Phantom of the Opera (Barnes & Noble Classics Series) (4 page)

For Erik, art and suffering have long been inextricably connected. First, as we learn from the Persian’s revelatory narrative near the end of the novel, Erik spent most of his youth traveling in fairs as a freakish attraction, his grotesque physical deformity (he is billed as a “‘living corpse’” (p. 257) and private anguish on exhibit for all to set eyes upon. Over time this spectacle of revulsion leads by its very repetition—despite the doors that open for him as a result of his singularity—to the atrophy of his soul and his capacity for good and to a penchant for gratuitous evil, as witnessed, for example, by the adventures recounted of his time in the employment of the Shah. Hardened slowly and resolutely by the unkind and cruel behavior toward him, Erik, as the Persian comments, develops a profound hatred for humanity and an unquenchable thirst for revenge: “‘He was restrained by no scruples and he employed his extraordinary gifts of dexterity and imagination, which he had received by way of compensation for his extraordinary ugliness, to prey upon his fellowmen’” (p. 256).

Following Erik’s arrival in Paris several years later and the construction of his home on the edge of the lake in the underground portion of the Opera House (the implausibility of which is conveniently justified by the explanation that he worked as a contractor during the construction of the building), his own artistic creation becomes the outlet for the pent-up desire, frustration, and rage that has withered him. In this way, his artistic soul engages in a deleterious relationship with his human self, thriving on the misery of his condition. The title of the “masterpiece” to which Erik dedicates himself in his solitary, removed world—
Don Juan Triumphant
—speaks to the disconnect between the reality of his isolated existence and an imagined, unattainable ideal. Yet while Erik is surely as far removed as possible from the physical attributes and infamous sexual prowess of Don Juan, the two share more than first meets the eye. Indeed, both are characterized by a vacuity, and seek to fill their emptiness by continuous pursuit: Don Juan is an obsessive and unscrupulous pursuer of women, and Erik tries to escape the truth of his physical existence by throwing himself into his artistic creation (the narrator notes that he repeatedly shuts himself away for days at a time as he works on his score). And just as Don Juan finds no lasting satisfaction in his conquests, Erik, although he succeeds in creating beautiful, haunting music, continues to be plagued by restlessness and anguish.

In addition to his composition of music, the other form of pursuit in which Erik engages is that of courting Christine Daaé. His promise of training her and making her a brilliant success above all moves him toward attaining her love. From the first times he visits her, he entices Christine by capitalizing on her innocence and naiveté, pretending to be the voice that she has been expecting since childhood. This subtle emotional manipulation turns to outright blackmail when Erik discovers Christine’s romantic feelings for Raoul, and he threatens to withdraw his lessons (and with them her newfound distinction) if she does not return his love. Erik’s obsessive desire to be loved—to be loved for himself, as he often repeats—becomes more and more insistent as the tale of their entwinement unfolds. The twists and surprises of the plot reveal the greater and greater lengths to which Erik goes in order to obtain this love, the stakes of which are so high that it subsequently becomes a requirement for Christine’s own survival.

Elements of Gothic peril and horror—including the red, blood-like ink with which Erik signs his correspondence, madness, coffins, and torture—characterize this forced romance as it progresses toward its unforeseeable resolution. Yet, on a larger level, the romance with Christine is itself secondary for Erik to a more fundamental, urgent desire for normalcy and social acceptance that being privately and publicly loved by her would represent. His plaintive discourse—“‘I’m sick and tired of having a forest and a torture-chamber in my house and of living like a mountebank, in a house with a false bottom! ... I’m tired of it! I want to have a nice, quiet flat, with ordinary doors and windows and a wife inside it, like anybody else! A wife whom I could love and take out on Sundays and keep amused on week-days’” (p. 222)—inserts this fantasy into a touchingly human (and very bourgeois) framework with which the reader can more easily identify.

What ultimately distinguishes Erik from the “triumphant” Don Juan of his imagination is thematically much more significant than the obvious differences in the nature of each of their human experiences. While Don Juan is characterized by a damnable inability to change or show repentance for his scandalous behavior (most versions of the legend end with his descent to hell), Erik, who is in most regards an equally reprehensible moral monster, is, in the resolution to his pursuit of Christine, transformed by love in such a way that he is freed from the rigid casing of hate that has suffocated and stunted him. The fulfillment of his desire to be loved (as and for
himself)
and the knowledge that he has stirred feelings other than shock and revulsion from another human being puts a literal and figurative end to his suffering and sets up the (narrative) redemption that he is allowed.

This redemption is in many ways the greatest trick—and the greatest surprise—of
The Phantom of the Opera.
Contemporary critics, and even more modern ones, have been fairly uniform, in fact, in their condemnation of Leroux for his weakness in the domain of creating characters; they view his novels essentially as plot-driven and lacking the unity and depth that come with the presence of psychologically rich characters. The novel’s rather unexpected and, as some have argued, unconvincing denouement has only confirmed this criticism, as there is no obvious foundation for Erik’s sudden course of action. Yet while it’s unlikely that anyone would make the argument that Leroux was interested in representing the complexities of the inner workings of the human psyche, and while it is clear that the transformation that occurs in Erik is perhaps overly rapid, indulgent readers can nonetheless make the case that they are prepared for the conclusion by a moral undercurrent of social culpability that runs through the novel.

The absence of love resulting from Erik’s physical unattractiveness—be it maternal, romantic, or social love—is overtly offered as an explanation for his malevolence. This malevolence is not, however, irremediable. Erik’s plea to Christine—“‘I am not really wicked! Love me and you shall see! ... If you loved me I should be as gentle as a lamb; and you could do anything with me that you pleased’” (p. 214)—explicitly puts forward the possibility of reversal, a reversal that in fact later occurs and is recounted by Erik with touching sincerity. This personal penitence is additionally accompanied by a narrative reparation and rehabilitation that clears him from the majority of the heinous acts attributed to him over the course of the novel. Any “fault” that remains is quickly and calculatingly shifted: For as the Persian’s concluding remarks suggest, far less remediable than Erik’s behavior are the inherent failures of basic human
ⁿ
ature—“He asked only to be ‘some one’ like everybody else. But he was too ugly!” (p. 259)—which is unable to recognize its own accountability in perpetuating human suffering. The reader is subtly and uncomfortably incriminated in this dark social complicity, and has little choice, in spite of any incredulity he or she may have relative to Erik’s sudden “transformation,” but to respond affirmatively to the final question—“Shall we pity him?” (p. 259)—posed by the Persian. Viewed in this way,
The Phantom of the Opera
can be understood as more than a simple horror story; instead, the novel retransmits a timeless message that evil is learned, not innate.

The stages of development in the relationship between Christine and Erik that spark the events of the novel’s ending are infinitely more complex—and interesting—than the wan love story of Christine and Raoul that plays out over the course of
The Phantom of the Opera.
Modern readers are sure to find the character of Raoul, with his endless fits of jealously, ineffectual outbursts, swoons, and whiny rants, to be largely uninteresting and unlikable. For in contrast to the evolution witnessed in Erik, and that of Christine, whose naivete and innocence (reinforced by the account of her fairytale-like, bohemian childhood) are steadily supplanted by an impressive presence of mind and a notable artistic, romantic, and human maturation, Raoul remains—from beginning to end—static. Although his feelings for Christine progress from juvenile infatuation to full-blown passion, he is emotionally and functionally as inept in the last scenes in which he appears as he is in the first. His inadequacies—physical, intellectual, emotional—are in fact such that the Persian must swoop in to orchestrate the attempt at Christine’s rescue all the while managing Raoul’s reckless impulses so that he does not compromise it.

Any and all Raoul-bashing should, however, be tempered at least in part by an understanding that this character serves as a kind of foil whose purpose is threefold. First, the idyllic, innocent, and fantasy-like romantic behavior of Christine and Raoul—which dates to the childhood episode in which he retrieves her scarf from the sea, and continues even in the dangerous present of the novel with the “game” of their one-month engagement—is set up to provide a stark contrast to Christine’s parallel dark and perilous relationship with Erik. Second, the textual presentation of Raoul as self-absorbed and thoroughly ineffectual is part of a larger strategy to make Erik more sympathetic, by comparison, to the reader. Indeed, Raoul’s very persistence in viewing first and foremost as his romantic rival the man that he initially knows as Christine’s mysterious dressing room visitor, and later as the dangerous villain that he is, highlights a stubborn narcissism that takes a firmer and firmer hold of him as the novel progresses. To confirm Raoul’s heroic incompetence as a hero, the reader need only call to mind the scene in which a bumbling Raoul, teetering on the brink of a nervous breakdown, desperately fires his gun into the air of his bedroom in an effort to rid himself of his foe. Third, from a cultural and sociological perspective, Raoul’s behavior along with that of his older brother, Count Philippe de Chagny, are examples of the codified aristocratic behavior typical of the late nineteenth century. Philippe, as the head of what is described by the narrator as one of the most venerable families in all of Europe, assumes the role of both father and mentor in his relationship with his younger brother. He helps shape Raoul’s career decision—the narrator tells us that he foresees “a glorious career for his junior in the navy in which one of their ancestors, the famous Chagny de La Roche, had held the rank of admiral” (p. 23)—and serves, during the six-month furlough that brings Raoul to the capital just prior to the tragic events that befall the two brothers, as his guide and initiator into the social world of the Parisian upper classes.

Although it is certainly not his primary focus, Leroux, through his depictions of secondary characters, also takes the opportunity to paint in broad strokes interesting portraits of other social types and situations of nineteenth-century culture and to make an often ironic social commentary. We are exposed, for example, to the inflated egos of diva opera singers like Carlotta (who, as we observe during the performance of Faust in which she has been warned not to sing, has a loyal and protective following that is easily incited by rumor), ambitious dancers like La Sorelli (who is “frequented” by Philippe de Chagny), and the aspirations of rapid social ascent of the laughably unrealistic Madame Giry (whose primary reason for serving as the ghost’s personal assistant is his promise-like prediction that her daughter, Meg, will become an empress).

Members of the legal profession are also particular targets of Leroux’s critical wit. From Monsieur Faure, the dismissive magistrate charged with ruling on the original inquiry, to Mifroid, the commissary of police called in to handle the investigation after Christine’s disappearance—who first appears in one of Leroux’s earlier novels,
La Double Vie de Théophraste Longuet
(1904;
The Double Life of Théophraste Longuet)—
these characters exhibit a too-literal dependence on fact, appearance, and procedure. Unlike the (competent!) narrator, and unlike Leroux himself, whose legal background and experience in court reporting prompted him throughout his life to question everything and to accept little at face value, they uniformly fail to apply reason and logic to the evidence collected in the case, and wind up understanding nothing at all, hiding behind red tape and the certainty of the official pronouncements.

When Gaston Leroux died suddenly in April 1927, just two years after
The Phantom of the Opera
had been turned into a film of great success, he surely could not have predicted the amazing afterlife that the novel would have during the remainder of the twentieth and now the twenty-first century, including other film versions (such as Universal’s extravagant 1943 remake of its own 1925 adaptation, directed by Arthur Lubin and with Claude Rains in the role of the phantom, and the 1962 British rendering by Terence Fisher, to name only two), made-for-television versions, an Andrew Lloyd Webber musical (which first opened in London in 1986 and will soon begin its eighteenth year on Broadway at the Majestic Theater), and a lavish 2004 film remake of Lloyd Webber’s musical, directed by Joel Schumacher. Like its thematic ancestors
The Beauty and the Beast
and
The Hunchback of Notre Dame, The Phantom of the Opera,
with its haunted and haunting representation of the inextricable connection between art, love, and loss has both infinite possibilities of reinvention and a timeless, universal appeal. While the successive versions continue to spin as much, and perhaps more, off each other as off Leroux’s text, Leroux’s original conjuring—despite its lukewarm critical reception—nonetheless remains the core of an amazing popular and cultural phenomenon. For the reader who takes the time to sit down with the novel, the result is a deeper understanding and appreciation of a story that will undoubtedly live on and on.