Friedrich de la Motte Fouqué's literary fairy tale, Undine, tells the story of a young water nymph, who was found dripping with water by a fisherman at the door of his hut located in a secluded forest. After happily accepting her into his hut to live and grow with him along with his wife, the married fisherfolk begin to believe Undine is a replacement for their daughter, whom they lost while she was very young. The fisherfolk raise Undine to the best of their ability, but she still lacks a soul, due to her water nymph nature. In order to procure a soul, Undine must marry a mortal human. She meets a mortal knight, Sir Huldbrand von Ringstetten, with whom she falls in love and marries. Once Undine obtains the soul, the reader notices a radical change from her normal demeanor. With the soul, Undine no longer behaves as a childish unconscious nymph, but as a conscious dignified human. Throughout the fairy tale, the author captivates and holds the reader's attention by using various metaphors that allow the reader to understand and analyze Undine. For the remainder of this essay, I will discuss how Undine is portrayed as the quintessential romantic character based on both the author's portrayal of Undine as a water nymph and our understanding of the concept of romanticism. I will also discuss the concept of the soul and how the acquisition of the soul can be interpreted by using some of Freud's psychoanalytical principles.

Undine was born in water, and is primarily composed of water, thus making her the literal embodiment of nature and all of nature's spontaneity, and untameable impetuousness. This embodiment of the nature, provides her with the inclinations to behave just as nature does, i.e., as an uncontrollable being. We observe this impulsive, childish behavior when Undine is first introduced in the first chapter of the fairy tale. After the fisherman invites the knight, Sir Huldbrand von Ringstetten, into his hut and they begin to converse, their conversation is suddenly interrupted by a disturbing sound of water splashing against the wall on the outside of the hut. This splashing of water is immediately attributed to Undine's childish character by the fisherman. He commands her to stop and reproaches her for her childish manner when a guest is in the hut; however, Undine simply laughs and runs away just like an uncontrollable child. Just a few sentences before the end of the same chapter, the reader sees this behavior once again. In this instance, Undine asks Sir Huldbrand von Ringstetten a question, but is immediately silenced by the fisherman, due to its inappropriate nature. Undine importunately insists that Sir Huldbrand von Ringstetten answers the question. When he doesn't she throws a tantrum, and is upbraided for her childish behavior by her parents, before running into the forest for solace where she is once again found by Sir Huldbrand von Ringstetten on a small island, created by the flood of water surrounding it within a short period of the time. To remove Undine from the small island, the knight carries her over the flood and back to the hut.

From when Undine is first introduced in the beginning of the story until she obtains a soul, the reader accepts that Undine is amoral. Although she behaves childish, there is no indication that she is conscious of what she is doing. There is no indication as to whether her actions are done to assuage or to distress those around her. This amoral characteristic is also found in nature. One cannot determine whether nature consciously behaves to favour or discomfort its inhabitants. This characteristic, which Undine shares with nature, is indicative of her inclination to behave just as nature does. The fact that Undine is comprised of water, serves as a metaphor to help explain her unconscious spontaneous behavior. However, apart from being a metaphor explaining Undine's demeanor, water also seems to be the natural element that is bringing individuals together. For example, when Undine first appears as a young girl at the fisherman's door, she is dripping with water. The fisherman immediately takes her into his home and gives her something warm to drink and cares for her thereafter. Likewise, we observe a similar phenomenon when the priest arrives at the fisherman's door, he too is dripping with water, and here the fisherman also takes him into his home and cares for him as well. These examples show that water serves the purpose of explaining why Undine acts the way she does, and demonstrating that it is the natural elements that bring people together. It also explains Undine's connection to nature. This connection to nature can be used to ascertain that Undine is the quintessential romantic character during the period of Romanticism.

Romanticism was an 18th century artistic movement characterized by the heightened interest in and celebration of nature, emphasis on the individual's expression of emotion and imagination. Romantics are also known for longing for the unattainable. Romanticism was also a movement rebelling against the age of reason or the age of Enlightenment. So, if Undine is truly a romantic character, there should be indication of her interest in or celebration of nature either by her actions or her statements. Towards the end of chapter eight, Undine brings the reader's attention to the existence of two types of individuals living in the world. In this passage Undine creates a dichotomy between herself and the others, whom I consider to be those, who live by reason or those, who celebrate reasoning and not nature. She refers to the others as mortals who will eventually wake up to a purer life. This may mean that their lives become purer as they reason more. For now I would like to say that “purer” can be interpreted as conscious, so the mortals will wake up to a more conscious life, while those like her and the other natural elements fade away and remain with sand, spark, wind and wave. Here Undine's expressions show that she is strongly identifying herself with nature. In this passage she avers that upon her death she will return to nature. For Undine, there is nothing other than nature. She knows she is from nature, composed of nature and must inevitably return to nature upon death. This strong identification with nature is indicative of Undine being a romantic character. Moreover, like most romantic characters, she too longs for something. In the same passage mentioned above, she says “that we all want more than we are given”, signifies a longing for something. Although Undine implies she is a romantic character and the reader identifies her as one, it would also be important for another character to recognize her as a romantic character. One character who acknowledges her as a romantic is Bertalda."

In chapter twelve, Kühleborn, Undine's uncle, frightens Bertalda, the fisherfolk's natural daughter and the knight. Undine manages to chase Kühleborn away and calm the knight and Bertalda and reveal the story of how Bertalda had been removed from the fisherfolk and how she had been put in her place. At first Bertalda is horrified; she thinks Undine is overcome with madness. Nevertheless, she gradually becomes convinced that Undine is telling the truth, as the young bride's tale seems to fit so well with past events. The passage continues to state that Bertalda also creates a dichotomy between herself and Undine. Bertalda sees Undine as someone more “spiritual than mortal". So, here we see that Undine can not only be characterized as romantic by the reader and herself but also by another character in the story. Bertalda's revelation that Undine is a non-mortal evinces that Undine is truly a special character.

As mentioned before, Undine also longs for something, namely a soul. Once she procures a soul, she becomes a mortal. The only way that she can obtain a soul is by marrying a mortal. She does this by marrying the knight, Huldbrand von Ringstetten. Now I would like to discuss what happens once she is married and the changes in her character that occurs once she obtains the soul. I would also like to discuss what the soul represents as these changes take place.

In one instance of the story Undine learns from Kühleborn that Bertalda is the daughter of the fisherfolk. On Bertalda's name day, through her songs of incantation, Undine alludes to knowing where Bertalda's parents are, and invites them to meet the imperial city to meet Bertalda, but after Bertalda meets them and is told that they are her parents, she is immediately offended because they are mere fisherfolk, and not of noble status. Bertalda reproaches both her parents and Undine, causing what Undine thought would be an act of compassion and kindness to result in disaster. Undine doesn't understand why, but what is even more surprising, is how she handles the situation. In this instance, Undine does not demonstrate her expected “natural” behavior and act in a spontaneous uncontrolled manner, rather she shows a conscious dignified manner, as seen in the middle of chapter eleven. In this passage we as readers observe for the first time Undine as a mortal with moral values. The author describes Undine as being compelled to act with dignity and pride. The fact that she feels compelled to act this way proves that she has a sense of decorum. The Undine the reader meets at the beginning of the story is not compelled to act in any way; she simply acts on impulse without thought, so that she has a soul, the reader gets a sense that Undine is becoming more conscious of how to act; she is developing a sense of what is the proper way to act. In analyzing the role that the soul is playing in Undine's life, I must first introduce the fundamental principles of Sigmund Freud's psychoanalytical theory.

Freud's theory asserts that the psyche is composed of three components, namely the superego, ego, and id. The superego is responsible for the moral standards of parents and society, and it censors and restrains the ego. The ego is the part that is conscious and most immediately controls thought and behavior. The ego is also most in touch with external reality. The id is the part that is totally unconscious and serves as the source of instinctual impulses and demands for immediate satisfaction of primitive needs. Using Freud's theory we can say that before Undine obtained the soul or became conscious, she was solely living by the impulsiveness of the id, there was no superego to impart morals or suppress the actions caused by the id, but after she married the knight, whom we may consider to have the morals and standards of society that Undine needs in order to have a soul, she develops her own ego.

The idea of Sir Huldbrand von Ringstetten having the morals to impart on Undine to give her a soul is seen tangentially in his dream. In this dream the knight is lifted by birds, a metaphor used by romantic writers to represent the soul, high into the sky to look down onto Undine, who is sitting in glass vaults beneath the Mediterranean Sea. This schematic is comparable to the schematic used to outline Freud's three components, i.e., the superego is at the top of the hierarchy, the ego is in the middle and the id is at the bottom. Careful analysis will lead the reader to notice that Undine is literally at the bottom, while Sir Huldbrand von Ringstetten is literally above her at the top, correspondingly making the knight the “superego” and Undine the “id”. Once they are married she obtains the ego, i.e., she is conscious and is more in touch with external reality and behaves accordingly, as we saw in the instance when Bertalda reproached her parents. Once she acquires a soul, she also obtains morals and social standards. This is again showed tangentially in chapter fourteen. In this example Undine is able to suppress the torrent of the water with the help of the moon, just like the superego is able to suppress the impulsive behavior of the id. This is a metaphor for Undine no longer being controlled by nature, but instead she is now consciously controlling nature and suppressing nature's impulsiveness. After the moon (superego) tames the impetuousness of the water (id), the soul behaves accordingly with the external reality; Undine swoops down from the heights of the mountain and lifts Bertalda and the knight on to the mountainside, where she comforts the knight and Bertalda. Again, this is not the same Undine we saw at the beginning of the story, she has truly changed and this change is due to the acquisition of the soul. After Undine acquires the soul, the reader realizes that she is led to her death, so now the question is: is having this sole a good or bad thing?

While there is no characteristic death for a romantic character, Undine dies miserably after she obtains a soul, once she became more conscious she attempts to part herself from where she comes from, water, and in doing so she is essentially trying to strip herself of what makes her romantic, namely her connection to nature. By trying to strip herself from nature, she is again proving that she was once bound to nature, and again this inextricable link to nature brings us back to her being a romantic character.

-O. James