Female Sexuality: Be Cruel or Wither Away

Mary Wollstonecraft complained that women could only gain power through tyranny or manipulation. In romantic poetry, women are shown to hold power in this way through seduction, violence, and cruelty. Such is the nature of Anne Bannerman’s, “The Mermaid.” I would argue though, that what Mary Wollstonecraft is pointing to, is no tragedy, but rather a form of feminism in itself. The displays of tyranny, violence, and cruelty are not unique to female figures; they are simply a reflection of the male. Often in Western feminism, what is respected is the female appropriation of what has formerly been considered masculine: i.e. wearing pants, playing sports, or joining the military. 

In “The Mermaid,” an unknown woman forsakes her lover who was taken by the sea, and instead transforms into that which killed him. She becomes a creature of violence and cruelty, and declares “I shall wait to lead the victims to their fate” (l67-68). What is considered shocking in this poem is not the display of cruelty, but rather that a woman chooses to no longer center her life around a male lover, and instead seeks to destroy men. In literature, men are allowed to destroy other men without question. Women though are expected to be docile and to serve and protect their husbands. Therefore, there is nothing more terrifying than the thought of the subservient female rising above the male. The violence of a woman against a man is only unique in its societal perception. If a man dove into the sea and sought to destroy women or other men, they would be seen simply as cruel tyrants, not as subversive.

Another problematic element of this poem’s perception is that the woman is using sexuality as the tool of violence. A man luring women to the grave through seduction is read differently than the mermaid pulling men into the sea by the same means as in Christina Rossetti’s “The Goblin Market.” A woman cannot experience sexual pleasure without withering away. In "The Mermaid" the mermaid states “to lure the sailor to his doom; Soft from some pile of frozen snow I pour the syren-song of woe” (l26-28). The mermaid does not simply kill the men in cold blood like an animal, but instead seduces them to their doom. Often, the woman is the prize and the man the one working to obtain her. Therefore, when a man seduces a woman to her doom it is seen as the natural state of affairs: the man wins the woman brought away from her innocence. To have a woman impose a deadly male seduction on a man is then shocking.

Ann Bannerman prefaces her poem with an epigraph from The Rambler, which details a woman becoming a mermaid who is ever searching for her drowned love. This poem turns the story from The Rambler on its head by instead having the woman forsake her love and use eternity to seek out men to destroy them. I see this as a feminist poem as the woman is turning her world away from men, yet one line does contradict my reading. The mermaid declares that because of her vengeant power, “on me the gifted wizard calls” (l44). This line implies that she is still subservient to a man. The wizard desires to call upon her dark power and use it for some dark purpose. While the rest of the poem would imply a breaking away from the male, this line ties her back to another form of the male.  In addition, I suppose that her choice to live a life devoted to tormenting and destroying men does imply a continued obsession with men. Therefore, while I do believe that there is a feminist aspect in the mermaid’s appropriation of male violence, perhaps she has not become completely free of male tyranny.

Photo: https://www.pinterest.com/idensmore/evil-mermaids/