Welcome to Day One of Phantom of the Opera Week here on White Rose of Avalon my Darlings.   Today’s topic is The Phantom of the Opera and how it relates to the Death and the Maiden motif!    I have written pretty extensively about the Death and the Maiden motif here on White Rose of Avalon.   It is the artistic and literary motif that depicts a young and living character, most often a maiden, who is intimately aligned with a personification of Death, usually depicted as male.    Most scholars believe that this motif can be traced back to Greek Mythology with the tale of Hades and Persephone.    It is also related to the Beauty and the Beast tale type, which I have a whole post discussing from my last Love Week this past February, which was Beauty and the Beast themed.

Now, in The Phantom of the Opera, we see the Death and the Maiden motif play out in an interesting way, which both kept much of the old concepts and re-invented them for the story.   Erik takes on the role of music teacher to Christine after the death of her father.    He even used the moniker ‘Angel of Music’ having found out that her father had promised a young Christine that he would send the ‘Angel of Music’ to her when he reached heaven as he was dying.    This relationship is built between the young and naive maiden Christine and the Phantom, who is a representation of Death in the story, even having been described as physically looking like a skull.   Erik has a “deaths-head” according to the original novel, which makes his association as a personification of Death itself ever more pronounced.    There is even a reference in the novel to Erik sleeping in a coffin, and it does not get more personification of Death than that!   Christine is a young and innocent maiden who wants nothing more than to become a famed Opera singer.    Erik is the deformed genius who haunts the Opera as the famed Opera Ghost, or more commonly known as the Phantom.   On a side note, interestingly, in the original novel, the word Ghost is used instead of Phantom, despite the title.  

Throughout the tale, Christine learns the truth about who Erik is, not an Angel at all.   It is at this point that Erik takes Christine into his lair, which is actually a hidden apartment dressed in the height of Gothic Fantasy decor.   This is the famous sequence in the musical which begins with Christine going through her mirror and into the Phantom’s world!    I read this as directly inspired by the kidnapping of Persephone by Hades in the Greek myth.   Persephone was picking flowers, acting much in line with her nature as a Goddess of Spring.    Similarly, Christine was practicing her craft of singing, which is acting much in line with her nature as a performer!    Erik, similarly to Hades, decided to take her into his Underworldly abode to make her his mate.   In the case of Hades and Persephone, the marriage takes place immediately and Persephone is bound to the Underworld later when she eats Pomegranate seeds which are the food of the Underworld.    In the case of Erik and Christine, he brings her to his Underworld Lair in order to train her and in the hopes that she will grow to truly love him.    It is only after she sees his face that he tries to keep her there permanently, and again this can be seen to mirror Hades giving Persephone the Pomegranate seeds in order to bind her to the Underworld when she wants to return to her mother!

Erik is convinced that Christine must become his bride one day, giving her only a short amount of time to conclude her affairs in the above world.   It is this time in the world above that seems to echo Persephone’s time spent with her mother during the light half of the year!   Of course, The Phantom of the Opera ends very differently than Hades and Persephone.   Erik and Christine do not end the tale married and with Christine growing to care for Erik, instead, Erik allows Christine to leave and she marries Raoul, living out her life in a much more mundane way than the life Erik would have provided for her as her husband!    However, I believe that the obvious parallels between The Phantom of the Opera and the Hades and Persephone myth are easy to see, as analyzed in this post, even with very different endings.

I hope that you have enjoyed my analysis of The Phantom of the Opera and how it fits into the Death and the Maiden motif.    What is your favorite Death and the Maiden story?   Let me know your thoughts in the comments below!

Note on Image: The image at the top of the post is Christine and the Phantom from the musical.   I found the image on https://www.npr.org/2013/01/27/170377703/25-years-strong-phantom-of-the-opera-kills-and-kills-again.

Tarot Note: I have a page offering tarot and oracle readings for those interested in these services!    I am very happy to be offering these readings to my treasured readers at White Rose of Avalon!  Link to page: https://whiteroseofavalon.life/tarot-and-oracle-readings/ 

Further Reading

• The Phantom of the Opera by Gaston Leroux
• Mythology by Edith Hamilton