Abstract
One of the rare Grimm’s stories that deserves greater attention is “The Nixie of the Millpond.” Rich in symbolic detail and psychological depth, embodying in Joseph Campbell’s phrase “a world of magic ... symptomatic of fevers deeply burning in the psyche,” it well repays close critical study. Like “East of the Sun and West of the Moon” and other tales from the so called “animal groom” sequence, “The Nixie of the Millpond” is steeped in the mysteries of human sexuality, with which it deals simply but not simple-mindedly. In the tradition of romantic comedy, to which most fairy stories adhere, it offers hope in the ultimate benignancy of the human condition without understating the dangers and the difficulties we all know to be a part of that condition. “The Nixie of the Millpond” celebrates in festive terms a full, rounded view of sexual love towards which so many in the latter twentieth century grope with increasing anxiety and frustration.