'Puss in Boots', 'The Phantom of the Opera' and 'The Woman in White'

I missed one of our 'Puss in Boots' lessons but I'm just going to blog about my initial thoughts...we discussed how the characters in 'Puss in Boots' correlate with the Italian Theatre characters we'd researched...it seems that Figaro was the 'Harlequin' of the piece...poor and hungry (he scrounges for food 'I'd pilfer the market for breakfast') yet proud ('impeccable hygenic integrity'), he uses the fact he is dismissed by others (the fact that he's a cat) to outwit...(helps his Master to woo his 'love'). I think the charcater of Figaro is a very interesting one as in some ways he is an archetypal fairytale character (a cat...that talks) but in other ways dismisses the fairytale nonsense (almost mocks his Master for his romantic endevours, calling him a 'lovelorn loon'). I also thought that, if Figaro is the 'Harlequin', Tabby might be 'Columbina'...Harlequin's 'companion' who helps him in his tasks and has more character and 'pepper' than the other lovers (Figaro's master's lover). Also, there's Signor Pantelone 'the old man was a fool and a miser' (Pantaloon) and in true fairytale style '[the] hag turns out to be the biggest snag'.


I've also been trying to get a bit more clued up on gothic texts and conventions and have been reading Gaston Leroux's 'The Phantom of the Opera' and Wilkie Collins' 'The Woman in White' - just as we were talking about the set characters in Italian theatre (and in fairytales, to an extent), it seems there are certain characters that most gothic texts have...the 'monster' male who is attracted by beauty and innocence (Dracula, The Marquis, The Phantom, Percival Glyde), a 'beauty' (Beauty, Mina, Lucy, Christine Daae, Anne), the beauty's dying or vulnerable guardian (In 'Phantom', Christine's adopted mother is on her deathbed, in 'Dracula', Lucy's mother is dying, in 'The Woman in White', Laura Fairlie's uncle is old and frail, in 'The Courtship of Mr Lyon', Beauty's father is quite weak...characters in the gothic tales seem to act in certain ways and do certain things for the sake of the old/dying relatives e.g. no-one tells Lucy's mother about the danger Lucy's in, Beauty stays with the Beast for the sake of her father...emphasizes the 'goodness' of the characters and heightens drama...imminent death!) and there's (sometimes) the antithesis of the 'monster male' in a male version of the 'Beauty'...(Raoul, the Piano Tuner, Walter) - occasionally, the male version of the 'Beauty', however, is found within the monster...as in The Courtship of Mr Lyon.

In addition, thinking about the different gothic texts, I found that the love/hate conflict that we discussed with regard to 'The Bloody Chamber' (curiosity/disgust, sex/death e.t.c.) runs through the entire gothic genre and The Phantom of the Opera sort of embodies this...The Phantom is obsessed with Christine - one of the reasons being that in terms of physical appearance, she's the exact opposite of him...but alongside the obsessive love for and admiration of Christine's beauty and innocence runs a hatred and deep-seated envy...If he can't have Christine, he'd rather her die or have all she cares about destroyed than she be someone else's...there's a fine line between love and hate in The Phantom of the Opera and in many gothic texts...to quote the musical (here I go again...) of The Phantom of the Opera 'Fear can turn to love, you'll learn to see, to find, the man behind the monster - this repulsive carcass who seems a beast but secretly dreams of beauty'). The other conflicts we've discussed in class that I've found to feature in The Phantom and The Woman in White are...the asleep/awake conflict (in The Woman in White, Count Fosco and Percival Glyde cover up the fact they've imprisoned Laura in an asylum by saying she fell to her death while sleepwalking...similar to Lucy in Dracula....also, in Phantom, Christine hears the voice of the 'Angel of Music' in her sleep) - there's also the dead/alive conflict (is the Phantom dead or alive? He is known as the 'Opera Ghost'...similarly, Anne in WiW is mistaken for a ghost)...maddness (Both Laura and Anne are imprisoned in asylums in WiW and those who can hear the voice of the Phantom are considered mad initially).

That's all for now...