Written by Kathryn Yelinek
Kathryn wrote this for her senior English Thesis.
I hope you haven't said anything about Erik,
because his secret is Christine Daaé's.
To
speak of the one is to speak of the other.
-Gaston Leroux
Today the name the Phantom of the Opera evokes different images: Lon Chaney towering over Mary Philbin from the 1925 silent film, a pearly white half mask from the 1986 megamusical by Andrew Lloyd Webber, or the general masked madman pounding away on an organ, as shown by spoofs on such shows as "Married With Children." Erik, the Phantom of the Opera, first entered into popular culture in 1909-1910 when the French writer-journalist Gaston Leroux serialized his story Le Fantôme de l'Opéra. The story was then published in novel form in 1910. Since then, a nearly uncountable number of films, theatrical productions, and written accounts have expanded, retold, and posed continuations of the original account of the Phantom's relationship with the young singer Christine Daaé. Much has been written about the various film adaptations of the Phantom story, and the numerous theatrical productions have also received their fair share of criticism. Similarly, many theorists have attempted to unlock the symbolism behind the reason for the Phantom's mask or his burrowing deep within the cellars of the Opera House. Little has been written about the novel adaptations of the Phantom's story, however, or about the character of Christine in these adaptations. This essay attempts to address the lack of criticism on written accounts of the Phantom of the Opera story and, specifically, of the role of Christine within these accounts.
My interest in Phantom literature and the role of Christine within this subgenre intersects with my own efforts to write a retelling of the Phantom of the Opera story. Begun over four years ago, my novel, with the new working title of The Mask of the Opera, draws from a tradition of Phantom retellings that emerged circa 1990 after the success of the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical. The first novel published was Charlotte Vale Allen's Night Magic. This novel was soon followed by Susan Kay's Phantom, often considered the definitive Phantom retelling, as well as Nicholas Meyer's The Canary Trainer, and Sam Siciliano's The Angel of the Opera. While all of these novels draw on the characters as defined by Leroux and on the symbols associated with the Leroux story (masks, music, angels, roses, etc.), they differ to the extent to which they adhere to or depart from the various elements of the original novel. The Leroux original is what one might call a "thriller," a detective story with elements of the Gothic interwoven with a love story. The more recent adaptations then pick and choose between emphasizing the detective story over the love story (Meyer), the love story over the detective story (Vale Allen, Kay, Yelinek), or in trying to strike a Leroux-like compromise between the two (Siciliano).
Within these different novels, the character of Christine undergoes various transformations and is given varying degrees of subjectivity and autonomy, from being an idiot savant incapable of anything but singing to being a headstrong and self-reflexive young woman ready to tame any man. This range of interpretations comes about from her unique position within the novel. If I ask someone unfamiliar with the Phantom story to recount the tale, the person usually has a vague idea of a mysterious man lurking in the cellars of some opera house somewhere committing crimes; Christine may or may not even be mentioned as the catalyst for some of the Phantom's most heinous crimes. Yet it is within this role as catalyst that Christine holds tremendous power within the novel. She is the point around which the Phantom, the narrator, and Raoul, the Viscount de Chagny (Erik's rival for Christine's affections) focus their respective attentions. Leroux must have understood how crucial she was to the text when he devoted such detail to chronicling her background in order to demonstrate how a woman, both a professional singer and a self-reliant orphan, could fall prey to the whims of the Phantom. In fabricating for her an elaborate past full of ghost stories and guardian angels, Leroux attempted to explain how she could be genuinely torn between the handsome aristocratic Viscount, who could promise her a life of elegance and luxury, and the deformed and outcast Phantom, who could promise her only music laced with death.
The problem of Christine within these novels comes about precisely because of her relationship with the two men of the Phantom and Raoul. I can add a third man to this puzzle, that of Christine's deceased father, who had told her a story concerning the Angel of Music, believed to visit all great musicians once in their lives. The Phantom takes advantage of Christine's memories of this story in order to integrate himself into her life. Christine becomes caught within the triangle of influence the personalities of these men hold over her. Anyone rewriting the Phantom story inevitably must confront the problem of Christine's individuality versus the overwhelming power these men hold. Often enough she comes across as gullible and naive, blindly inviting a man's voice to speak to her in her dressing room without asking any questions. Otherwise she is a tease, alternately saying "yes" and "no" to both the Phantom and Raoul as she is unable to choose between them. Either scenario is an accurate reading of the Leroux novel, as Christine does do both. While keeping this problem in mind, I am not seeking to radically rewrite the character of Christine in the vein of some feminist fairy tale. That is to say, I do not intend to rewrite Leroux so that Christine rejects both Raoul and the Phantom in favor of her own career or some other pursuit that does not involve a husband. Instead, I wish to probe the question of whether or not it is possible simply to extract her own personality and agency from beneath the mantle of these male influences.
In an effort to read the role of Christine in the different Phantom novels, I would like to introduce an idea from Judith Arnold called the "Man does, Woman is" syndrome. Taken from the language of contemporary popular romance novels, this idea makes reference to any plot where a man plays an active role and causes things to happen while the woman reacts to things done by the man, is acted upon by the man, or in some way motivates the man's actions while remaining passive herself (Arnold 133). Arnold would probably argue that this model accurately describes the Leroux Christine as a class "is" heroine. She might say this because the model helps define the main role that Christine plays in many Phantom novels: she is. Her mere existence accounts for many of the actions of the Phantom and Raoul. In fact, in the Leroux novel, it appears as though no action on Christine's part made the Phantom begin to communicate with her. Christine tells Raoul: "The first time I heard his marvelous voice begin singing all at once, seemingly close beside me [in my dressing room], I thought, as you did, that it must be coming from another room" (122). This quote reveals no action on Christine's part that would have caused the Phantom to believe he should begin singing to her; rather the voice began "all at once," as if Christine, in a state of suspension, had given rise to the Phantom's voice through her very being. The Phantom's voice, in turn, activated her. Similarly, Raoul first approaches Christine in the Opera House after she sings at a Gala. Overcome with emotion following her performance, Christine swoons and is carried offstage to her dressing room, where Raoul goes to meet her. There he introduces himself as the little boy she had known in childhood. Here Christine motivates Raoul to approach her and make contact. Christine, through fainting, a second state of suspension, draws Raoul out into completing some sort of action.
Charlotte Vale Allen's Night Magic, however, shows a different set of events for how Erik and the Christine character (named Marisa) come to meet. Marisa's father Cameron invites Erik to their house to contemplate redecorating the kitchen. Marisa, completely enraptured by the secretive architect, persuades her father to invite Erik to dinner; if he comes, she will cook the entire dinner herself. Although Erik would usually never consider such an invitation, he accepts. After their dinner, however, Erik refuses to come again to Marisa's house and refuses the phone calls she asks her father to place to him. After several months of waiting, Marisa places a call to Erik herself. At first he is unable to respond to her, then, finally, galvanized by her action, he calls her back and agrees to the first of their nighttime meetings. This set of actions demonstrates two points in relationship to the Leroux outline. First, the gender roles are reversed. Here Erik hangs in a state of suspense until Marisa calls him (a voice beginning all at once, seemingly close by); only then can he produce the action necessary to make contact with her. Secondly, the distinction between action, reaction, and causing others to act as described by Arnold becomes blurred in this set of events. Marisa emerges as the instigator of the main events (asking Erik to dinner, making the first phone call), with Erik as the inert catalyst for these events. Yet his own silence, while uncommunicative with Marisa, comes about through his willful decisions not to contact her. As seen by Marisa, he is in a state of suspension, cut off from the world. For him, he is actively deciding not to speak with her or return the phone calls from her father. His phone call to her then is both a reaction to her initial call and a request for them to meet, a step beyond her simple attempt to contact him. Marisa's phone call, too, is wrapped more in the language of reaction than proactive step: "Curling up on her bed, she held the worn-smooth paper with Erik's number in the palm of her hand. No mater what happened, she had to hear him tell her personally that he didn't want to know about her, that he didn't care" (43). Marisa is stepping forward to break the passive silence between the two of them, but in her curled up, fetal position and in her "ha[ving] to hear him" she resembles the passive Leroux Christine, drawn to action only by Erik's voice.
Such interweaving of the actions and reactions between Christine/Marisa and Erik in Vale Allen is typical of the language of Phantom literature, beginning with the Leroux novel. There the Persian, a mysterious acquaintance of Erik's, tells Raoul: "I hope you haven't said anything about Erik, because his secret is Christine Daaé's. To speak of the one is to speak of the other" (187). Kay describes Christine in Erik's house: "When the minutes continued to tick away in deadly stillness, I realized that his voice had become, for me, a drug as powerful as morphine, necessary to my senses, vital to my existence" (468-469). In Siciliano, Christine speaks of her soul as connected to that of the Phantom: "Oh, if I abandon my Angel I, too, am lost-am damned!" (125) Perhaps the most famous example comes from the libretto of Andrew Lloyd Webber's The Phantom of the Opera where Christine and the Phantom sing to each other: "(Christine:) I am the mask you wear.../ (The Phantom:) It's me they hear..." (Perry 145). The theory of the Phantom and Christine representing somehow two parts of one whole blossoms from such language and questions the notion that Christine could ever have complete agency separate from that of the Phantom, if he is in fact just an extension of her own self. Harriett Hawkins, in her book Classics and Trash: Traditions and Taboos in High Literature and Popular Modern Genres examines The Phantom of the Opera in addition to such words as George du Maurier's Trilby, Henry James's The Bostonians, and the ballet film The Red Shoes in order to show how the plight of a woman caught between life as a lover and life as an artist is portrayed in art itself. In this examination, she puts forth one of the clearest theories of how the relationship between Christine and the Phantom may be read as that of a woman afraid of loosing her muse but equally afraid of the demands such an artistically rigorous life might make of her (45). Hawkins argues that if Christine were to demonstrate the same unhidden ambition as the Phantom, she would be seen as unwomanly and ultimately monstrous since traditionally a woman was not to be plainly ambitious (52). However, Hawkins makes the point that such an interpretation of the Phantom as muse allows two distinct readings: one which submits Christine entirely to the demands of her muse the Phantom, and one in which Christine serves her muse willingly and therefore becomes at least symbolically liberated (53).
Such an understanding of the Christine-Phantom relationship serves well in theory, as a way of speaking about women in art perhaps, but does not hold up well in the world of Phantom literature, specifically Leroux, on which the theory is based. While Hawkins suggests that Christine serves her muse willingly, Leroux has Christine say that she does not enjoy having Erik as her tutor. She describes to Raoul her time with Erik in his underground house:
It went on for two weeks, two weeks during which I lied to him.
My lies were as hideous as the monster who inspired them,
and at that price I was able to gain my freedom...
Finally, after two weeks of that abominable captivity
in which I was filled with pity at some times,
and with enthusiasm, despair, or horror at others,
he believed me when I told him, 'I'll come back'" (Leroux 140-141).
The idea of completely submitting Christine to the whims of her muse the Phantom does not agree with the Leroux text, either. The Phantom does come to Christine and tutor her. From him she gains the expertise, confidence, and opportunities to sing as her father always hoped. Without him she would not have become a star of the Opera House. In this way the Phantom does serve as her muse, and she does submit to his rules as to when and how she will sing. However, as seen with the Vale Allen situation, with Erik and Christine one is not always active while the other is passive, because Christine is equally, and perhaps more so, the muse of the Phantom. For her he finishes his chef-d'oeuvre, the opera Don Juan Triumphant. For her he plays the folk song "The Resurrection of Lazarus" on the grave of her father. Each time in the novel that the Phantom is shown composing or making music, he does so in connection with Christine. Nor is it safe to say that he serves his muse any more willingly than she might serve hers, because for him to reveal himself to anyone, to bring someone to his secret and well-guarded underground house, or to bring suspicion onto himself as his abductions of her creates, is not in his initial character. Before Christine, he remained a secretive and cloistered man, hiding in the shadows. For him to bring Christine to his house would have been as jarring for him as remaining there was for her. Instead of Christine completely submitting herself to the whims of her artistic genius, then, Leroux presents us with a picture of two artists, joined to each other with ties that are as threatening as they are beneficial to each of them.
The idea of Erik and Christine tied to each other as tutor-pupil or mutual geniuses, however, is not the only relationship that can exist between them. For Vale Allen, Christine and Erik are tied to each through bonds of love, not artistic necessity, creating each of them as objects of desire rather than as objects of artistry. This romantic relationship is a rather new interpretation, springing from the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical, which uses love songs and a sympathetic Phantom to sell tickets. Statistics of fans of the Lloyd Webber musical are consistent with a more romantic twist to the Phantom story. According to a 1998 survey conducted by Barbara ---- via POTO: The Phantom of the Opera Magazine, the Phantom Internet Mailing List, and -----'s own website devoted to all things Phantom of the Opera, 85 percent of Phantom fans are women. The average age is 31. Nearly half of the survey respondents listed their occupation as "student" (----- 256-58). Similarly, the vast majority of readers of contemporary romance novels, such as those sold under the Harlequin brand, are women. Seventy percent are under the age of 49, and 45 percent attended college (Linz 12). It should not be surprising then that the overwhelming majority of fan fiction produced by such fans also centers on a romantic relationship between the Phantom and Christine. Before the Lloyd Webber musical, most of the people interested in the Phantom of the Opera and his story were monster movie fans equally interested in the stories of Frankenstein's monster and Dracula; prior to 1986, the Phantom was portrayed more often as a madman murderer lusting after Christine than as a lonely, misunderstood genius seeking a muse.
The majority of Phantom literature, unlike the Vale Allen novel, moves back and forth along a continuum with Christine as potential love object at one end and Christine as student at another. Her role vis à vis Erik often changes, too, over the course of the different novels. In the Kay novel, for example, Erik falls instantly and hopelessly in love the first moment he hears her. He tracks her, watching her throughout the Opera, until the time she breaks down in her dressing room, begging her deceased father to send the Angel of Music; unable to withstand her grief, he sings to her. Their relationship remains steadily that of teacher and student until the intrusion of the Viscount de Chagny, at which point Erik throws off his guise as angel and leads her to his house beneath the Opera. From that point, they dance carefully back and forth, switching from student and teacher to hesitant suitor and beloved, until the final moments in Erik's house after he has kidnapped her for the final time. When Christine is confronted with the choice of marrying Erik and saving Raoul or having Erik kill Raoul, the categories suddenly collapse:
"Take me!" [Christine] whispered. "Teach me...."
Stunned, incredulous, scarcely able to believe in what I heard and saw,
I lifted her face with trembling hands and kissed her bruised and bleeding
forehead with all the uncertain timidity of a terrified boy.
And then suddenly I was no longer the teacher, but the pupil...
for her arms were around my neck, her caressing hands an insistent pressure
against my skull, drawing me forward with unbelievable strength into her embrace. (Kay 495-496)
In this, the point towards which the entire novel progressed, the labels of student and teacher, suitor and beloved, conflate and merge, as do the characters of Erik and Christine. It is difficult to identify who acts here and who reacts, whether Christine's words begin the march towards the kiss that transforms Erik, or if it is the threat of death to her and Raoul that spurs her on. Either way, Kay brings about the final synthesis of Christine and Erik.
In all these novels, whether she plays student, muse, lover, or something in between, Christine is defined in relationship to Erik, or sometimes to Raoul or to her father. Boiling the novels down to their basic components, Christine has one function: drawing Erik from his solitude and bringing about his final transformation. In playing this role, she acts as any of the above mentioned categories, and she has few defining characteristics but those that come about through her position as student, daughter, or beloved. She is deeply religious, but this is necessary to explain away her ties to her father and to allow her to fall under the Phantom's spell. She has no hobbies and no friends to draw her away from the combined influences of Erik, Raoul, and her father. She has an adopted grandmother, an old woman with whom she lives, but this woman encourages her belief in such things as the Angel of Music. The only time we see her doing something unrelated to her role is when Raoul stumbles upon her sitting beside her grandmother and making lace. In contrast Erik has hobbies outside of his loves for music, architecture, and magic that are required for his position as Opera Ghost: he is a connoisseur of wine, a collector of decorative trinkets, and a chef. Raoul, too, has the distinction of being a sailor and of having an older brother. While both these relationships figure into the plot, they are separate from his position as rival for Christine's affections; his status as handsome viscount and member of the nobility suffices to make him a more appealing suitor than Erik and to present a threat to the possibility of marriage with a poor opera singer.
In the search for a Christine who acts clearly outside of her role as lover or student, I turn now to those models where she holds positions or a character not in relationship to Erik, Raoul, or her father. Surprisingly enough, these occur at the outer poles of the student-lover continuum. The first of these is Marisa from the Charlotte Vale Allen novel. Almost exclusively in a lover relationship with Erik (their music lessons soon dissolve into lessons of an entirely different sort), Marisa has interests and relationships outside those of her father and Erik (there is no Raoul character in Night Magic). First and foremost is her friendship with the housekeeper and confidant Kitty. Once married to Erik, Marisa also acts as a partner in his contracting business, allowing Vale Allen to show her as a mature businesswoman, speaking for but independent of Erik. Furthermore, Marisa has small loves and dislikes completely removed from the world of her father and Erik: a treasured pair of tortoise-shell hair combs from her late mother, a fondness for dogs and for dancing, a hatred of Jane Austin and academic texts. These traits allow her to act from time to time outside of the influence of Erik and her father, creating times when she can break the action-reaction cycle between her and Erik.
The second Christine that possesses traits not required by her role comes from the novel The Canary Trainer by Nicholas Meyer. This Christine rests at the opposite end of the lover-student continuum, having practically no romantic interaction with this Phantom (he is never named Erik). This Christine, however, is far from the spunky girl that is Marisa. For all practical purposes Meyer's Christine is an idiot savant, unable to relate to the world in any capacity save that of a singer. She remains unaware of the true nature of her Angel of Music until the very end of the novel, when the Phantom takes her to his house for the first and last time. Christine has little chance to act within this particular novel-afraid of the outside world, her existence is restricted to the Opera and the apartment she shares with her grandmother-however she does possess a character distinct from that necessary for the novel. With the Meyer book, her role remains the same as that of Leroux: she must draw the Phantom out and bring about an ending that disarms him. While Meyer, writing from a Sherlock Holmes tradition as well as a Phantom tradition, allows Holmes to take over much of the action of the novel, Christine's complete fear of the world is not required to fulfill her role. Because the Sherlock Holmes storyline shares space with the Phantom story, Christine needs to complete only a few acts: sing well at the opening of the novel, sing a second time right before the Phantom kidnaps her, then allow herself to be kidnapped. Such acts do not rely on her simple-mindedness, since a woman with more comprehension of the world could carry out these same tasks. Instead, Christine's simple-mindedness serves the same role as Marisa's spunkiness: allowing her a personality distinct from that required by her role. While Meyer's Christine may not be as appealing or as well-developed as Vale Allen's Marisa, she remains a character defined in more ways than her relationship with the Phantom, Raoul, or her father.
Most of the Christines, however, do not possess such characteristics that distant them from the surrounding male influence. The Christine in Siciliano's The Angel of the Opera has only one moment in which she interacts with someone other than Erik, Raoul, the memory of her father, Sherlock Holmes, or Holmes's sidekick Dr. Henry Vernier. After speaking with Holmes about Erik in Notre Dame cathedral, during which time an old woman repeatedly tries to hush them, Christine leaves. Dr. Vernier narrates: "[Christine] strode past us, hurling over her shoulder at the scowling old woman, 'Go to the devil, old cow'" (126). Such a comment is evidently supposed to highlight Christine's spunk or spine, but since the words have no consequence and Christine otherwise falls under the influence of those around her, the words do little more than suggest she has a dislike for old women. She has no grandmother in this version, so it is difficult to ascertain how she interacts with the elderly on a regular basis. In one other incident, Christine speaks to Homes about Carlotta, the rival diva at the Opera House, and she characterizes Carlotta as "an old cow" who "bleats like a billy goat" (44). Again, while the words are harsh, Siciliano gives Christine no direct interaction with Carlotta so the reader may see how she exerts her will directly. Instead, the majority of Christine's actions become mediated through men such as Erik, Raoul, or Sherlock Holmes, creating a Christine who speaks harshly but lacks the agency to break the cycle of influence between her and the men around her.
The Christine in Kay similarly has little interaction with anyone outside the circle of Raoul, Erik, and the memory of her father. Lacking a grandmother and not venturing from the confines of the Opera, Christine's main exchanges with others come in the form of animals: Erik's pet cat and a spider she finds crawling in her bedroom in Erik's house. Yet even these interactions revolve around Erik. Christine's reaction to the ugliness of the spider tells him he could never hope to find in her a willing lover. The cat then acts as a rival to Christine for Erik's affections. Christine notices this as she wanders into Erik's drawing room to listen to him at the piano:
[Erik] didn't notice my presence-he never notices anything when he plays!-but the cat did.
I saw her sit upright on the piano and look at me with hostility.
Go away, she seemed to be saying, we don't need you here!
At other times I had permitted her slit-eyed enmity to drive me back into my room,
but today I was determined not to give ground; I wished to hear Erik play
and I would not be intimidated by a jealous feline.
I stayed on the couch and watched the animal prepare for war. (Kay 438)
That the cat wins this time says much about Christine and her inability to act outside the direct influence of Erik. She comes to the drawing room in an effort to hear him, not for her own needs such as reading a book or playing the piano herself, and the only reason she remains is to be able to hear him. Yet he ignores her, not noticing her behind him, and instead lavishes his attention on the cat. Ignored, cut off from the presence that animates her, Christine remains passive on the sofa, watching Erik and the cat, unable to break into the communication running between them without an invitation from Erik.
What these two Christines lack in interactions with those beyond Erik or Raoul or their father, they make up for in the final moments of the novel, in the kiss that transforms Erik. The kiss in Susan Kay's Phantom was examined above, in relation to the moment when lover, student, action, reaction, Erik, and Christine all blur together. What I want to reinforce now is the fact that Christine does make some sort of motion towards Erik at this point. The Siciliano Christine also makes a motion towards Erik:
She stared at Erik. The Persian and the Viscount were terrified, but not she.
She took a step forward, then another. She was so pale in the white smock
that she seemed a ghost already. At last she reached Erik.
His sad eyes stared down at her. Slowly she raised her hand, then pushed aside the mask.
The black porcelain broke when it struck the floor.... She put her hand on his shoulder,
then slipped it around behind his neck and drew him down to her. (Siciliano 238)
This Christine acts more than the Kay Christine, but she is still working within the framework of the Phantom's threat to kill all those in the Opera at that moment if she does not consent to be his wife. The extent then at which Christine is acting under her own initiative or responding to the threat of the Phantom is questionable. The point, though, is she does approach the Phantom; she makes a move that results in the all-important kiss.
Allowing Christine some agency at this moment can then be read as the authors' attempt to make up for not giving their Christines more individuality throughout the rest of the novel. Marisa in Vale Allen's Night Magic does not have a kiss moment such as this; she has already snagged her Phantom and does not need one. Neither does the Christine in Meyer's The Canary Trainer. Her innocence and simpleness has already established that she could not be the lover of the Phantom. Instead, Meyer must complete the Sherlock Holmes thread of the story, and he allows Holmes to chase the Phantom out of his underground house, where he dies without a kiss from Christine. In between the two categories is the original Leroux novel, where Christine waits for the Phantom to approach her, then nods her head a little and allows the Phantom to kiss her. This Christine does not need as much reassertion of her agency, as she has interacted with her grandmother and has, over the course of the novel, traveled to places far beyond the Opera.
For all the novels, the kiss is the point towards which the story builds. In that moment, Christine is caught between two worlds. Throughout Phantom theory, Erik has been read as all that is Other to the bourgeois world of late nineteenth century Paris. He crosses boundaries of what is German or French, Gentile or Jewish, civilized or barbarian, Western or Oriental, male or female, White or "Colored," class-climber or revolutionary (Hogle 838). He is alternately the Minotaur at the center of his labyrinth, Pluto at the nadir of the underworld, the unrelenting demand of an artistic muse, and all that should not be looked on in the light of day. In kissing Erik, Christine comes as close as she can to that Otherness. At the same time, she is attempting to win freedom for herself and Raoul, and so she has aligned herself completely with and is fighting for the bourgeois norms and way of life that the Viscount represents. Hung in this moment of confounding of boundaries, action, and ways of life, Christine stands as an archetype of the woman who straddles worlds. She is the woman who struggles with the demands of her muse as Hawkins argues, but she is also Psyche, Proserpina, and Beauty.
In order for this moment to resonate, Christine must have presented the reader with new and interesting reasons for why she chooses the man she does. Her story has been told before, many times, and not just in other Phantom retellings. The Phantom of the Opera is a variation on a theme of stories as ancient as those of Psyche and Amor, of Proserpina and Pluto, of Beauty and the Beast. Christine is choosing between ugliness and beauty, between art and normal life, between light and darkness, between good and evil-the choice differs depending on the novel. It is this difference in choices that makes each incarnation of Phantom story interesting. Depending on how clearly the author has depicted Christine, what defines good or evil can change from novel to novel and from interpretation to interpretation. For some readers, Leroux exemplifies the battle between high class (Raoul=good) and middle class (Erik=bad). For Hawkins, it represents artistic freedom (Erik=good) versus conventional female roles (Raoul=bad). Such interpretations are warranted since the Leroux Christine is as concerned with her art as with her relationship to Raoul. Meyer, with his mentally uncertain Christine, creates a battle between madness (Erik=bad) and rationality (Raoul=good). Vale Allen depicts Marisa and Erik's love as a struggle of intimacy over the alienating wounds the world inflicts on people. In each case, an individualized Christine defines the categories that she must choose between and so highlights new meanings in an old story.
In attempting to individualize my own Christine and my own novel, the answer seems clear enough: create a character who has interests and experiences outside of the trinity of Erik, Raoul, and her father. Yet that cannot be as easy as it sounds, for other novelists have attempted the same thing with varying degrees of success. Christine must, by definition, complement Erik enough to mirror him and provide him with the kiss that transforms him. She may do this in many ways: a love of music, an interest in the spiritual side of life, a loneliness that matches his, or any number of inventive solutions an author may produce. At the same time, Christine must also complement Raoul enough to be his lifelong friend. Again, this matching may take any number of forms: their shared history, an interest in the luxuries high social standing may bestow, a simplistic understanding of the world, etc. Finally, Christine must be overshadowed enough by the memory of her father to turn to Erik to achieve the goal he had for her of being a singer. These characteristics focus her interests on the men, drawing her into the charged rivalries between the three that drive the novel. Without her extreme attachment to any one of them, the novel simply would not run.
Yet, Leroux was able to provide Christine with a few snippets of individuality that did not directly intrude on the ties between her and the men in her life. As mentioned above, she lives with her adopted grandmother, whose absence is prominent in Siciliano and Kay. She is featured doing something other than visiting with Raoul or singing since she makes lace. Furthermore, the fact that she was born and raised in Sweden becomes important at the end of the novel when Raoul takes her and her grandmother from Paris to Sweden to escape any lingering threats from the Phantom. Meyer also extends her belief in Catholic doctrine into extreme naiveté and simple-mindedness. Vale Allen draws on the loss of her mother for the hair combs and on her implicit mothering tendencies for her love of dogs (Erik refuses to have children). Together, these characteristics hover on the edge of the ties that bind her to Erik and the others, nuancing them and adding friction when needed.
I drew on this need to create friction between Christine and Erik in developing characteristics to give to the Christine in my own novel. By definition Erik rules in the Paris Opera House. The managers, chorus members, ushers, and patrons bow under his commands. Christine alone disrupts the solitary peace he developed in the cellars. In Leroux, Kay, and the others, her one weapon against him remains the possibility that she might leave him; yet tied as she is to Erik and to her father through her career as a singer, this is never a serious threat. She may refuse his amorous advances, but she will not leave the Opera and his domain. Only Raoul can provide her with the means to escape. In my novel I highlighted the tidbits that Leroux provided to individualize Christine and used them to threaten the holds that both Raoul and Erik hold over her: Christine's devotion to her ailing adopted grandmother often calls her away from the Opera and motivates her to inquire about employment in her native Sweden. Such actions originate far from the spheres of influence that are Erik and Raoul. In caring for her grandmother she is not lover or student. In some ways she is daughter, but she is also friend and caregiver. More importantly, she is a young woman deciding upon what is most important for her life, then acting upon these convictions. Her individual motivations can then add more friction to the final kidnapping scene and the transforming kiss.
In creating the grandmother as a driving force in Christine's life, however, I have not moved her completely beyond the realm of influence that is Erik. Her grandmother comes from Sweden, knew her father, and encourages her to believe in the Angel of Music. In contemplating moving back to Sweden, Christine returns to the land of her father where she first learned of the Angel of Music. The world of Phantom of the Opera literature, it seems, is much like Rome: all roads lead to the Phantom. This is much in keeping with the Leroux novel, where all layers of the novel-like the labyrinthine corridors of the Opera itself-were connected in some way to the Opera Ghost. Erik is, after all, the Other to which Raoul stands diametrically opposed. Whatever an author elects to have Christine choose between, be it madness and rationality or art and normal life, Erik stands as her tempter. Without him, there would be no decision for her to make, and no matter what she chooses, he remains as a long shadow, his influence so powerful that she and Raoul must flee Paris to escape him. Hawkins would argue that such a long shadow represents the profound loss a woman feels when she must give up her muse. Yet Christine and Erik may play out any number of relationships, for everyone must at some point make a decision that allows no turning back.
The Phantom story tells a universal tale of a struggle between contradictory lifepaths; such is one reason for its popularity. Within this story, Christine is the chooser. By definition she cannot exist without her choice. Such is the tie that binds Christine to the Phantom. Such too is Christine's central importance within the story. The tale has been told without Raoul, without the Persian, without Raoul's older brother, and without a number of other characters integral to the Leroux text, but the story has never been, and never can be, told without Christine. Yet Phantom literature also tells a specific story. It is the tale of one specific woman who must make one specific choice. Any story, particularly one that confronts important life decisions, benefits from having well-rounded and well-defined characters. Christine has rarely received this honor. Perhaps the universality of her role has hindered authors from attempting to draw her too distinctly away from Erik and Raoul. Perhaps authors, too drawn to the puzzle that is Erik, have used her more as a tool to decode him than as a character in her own right. Whatever the reason, Christine has ultimately remained a character as veiled and confusing as Erik.
Arnold, Judith. "Women Do." Krentz 133-140.
----, Barbara. "Fandom: Phantom Fans Unmasked: The Results of the Phantom Fan Survey (1998) (Statistical Approach)." POTO: The Phantom of the Opera Magazine: The Millennium Issue, Collector's Edition, 2000. Ed. Carrie Hernández. Granada Hills, CA: n.p., 2000. 255-59, 295.
Hawkins, Harriett. Classics and Trash: Traditions and Taboos in High Literature and Popular Modern Genres. Buffalo: University of Toronto Press, 1990.
Hogle, Jerrod E. "The Gothic and the 'Othering' of Ascendant Culture: The Original Phantom of the Opera." The South Atlantic Quarterly. Vol. 95. No. 3. (Summer 1996), 821-846.
Kay, Susan. Phantom. New York: Island Books, 1991.
Krentz, Jayne Ann, ed. Dangerous Men and Adventurous Women: Romance Writers on the Appeal of the Romance. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1992.
Leroux, Gaston. The Phantom of the Opera. Trans. Lowell Bair. New York: Bantam Books, 1990. (Originally published Paris, 1910).
Linz, Cathie. "Setting the Stage: Facts and Figures." Krentz 11-14.
Meyer, Nicholas. The Canary Trainer: From the Memoirs of John H. Watson. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 1993.
Perry, George. The Complete Phantom of the Opera. New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1987.
Siciliano, Sam. The Angel of the Opera: Sherlock Holmes Meets the Phantom of the Opera. New York: Otto Penzler Books, 1994.
Vale Allen, Charlotte. Night Magic. New York: Atheneum, 1989.
