Any Other Princess I'd Rather Be

Sorry for the Yoda-esque title, but it gets the point across. After reading the Hans Christian Anderson version of the Little Mermaid and after rewatching the Disney film, I've decided that I'd rather be almost any other princess than Ariel. This is an interesting realization for me because of all the princesses, I used to identify with Ariel the most. We both love to sing, we both have thick hair (at one point mine was also red), we both have sisters, and we both fought with our parents. However, after rewatching the movie I realized how little I'd want to identify with her: in the sea, she has a very restrictive father who uses her as an example of his success. He definitely loves her, he sacrifices himself to keep her from becoming a polyp after she makes the mistake of defaulting on her contract with Ursula, but he also objectifies her as a music box he can show off. When Ariel goes to visit Urusla, she's told it's better if she doesn't speak and that boys will like her more for this. She's told that all she needs to do to woo a man is to be pretty and demure. Wow. At least Snow White could cook and clean and in the Grimm's tale had a backbone. Ariel just sort of goes along with this, then abandons her family and all her friends to pursue a guy who she never has a conversation with until she is breaking up his wedding minutes before she turns back into a mermaid. How does she know she loves him? She looks at him. Apparently mermaid culture and the culture of whatever country Eric is supposed to be prince of literally could not care less about conversation. All anybody seems to care about if beauty and techniques of up keeping beauty (see dinglehopper).
The Hans Christian Anderson might be a little less vain, but Ariel (who isn't named Ariel in the original) does seem a little more gold-digger-y. She does fall in love with Eric, but she seems to more fall in love with the "eternal soul" she could gain from having him love and marry her. The H.C.A. version is more a plug for the Christian faith (the Little Mermaid wants to go to heaven) than it is for genuine, true love. However, to achieve her eternal soul the Little Mermaid has to more permanently sacrifice her boy: her tongue must be cut out, she has to go through the pain of having her tail separated into legs (which, if Ariel experiences this too she hides it really well), and she must feel as if she is walking on glass each time she takes a step on her new legs. She goes through this suffering, but still doesn't get the prince. In fact, he calls her his "dumb" little companion. I'm sure dumb had a different meaning when this story was written, but I still didn't appreciate the Littler Mermaid being so repeatedly talked down to. Even if it was meant to be endearing, Eric is fairly condescending in the original story. The Little Mermaid at least has the redeeming quality that she isn't a murderer. When she is presented with the opportunity to regain her mermaid-ship by killing the prince (because her sisters did a Locks of Love-esque trade for their sister to return to them) and bathing herself in his blood, she throws the knife into the water and then herself, turing into sea foam. She then evaporates into water particles in the air and Hans lays his Christian-missionary type statement out: if air-born mermaid particles float into the room of a good child, they get to go to heaven a year sooner, but if they float into the room of a wicked child, they cry and have their stay as water particles extended a day for each tear shed. So the soul-digging Little Mermaid still has a chance to reach heaven, but it'll take a while.
I don't know why I would ever choose to identify with this particular princess, neither story presents an ideal situation. I wouldn't want to be married to a man I never spoke to who I knew only loved me because he thought I was beautiful and had a pretty singing voice. I'd like to marry a man who thinks I'm beautiful and that I have a lovely singing voice, but also that values my opinions and moral values and can hold a conversation with me. Similarly, I don't want to marry a man for the purpose of gaining anything, I'd rather marry for true love and not through dubious purposes. Especially not if those dubious purposes required me to feel pain for extended periods of time. I'd be more troubled if Little Quinn had identified with the H.C.A. Little Mermaid because she's literally told that beauty is pain and she needs to suck it up, then they end the story with a very obvious moral meaning that this story is meant to TEACH CHILDREN AN IDEAL SET OF VALUES AND BELIEFS. As a Catholic, my understanding is that as long as I am a good person and that I repent for my sins committed on Earth, I will go to heaven. I would really rather not believe that rather than my own "goodness" being enough to get me into heaven, I need to trick a man into loving me enough to get me there. Also I don't really love that he's pushing religion in a children's story any way. In this case I'm glad I identified with Ariel over the Little Mermaid, but I'll be on the look out for a new, more complete princess with whom I can identify with instead.