The Little Mermaid was written as a love letter by Hans
Christian Anderson to Edvard Collin. Anderson, 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 Anderson down, disgusted.
Anderson 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 1936 and it goes down in history
as one of the most profound love letters ever written. Most
scholars and psychoanalysts concluded that Anderson was
bisexual; however, he never acted upon his homosexual drives.
The Little Mermaid, as it was originally written, did not have a
happy ending. That’s always a fun thing to tell the kids when
they watch the little mermaid. In the original she killed
herself because she couldn’t be with him ya know….by the way…