The Little Mermaid

Andersen rejected the Undine model of winning a soul through human love and gave the mermaid a path of good deeds among the Daughters of the Air.

Andersen was influenced by Undine, another story of a mermaid gaining a soul through marriage, but he felt his own ending was an improvement. In a letter written in 1837, shortly after he finished the manuscript, he said he did not want the mermaid's immortal soul to depend on the love of a human being, because that would depend too much on chance, and he gave her a more natural and more divine path instead. The story's working title was Daughters of the Air, spirits who can earn souls through three hundred years of good deeds. Because the mermaid refused to kill the prince and kept doing good despite her pain, she is raised to the spirit-world and joins them. Critics read the ending differently. Jacob Bøggild and Pernille Heegaard see a conscious choice for ambiguity that reflects Andersen's skepticism toward idealized physical and religious symbols, while Søren Baggesen and James Massengale argue it is a natural part of the story's structure as a religious narrative.