The Phantom of the Opera

Two of the text's central motifs appear in Chapter 5 while discussing Christine's childhood: music and folktales. From a young age, Christine was a lover of both music and magical tales, and this love carried on into her adulthood. As a child, Christine “delighted in stories, in old Breton legends” (57) so much that she and Raoul would wander Perros-Guirec “like beggars” (57) asking the elderly people to tell them legends of the area. Christine's father also played a major role in her belief in fantastical stories, as he told his "legends of the land of the North" (58) with a deep conviction of truth, even promising to send the "Angel of Music" to Christine after he dies. Christine’s father “taught [her] the musical alphabet before she knew how to read” (55), igniting her passion for song. Christine listened to and accompanied her father's violin playing "in ecstasy" (56). These eccentric lessons inform Christine's behavior throughout the text, making her more prone to believing fantastical rumors and prone to becoming entranced by Erik’s great musical abilities.

One of the legends Christine loves the most is about the Angel of Music, and the text draws direct parallels between Christine's experience with Erik and the tale of Little Lotte. In the legend, Angel of Music secretly visits Little Lotte’s cradle while she sleeps, and the girl grows to be a musical prodigy. Before Christine reveals that a voice, calling itself the Angel of Music, has been teaching her at the Opera, Raoul remarks, “No professor on earth can teach you such accents as those. You have heard the Angel of Music, Christine” (64). Raoul speaks metaphorically about Christine’s miraculous development, but Christine and Mamma Valérius have “candid and perfect faith in a genius who [comes] down nightly from Heaven” (91) to give Christine singing lessons. For Christine, the Angel's performance of The Resurrection of Lazarus at her father's grave in Chapter 5, combined with Raoul hearing the voice himself, confirms the Angel’s existence. Raoul, however, has seen the real man behind the graveyard music, and he knows someone is taking advantage of Christine's “highly-strung imagination [and] her affectionate and credulous mind” (88). Later chapters reveal that Erik creates the disembodied, angelic voice through ventriloquism to gain Christine’s confidence. The Angel of Music figure connects both to the theme of illusion and the theme of superstition.

A minor conflict within Christine and Raoul's relationship is their class difference. Raoul is a viscount who comes from a reputable, upper-class family; as such, he is expected to carry on his family's name with a suitable and equal match. Christine in comparison, is a musician's daughter who spent most of her life in poverty. Raoul recognizes the impossibility of their relationship from a young age. He breaks his own heart by declaring his love for Christine, “for he knew that Christine could not be the wife of the Vicomte de Chagny” (59). There is also a cultural stereotype that dancers and musical performers are more passionate and sensual. As Philippe thinks in Chapter 2, it is fine to be with a dancer for “an hour or two after dinner” (28), but they are not noblemen’s wives. When Raoul's adulthood infatuation with Christine appears to put a strain on the young man's behavior, Philippe curses Christine, calling her “that little baggage” (82), for apparently ensnaring his young brother in an unrespectable match. Raoul too displays this mindset after he learns of Christine and the Angel of Music’s nightly meetings, as he thinks Christine is having a secret affair while also leading him on. He begins to have doubts “in her innocence, in her purity” (92). Philippe believes Christine is only after Raoul's money and status, and his dislike for her grows as Raoul's attachment to her deepens.

Setting plays a major role in creating the sinister mood of Gothic novels like this one. Two settings in these chapters contribute to the threatening feelings characters have while they go about their investigations. The first setting is the graveyard in Perros-Guirec where Raoul follows Christine. Graveyards are a classic Gothic setting due to their connection to the afterlife and spirits—the unexplainable. In Chapter 5, the graveyard's sinister quality is enhanced by the little church piled high with human remains:

Skeletons and skulls by the hundred were heaped against the wall of the church, held in position by a wire that left the whole gruesome stack visible. Dead men’s bones, arranged in rows, like bricks, to form the first course upon which the walls of sacristy had been built. The door of the sacristy opened in the middle of the bony structure, as is often seen in old Breton churches. (63)

Raoul can't help but faint at the sight of the shadowy figure's death's-head mask, for it is as if the man was an “unearthly apparition” (69) of one of these skeletons come back to life. The second setting is the Opera where Moncharmin and Richard investigate the ghost in Box Five. In Chapter 6, the text personifies the Opera and its "delight" in creating fear. The statues on the ceiling “grinned and grimaced, laughed and jeered at MM. Richard and Moncharmin’s distress” (71), as if they were responsible for the “fantastic shape[s]” that the men saw in the Opera’s “deceptive light” (70). The strange lighting and décor of the Opera toys with the minds of those already frightened by hidden figures and apparitions, making any object appear potentially threatening.

Major incidents occur in Chapter 7 that propel the characters into a frenzy. First, during the opera performance, Carlotta—a seasoned performer—croaks like a toad multiple times. The managers, having earlier received a letter from the Opera Ghost to replace Carlotta, start to believe “there is witchcraft behind it” (84). At the same time, the managers finally hear the ghost's “impossible voice, the mouthless voice” (85-86) in Box Five, which sends them into a state of total shock, further catalyzing their mad obsession with exposing the ghost. Christine goes missing after the performance, but it is her sighting with a mysterious man in a carriage that sends Raoul into a fury. Raoul's extreme jealousy completely clouds his mind that he starts cursing Christine as a "bold and damnable, sly creature" (92). Raoul's fixation on Christine pushes him into extreme changes of mood when she doesn't reciprocate his feelings, leading him to “[think] of dying” (93) to escape his self-inflicted heartbreak. These incidents both connect to the theme of obsession.