Welcome to Day Three of Phantom of the Opera Week here on White Rose of Avalon my Darlings! As today is Femme Fatale Friday, the topic of this post is Christine Daae, of course. The character of Christine is the one in the story that I have related most heavily to throughout the years of reading and watching this tale. I too, was a young and naive maiden, or more accurately a young girl, the first time I ever read this book when I was approximately eight years old. I too, had long loved music and performance art, having dreams of one day singing and acting on stage, which did not come to pass for me, but is still a thing I love to this day! Finally, I too, had a deep fascination and appreciation for the morbid and macabre, being attracted to the dangerous figure of The Opera Ghost.
I think what most appealed to me about this story was that although Christine becomes frightened of Erik the Phantom when she realizes that he is not truly her ‘Angel of Music’ she never seems to lose her empathy, sympathy, and compassion for him. It is my interpretation that she is still attracted to his genius, his talent, and even his dangerous nature. It is a natural thing to become attracted to men who have a dangerous side, as long as it is not directed at us because they are the men who can best protect us from the greater dangers of the outside world. If we become pregnant and are therefore vulnerable, it is the more dangerous men who can protect us and our future children. It is this deep-seated evolutionary psychological response to dangerous men, who only harm others and not us, that is active in women (at least on some deep level), and it is certainly very active within Christine.
Christine goes from being a naive and sweet girl who believes that her father sent her the ‘Angel of Music’ to a maturing young woman who realizes that Erik is a man who is deformed but brilliant. She does not try very hard to escape, seeming to be at least intrigued by Erik, and truly wanting to know more about this strange mad genius. It is only after uncovering his true visage by removing his mask, that he threatens to not let her return to the outside world. Christine is able to broker a deal, promising to return to him. She even is shown to be intent on keeping this deal with Erik, only having her mind swayed by her childhood sweetheart Raoul. While she does have tender memories that bring on a resurgence of feelings for Raoul, I believe that she is more rightly scared of her own attraction to Erik. She is a young woman going through a sexual awakening and scared of it, she is even more fearful of her attraction to the darkness. In many ways, Erik represents her own Shadow desires as much as he is a powerful romantic prospect for her!
Her choice to give into Erik’s thrall over her time and again, which she does in order to protect others, but I believe also because she wants to on some level, shows that she is not simply terrified of Erik. Christine is also deeply attracted and possibly beginning to truly love this man who has known very little true compassion and love in his tortured life! While Erik chooses to let her go in the end, she gives him a final kiss of gratitude and promises to make sure he is properly buried. She goes off after the events to marry Raoul and live a rather mundane life when compared to the one Erik could have provided for her.
In the end, I want to explain that Christine is one of my favorite literary characters (alongside Erik himself) because she is not your average Gothic Heroine. She has deep desires that go beyond simply getting married and maybe gaining social standing. She wants to be talented and to perform, sharing her art with the world! It is this desire to be more than just a wife that makes her so relatable in my opinion. We can see that as she comes into her own, and has her sexuality awakened, she does also desire to have a mate in life. Over the course of her story, we see Christine show grit and determination to help other people survive the situation she had found herself in. She had come a long way from the girl she was at the beginning. I still wish that mate would have been Erik, as she seemed most alive then, but alas the childhood sweetheart (as whiny and possessive as he was) won out. I view the choice of Raoul as a trauma response due to her fear of accepting her feelings for Erik. As the story concludes, Christine has become a woman whereas she had started the tale as a girl. This development of her character is what makes the story work, as it feels very much like an archetypal coming-of-age narrative! The final thing I have to say is that I see Christine’s development as the Maiden becoming the Queen of Death, as Erik is the personification of Death, even compared to Death in his description in the novel!
I hope that you have enjoyed reading my thoughts on Christine Daae. Do you enjoy her as a Gothic Heroine? Let me know your thoughts in the comments below!
Note on Image: The image at the top of the post is Christine as portrayed by Sarah Brightman in the original production of the musical. I found the image on https://www.facebook.com/SarahBrightmanMusic/photos/on-this-day-31-years-ago-sarah-originated-the-iconic-role-of-christine-daaé-in-t/1645116422207417/?paipv=0&eav=AfbMujxT3GUzwxrPPwocazFuULFvEOOis5W-fJxwVUFnXxVI7YcQkWMUX7_OWxJ0LmE&_rdr.
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
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