Woman of the Month: Christine Daaé

Christine Daaé from The Phantom of the Opera

For years now I've been meaning to write a big, juicy meta on the character of Christine Daaé: opera singer, orphan girl, and object of obsessive desire.

As the female lead of Gaston Leroux's The Phantom of the Opera, she plays an extremely passive role, one that's only mildly mitigated in Andrew Lloyd Webber's famous musical and various other filmic adaptations.

More than that, she's constantly abused by the fandom, which often seems more interested in treating her as an empty vessel upon which they can project themselves in order to enjoy the attentions of a brilliant, tortured, violent man, rather than a fully-formed character in her own right (and who are ultimately infuriated that she chooses to abandon him).

There are several extremely bad hot takes regarding this dynamic (here's an horrific one, though thankfully it comes with a rebuttal) and even more recently there was some controversy in the Star Wars fandom over a comic in which a deranged Imperial nurse becomes besotted with Vader, indulging in wild fantasies of them ruling the galaxy together, and considering herself The Only One Who Understands Him.

She ends up dead at his hands, and a lot of readers considered this a deliberate mockery of romantic female fantasies. Look, it got overwrought and silly and more than a little weird, but all you need to know for the purposes of this post is that one panel depicted the woman imagining herself removing Vader's helmet in an image highly reminiscent of the scene in which Christine removes the Phantom's mask. In response to this, certain Phantom/Star Wars fans decided to call the nameless nurse "Daaé" in honour of Christine.

This is a very dubious distinction considering these women have nothing in common besides a single scene of similar iconography, but it serves to underline what a lot of fans actually get out of these stories - the kind I usually refer to as "beauty and the beast narratives", but which have also been called "loving the monster", "death and the maiden" or just plain old "all girls want a bad boy". They are tales in which A Pure Innocent Girl becomes the Saviour of a Dark and Dangerous Man.

Think The Phantom of the Opera, Disney's Beauty and the Beast, the BBC's Robin Hood (in which Marian was caught between Robin and Guy of Gisbourne), the elaborate head-canons that Avatar: The Last Airbender's fandom came up with for Zuko and Katara, the myth of Hades and Persephone, and of course, whatever the hell fandom believes is happening between Kylo Ren and Rey in the Star Wars sequels.

There are thousands of variations on this theme, with male protagonists ranging from fundamentally good-hearted men who are a bit rough around the edges, to full-blown mass-murdering psychopaths, but ultimately there are three distinct interpretations that readers/viewers derive from this subgenre of romantic fiction. 

For some, they're didactic tales about how women should reject their own dark sides and choose the right man over the wrong one. For others, they're self-insert wish-fulfilment stories in which they can indulge their secret desires and successfully tame the beast (or go wild themselves).

But for me, there's a third option that's often overlooked: empowering stories of women who successfully free themselves from a man's control and manipulation. This is Rey rejecting Kylo's nihilistic offer to rule the galaxy, Sarah telling Jareth: "you have no power over me," and Christine finding a way to end her stalker's reign of terror.

That so many readers/viewers want to take these choices away from the heroines, instead forcing them into relationships with men they're clearly desperate to escape, is... well, it's my problem because people can do whatever they want in fan-fiction.

But it remains a constant source of frustration for me, as it so often involves looking at each woman in the context of what she's doing for or to the male characters, rather than what he is inflicting on her, and what she ultimately chooses to do about it.

Let's not kid ourselves here; Christine is hardly a feminist icon, role model, or even hugely three-dimensional character. Rather, she's is a quintessential Gothic heroine: vulnerable in mind and body, beset upon by dark forces, susceptible to psychological manipulation, and almost entirely acted upon throughout the story.

And yet despite all this, she's a precious female character to a lot of people - including myself. So buckle up, this is going to be a long one...

In reading Leroux's original novel for the first time, my biggest disappointment was that we get no sense of Christine's interior life, especially as it pertains to her career. There's no insight given regarding her personal dreams for a future on the stage; just that her education stalled after her father's death, only to improve exponentially under the guidance of a mysterious tutor some time later.

I had the impression in my mind that the love triangle between Christine, Raoul and Erik would be an analogy for a young woman's aspirations versus society's expectations for her. Both men are a double-edged sword: Raoul represents security, love and domesticity, but heralds an end to her promising career, while Erik is able to hone her voice and thus fulfil her ambition... but unfortunately is also a murderous psychopath living in the sewers.

In a perfect world, Christine could have had both a career and a loving husband, but then - that's too easy. To get both would destroy the potency of the story and the bittersweetness of its ending. For her choice to have any weight, it has to be a difficult one, with a hefty price to pay either way: Raoul, family and freedom, or Erik, ambition and enslavement.

This at least is the way Christine's dilemma plays out in my head. In truth, this simply doesn't appear on the page, and neither the novel nor the musical ever fully equates the Phantom with her career and her love of singing. If anything, Erik more closely embodies Christine's ongoing grief over her father's death and inability to move on.

After all, it was Gustave Daaé's death that made her so susceptible to Erik's gas-lighting; specifically the way he promised to send her the Angel of Music after his passing. Although we get no understanding of how Erik learnt about this, or what his first encounter with Christine was actually like, he capitalizes on Gustave's promise by presenting himself to her as said Angel of Music, thereby linking himself to her father in her mind.

Freud would have a field day with Christine's mental state, and it's best exemplified in the lyrics Christine sings when she encounters Erik at her father's grave: "Angel or father, friend or phantom, who is it there, staring?" Her inability to distinguish these men from each other is backed up in Raoul's following line: "whatever you may believe, this man, this thing is not your father!"

The 2004 film deepens this subtext further in a scene in which Christine prays in a theatre chapel. The screen direction notes that the daguerreotype of her father "should vaguely resemble the Phantom when disguised". (Yes, I have the screenplay for this movie, shut up).

So in Christine's mind, the identities of her beloved dead father, the mysterious Angel of Music, and the violent psychopath called Erik are blurred; she's by turns hypnotized, awestruck, devoted and terrified of him. The deception is a cruel one, for Christine is all too eager to believe that her father's spirit has returned to her, and Erik takes full advantage of this faith in his ongoing manipulation.

This is the crux of the situation she finds herself in, and so despite the myriad of adaptations across the years, Christine's characterization is fairly consistent throughout all of them. Due to the very nature of what the story requires of her, Christine must be demure, naive and gentle: a young debutant and complete innocent.

She's first mentioned rather obliquely in the novel, in relation to a kidnapping and other strange events that Leroux plans to elaborate on later. When we first see her "for real", it's after her magnificent performance on the stage as the usual soprano's understudy, one which earns her a standing ovation. Once concluded, she promptly faints.

Not the most auspicious beginning, but it's important to note that at this stage Christine already in the Phantom's thrall, the strain of which is having an effect on her health (thus the fainting). Thus her story begins in media res, and most of her subsequent behaviour is described and experienced from the point-of-view of the Vicomte de Chagny, who recognizes his childhood friend and attempts to reignite their relationship.

Raoul in the novel is much younger and more sensitive (seriously, he's constantly bursting into tears), and utterly confused by how hot and cold Christine runs. At times she implores him for companionship, at others insists that he leave her alone - which is really just her trying to protect him from Erik while making a desperate, silent cry for help.

Given Christine's tenuous grip on reality, it's Raoul who grasps the fact that she's being conned by some mysterious male figure, though it takes him a while to grasp the true extent of the deception, as well as Erik's true motivations.

And despite my irritation at the average Christine/Erik shipper's insistence that Raoul is a possessive, milquetoast, patronizing tool, I can understand why some would take a dim view of his literary portrayal. Here are some of his thoughts on Christine:

"What he [had seen and heard of Christine] made him suspect some machination which, devilish though it might be, was none the less human. The girl's highly strung imagination, her affectionate and credulous mind, the primitive education which had surrounded her childhood with a circle of legends, the constant brooding over her dead father, and above all, the state of sublime ecstasy into which music threw her... all this seemed to him to constitute a moral ground only too favourable for the malevolent designs of some mysterious and unscrupulous person. Of whom was Christine Daaé the victim?"

A more condescending paragraph I can't imagine, and he repeatedly comes across as an ass: obnoxiously jealous of the Phantom, constantly asking Christine if she would love Erik if he were better looking, and certainly embodying a man of his time when it comes to doubting Christine's virtue:

"To think that he had believed in her innocence, in her purity! The Angel of Music! He knew him now! He saw him! It was, no doubt, some frightful tenor, a good-looking popinjay, who mouthed and simpered as he sang! And she, what a bold and damnably sly creature! ... He had loved an angel and now despised a woman!"

The relationship between Raoul and Christine in the musical comes across much better, as does Raoul himself. The literary versions are barely out of adolescence, whereas the musical seems to depict them in their mid-twenties, which changes their behaviour accordingly.

Is Webber's Raoul rather paternal and overprotective and initially too eager to dismiss Christine's fears? Sure, but he also provides constant support and reassurance, and in the Final Lair ultimately urges Christine to let him die so that she can gain her freedom (the literary Raoul is virtually unconscious at this point, barely holding on to life in the torture chamber adjacent to Christine's room). He embodies the White Knight archetype in its purest form: masculine, chivalric, protective and gentle.

But most significantly, in both the book and musical Raoul offers Christine a no-strings-attached chance of escape from the trauma she's undergoing. Leroux's Raoul offers to remove her from Paris, take her anywhere she likes, and then leave her if she wants, saying: "I will remove you from his power, Christine, I swear it. And you shall not think of him any more." Webber's Raoul offers her an escape in terms that puts the power of the decision in Christine's hands: "Let me be your shelter/let me be your light...let me lead you from your solitude."

All this stands in stark contrast to Erik, and it's a shame so few people seem to grasp the true cruelty of what Erik does to Christine: gas-lighting her through a combination of optical illusions and her vulnerable emotional state into believing he's a supernatural being sent from her father.

His first spoken words on the page (as overheard by Raoul) are him telling Christine: "you must love me," and we later learn that he (in the guise of the Angel) has forbidden her from ever marrying; threatening that he'll abandon her forever if she does.

Once she gets wise to his deception, the Christine of the novel describes the terrible psychological toll that Erik's manipulation has had on her, telling Raoul: "How was it, when I saw the personal, the selfish point of view of the voice, that I did not suspect some imposture? Alas, I was no longer mistress of myself: I had become his thing!"

This sentiment is echoed in the musical, when Erik makes his final play, forcing Christine to chose between a lifetime with him and saving Raoul's life, an ultimatum she answers with: "Farewell my fallen idol and false friend...One by one I've watched illusions shattered/Angel of Music...you deceived me - I gave my mind blindly..." These are the words of a woman that has finally broken free of her gas-lighter's control. 

As it happens, the events of the Final Lair play out very differently between novel and musical. By the time Leroux's Christine is held hostage in the subterranean chamber, she's so desperate that she attempts suicide by bashing her head against its stone walls. Yikes.

And yet in the musical, this is the moment Christine comes into her own, managing to free both herself from Erik's brainwashing and Raoul from physical harm.

I mentioned in my review of the book that the literary Christine's choice is not between Raoul's life and her own freedom, but rather the lives of everyone currently inside the Paris Opera House. Erik has rigged explosives beneath the building, which he'll set off if Christine doesn't agree to become his wife. (That Raoul is in the torture chamber next to them is almost incidental).

This choice is represented by a brass scorpion and grasshopper, and Erik demands that Christine turn one or the other: the scorpion means she agrees to marry him, and will release floodwaters that will douse the gunpowder, while the grasshopper will set off the explosives designed to bring down the entire house, killing everyone.

In the musical, the scenario is more straightforward - and honestly, more powerful despite there being less lives at stake. Raoul is caught in the Punjab lasso, and Erik tells Christine: "buy his freedom with your love; refuse me and you send your lover to his death."

In both cases, the solution to the problem is Christine's capitulation to Erik's demands, though again, this plays out very differently between novel and musical. In the novel, we hear about the events from Erik's point of view, as told to the Persian (who he refers to as daroga) some time later:

"Christine came to me, with her beautiful blue eyes wide open, and swore to me, as she hoped to be saved, that she would be my living wife! Until then, in the depth of her eyes, daroga, I had always seen my dead wife; it was the first time I saw my living wife there. She was sincere, as she hoped to be saved. She would not kill herself. It was a bargain. [He describes freeing the unconscious Raoul from the torture chamber].

Then I went back to Christine. She was waiting for me... yes, she was waiting for me, waiting for me erect and alive, a real, living bride... as she hoped to be saved... and when I came forward, more timid than a little child, she did not run away... no, no... she stayed... she waited for me... I even believe, daroga that she put out her forehead... a little... oh, not much... just a little... like a living bride. And and I kissed her! I! I! I! And she didn't die! Oh, how good it is, daroga, to kiss a person!

[He describes kissing her feet, and the two of them crying together. He takes off his mask to catch her tears, then allows her to go to Raoul]. I made her understand that, where she was concerned, I was only a poor dog, ready to die for her, and that she should marry the young man when she pleased, because she had cried with me and mingled her tears with mine."

It is explicitly her grief and pity that moves Erik to show mercy, not the kiss he gives her, and although she does kiss him goodbye on his forehead, this is after she's been allowed to reunite with Raoul and is on the verge of escape. And of course, we have no idea what Christine is really thinking in this moment, since what we hear of the events is strictly Erik's narrative. Perhaps she's beside herself with terror, or revulsion, or despair.

There's a dramatic change in the musical, in which the kiss itself is the act that saves Christine - what's more, it is much more assertive and powerful since Christine herself approaches the Phantom and kisses him, on the mouth, silently agreeing to his terms in a combination of abject pity and her desire to save Raoul.

And yet one cannot deny that she holds all the power in this moment; even when given an impossible choice that's been forced upon her. Christine who has no weapons, no allies, no plan - only compassion and the courage to exercise it, manages to free herself not through force or deception, but simply by having empathy for the monster. It's the least, and yet the most she could possibly do.

Now, admiring a young woman for having "empathy for the monster" is obviously not something you want to do in real life, especially if it, say, impedes the course of justice, or excuses his violent actions, or leads to a person believing that it's required in order to be a good person. Heck, we'd be looking at a very different story if Erik had responded to Christine's compassion with: "Cool, guess we're married now. I'll set up the double bed as far away from the sewer water as possible."

But he doesn't. He isn't so far gone that he can't grasp the momentousness of what Christine is sacrificing, and how badly he comes across in comparison. It's his story as well, and what could have been the triumph of a psychologically abusive man over his victim becomes something else when he's so shamed by her goodness that he sets her free instead.

And because Christine knows what is best for herself, she goes.

***

Christine Daaé, the Gothic heroine of The Phantom of the Opera, is almost as mysterious a figure as the Phantom himself, and it's hard to get a grasp on her when almost the entire story is told from the points-of-view of the men surrounding her. Most versions require her to be passive, vulnerable, and almost entirely acted upon; gas-lit and grieving, a literal Living McGuffin until the last climactic moment when she seizes what little agency she has, and makes a choice.

Hers is the story of a woman caught in a web, struggling between a dangerous psycho, an angelic tutor, the memory of her father, and her childhood sweetheart; men who dominate her life and thoughts, giving her very little room to decide what she wants from her own life. 

The point is for her to find a way to free herself from it all - like Rey in Star Wars, Sarah in Labyrinth, Marian in the BBC's Robin Hood, and countless other women before and after her.

And she does! That's the real power of Christine - not being the centre of a love triangle, not being the object of obsession by various men, but because she's put in an impossible scenario and escapes it, through a profound act of grace and kindness. Sometimes, that's the only weapon we have.

Too many viewers want these women to remain in the power of manipulative, controlling men, when their true power lies in rejecting them, in outwitting them, in finding the strength to leave and forge their own destinies. In Christine's case, does this manifest as marriage to Raoul? Yes, and that's an inevitable side-effect of the period in which her story takes place. Her freedom isn't absolute. 

But on that note, I can only end with a quote from the book, one that's woefully ignored by a fandom that's too eager to make Christine the instrument of Erik's redemption instead of a woman with her own thoughts, hopes and desires:

"I am mistress of my own actions, you have no right to control them."

Who is she talking to in this moment? Raoul.