpelstiltskin. In this one we see the negligent father again. We've seen him in lots of stories, probably most notably in Cinderella, since he was there and allowed her to be turned into a scullery maid. But we also see him in Hansel and Gretel and in Snow White, it's sort of implied in Snow White we never see him, but he did marry this awful woman and he doesn't stand up for Snow White in any way. So in Rumpelstiltskin, we've got this father who claims that his daughter can do this amazing thing, right? Spinning straw into gold, but he knows that she can't. And he even agrees to have her come to the palace and do it, knowing full well presumably that she's gonna have to suffer some awful fate if she can't do it, right? He put his ego above his daughter and that's not good, right? So I think he counts as a negligent father or a failed father figure figure. We also have a poor girl who ends up elevated to royalty like we do in Cinderella. And we can even compare this story to one of the stories from that three story episode in that, in this story, the girl promises her unborn child to Rumpelstiltskin, just like the father in Rapunzel promises the unborn child to the sorceress. And we can compare Rumpelstiltskin to the Little Mermaid because both have this central idea of a symbolic marker of your inner identity, right? The whole you of you. In the Little Mermaid, of course, it was her voice in her Rumpelstiltskin. It's his name. Which brings us to the last story, which was the Frog King, right? In this one we get the youngest daughter being the most beautiful and the protagonist of the story we Saw that in the Little Mermaid and Beauty and the Beast and East of the sun and west of the Moon. And like all of those other youngest daughters, the princess in the Frog King story is. Isn't totally wonderful and perfect at the beginning, right? She needs to be taught a lesson. Her father has to tell her that if she promised to keep the frog near her, then she's got to honor her promises. Beauty from Beauty and the Beast and the girl from east of the sun, west of the Moon, both need to learn to see their men for who they truly are and not judge them by appearances. The Little Mermaid also needs to learn a lesson, right? She learns that trying to be something you're not doesn't get you what you want. And of course, like those stories, the Frog King is another animal bridegroom story, right? The Little Mermaid isn't an animal bridegroom story, but it does have some of the same elements, except, of course, the princess is the quote unquote animal in this analogy. In the Frog King, we also have the deep, dark wood which we saw in Hansel and Gretel and Little Red Riding Hood and Snow White and maybe even Rapunzel, if we want to count the wilderness that she ends up in with the princess. The deep, dark woods in the Frog King is where the well is where the princess loses her ball and meets the frog and makes the deal with him. So remember, the woods is where your problem kind of comes to a head or where you deal with what you have to deal with. So here's where the princess makes the deal that will ultimately result in her tying herself to this frog that turns out to be a handsome prince. And finally, though I could go on forever. I know I'm just hitting on a few key points here here. But my goal is just to kind of show you the places where all of these stories connect, right? We could have whole episodes where we analyze each one of these stories, but that's not really what I'm doing here. That's not what I'm going for. I'm going for just showing you all of the places where the elements repeat from story to story to story and where they hold a similar symbolic resonance. So finally, for now anyway, we've got the animal bridegroom, right, in the form of the frog sleeping in the bed with the princess, like east of the sun and west of the Moon and Rapunzel and Sleeping Beauty and all the symbolism that's in those stories is relevant there too. Okay, I feel like I've been talking way too much. We should wrap this up. We should wrap up Summer Session, and we should march boldly forward into season four. But before we do, I just want to say one more time, thank you. Okay. It continues to be a total, total shock to me that this podcast has taken off, that you are all out there listening. It's just an idea that I had one day about how I might be able to help people enjoy the classics who had struggled with them in the past and now look at us, right? But even more than a shock, it's a joy. It's truly a joy to create this show. And that's entirely because of you, right? Getting your emails and talking about these books and stories and reading aloud and getting to learn, live in these worlds with these characters. With you, I. I can't even describe it. It's bliss. So thank you so much for being here. Thank you for being a part of Summer Session 2025. Thank you for spending your summer with me and for making it a fairy tale summer. It's been amazing and wonderful, and if we didn't have a new book to start, I think I would be absolutely devastated that it's over. But I am not, because we get to dive right into Frankenstein, and I am so unbelievably excited about that. I just. I cannot even tell you. So, yes, Frankenstein, here we come. We begin this week, Thursday, September 4th. We're back to two episodes a week, and this is the week when that happens. So make sure you're subscribed so you don't miss any of the episodes and don't have to come looking for them all by yourself. This Thursday, Like I said, it's our intro episode. We won't read any of the book itself. I'll just be telling you a little bit about it. I'll give you some historical context that might be helpful. I'll talk a little bit about Mary Shelley, but nothing, I promise, nothing that will give anything away or be a spoiler of any kind. I just tend to think that a little bit of background information, particularly if the book is a little challenging. So a little background info can really help in terms of diving into the book and feeling confident. So we'll do that on Thursday and then on Monday. So a week from today, September 8th, we will start this book. So stay tuned. I absolutely cannot wait to get started. I hope that you'll stick around. We'll be reading Frankenstein for September and October, and then in November, we'll be getting into the holiday spirit a little early, and I'm super excited for that. Too. So stay tuned. I'll see you again on Thursday. Thank you for being a part of Storytime for Grown Ups. Thank you so much for listening. This concludes Summer Session 2025. Frankenstein begins this Thursday, September 4, with episodes dropping every Monday and Thursday. Wherever you get your podcast, I very much hope that you'll join us. Thank you for being a part of Summer Session. Class is dismissed.