The Phantom Of The Opera is said to be a story of love and horror. However, one can also see it as a story of a young woman’s sexual journey from child to adult. That woman of course is Christine, who at times seems to be quite naive, and at others quite grown up.
When the story starts, we don’t have a full picture of who Christine is and her outlook on life. However, as the story continues, her background is filled in. When you read all of these passages and put them together, you end up with a good picture of how Christine evolves throughout the story.
The book opens with Christine singing and fainting on stage. The woman who fainted on stage was physically a woman, but still very much a child emotionally. It’s said that from a very young age, Christine is sheltered and has only positive experiences of life. Her father dotes on her and teaches her how to sing, and the two wander throughout the countryside singing for others and generally having a ripe old time.
Then, Madame Valerius and her husband take in Christine and her father. Although it is said that her father is grieved, they still go and wander throughout the countryside again once the year. She still sees music is purely positive, and sees everyone as kind.
The first time she’s really exposed to any darker things in life is when her father gets sick and eventually dies. At which point, it is said she falls into a deep depression, and kind of lives life like she’s going through the motions. She does go to the conservatory, which is equivalent to college, to continue her singing lessons. It’s described that her voice is weak, and she only does well to please Madame Valerius.
So, here we have a picture of a young woman very sweet and innocent, sheltered and spoiled. And into this picture we have to place Raoul. When she first meets Raoul it is said he is a little boy. Although it’s not clear exactly how old he was, it is presumed that they were both pre puberty. They run around and play like kids, without there being any real indication of burgeoning love or sexuality.
They meet again three years later and now we can see the beginnings of love, or at least attraction. They both admit that they had stirrings of love and were seeing each other as potential partners. It is presumed at this point they have both been through puberty and are now exploring the first stirrings of sexual feelings. Now, because Raoul is a Viscount, Christine knows she can ever marry him. So, she never really explores those feelings in more depth.
Fast forward several years: now Christine is out of the conservatory and at the opera. Her father has died and her depression still lingers. Then she hears Erik for the first time. The only thing she can think, after checking the dressing room next to hers, and not finding anybody, is that he must be the Angel Of Music. And Madame Valerius doesn’t help anything. She tells Christine that he really must be the Angel Of Music and tells her to ask him if he is. And of course, because it helps him to string her along, he says yes he is.
When Erik starts tutoring her, her depression lifts as she starts to feel again. She begins to enjoy life and enjoys her singing lessons. And, since the voice is an angel she has no where to put these feelings, including the reawakening sexual ones.
Then, when she sees Raoul at the opera, she remembers her previous stirrings of feeling. Since she has no reason to presume that there’s any reason to suppress those feelings, Erik is able to pick up on them. He then gets upset, and even disappears for a day. Christine, of course, thinks this is devastating, and promises not to speak to Raoul.
We must remember the time period in which Christine lived. Women were pure, chaste individuals with no sexual feelings except for their husbands or future husbands. They had to act demure and innocent. Right! Tell that to a horny young woman!
Again, since Christine believes the voice is an angel, subconsciously, or perhaps consciously, she sees these burgeoning feelings as being condemned by God – probably because she knows she can’t marry Raoul, and therefore they aren’t about her future husband.
Later, when Christine and Raoul go to Perros, Christine finds out that Raoul can hear Erik as well. Raoul tells her that she must have been hearing the voice of a man. She replies “I am an honorable woman, Viscount, and I do not lock myself up in my dressing room with men.”
Yes, she locks herself in her dressing room with him!
The next time we see Christine after this fight in Perros is on the night of the ball. It is easy to see that she has significantly changed. Later, when she tells her story to Raoul on the roof, she fills in all the details of what happened in the meantime.
She, herself points out that she was very naive when she was seduced by Erik’s voice. She tells Raoul that when she was in Erik’s house, she locked herself in the bathroom with a pair of scissors. She was ready to kill herself in case Erik is not a gentleman.
OK, what is wrong with this picture? Gentleman don’t abduct women and take them to a secret house without a chaperone. Is it hard to imagine that a woman so sheltered, yet still physically a woman, could secretly wish he would do something?
Since “good” girls don’t have these feelings, or do anything that would make it appear they were alone with a man they weren’t engaged to, Christine protests that she has any feelings for Erik except horror.
Yet, he did at quite ungentlemanly. And she was alone with a man. Who had a beautiful voice and knew just how to reel her in. It’s not hard at all to believe two things are going on here:
1. She is terrified that someone will find out she’s done something “good girls” don’t do.
2. She is there under duress so it’s really not her fault, and my goodness this is exciting. Even Raoul points out this aspect: “Love of the most exquisite kind, the kind that one does not admit even to oneself…The kind that gives you a thrill when you think of it. No wonder: a mysterious man living in an underground palace!”
Now, this doesn’t go through her head consciously. It’s all just a feeling it first. Yet, later it does become conscious. When Raoul and asks her: “If Erik were handsome, would you love me, Christine?”
“Why do you raise questions that I have pushed to the back of my mind as if they were sinful?”
This shows that she has thought of Erik in a sexual way.
There is ample evidence that it is Erik who sees the adult woman and Raoul who sees the child.
Erik plunges her into a world that is so unlike what she is used to, that it probably addles her brain. Since it is so different and bizarre, it does make sense that she would want to try to forget it. But she can’t.
Ugly or not, Erik as awoken something in her. I believe she likes it, but at the same time she has nothing to compare it to, nothing to put it in context except the rules of society. So, it scares her. And, when scared she falls back on the familiar, which is Raoul and their playful, childish antics.
Couched in the acceptance of him being her fiancé, she is allowed to be alone with him. Yet, Gaston Leroux makes quite clear that, until she kisses him on the roof, their game is quite devoid of sexual tones.
When Christine plays at being engaged to Raoul, she is truly playing. I believe that part of this game is a distraction from how scared she is of Erik when he gets into these dark rages when he’s working on his opera. This story reiterates several times that Raoul and Christine were playing like children, and she calls him her “friend” and “Prince Charming”. Yet there is an undercurrent is something else – after all, she is wearing Erik’s ring.
This undercurrent comes to the forefront when Raoul and Christine fight. She then returns to Erik for two days. I believe that she has come to love Erik and has grown up by being loved by him.
The month that Christine and Raoul spend together is her way of remembering how far she has come. She is trying, in as gentle a way that she can, to show him that she doesn’t have an adult love for him. She shows him her domain as if to tell him:
– this is where I belong
– he has given this to me and I accept
– you can give me happiness, but happiness without depth, because you (Raoul) have not yet grown up
So, while she has been playing with Raoul and subconsciously sending him the message that they are not meant to be, when they fight and she returns to Erik she has come back to earth. I believe that by returning to Erik that day, she is reminding herself of what it is like to experience an adult love.
And because of the ring and Madame Valerius’s approval, she doesn’t fear returning to him. So if anyone was to admonish her for not being chaste, she can say that she has her chaperone’s approval, plus she is engaged. Although she never says this part out loud.
As we get closer to the end of the book, Christine becomes more and more terrified of Erik and what he is capable of. I don’t believe this is because she doesn’t love him, but because he is acting more and more erratic. And given what the Persian has told us, Erik must have been truly frightening.
The culmination of her sexual feelings and love for Erik are worthy of their own posts, soon to come.