I believe at times that man created art out of fear of exploring woman. I believe woman stuttered about herself out of fear of what she had to say. She covered herself with taboos and veils. Man invented a woman to suit his needs. He disposed of her by identifying her with nature and then paraded his contemptuous domination of nature.
But woman is not nature only. She is the mermaid with her fish-tail dipped in the unconscious. Her creation will be to make articulate this obscure world which dominates man, which he denies being dominated by, but which asserts its domination in destructive proofs of its presence, madness.
From The Diary of Anais Nin, Vol. 2 (1937)
I have been pondering the power of the mermaid as image, as symbol. Mermaids were always fascinating to me as a child. More recently I’ve been troubled by their lack of sex – a sex symbol to sailors, but then they lure them to their death, is their sexlessness a part of it? This passage made it so clear, though. Water as a symbol of everything that is mysterious & uncontrollable about being human: the surge & tide of our feelings, the depths of the unconscious. The mermaid (woman) swims in this world, she is half & half, that is why man fears her, & why she is disabled in a world defined entirely by ratiocination. Water is also a connection to our time before birth, we all began as little fish, in a way. The unconscious preserves this bond, also related to womanhood (our time in the womb).