Amelia Douglas is a mermaid who lives as a human in a small cottage by the shore ten years after her fisherman husband, Jack, was lost at sea. Levi Lyman is the assistant of P.T. Barnum, who has sent him to Maine to investigate rumors of a woman who can turn into a mermaid. Amelia goes to New York City to work in Barnum's American Museum as an attraction, hoping to make enough money to travel the world. Meanwhile, Barnum wants to wring every possible penny out of her, while Levi has fallen in love with her and wants to protect her from exploitation.
The Mermaid contains examples of:
- Character Tics: Levi clears his throat when he's uncomfortable, a habit Amelia finds first annoying and later endearing.
- Eye-Dentity Giveaway: Amelia can transform between a mermaid and a human woman. As a mermaid, her face is shaped differently, she has sharp teeth and claws, and her whole body is covered in scales, but her grey eyes always look the same, whichever form she's in.
- Fainting: When Amelia first enters the American Museum, she's already suffering from Sensory Overload from the noises and crowds of New York City. Then she sees taxidermied animals on display and is disturbed by the sight of creatures reduced to their outer skin. When a band starts playing loud, unfamiliar music, Amelia covers her ears and curls into a Troubled Fetal Position. Then Levi sees her and tries to talk to her. Amelia tries to stand but instead passes out.
- Fish out of Water: Amelia learned everything she knows about humanity from Jack, who was practically a hermit and never expected Amelia to follow human social norms. When she moves to New York, she's confused by almost every aspect of the culture, especially the many rules regarding how proper ladies are supposed to act, and finds it almost impossible to behave in the ways expected of her.
- Half-Human Hybrid: Levi and Amelia's daughter turns into a mermaid when she's in the water, like Amelia. Unlike Amelia, she looks like a traditional mermaid, with the upper half of a girl and the lower half of a fish.
- Home Nudist: Charity and Barnum clothe Amelia in fancy dresses with layers of corsets and petticoats and bonnets that restrict her vision. Amelia finds it unbearably stifling. When she gets back to her room at night, she takes everything off and lies naked on top of her bed so her skin can breathe.
- House Rules: Barnum's young daughter Caroline teaches Amelia to play cribbage. She doesn't know how to play, so she invents her own rules.
- Humans Are the Real Monsters: Amelia loses her desire to travel the dry world when she goes on tour in the South and witnesses the horrors of slavery. She wants only to return to the sea, where animals kill for their own survival but are never wantonly cruel.She'd wanted money to travel and see all the wonders of man? What was there to see besides the misery people inflicted on one another?
- Insatiable Newlyweds: After Levi and Amelia are married, they go into their apartment and don't come out for three days.
- Intrigued by Humanity: Amelia used to enjoy exploring shipwrecks as a child. Her family warned her of the danger and cruelty of humans, but that only whetted her curiosity. As an adult, her fascination leads her to swim too close to the surface to watch for boats and eventually to follow a ship to the coast of New England, where she spends days spying on humans. After Jack captures her in his net and then lets her go, she decides to test the old legend that a mermaid who crawls onto dry land will turn into a human so she can see him again.
- It's Not Porn, It's Art: Amelia has to take her clothes off to transform into a mermaid, and Barnum insists that she do so behind a screen. Amelia doesn't understand how people can think the human body is obscene when so much of their art depicts naked people, but Levi tells her, "They were Greek and Roman and that was all right for them."
- Long-Lived: Mermaids age much more slowly than humans. Amelia looks much the same as she did when she first took on human form, even while her husband grew old and then disappeared.
- Meaningful Rename: When the mermaid first moved on land to live with Jack, she couldn't say her original name in English, so Jack listed off names to her until she heard one she liked.
- Media Scrum: Amelia can't go outside without being mobbed by reporters shouting questions at her. Barnum tells her to pretend to be unable to speak so reporters will direct their questions at Levi, but it doesn't work.
- Morphic Resonance: Mermaids don't look much like humans. Their faces are shaped differently, they have sharp teeth and claws, and their whole bodies are covered in scales. But Amelia's grey eyes always look the same, whichever form she's in.
- Name That Unfolds Like Lotus Blossom: Amelia's mermaid name translates to "Breaking the Surface of the Sea."
- No Such Thing as Bad Publicity: In-universe example. Barnum is a firm believer in this trope. A few years ago he was exposed as a fraud for trying to pass off an elderly slave as George Washington's 160-year-old nanny
, but he regrets nothing, not even charging admission so the public could watch her autopsy.Barnum thought all publicity was good publicity, and even if folks thought he was a con artist, then at least they knew the name of Barnum. - Protection from the Elements: Mermaids are immune to the cold. Amelia always thought that the human practice of wearing dead animal skins was barbaric, until she transforms into a human for the first time on a cold night and quickly realizes why humans need to cover themselves.
- Shapeshifting Heals Wounds: Amelia is shot in the stomach by a man who wants to punish her for arousing men's lust. She falls into a coma for three days. Levi has almost given up hope when he has the idea to drop her into the harbor to see if transforming into a mermaid will help. Sure enough, as soon as she transforms she recovers completely, and when she turns back into a human she shows no sign of injury.
- Significant Name Shift: Levi is one of the few people who call Barnum by his middle name, Taylor, instead of by his last name. When Levi starts calling him Barnum, Amelia thinks Barnum must be losing Levi's friendship.
- Talk About the Weather: While Amelia is staying in the Barnums' apartment, she's expected to spend her free time sitting in the parlor with Barnum's wife Charity and make polite conversation about the weather, even though Charity rarely goes outside.
- A Taste of the Lash: Barnum sends Amelia on tour with a variety of other attractions, including an orangutan whose handler keeps her in a tiny cage without enough food or water and beats her if she moves too slowly. One day Amelia sees the handler whipping the orangutan, leaving stripes on her neck and shoulders. Amelia grabs the whip and lashes him across the left cheek, leaving a welt from his mouth to his ear.
- Tears of Joy: Amelia cries when she realizes that she's pregnant with Levi's child, after decades of wanting a child but being unable to have one with Jack.
- Trampled Underfoot: The first time Amelia is exhibited as a mermaid, the crowd storms the stage, and a woman falls and is trampled to death. After everyone leaves, Amelia is horrified to find her bloodied, broken body in an aisle. She almost quits her job over it. Barnum hires guards to prevent it from happening again.
- Tropical Epilogue: Amelia and Levi agree to move to Rarotonga after Amelia's contract is up, but when Amelia is almost killed in Charleston by an angry mob, the two agree that it isn't safe for her to stay in America any longer. Amelia runs into the ocean and swims away. Four years later, Levi finally makes it to Rarotonga, where he finds Amelia living in a hut on the beach with their three-year-old daughter Charity.
- Unable to Cry: Most mermaids are unable to cry, but after years of living mostly on land, Amelia gains the ability to cry even while in her mermaid form.
- Waving Signs Around: Demonstrators gather in front of the museum, reading Bible passages and waving signs accusing Barnum of arousing the audience's lust by displaying a naked mermaid.
