15 of the most interesting female monsters in fiction

7. The sea witch

You might be wondering if Disney’s The Little Mermaid can rightfully take a place on this list. That is, besides the horrifying elements of a young girl giving up her voice and autonomy to chase after a man she’s just met.

But, believe it or not, Prince Eric and the other humans aren’t the ostensible villains. Despite their seemingly insatiable hunger for sea life like Ariel’s friend Sebastian, she’s still cool with the land folk. Instead, we’re told to be afraid of the sea witch, Ursula.

Ursula is an interesting figure, not least because she combines quite a few tropes in her brief film appearance. She’s a witch, to start, and one that carries quite a bit of the cultural baggage of the evil, hermit-like sorcerer despite living under the sea. Ursula has all of the spooky accouterments of a witch, too. There’s the hallway of creepy things (in this case, the soul trapped in kelp monsters, natch). There are the two menacing sidekicks (Flotsam and Jetsam, the moray eels).

Self-confidence

First and foremost, however, is Ursula’s unapologetic love of herself. That’s really something, given that she’s a large-bodied woman with a loud voice full of vocal fry and cackling laughter. Sure, we get it: we’re not supposed to like her. She’s too loud, the movie is trying to tell us. She takes up too much space, physically and mentally.

Even before Ursula formally takes Ariel’s voice, she does so just by pure dint of talking and singing. Ursula barely lets the titular little mermaid get a word in edgewise.

Despite all of the obvious narrative leanings towards hating the monstrous Ursula, many fans have come to love her. If it weren’t for the not-cool moves of stealing Prince Eric and trying to usurp an entire kingdom, we could unabashedly love her. Though, honestly, if Prince Eric is such an easily compelled guy, Ariel could do a lot better.