The Metamorphic Mermaid in Fairy Tales and Feminism
The Metamorphic Mermaid in Fairy Tales and Feminism
Chapter 7 explores Evelyn’s series of Symbolist paintings based on Hans Christian Andersen’s popular fairytale ‘The Little Mermaid’ in relation to early and more recent feminism, and shows how she employed the metamorphic mermaid as a model for socio-political transformation from captivity to liberty. Her paintings are compared with contemporary literary and visual texts in order to show how her work, often positioned in relation to male Pre-Raphaelite artists, dialogised with early feminist iconography. Chapters 6 and 7 reveal George Watts’s and Evelyn De Morgan’s statuses as suffragist poet-painters and/or narrative painters who re-presented women to promote socio-political reform.
Keywords: Mermaid, metamorphosis, fairytales, feminism, symbolist painting, Hans Christian Andersen, Pre-Raphaelite, transformation, captivity, liberty
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