One of Andrei Castaigne’s gorgeous water-colour illustrations of the novel
The French author Gaston Leroux’s 1910 novel “The Phantom of The Opera” is one of gothic popular fiction’s classics, even if its continued popularity partially rests on its many adaptations.
The many adaptations have made the broad outlines of the novel familiar to many. Erik, a disfigured man living beneath the Paris Opera house, who haunts it as the Phantom through an ingenious system of secret tunnels and doors. And he falls in love with the beautiful soprano Christine Daaé, who he tries to seduce with his beautiful voice and keeping how he looks hidden.
Of course, knowing all this makes reading the original novel today very different than intended. Leroux was primarily a mystery writer, otherwise known for his stories about the detective Joseph Rouletabille, modelled on Sherlock Holmes. And the book is structured as a mystery novel. The identity and nature of the phantom is kept from the reader throughout a large chunk of the book. Strange and unexplained events happen that carefully build up a sense of mystery around Erik.
It isn’t until chapter 13, which is over a hundred pages into the book in my copy that the reader gets any answers. And it still leaves much unexplained, questions are left unanswered right until the end.
So the modern reader is reading a mystery novel where they already known the solution, which makes for a strange reading experience if nothing else. Still it is a weak mystery which is truly spoiled by the reader knowing the ending, a good mystery novel survives like any other novel on their character and atmosphere.
Thankfully for the novel, the atmosphere is superb. The ghost story elements and twisted emotions of this melodrama are still engaging. It is helped by the strong setting. The book draws from the unusual qualities of the real Palais Garnier and extrapolates from this already strange reality by developing it into this gothic castle filled with secret passageways and traps, built by Erik.
The book’s title character, Erik is very compelling. He is composed of several extreme traits, simple in themselves, whose contradictions create complexity. Erik’s life is marked by his severe deformity, which has alienated him from humanity and led people to abuse him. His alienation and ill-treatment has led him to embrace cruelty and villainy. He is a genius, adept both at creating machinery and traps which he uses to violent ends. He is also capable of making beautiful things, as he is a skilled musician.
He is equally detestable, pitiable and admirable. And the novel’s heroine, Christine, ends up feeling all these conflicting emotions for Erik: she pities his loneliness, detests him for his cruelty and possessiveness and admires his music-making.
The novel’s story is a variation on the beauty and the beast theme. Erik is obsessed with Christine and wants her to love him, and tries to seduce her with his music. Of course this love is diseased, as he tries to possess her by force. His methods of convincing her end up in kidnapping and blackmail. Christine can at best only pity him for being a genius forced into a pathetic existence by his deformity. His redemption can only come when he lets her go to be with the man she truly loves, Raoul. Only then he can turn into someone worthy of her sympathy.
As enjoyable and interesting as it is, this isn’t a very progressive story, of course. Leroux might have intended to condemn how people who are disabled or otherwise different were shunned. And that message is still clear, but his disfigured villain ends up confirming many of the prejudices of his age.
The novel’s racial politics are interesting and complex, as its treatment of the non-european is both positive and negative. Erik has a past building torture devices and chambers for the sultanate of Persia, which is a prime example of European stereotypes about oriental despotism and cruelty.
Yet the novel’s only Persian character is different. He is a former police chief or “daroga” and isn’t given a name, being only known as “The Persian”. He is the only character who has any deeper knowledge about Erik, knowing him from his time in Persia and even saving his life.
He acts as the novel’s main source of knowledge about Erik, who doesn’t explain much about himself.
The Persian is at first mysterious, which probably led contemporary readers to suspect him of being one of the oriental villains common in popular fiction at the time, but is ultimately revealed to be a good man. He isn’t given a name, but he is the closest the novel has to a hero. Raoul tries to save Christine, but isn’t competent at all. The Persian is far more capable, even if he ends up in the Phantom’s traps. He fulfils stereotypes in some ways, but is ultimately heroic.
The gender politics of the beauty and the beast theme are of course questionable. Stories about a man who kidnap a woman to try to force her into a relationship with him and is then redeemed should at best be regarded with suspicion. Still, any redemption for Erik in this book is completely dependent on him letting Christine go. And Christine has more agency than is customary in this type of story. She is somewhat defined by her relationships to the men in her life, but she frequently acts contrary to their wishes.
“The Phantom of the Opera” is far from a perfect novel. The pacing is somewhat awkward, with perhaps too much focus given to comic relief characters like the opera directors. And the mystery has been spoiled for modern readers by popular culture long ago. Yet the novel still works. Its atmosphere and melodrama remain compelling. The phantom himself is an imaginative feat, a compelling gothic creation, one that has given this novel a legacy and still makes it worth reading.
I recently re-read it in David Coward’s 2012 english translation, published by Oxford University Press in their World Classics series. I recommend it, the translation is unabridged (unlike the commonly re-printed public domain translation by Alexander De Teixeira Mattos) and Coward has provided the book with an illuminating foreword and annotations.
