The Phantom of the Opera: Chapter 13

Storytime for Grownups

In this episode of Storytime for Grownups, host Faith Moore and a guest reader dive into Chapter 13 of Gaston Leroux's The Phantom of the Opera, following an extensive recap of

Key takeaways

• Faith Moore draws strong Beauty and the Beast parallels, noting how Eric's skeletal appearance and isolation make him a tragic figure rather than a pure monster.
• Listeners Corinthia and Paula Fernandez submit comments highlighting Eric's psychological trauma and Chapter 12's pivotal narrative twist regarding his true identity.

Main topics

• Eric's backstory and physical deformity
• Beauty and the Beast thematic parallels

Notable quotes

"He is my rival, and if he's not dead, it's a pity."

Conclusion

The episode masterfully bridges gothic horror with psychological chara

Transcript preview

Speaker 2 (0:00) Hello, and welcome to Storytime for Grownups. I'm Faith Moore, and this season we're reading The Phantom of the Opera by Gaston Leroux. Each episode, I'll read a few chapters from the book, pausing from time to time to give brief explanations so it's easier to follow along. It's like an audiobook with built-in notes. So brew a pot of tea, find a cozy chair, and settle in. It's storytime! you Speaker 1 (0:42) Hello, welcome back. So I'm actually recording this episode before I leave for Tennessee. So I know that this is airing after I have met some of you in Tennessee, and I'm sure it was wonderful. It just hasn't happened yet for me. I had to record this episode before I left because I'm not going to get home until Sunday evening. So I wanted to make sure that this would get out on Monday for you guys. So I'm not going to talk about Nashville yet because I haven't been. So I'll let you know how it went. on Thursday when I'm actually recording after it happened. And the other thing this means is that I didn't have as much time as I usually do to wait for your questions to come in. So I did get some, I picked two, so I'm going to read some questions. But if anything comes up in the intervening time that I didn't cover today, then I'll talk about that when I get back. So I just wanted to make sure this episode went out on time. So I did all this before the trip. But Anyway, here we are in this episode, and this is going to be chapter 13. So last time we read chapter 12. I do actually have a lot to say about chapter 12. It's one of my favorite chapters. So we're going to talk for a bit, and then we've got chapter 13. Before we get into that, though, all the usual reminders. Please make sure that you subscribe to this show. Please tap the five stars if you've been enjoying it. Please... Tell everyone that you know about the show. Let's get more people listening. It's finally October, you guys. So perfect for spooky season. Perfect book, I think, for spooky season. So people can join. They can start at the beginning and catch up with us. So let people know about Storytime for Grownups and that we're reading this book. And now my novel, Wooing Jane, is not available for pre-order. It's just available. to order. So I hope that you will pick up a copy if you haven't already. There's a link in the show notes to do that. And if you have your copy already and you are reading it and enjoying it, I would love it if you would go on Amazon and leave a positive review. Tap the five stars over there as well, please. That would really, really help me out. I really would appreciate that. Okay. I think that's all I've got for now. Of course, scroll into the show notes. You might find a link there that interests you. And the contact link is there. Please, please do get in touch with me about this chapter, about this book, about my book, whatever you want. Get in touch. I love to hear from you. But now let's remind ourselves of what happened in chapter 12. Then we'll talk for a bit and then we'll get into chapter 13. So here is the recap. All right, so where we left off, Speaker 2 (3:07) Christine and Raul go to the roof where Christine thinks they can talk without being heard. She tells Raul that she will escape with him and soon, and that if, when the time comes, she refuses to go, he should take her away by force. Christine is overcome with emotion, and she tells Raul that she is now horrified by the man that she once thought was the angel of music, but she pities him too. He has given her one day more before she must go back to him. And Raul says that they should leave at once, but Christine can't bear to disappoint him. She tells Raul that when she first saw the man that she thought was the angel, she thought she might die because he was so hideous. At that point, they both hear a cry that sounds like a person in pain, but they see no one there. Christine tells Raul that a voice came to her dressing room one day and gave her singing lessons. She asked it if it was the angel of music sent from her father, and it said that it was. But when Christine told the voice about her friendship with Raul, the voice became jealous and left her. Christine realized she was in love with Raul, but when the voice returned the next day and asked her, she said that she didn't love him. She says that when she had her triumphant performance, she pretended not to see Raul so as not to upset the voice. On the night when the chandelier fell, Christine was afraid for Raoul, but also for the voice. But that was the night that she was transported beyond the mirror, where she was met by a skeletal man in a mask who smelled of death. She fainted. When she woke up, the man was taking care of her tenderly, but she was horrified by this as well. He put her on Cesar, the stolen horse, and began to lead her through the tunnels. Christine began to wonder if the voice was actually the phantom. The man led her through the tunnels. under the opera house until they reached a lake. Then they got into a boat and rode across the lake. The man explained that he isn't a ghost or an angel. He's a man and that his name is Eric. He said that no harm would come to Christine as long as she never touched his mask. When Raul hears this, he says that they should run away now, but Christine says no, then Eric would die of sorrow. She also says that Eric is capable of killing them both because he loves her so much. Raul accuses Christine of loving Eric and Christine says that she's horrified by Eric, but also feels sorry for him and she's entranced with the emotion of his music. She says that he told her where he could go and confessed that he loved her, but she stayed with him to hear him sing. Eric took Christine to his house across the lake and told her that she must stay with him for five days and then he would release her, but she must come back and visit him of her own free will. He showed her around and she saw that he sleeps in a coffin and that he's composing a strange work called Don Juan Triumphant. Christine and Eric sang together from Othello and moved by the music, Christine began to find Eric appealing. She wanted to see what he looked like, so she took off his mask and she tells Raoul that his face is horrifying, that it looks like a skeleton with eyes that only shine in the dark. Eric became enraged and forced Christine to look at him. He compared himself sarcastically to Don Juan, and then he began to cry, and he said that now that Christine has seen his face, she would never want to return to him, and he went and locked himself in his room. Christine heard the music that Eric had been writing and realized it was far more beautiful and horrible than anything else that she'd ever heard in the opera. Christine went into the room and told Eric that she wouldn't be afraid of his face anymore, even though she tells Raoul that she was lying about that. Eric was overjoyed that she wasn't horrified by him and treated her with submissiveness and devotion. He allowed her to go out in the carriage at night and eventually allowed her to go free. When Christine saw how devastated he was that she was going, she felt for him and agreed to come back. When her story is over, when she's told Raul all of this, Raul says that if Eric had been handsome, Christine would love him instead of Raul. Raul says she can't even imagine that and proves her love for Raul by letting him kiss her. As they kiss, they hear a terrible sound and something that looks like a dark bird comes toward them, so they run away. All Speaker 1 (7:02) right, sorry that recap was kind of long, but a lot happened in chapter 12. So I'm going to read two comments today. The first one comes from Corinthia. She says, Wow, we finally learn the full story behind Christine's torment. I feel so much pity for her. Because of the beliefs encouraged by her superstitious father and her adoptive mother, she was vulnerable to the ghost's manipulation. He used her faith in the angel of music to gain her trust, and by the time she realized the truth, it was almost too late. She had become the prisoner of a possessive, rejected, and deeply disturbed man. At the same time, I cannot help feeling some sympathy for the ghost. As the parent of a child with special needs, I know that even in modern society, children who are different can be treated cruelly or excluded. I can only imagine the abuse, rejection, and loneliness Eric may have experienced because of his appearance. That pain does not excuse the cruel and murderous person he becomes, or the way he treats Christine, but it does help me understand why he is such a tragic character. And the second one comes from Paula Fernandez. She says, Okay, so... I've said this before, but I feel like in every book that we have read together on here, there is one chapter where everything just kind of suddenly changes, either because something that we thought was true is actually false, or because we learn a really important piece of information, or because there's some kind of twist. Whatever it is, I feel like there's been a chapter like that in every book. And for me, chapter 12 is that chapter in The Phantom of the Opera. And the reason I feel that way is that now, suddenly, we understand what is going on. on with the opera ghost. Not completely. There's still a lot of questions. We still have no idea how he does all the things that he does, but we now understand at least a little bit why he behaves the way he does. Because the revelation of chapter 12 is that Eric is really just a man. And like Corinthia says, he is a man who has been shunned because of the way that he looks. The big revelation here, or one of the big revelations at least, is that the death's head that everyone keeps seeing, that is not a mask or a costume. That is actually what Eric looks like. He looks like a living skeleton. And because of this, he hasn't been able to participate in normal life. He hasn't been allowed to because even his mother, it turns out, couldn't bear to look at him. Here's what he says. When my own father never saw me and when my mother so is not to see me, made me a present of my first mask. Okay, so this is a guy who was born with a deformity, essentially. He has no nose. His eyes are sunk very deep in their sockets. His skin is stretched very tightly over the bones of his face and hands. His lips are probably very thin or maybe even non-existent. He looks like a living skeleton. And on the one hand, that's very creepy and it's in keeping with the sort of spooky season aspect of this book. On the other hand, it's not Eric's fault that he was born like that. And being born looking different from other people isn't actually a statement about who you are on the inside. I mean, if a monster looks like that, like if he actually were a skeleton come to life or some sort of horror movie creature, that's one thing. But he's not a monster. He's a man. That's what we're learning here. He is just a man, essentially a very ugly man. But we also know that he's done terrible things. As far as we can tell, he has killed two people, Joseph Bouquet and the concierge lady, so that's really bad. And he also essentially took Christine prisoner after first lying to her that he was the angel of music and earning her trust in this really kind of insidious way that took advantage of her innocence and her grief over her father's death. So from what we can tell at this point, Eric is someone who, through no fault of his own, was born looking a way that made society shun him. who was shunned such that he has to live underground in this weird house on the lake under the opera house because if he lived somewhere normal, people would be terrified of him and kick him out of there. So he can't interact with people in a normal way. He probably has no friends. He seems to have no family that want to know him. He's completely alone and he's hated for reasons that have nothing to do with his actual worth. But it seems fairly clear that because all of that happened, he has become, at best, very eccentric, and at worst, like a murderous madman. But the other thing that we learn about Eric in chapter 12 is that the reason that