Sex, Lies, and Mermaids: Queer Nature and Deviant Sexuality in Fairytales by German Women321 DOI 10.24053/ CG-58-0020 Sex, Lies, and Mermaids: Queer Nature and Deviant Sexuality in Fairytales by German Women Melissa Sheedy University of Wisconsin-Madison Abstract: The folkloric tradition linking women to water spirits is well attested among the work of German women writers of the long 19 th century. Their characterizations challenge conventional stock portrayals in tales made famous by the Brothers Grimm and they critique patriarchal structures that assert dominance over feminized nature. The mermaid-like figures in Ricarda Huch’s “Lügenmärchen” (1896) and Charlotte von Ahlefeld’s “Die Nymphe des Rheins” (1812) mobilize dishonesty as a discursive tool that I read as queer to negotiate patriarchal life on land. Whether as recipients or tellers of falsehoods, these protagonists thrive in a world in which their male interlocutors brandish untruths to suppress and control nature. These depictions of transgressive bodies inextricably linked to the natural world challenge conventional notions of sex, identity, and biology to pose a uniquely queer potential. Drawing on queer and feminist ecocritical theories, this paper proposes a queer ecocritical framework that examines these figures as feminized harbingers of the natural world. From the celebration of identity to the denial of heterosexual marriage as a happy ending, these figures transgress bodily and sociocultural norms to resist patriarchal suppression and control. Keywords: Fairytales, mermaids, 19 th century, ecocriticism, queer theory You’ll have your looks! Your pretty face! And don’t underestimate the importance of body language! - “Poor Unfortunate Souls” from Disney’s The Little Mermaid 1 From Melusine to Ariel, the long tradition linking women to water spirits such as nixies, mermaids, and Rhine-dwelling maidens is well-attested in folklore 322 Melissa Sheedy DOI 10.24053/ CG-58-0020 from the Middle Ages to the present, and it is often predicated on the relationship between ambiguous sexuality, femininity, and the non-human natural world. 2 A remarkably rich corpus exploring these gendered connections - one particularly ripe for a literary queering - can be found among the work of German women writers of the long 19 th century, whose tales reframe the familiar nixie figure not as cold-hearted villain or naïve, star-crossed ingénue, but rather as a complex, agentive protagonist both aware of and able to employ her own transgressive sexuality. Not only do these characterizations challenge the conventional stock portrayals in the tales made famous by the Brothers Grimm, but they also deliver a sharp critique of patriarchal structures that assert male dominance over a natural world conceptualized as inherently feminine. 3 In Ricarda Huch’s “Lügenmärchen” (1896; “Pack of Lies,” 2001) 4 and Charlotte von Ahlefeld’s “Die Nymphe des Rheins” (1812; The Nymph of the Rhine), both narratives mobilize dishonesty as a way to negotiate life on land. Wielding trickery as a discursive tool that I read as queer, their protagonists are able to navigate and indeed thrive in a world of deceptive discourses, one in which their male interlocutors brandish untruths to suppress and control feminine-coded nature and sexuality. In their mutual deconstruction of the heteropatriarchal systems privileging and sustaining binaries such as culture/ nature and masculine/ feminine, strains of material feminism and queer theory 5 intersect with and inform each other. Drawing on both theoretical currents, this article proposes a queer ecocritical framework that examines these figures as both monstrous and sexualized harbingers of a natural world that is beyond human understanding. From the celebration of ontological oddities to the denial of heterosexual marriage as a happy ending, these fairytale figures transgress both bodily and sociocultural norms to resist patriarchal suppression and control. From their modern appearances at Pride parades and episodes of “RuPaul’s Drag Race” 6 to the deeper symbolism linking them to contemporary transgender identity discourses, mermaids and their depictions are undoubtedly queer. Half human, half sea creature, these figures represent a realm of im/ possibility, evoking an atavistic response fueled by both fear and desire. An early literary example can be found in Thüring von Ringoltingen’s 15 th -century Melusine , whose titular protagonist forbids her husband from seeing her while she enjoys her weekly bathing ritual. Reymundt cannot help but peep: “[H]e had discovered his wife Melusine in the midst of a dishonorable deed and unfaithful affair” (von Ringoltingen 72). 7 The reveal of Melusine’s true fishy form is seen as an act of betrayal, even though it was Reymundt himself who first broke his promise not to intrude on her baths, and her appearance verges on the grotesque as it both draws and repels his - and the readers’ - attention. Melusine’s monstrous serpent-like tail is a damning indication of her true form, revealing a cultur- DOI 10.24053/ CG-58-0020 Queer Nature and Deviant Sexuality in Fairytales by German Women 323 al pathologization and deep-rooted fear of female sexuality and transgressive identity that potently manifests in the figure of the mermaid. Melusine is only a small fry in a veritable sea of powerful female water spirits in the Germanic fairytale tradition: From the trickster-like nixies in the Grimm tales, who always have an eye for a bargain, to the myth of the siren-like Lorelei, who is unfairly blamed for the deaths of the sailors who cannot keep their eyes on the horizon, these figures are deeply embedded in cultural mythologies. Their stories are awash in transgression: from deviant bodies that disrupt the boundaries of the normative human or non-human animal form to their amoral actions and desires, mermaids pose an ontological dilemma, resisting conventional taxonomies of biology and morality. Their connections to mystical nature speak to age-old associations linking women with the environment: “Women were seen as closer to nature than men, subordinate in the social hierarchy to the men of their class, and imbued with a far greater sexual passion. […] Like wild chaotic nature, women needed to be subdued and controlled” (Merchant 132). Like witches, these mermaid figures are transgressors, representing nature’s unpredictable and destructive side. Beautiful but deadly, they are creatures to be controlled - and are themselves ultimately uncontrollable. Building on Catriona Mortimer-Sandilands’s proposal of an ecosystemic “‘queer’ ecocultural studies” that works to challenge “intersections of power, beginning with heteronormativity, and ecological relations” (455), this article focuses on material nature, which spills over the discursive binary depicting it as a feminized realm at odds with “masculine” culture. In its acknowledgement of non-human agency, the recent “material turn” 8 in ecocritical scholarship provides fresh conceptualizations of matter and material nature. An interdisciplinary set of approaches toward nature-as-matter, feminist material ecocriticism in particular works to deconstruct harmful binary structures such as those between civilization and nature, reason and emotion, discourse and matter, and heteronormative and queer, all of which have been mapped onto the underlying dichotomy of male and female. The recognition of the more-than-human natural world as an omnipresent, agentive subject existing “in bodily forms and in discursive formulations” (Iovino and Oppermann 1) challenges these binaries by decentering the human actor and making space for a network of interlocking material relationships. 9 As “in-between” fictional figures bridging the discursive and material gap between the human and more-than-human realms, mermaids are an enticing focus for such a framework. Moreover, these depictions of deviant, transgressive bodies inextricably linked to the natural world also pose a uniquely queer potential. In challenging conventional notions of sex, identity, and even biology, these tales of love, vengeance, and slippery sexuality are teeming with queer possibilities. 324 Melissa Sheedy DOI 10.24053/ CG-58-0020 A queer lens does not presuppose unequivocal portrayals of same-gender attraction, but invites instead curiosity and a sense of possibility: What textual implications, regardless of author intention, lie submerged beneath the surface structure of a narrative? 10 What counternormative identities, desires, and performances are alluded to between the lines? In its challenge to heteropatriarchy, “queering” goes beyond identity, constituting a mode of interrogating intersections of power (Mortimer-Sandilands 458), and therefore has much in common with ecocritical studies. A queer ecocritical approach looks beyond the idea of a natural world whose only purpose is to reproduce via normative sexual practices (458). It also acknowledges “a natural world with a range of enacted identities and bodies that do not fit into the patriarchal world order” (Sheedy 156). In their book Transgressive Tales: Queering the Grimms , Kay Turner and Pauline Greenhill explore “queering” as an analytical tool for examining fairytales in particular, a genre that specifically features figures who are socially marginalized or who behave or appear aberrantly (4). Turner and Greenhill write that queerness “embraces more than sex/ gender/ sexuality to deal with the problematics of those who for various reasons find themselves outside conventional practices” (4). Their use of a queer lens to approach the Grimms, for instance, “shifts focus from normative sexual dynamics […] to the tales’ internal struggles, suggestive of multiple and more complex desires and their perversely performative nature” (3). These “internal struggles” and transgressive desires manifest clearly in many mermaid tales of the 19 th century, couched within somewhat simplified depictions of desires for vengeance or immortality. Among these 19 th -century mermaid tales by women writers 11 are Ricarda Huch’s “Pack of Lies” and Charlotte von Ahlefeld’s “The Nymph of the Rhine.” Huch’s dark love story, “Pack of Lies,” centers on - and is focalized through - a bored young man who comes across tales of the so-called “water sprites” (353), 12 women famous for their beauty as well as for their ability to lure the souls out of the living with their song. This song grants access to all earthly and unearthly truths - a tantalizing gift indeed - and when he himself is eventually lured to the seaside one evening by just such a mermaid, the youth wastes no time in asking her for the secret of her talents. They strike a bargain: she will teach him the art of her song in exchange for the heart from his chest. The nix herself has her own agenda, namely, the desire for an immortal soul, the lack of which is a folkloric hallmark of mermaids. When the young man returns the next evening with a calf ’s heart instead of his own, she devours it greedily, seemingly unaware of its origins. It is only then that the young man learns that the key to controlling nature lies in the very lack of a heart - it is his own connection to life that renders him incapable of controlling it. The nixie, meanwhile, is left with the contented belief that she is in possession of an immortal soul as well as an immortal lover DOI 10.24053/ CG-58-0020 Queer Nature and Deviant Sexuality in Fairytales by German Women 325 (or so the reader might think - perhaps the nixie is cannier than we realize and knows more than she lets on). The tale ends on a bittersweet note with the youth’s ironic declaration that “[k]nowing and loving one another is the essence of eternal bliss” (Huch 317), 13 for of course, neither truly knows the other. Charlotte von Ahlefeld’s “The Nymph of the Rhine” is a much less ambiguous tale of vengeance. A young fisherman is in love, but too poor to marry. His beautiful singing voice draws a nymph, Libella, 14 out of the water. She promises to reward the young man with riches if he will grant her a boon. We learn that Libella once long ago saved the count Raimund 15 from drowning. The two fell in love, but she hid her identity from him until he gave her a ring and a promise to love no one but her. This oath falls flat when she tells him that she is a nymph: in fear of her supernatural power, he abandons his former love and announces his intentions to marry the human girl Bertha. Back in the present day, Libella convinces the angler to lure Raimund to the water, under the pretense of wishing to return his ring to him. Unsurprisingly for the reader, she instead drowns Raimund and returns to the depths of the Rhine. The fisher, however, finds a net filled with gold and a warning to be “more constant than Raimund,” 16 and he lives happily ever after - the promised reward for his fulfilled oath. For these figures, the key to their survival lies in deception: from their secrets to their human appearance to their shrewd bargaining, these mermaids wield misdirection to help them negotiate a world ruled by patriarchal order. Ahlefeld’s Rhenish ruse in “The Nymph of the Rhine” assures the nymph her vengeance against a man who wronged her, and it also keeps her safe. Libella hides both her name and her identity in order to survive in a world on land. Born with the knowledge that her destiny would encompass both love and suffering, and in acknowledgement of the frailty and fear of humankind, she resolves to enjoy her first love for as long as she can: A nervous foreboding held me back from confessing to him that I belonged to the mighty lineage of the Undines, for I, who would have so gladly and lovingly submitted the very best of myself to him, quietly feared that the superiority given to me over the limitations of humankind would lead him further from me, rather than bring him closer. 17 Convinced, however, by her lover’s ardent words and promises, she eventually tells him who she really is, which leads to the betrayal of his oath. The inconstant count is punished for his falsehood, while the nymph - violent though she may be - ultimately keeps her promise. The question of promises kept also underlies Huch’s “Pack of Lies.” The tale focuses broadly on the lies of the youth who desires not merely control over the natural world, but also understanding of its inner workings: 326 Melissa Sheedy DOI 10.24053/ CG-58-0020 This enormous magic charmed each thing to reveal in its own way what its essence was. To the young man this seemed the most curious and glorious thing in the world, and he daydreamed incessantly about how the stars in the heavens would heed his command, and pebbles on the path and the greenish gold beetles that crawled before him on the sand would make themselves known to him. […] In short, he imagined it would be as if every speck of them would become completely transparent in body and soul before him. (353) 18 For the young man, this enticing combination of knowledge and power seems well worth a broken promise: “The more he thought about it, the more firm became his decision not to relinquish his heart, which he believed he could not spare in this lifetime; nonetheless, he was certainly not willing to do without the siren song of the nix” (355). 19 The irony of his desires is not lost on the reader: embedded within his wish for transparency is the potential of a foresworn oath, a betrayal that in the end denies him that very transparency of the world around him. The youth is of course not the only one with a secret: his nixie lover is also driven by her own desire to obtain a human soul. Notes of deception pervade the narrative: when the young man first meets the nixie, he ignores his sense of foreboding, finding himself irresistibly drawn to her “restless smile on sly lips” (354). 20 Shawn Jarvis’s translation of the story renders the original German adjective “falsch” ( wrong, fake ) as “sly,” which transforms the idea of innate falsehood into something more playful. Despite this apparent guile, the youth disregards his intuition and throws “caution to the winds” (354) 21 just to get close to her - and, of course, her secret. There is also, perhaps, a deceptive element to the bargain they strike. The nixie desires a human heart more than anything, but she claims the gift to be a “small token” (355) 22 that he would not miss (an easy promise to make, for she herself has lived her whole life quite comfortably without a heart.) Despite these devious undertones, Huch’s narrative, however, does not allow us to simply chalk this all up to a case of mutual fault: as the narrative’s focalizer, the young man brings a perspective to the tale colored by his own deception, so the nixie’s perceived half-truths must be taken with a drop of saltwater. We must also consider the possibility that the seemingly naïve nixie is in fact operating in full awareness of her lover’s lies - she could indeed know that the heart he brings her belongs to a calf, and that the ticking inside his chest that he explains away as a clever mechanical device is nothing other than the living muscle under discussion. Indeed, the nix’s song is said to be so powerful that it coaxes the essence of all things: “as the soul listened, it strained so longingly toward the singing force that it laid itself bare and revealed itself without resistance” (353). 23 Could she be denying him control over nature DOI 10.24053/ CG-58-0020 Queer Nature and Deviant Sexuality in Fairytales by German Women 327 by exerting her own control over his web of lies? In either case, Huch’s ending may seem hopeless - we leave the tale as the nixie, seemingly unaware of her lover’s betrayal, gently kisses his eyes in a falsely contented happy ending. And yet we can read this another way: the nixie’s “failure” to achieve mortality through the deception of another helps her avoid the fate of so many other merwomen, who are destined to lose their goddess-given immortality for the sake of mediocre men. In both tales, “nature,” represented by watery realms of the unknown, is a space associated with unruly femininity in opposition to “masculine,” “rational” culture. Both fairytales construct a binary opposition between “water” as nature, and “land” as civilization, but only the mermaid figure can safely negotiate both spaces. The entanglements between these figures and water can be seen for instance in Ahlefeld’s heroine Libella, who shares her name with a formidable predator: the dragonfly ( die Libelle ). Dragonflies spend the first part of their lives underwater as larvae (known as nymphs! ), who hunt voraciously until they reach maturity. Their final transformation into adulthood, when they emerge from the water, is a time of extreme vulnerability. 24 Libella’s own emergence into life on land is similarly precarious, as she risks both her safety and her secrecy. The transformative nature of these insects is mirrored in her own ability to navigate both land and water, and Libella also encapsulates their predatory drive beneath the water. As a harbinger herself of the natural world, the mermaid figure exerts the kind of control over it that is denied to the tales’ human male actors. Huch’s nixie, for instance, possesses a song powerful enough to tease the soul from the material bodies of humans, animals, plants, and even objects (311), an ability that the youth is unwilling - or unable - to obtain for himself. Ahlefeld’s Libella, on the other hand, applies a more violent influence when she brings the waters of the Rhine to life to punish Raimund: “The water began to bluster and to seethe, as if it wanted to exceed its borders. The boat wobbled. How terrible are the elements in their turmoil! As if gripped by an unseen maelstrom, the boat capsized, and Raimund went under in the raging torrent” (75). 25 At Libella’s command, the anthropomorphized natural world overflows its boundaries, a roiling upheaval that transgresses the conventional nature-culture boundary. Libella herself seems to embody the force of chaotic nature as she prepares to drown Raimund: “Libella’s eyes flashed like lightning in a dark tempestuous sky.” 26 This stormy imagery brings to mind Carolyn Merchant, who reminds us of the close ties between the unpredictability of nature - particularly weather and natural disasters - and the patriarchal conceptions of witches (27). Like witches, these mermaid figures exercise both power and knowledge that are inaccessible to the texts’ male humans, and it is this capacity that renders them 328 Melissa Sheedy DOI 10.24053/ CG-58-0020 a threat. The nix’s power to know and summon the spirits of the land in “Pack of Lies,” for instance, directly correlates to witches’ presumed control over the natural world: “Every natural object, every animal, every tree contained a spirit whom the witch could summon, utilize, or commune with at will” (Merchant 140). Both merfigures’ control over the violence of nature places them directly at odds with the polite restraint of civilization, and yet they, unlike their male counterparts, do in fact fulfill their promises. While mermaid tales frequently render these characters as wily and deceptive precisely because they threaten the social order through queerly transgressive appearance and desires, the envoys of the natural world nevertheless adhere to the laws of humankind more closely than do the humans with whom they interact - perceived lies are found in precise language and meticulous promises, but these figures do honor their arrangements. Like the Grimms’ “Nixie of the Mill-Pond,” who strikes and keeps a bargain with a miller too careless to question the stakes, both nix and nymph keep their promises. Thus, it is merely the implied threat of difference, the fear of transgression or deviation, that, together with their ambiguous sexuality, drives the villainous narrative behind many mermaid tales and the watery witches within them. The relationship between these figures and the feminized wilderness also implicates material nature as a distinctly queer space, resistant to heteronormative discourses and interference. By challenging rigid boundaries of biology, identity, and even gender, depictions of nature such as those found in these tales reveal a wild and thriving realm beyond conventional human understanding. Drawing on Jack Halberstam, Mortimer-Sandilands observes that queerness “is not so much a question of sexual identity as it is a practice of space” in opposition to the rigors of heteronormative institutions of family and reproduction (459). 27 For Mortimer-Sandilands, a queer nature “suggests an active practice of interrogating the heteronormative and homophobic relations through which ideas and institutions of nature […] have been organized to shape both homosexual and heterosexual practices” (459). As a site that actively produces living, embodied evidence that contradicts established notions linking “natural” with “heterosexual” (Mortimer-Sandilands 459), 28 material nature in both tales functions as a dynamic, self-determined, agentive space that allows for and nurtures transgressive, ill-understood identities beyond the axes of sexual expression. As Mortimer-Sandilands suggests, “[b]oth historically and intimately, sexuality is organized in articulation with race, class, and gender; it is also embodied and lived, taking shape in fleshy particularity rather than idealized universality” (460—61). In both tales, this environmental resistance to heteronormative and patriarchal power structures manifests in the independent female figures in possession of power and expertise that are inaccessible via conventional modes DOI 10.24053/ CG-58-0020 Queer Nature and Deviant Sexuality in Fairytales by German Women 329 of knowledge production: in “Pack of Lies,” for example, the youth’s desires for immortal comprehension are rooted in timeworn pages and in his own endless brooding, neither of which equip him for the reality of the nix’s gifts. In “The Nymph of the Rhine,” the count’s fear of the unknown results in a failure to recognize Libella’s humanity and thus leads him directly into the path of her monstrosity. Both authors’ mobilization of the mermaid figure is embedded in frameworks of ecological space and autonomy. These mermaids are entangled with the morethan-human natural world that harbors them, and it is the specifically masculine intrusion into this space - invited or otherwise - that catalyzes the tales’ tragedies. In “Pack of Lies,” the youth’s collision with the paranormal is the result of the nix’s siren-like song that lures him out of bed. It is his dishonest fulfillment of their bargain, however, that constitutes the true violation of a world of which he has little understanding. In Ahlefeld’s text, it is the count’s cheeky dive into the waves of the Rhine, an intrusion into Libella’s realm, that betrays his lack of preparation: He leapt boldly and joyfully into the river and played, swimming, with the lisping waves, who, proud of their fine burden, surrounded him and carried him along on glittering swells, as if he were Neptune in the plentiful seas. But suddenly a cramp hampered the graceful routine of his vigor. A deathly paleness replaced the rosiness of his face, and with terrible capriciousness, the floods tore him away. (66) 29 The anthropomorphized waters of the Rhine in Ahlefeld’s text play with the mortal novelty among them and discard him at their own whim, a reminder of the dangers of a natural world both unpredictable and impulsive. Both tales end in broken bonds as a result of (male) human intrusion, and thus can both be read as a critique of patriarchal interference in feminine and feminized spaces, both in terms of individual material bodies and in the ecosystemic whole of a natural world viewed as the inert site of civilization’s conquest. 30 These repeated textual constellations reveal both the authors’ awareness of and perhaps empathy for a natural realm at odds with masculinized social norms - a discursive space ripe for queer interrogation. As agents of nature whose bodies operate outside of conventional parameters, the figures of the nixie and the nymph further raise questions of biology and biological uncertainty. The idea of “biology as destiny” has long functioned as a convenient justification for the perpetuation of exclusionary structures, which Stacy Alaimo indicts in her call for a feminist intervention in the discipline: “Since biology, like nature, has long been drafted to serve as the armory for racist, sexist, and heterosexist norms, it is crucial that feminists recast the […] values and assumptions that permeate this field” (5). Like many fairytale 330 Melissa Sheedy DOI 10.24053/ CG-58-0020 figures who transform into other species or who seem to exist on the ontological cusp, mermaids in possession of bodies that resist heteropatriarchal norms further bring to mind the concept of trans biology. Drawing on Donna Haraway’s conception of transas a means of describing fluid identities at odds with essentialist notions of gender, 31 Sarah Franklin proposes the term as “a biology that is not only born and bred, or born and made, but made and born ” (“The Cyborg Embryo” 171). While Franklin’s treatment focuses on issues of cloning, embryology, and stem cell research, transbiology also possesses a rich potential within folklore: The fairy tale, like myth, imaginatively anticipates the transbiological wonders and worries of today. Transbiology here includes animals or humans who masquerade as or transform into another species (in whole or in part) and/ or who otherwise mess with hard-and-fast distinctions between species, including between human and non-human. (Turner and Greenhill 6) The Grimms’ œuvre alone features plentiful examples of human and morethan-human figures who transform into or perform other identities, such as the plucky heroine of “Fitcher’s Bird” who dons an avian disguise, or the numerous transformations that take place between animals and humans in stories such as “The Frog King” and “Hans My Hedgehog.” These frequent transbiological expressions in tales reveal the “awkward knottiness/ naughtiness” (Turner and Greenhill 12) that distorts the conventional human/ non-human binary, uncovering a web of connections and intersections that undermine strict categories. In mermaid tales, these transformations are often predicated by a transgressive desire to cross known boundaries, a queering of the social and biological order that frequently renders these figures villainous. This pattern of transformation, change, and implied deception associated with mermaid figures has vital implications for trans discourses and queer theory. There exists a long-standing connection between trans and queer identities and perceived dishonesty: 32 while “passing” as cisgender promises a safer negotiation of cis-dominated spaces, anti-trans and homophobic discourses rely on harmful accusations of “pretending” or masquerading to deny a transgender or queer person’s experiences and identity. 33 In “Nymph of the Rhine,” the form Libella takes on land protects her in a world of humans, but it also renders her both trickster and threat. The liminality of the mermaid form that allows for and indeed seems to demand transformation defies heteronormative structures of gender and biological stability, as does the figure’s ability to traverse multiple spaces and worlds. Connected to this capacity is the strong desire to change form or gain specifically human attributes, such as an immortal soul or a human heart. In Leland G. Spencer’s article “Performing Transgender Identity in The DOI 10.24053/ CG-58-0020 Queer Nature and Deviant Sexuality in Fairytales by German Women 331 Little Mermaid : From Andersen to Disney,” the author suggests that mermaid tales in the vein of “The Little Mermaid” are essentially coming-out narratives that thematize transgender identity performance. Viewers of the 1989 classic have long interpreted Ariel’s loss of voice as an analogue to the silencing of queerness specifically, or otherness in general. 34 Spencer observes: a transgender reading of [Andersen’s] story recognizes that to find love and hence immortality, the mermaid must successfully perform an identity that others do not recognize as natural for her, including making decisions about whether to undergo painful changes to her body. (117) While Andersen’s heroine ultimately fails in her endeavor and chooses to become a spray of sea foam rather than harm her lover, a tragic finale that Spencer reads as emblematic of the real existing struggles of transgender people (118), Disney unsurprisingly offers its protagonist a cheerier conclusion in the body that feels most authentically hers. We must note, however, that any queer or transgender reading of the film’s happy ending is undermined by its safely heteronormative packaging via marriage to a hunky male prince and a sequel featuring their biological offspring; nevertheless, a lens informed by these discourses offers a way of reading between the lines toward a potently queer subtext. While tales like Andersen’s and other mermaid stories from the 19 th century deal more concretely with themes of transformation than either Huch’s or Ahlefeld’s texts, both nixie and nymph in their stories negotiate the boundaries between human and more-than-human in ways that, for them, promise a measure of safety, but which also are seen to threaten the patriarchal world order. Closely intertwined with the themes of deception and transgression, sexuality plays a central role in these tales, both of which can be characterized as “19 th -century steamy”: from a breast “stormed with wonderful impulses” 35 to the “blissful […] caresses” (Huch 355) 36 and “exquisite skill in unfurling love and lust” (Huch 354) 37 of an alluring water sprite, there are plenty of heaving sea-shell-decked bosoms to make modern readers blush. The beauty that draws in the mortal love interests has strong ties to nature, both nurturing and threatening, and it possesses a power that simultaneously lures and repels. Desire and revulsion are thus closely entangled through the authors’ exploration of othered bodies: in the eyes of the human male partners, these female forms - much like Melusine - border on the grotesque as they cross boundaries of femininity and even humanity. In contrast to “the soft, human charm” 38 of Raimund’s new betrothed, for instance, Libella becomes for him a “miscarriage of hell,” 39 a demonic “elemental spirit” 40 rather than the mortal girl he thought she was. The dehumanizing connections among seduction, deception, and fear have their roots in 332 Melissa Sheedy DOI 10.24053/ CG-58-0020 Renaissance conceptions of female sexuality as a source of male debasement: “The blame for the bodily corruption of the male was attributed directly to lust and temptation by the female” (Merchant 133). Overt depictions of desire among the mermaid figures in these tales are thus perceived as transgressive, even dangerous, and the close relationship between fear and compulsion plays a central role in how they interact with mortals. Huch’s nixie, for instance, offers the youth a knife with which he might cut out his heart to fulfill their bargain: “[She appeared] with a pointed, transparent little blade, saying her mother had fashioned it out of fish teeth. It would glide into flesh with an agreeable ease, more pleasure than pain” (Huch 355). 41 The young man’s hesitation to allow the nixie to complete the operation herself is unsurprising; one can indeed read the supposedly pleasant act as a symbolic inversion of masculine penetration, a transgression of the presumed inviolate male body. While the young man in “Pack of Lies” is compelled more by greed than by fear and stays with his nixie lover in spite of her disturbing offer, both he and the reader are treated to frightening visions of the monstrous form underneath when she bites into “his” heart: [S]he replied, however, that she would prefer to eat it raw and immediately bit off a large piece with her sharp, barbed teeth. […The] color of her eyes danced from a limpid light green to a smoky dark green and then back again, as if they were not eyes at all but rather waves reflected in a delicate crystal. (Huch 356) 42 This suggestion of the ocean’s depths rendered in the nix’s eyes reminds the reader of her connections to and origins within the non-human natural world, a hint of her true identity within a pleasingly feminine form. As emissary of the wild unpredictability of the ocean, the nixie herself seems a piece of the sublime, both enchanting and dangerous. Her transformation from tender lover to monstrous predator and back reinforces the connections linking women to a nature to be both feared and controlled, and it reveals a transgressive identity that cannot be categorized as one or the other. It is this challenge to the enduring nature/ culture duality, a dichotomy which Merchant indicts as a “key factor in Western civilization’s advance at the expense of nature” (143), that presents a particularly queer potential in these texts, as the merfigures at the heart of these tales seem to exist outside of a patriarchally prescribed social order. Simultaneously predator and target, monster and maiden, human and more-than-human, the nix is a queerly vibrant figure who forges and crosses her own borders at will. Within a broader fairytale canon largely molded by men, the work of 19 th -century women - despite increased scholarly attention since the 1980s - is too often disregarded, even in recent engagements with the genre. 43 The lack of DOI 10.24053/ CG-58-0020 Queer Nature and Deviant Sexuality in Fairytales by German Women 333 acknowledgement for their part in writing, creating, and shaping the fairytale tradition remains a glaring lacuna. And yet the subversion of gender norms and intrinsically political content of these stories continue to inform our understanding of fairytales and their creators in new ways, helping readers to look beyond the normative (male) editorial practices of the day. Mermaid tales created by Ricarda Huch, Charlotte von Ahlefeld, and many other nineteenth-century women 44 seem to anticipate modern subversive fairytale discourses by showcasing a feminized natural world teeming with powerful, unruly women. Contemporary German author Kerstin Hensel, for instance, has recently published a stunning new children’s book, Rusalko (2022). Hensel’s play on words in her title transforms the traditionally feminine “rusalka,” a water-dwelling figure from Slavic mythology, into the grammatically neutral “rusalk o .” Hensel is no stranger to incorporating transgressive witchy women and magical waters into her texts, 45 and the titular merperson in this tale grapples with - and eventually embraces - their own non-binary gender identity as the “Meerjungsfrau Prinzesserich” (36) Rusalko: “The name sounded both girly and boyish, and seemed extraordinarily elegant.” 46 Inspired by her granddaughter’s adorable mix-up of the word “Meerjungfrau” (mermaid) with “Meer jungs frau” (an untranslatable neologism approximating the idea of a “sea-boys-woman), 47 Hensel’s gentle tale is both a wholesome addition to the wealth of mermaid stories that have charmed audiences for centuries, and - in classic Hensel style - a politically charged fairytale with much-needed representation for trans and non-binary kids. It not only showcases the rich possibility in queering familiar tales and figures by women writers such as Huch and Ahlefeld, but it also channels the latent queer potential in these stories to render the unspoken explicit. While Huch and Ahlefeld’s texts center outwardly heterosexual relationships, both stories resist the conventional fairytale wedding that concludes so many tales, instead featuring darkly ambiguous conclusions that hint at other realities and desires rife with queer potential. Lacking both the traditional matrimonial ending and the expected demise or exile that often awaits those female fairytale figures who do not fulfill domestic roles, both tales upend expectations and present a new path for their heroines. If we look at these mermaid characters as harbingers of nature, we uncover a queerly agentive natural world that actively resists both control and comprehension, challenging conventional binaries and subverting patriarchal norms. These slippery figures represent an exuberant transition from water to earth, fish to woman, and back. Whether on land or sea, whether practicing love or war, there is far more to these briny beings than meets the (fish)eye. 334 Melissa Sheedy DOI 10.24053/ CG-58-0020 Notes 1 This infamous line sung by sea-witch Ursula in Disney’s The Little Mermaid (1989) - herself something of an icon, inspired by legendary drag queen, singer, and actor Divine - is an attempt to coax protagonist Ariel into trading her voice for a spell to make her human. 2 I am immensely grateful for the feedback and support provided by Sabine Gross, Hannah Vandegrift Eldridge, Mary Hennessy, Marcus Bullock, and colleagues in the German+ Unit at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. I would also like to thank the anonymous reviewers for their thoughtful engagement with my work. 3 For more on the long-standing connections linking women to nature, see Carolyn Merchant’s The Death of Nature: Women, Ecology, and the Scientific Revolution (1989) and Stacy Alaimo’s Bodily Natures: Science, Environment, and the Material Self (2010). 4 A note on translations: all quotes from Huch’s “Lügenmärchen” are translated by Shawn C. Jarvis, and unless otherwise indicated, all other translations are my own. 5 First coined in 1991 by Teresa de Lauretis, the term “queer theory” describes a set of approaches that aim to interrogate and problematize discursive conventions that label and marginalize positionalities expressed not only through sexuality, but also through race, gender, age, and disability. See De Lauretis, “Queer Theory: Lesbian and Gay Sexualities: An Introduction” (1991). According to Sue-Ellen Case, queer theory “works not at the site of gender, but at the site of ontology, to shift the ground of being itself ” (3). 6 Season 10, Episode 7 (“Snatch Game”) of RuPaul’s Drag Race famously features a “Mermaid Fantasy” runway challenge. 7 “er hette sein Weib Melusinam an was unehrlicher That und ungetreuwen Sachen funden” (Ringoltingen 72). 8 The nonanthropocentric “material turn” in ecocriticism foregrounds matter and the corporeal body as central actors in discussions of the more-thanhuman natural world. See Serenella Iovino and Serpil Oppermann’s volume Material Ecocriticism (2014). 9 For more, see Serenella Iovino and Serpil Oppermann’s “Introduction: Stories Come to Matter” in their volume Material Ecocriticism (2014). 10 See, for instance, Alexander Doty’s definition of queer criticism in the book Making Things Perfectly Queer: Interpreting Mass Culture (1993) . According to Doty, a queer lens is dependent on “a range or network of nonstraight ideas. The queerness in these cases might combine the lesbian, the gay, and DOI 10.24053/ CG-58-0020 Queer Nature and Deviant Sexuality in Fairytales by German Women 335 the bisexual, or it might be textual queerness not accurately described even by a combination of these labels” (xviii). 11 For more on the tradition of female creative writing storytelling in the 19 th century, see Julie L. J. Koehler’s chapter “Women Writers and the Märchenoma : Foremother, Identity, and Legacy” in Elisabeth Krimmer and Lauren Nossett’s Writing the Self, Creating Community: German Women Writers and the Literary Sphere, 1750-1850 (2020). For the subversive potential of fairytales by women writers, see also the volume Women Writing Wonder: An Anthology of Subversive Nineteenth-Century British, French, and German Fairy Tales (2021), edited by Julie L. J. Koehler, Shandi Lynne Wagner, Anne E. Duggan, and Adrion Dula. 12 “Wasserweiber” (Huch, “Lügenmärchen” 311). 13 “Einander erkennen und lieben ist ja das Wesen der Seligkeit” (Huch, “Lügenmärchen” 317). 14 The character of Libella/ Libelle is also the protagonist of Benedikte Naubert’s 1817 fairytale “Libelle. Romantische Erzählung” (“Libelle: A Romantic Tale”). Appearing five years after “The Nymph of the Rhein,” Naubert’s story takes direct inspiration from Ahlefeld’s text. 15 Note the similarity to Melusine’s husband Reymundt. 16 “beständiger wie Raimund” (Ahlefeld 76). 17 “Eine schüchterne Ahnung hielt mich ab, ihm zu bekennen, dass ich zu dem mächtigen Geschlecht der Ondinen gehörte, denn ich, die ich so gern mein ganzes besseres Selbst liebend ihm unterworfen hätte, fürchtete leise, dass die mir über die Beschränkung der Menschen verliehene Überlegenheit ihn weit eher von mir entfernen als ihn mir nähern werde” (Ahlefeld 67). 18 “[A]lles reize der unerhörte Zauber, auf seine Weise mitzuteilen, was in ihm sei. Dies schien dem jungen Manne das Merkwürdigste und Schönste auf der Welt zu sein, und er träumte sich beständig aus, wie auf seine Lockung die Sterne vom Himmel kämen und die Kieselsteine am Wege und die grüngoldigen Käfer, die vor ihm über den Sand krochen, und ihm verkündeten […] er stellte sich vor, es wäre, wie wenn sie an Leib und Seele in allen Teilen vollkommen durchsichtig vor ihm würden“ (Huch, “Lügenmärchen” 311). 19 “Je mehr er es sich überlegte, desto fester wurde sein Entschluss, sich des Herzens, ohne das er nun einmal im Leben nicht auskommen zu können glaubte, nicht zu entäußern, weswegen er aber andererseits doch keineswegs auf den Singezauber der Nixe verzichten wollte“ (Huch, “Lügenmärchen“ 314). 20 “das unstete Lächeln ihres falschen Mundes” (Huch, “Lügenmärchen” 312). 336 Melissa Sheedy DOI 10.24053/ CG-58-0020 21 “er [stellte] alle Zweifel und innerlichen Warnungen zurück […]” (Huch, “Lügenmärchen” 312). 22 “geringfügige Gabe” (Huch, “Lügenmärchen” 314). 23 “Die lauschende Seele walle der singenden Macht so sehnlich entgegen, dass sie sich ihr ohne Widerstand enthülle und offenbare“ (Huch, “Lügenmärchen” 311). 24 This information is presented with gratitude to the website of the Minnesota Dragonfly Society, whose members are largely citizen scientist volunteers. https: / / www.mndragonfly.org/ index.html. 25 “Da fing [das Wasser] an zu brausen und emporzuwallen, als wollte es seine Grenzen übersteigen. Der Kahn schwankte. […] [F]urchtbar sind die Elemente in ihrem Aufruhr! Wie von einem unsichtbaren Wirbel ergriffen, schlug es um, und Raimund ging unter im wütenden Strome“ (Ahlefeld 75). 26 “Libellas Augen funkelten, wie Blitze am finsteren Gewitterhimmel” (Ahlefeld 75). 27 See also Halberstam, In a Queer Time and Place: Transgender Bodies, Subcultural Lives (2005). 28 Mortimer-Sandilands further points out the problematic practice of invoking nature as a way of normalizing (or, ‘naturalizing’) queerness. Instead, the author calls for a critical engagement with sex, culture, nature, and power (459—60.) 29 “[Er] sprang kühn und freudig in den Fluss und spielte schwimmend mit den lispelnden Wogen, die, stolz auf ihre schöne Last, ihn umfingen und auf blinkendem Saume ihn einhertrugen, als sei er Neptun in der Fülle des Meeres. Doch plötzlich hemmte ein Krampf die anmutsvolle Übung seiner Kräfte. Todesblässe verdrängte die Rosen seines Angesichts, und in grässlicher Willkür rissen ihn die Fluten mit sich fort“ (Ahlefeld 66). 30 Consider, for instance, 19 th -century attempts to “tame” the Rhine and to control other waterways in central Europe, enterprises whose unintended consequences have shaped Germany’s relationship with its own topology. See for example David Blackbourn’s The Conquest of Nature: Water, Landscape, and the Making of Modern Germany (Norton, 2006). I argue that these physical interventions are symbolically mirrored in the plentiful mermaid tales written by 19 th -century women, who implicitly connect the fates of these folkloric figures with that of the land itself. 31 See Donna Haraway’s Modest_Witness@Second_Millennium. FemaleMan©_ Meets_OncoMouseTM: Feminism and Technoscience (1997). New York: Routledge. 32 For more, see Thomas J. Billard’s “’Passing’ and the Politics of Deception: Transgender Bodies, Cisgender Aesthetics, and the Policing of Inconspicu- DOI 10.24053/ CG-58-0020 Queer Nature and Deviant Sexuality in Fairytales by German Women 337 ous Marginal Identities” in The Palgrave Handbook of Deceptive Communication, edited by Tony Docan-Morgan (2019). In the chapter, Billard analyzes the paradoxical reception of transgender individuals who “successfully” pass as cisgender; passing renders them on the one hand more legitimate in heteropatriarchal spaces, but it also feeds discourses of malicious deception. In her analysis of the Grimms’ “Fitcher’s Bird,” Catherine Tosenberger identifies a connection between deception and survival: for the protagonist, dishonesty offers a means by which to beat an unfair system not for the sake of a happy ending, but merely for continued existence. See Tosenberger, “The True (False) Bride and the False (True) Bridegroom: ‘Fitcher’s Bird’ and Gendered Virtue and Villainy” (212—13). 33 These discourses endure even when the person in question is not trans: see, for example, the false accusations against Algerian female boxer Imane Khelif, whose appearance in the 2024 summer Olympics was marred by vicious disinformation campaigns that, relying on racist, sexist, and transphobic stereotypes, falsely labeled her as transgender and/ or as a man. 34 A quick search on Reddit reveals countless threads that invite fans to discuss analyses such as these, share ideas and artwork, and explore subversive readings of familiar films and tales. 35 “[…] von wunderbaren Regungen bestürmt ward” (Ahlefeld 66). 36 “wonniglich[e] Liebkosungen” (Huch 314). 37 “ausgesuchteste[] Künste[] in Entfaltung von Liebe und Laune” (Huch 313). 38 “[der] sanfte, menschliche Reiz” (Ahlefeld 71). 39 “Nachtgeburt der Hölle” (Ahlefeld 75). 40 “Elementargeist” (Ahlefeld 71). 41 “[Sie erschien] mit einem spitzen, durchsichtigen Messerlein […], von dem sie sagte, ihre Mutter habe es aus Fischzähnen gemacht und es werde mit angenehmer Geschmeidigkeit in das Fleisch gleiten, mehr Lust als Wehgefühl erregend” (Huch, “Lügenmärchen” 314). 42 “[S]ie sagte aber, sie esse es lieber roh, und biss sogleich ein großes Stück ab mit ihren scharfen, stacheligen Zähnen. [… Die] Farbe ihrer Augen [wogte hin und her] beständig zwischen einem klaren Hellgrün und schwärzlichem Dunkelgrün […], als ob es gar keine Augen, sondern in einem zarten Kristall spielende Wellen wären” (Huch, “Lügenmärchen” 315). 43 See for example my Review Article that examines recent book-length interventions into the genre. Of the seven monographs and edited volumes I reviewed, women creators are mentioned scarcely a handful of times (“Beyond the Seven Hills” 721—22). 338 Melissa Sheedy DOI 10.24053/ CG-58-0020 44 For example, see Marie Timme’s selkie tale “The King’s Child” (1867), Marie von Olfers’s sweetly wholesome “The Little Princess” (1862), and Benedikte Naubert’s “Libelle” (1817). 45 See for instance her version of the Mittagsfrau (Lady Midday) figure associated with a magical lake in Gipshut (Cap Rock, 1999). 46 “Dieser Name klang sowohl mädchenals auch jungenhaft und außerordentlich elegant” (Hensel 13). 47 Based on personal conversations in June 2023. Works Cited von Ahlefeld, Charlotte. “Die Nymphe des Rheins.” Im Reich der Wünsche. Die schönsten Märchen deutscher Dichterinnen. Ed. Shawn C. Jarvis. Munich: C.H. Beck, 2012. 61—76. Alaimo, Stacy. Bodily Natures: Science, Environment, and the Material Self . Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2010. Ashman, Howard and Alan Menken. “Poor Unfortunate Souls.” The Little Mermaid . Dir. John Musker and Ron Clements. Perf. Pat Carroll. Walt Disney Animation Studios, 1989. Billard, Thomas J. “’Passing’ and the Politics of Deception: Transgender Bodies, Cisgender Aesthetics, and the Policing of Inconspicuous Marginal Identities.” The Palgrave Handbook of Deceptive Communication . Ed. Tony Docan-Morgan. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019. 463—77. Case, Sue-Ellen. “Tracking the Vampire.” differences: A Journal of Feminist Cultural Studies 3, no. 2 (1991): 1—20. De Lauretis, Teresa. “Queer Theory: Lesbian and Gay Sexualities: An Introduction.” differences: A Journal of Feminist Cultural Studies 3, no. 2 (1991): iii—vxiii. Doty, Alexander. Making Things Perfectly Queer: Interpreting Mass Culture . Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1993. Franklin, Sarah. “The Cyborg Embryo: Our Path to Transbiology.” Theory, Culture and Society 23, no. 7—8 (2006): 167—87. Halberstam, Jack. In a Queer Time and Place: Transgender Bodies, Subcultural Lives . New York, New York UP, 2005. Haraway, Donna. Modest_Witness@Second_Millennium. FemaleMan©_Meets_Onco- MouseTM: Feminism and Technoscience . New York: Routledge, 1997. Hensel, Kerstin. Rusalko. Ein Unterwassermärchen . Berlin: Eulenspiegel, 2022. Huch, Ricarda. “Lügenmärchen.” Im Reich der Wünsche. Die schönsten Märchen deutscher Dichterinnen. Ed. Shawn C. Jarvis. Munich: C.H. Beck, 2012. 311—317. Huch, Ricarda. “Pack of Lies.” The Queen’s Mirror: Fairy Tales by German Women, 1780- 1900. Ed. Shawn C. Jarvis and Jeannine Blackwell. U of Nebraska P, 2001. 353—357. Iovino, Serenella and Serpil Oppermann. “Introduction: Stories Come to Matter.” Material Ecocriticism . Bloomington: Indiana UP, 2014. 1—17. DOI 10.24053/ CG-58-0020 Queer Nature and Deviant Sexuality in Fairytales by German Women 339 Jarvis, Shawn C., ed. Im Reich der Wünsche. Die schönsten Märchen deutscher Dichterinnen. Munich: C.H. Beck, 2012. Jarvis, Shawn C. and Jeannine Blackwell, eds. The Queen’s Mirror: Fairy Tales by German Women, 1780-1900. U of Nebraska P, 2001. Koehler, Julie L. J. “Women Writers and the Märchenoma : Foremother, Identity, and Legacy . Writing the Self, Creating Community: German Women Authors and the Literary Sphere, 1750-1850. Ed. Elisabeth Krimmer and Lauren Nossett. Rochester: Camden House, 2020. 182—203. Koehler, Julie L. J., et al., eds. Women Writing Wonder. An Anthology of Subversive Nineteenth-Century British, French, and German Fairy Tales . Detroit: Wayne State UP, 2021. Merchant, Carolyn. The Death of Nature. Women, Ecology, and the Scientific Revolution . New York: Harper & Rowe, 1989. Mortimer-Sandilands, Catriona. “Queering Ecocultural Studies.” Cultural Studies Vol. 22 (2008): 455—75. Naubert, Benedikte. “Libelle. Romantische Erzählung.” Im Reich der Wünsche. Die schönsten Märchen deutscher Dichterinnen. Ed. Shawn C. Jarvis. München: C.H. Beck, 2012. 105—141. von Ringoltingen, Thüring. Melusine. Nach den Handschriften kritisch hrsg. von Karin Schneider. Berlin, 1958. Sheedy, Melissa. “Beyond the Seven Hills: Fairytales and Folklore in Recent Scholarship and Pedagogy.” Monatshefte 116.4 (2024): 705—26. —. “Queering Material Nature: Bewitched Bodies and the Limits of the Enlightenment.” Goethe Yearbook 30 (2023): 155—59. Spencer, Leland G. “Performing Transgender Identity in The Little Mermaid : From Andersen to Disney.” Communication Studies 65.1 (2014): 112—27. Tosenberger, “The True (False) Bride and the False (True) Bridegroom: ‘Fitcher’s Bird’ and Gendered Virtue and Villainy” Transgressive Tales: Queering the Grimms . Ed. Kay Turner and Pauline Greenhill. Detroit: Wayne State UP, 2012. 207—21. Turner, Kay and Pauline Greenhill. “Introduction: Once Upon a Queer Time.” Transgressive Tales: Queering the Grimms . Ed. Kay Turner and Pauline Greenhill. Detroit: Wayne State UP, 2012. 1—24.