In an extended version of The Little Mermaid, Ursula describes how self-censorship, through rationally spoken language, is a male virtue that comes with a self-claimed right to police the voices of others. She reminds Ariel about how voices of women are judged by men like Freud, Aristotle and Hemmingway:

“The men up there, they don’t like a lot of blabber; they think a girl who gossips is a bore; yes on land it’s much preferred for ladies not to say a word - and after all dear, what is idle prattle for?”

This is a warning, but Ariel is not stupid. She does not let herself be coerced into selling her voice out of pure ignorance. She is not blindly in love with a prince! The reason she gives up her voice is that she understands that it never truly belonged to herself in the first place.

She can not keep her voice for herself, inside herself, because it first comes into existence that very moment when it leaves her body. “It is as if my voice hollows me out, and in a sense speaks by itself, through me. My voice is an element which ties me to another without belonging to either of us.”

There is a brief moment in which Ariel's voice exists on its own, in the space between Ariel's body and Ursula’s. It had a chance to escape, to become a being of its own. But it didn't.