So I want to try to articulate something I find fascinating (and deeply tragic) regarding Erik from The Phantom of the Opera and Éponine from Les Misérables (I’m specifically talking about the novels here).
While Erik can be quite arrogant and boastful, he also seems to be consumed with a heavy burden of self-loathing and shame (this is a very common human contradiction). And he claims to want a normal life like anybody else, while making choices that just seem to actively sabotage that. He knew, surely, that it wasn’t going to go over well when he told Christine to go look at his creepy, morbid, funeral-themed bedroom with the coffin bed. I cannot help but read this perverse delight in shocking her, even as he wants to put her at ease with how normal everything else about his house is. It’s bizarre and understandable and human and wondrous, and I could go on and on about it.
It’s like, he wants a normal life like anybody else, but because he has been denied that due to his appearance, he has thrown himself into the role of the monster. It is better, surely, to intentionally shock and terrify people by behaving as a ghost, showing up to the managers’ dinner and making a comment about Buquet’s death, sleeping in a coffin, etc. etc., than to have people react with horror and jeering when he’s just being himself and happening to look the way he does.
If everyone is going to view him as a monster, why not have it be a monster of his own creation?
So, reading this agonising passage regarding Éponine in Marius’s room, I can’t help but think something very similar is at play here.
“Nevertheless, while Marius stared at her in pained surprise, the young girl was moving all about the garret with the audacity of a ghost. She darted to and fro, not bothered about her nakedness. Occasionally her unfastened, torn chemise dropped almost down to her waist. She shifted the chairs, she moved the wash basin and jug on the chest of drawers, she touched Marius’s clothes, she poked about in the corners. ‘Oh!’ she said. ‘You’ve got a mirror!’ And as if she were alone she hummed snatches of satirical songs, frivolous refrains that in her hoarse, throaty voice sounded doleful. Beneath this brazenness a suggestion of something forced, uneasy, abashed was detectable. Effrontery is a display of shame. Nothing was more dismal than the sight of her cavorting and, as it were, flitting about the room like a bird frightened by daylight or affected with a broken wing. You felt that under other circumstances, had she been brought up to lead a different life, the playful and uninhibited behaviour of this young girl might have been something sweet and charming. In the animal world, never does the creature born to be a dove turn into a bird of prey. That is something you see only among humans.”
(Donougher translation p. 667)
By behaving insolently on purpose, by playing into what people already think of her based on her situation and appearance, she can cover over her real shame. Like it’s not really her, it’s the role she’s enacting, in a way.
I could rant (and I have done, more than once!) about the similarities and the differences between Éponine and Erik in this regard. The deep sense of shame they carry, what caused it, how they respond to it. How the world stole what they might have been, warping them into these “monstrous” roles. The ghosts of their potential and the ugliness of reality. How they embody, exaggerate, and yet contradict the way the world sees them. How Éponine accepts and internalises society’s view of her, while Erik maintains that he is not really a wicked man… There’s just a lot there and I think it’s pretty fascinating.
Anyway. Just some messy thoughts.
