The Phantom of the Opera: Chapters 10 & 11

Storytime for Grownups

In this episode of Storytime for Grownups, Faith Moore reads and analyzes chapters 10 and 11 of Gaston Leroux's The Phantom of the Opera. Th

Key takeaways

• Raoul's character arc shifts from a dashing hero to a petulant, jealous figure driven by insecurity.
• Thematic use of colors: Red represents passion, blood, and death; Black signifies mourning and darkness; White denotes innocence.

Main topics

• Analysis of The Phantom of the Opera chapters 10 & 11
• Character study of Raoul and Christine

Notable quotes

He had loved an angel, and now he despised a woman.

Conclusion

The episode provides a deep thematic exploration of Leroux's work whil

Transcript preview

Speaker 1 (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! Speaker 1 (0:42) Hi, welcome back. I'm sorry, but my voice is still a little scratchy. I think I'm on the mend. It's a little better than it was. I'm taking some medicine. I'm drinking some tea. I'm doing lots of resting. So I think we're good, but I'm sorry you have to listen to my scratchy voice again in this episode. But as before, the chapter was recorded before I got sick, so you won't have to deal with it in... that part of the episode, but you will have to deal with it now. We're just going to soldier on because I've got a lot to say today. And so hopefully my voice will hold out and I'll just do the best I can. So please bear with me and thank you. I appreciate you listening to this kind of strange, scratchy voice for a while. So before I get into the episode and the questions, I do just want to remind you of a couple of dates coming up. because they are coming up this week. So the first is this Wednesday, Wednesday, September 30th at 8pm Eastern is Tea Time. That'll be over in our online community, which is called The Drawing Room because it's where we withdraw after the show to keep talking. And Tea Time is like a voice chat, kind of like a group phone call. You can hear me, I can hear you. You don't have to talk, but I love it when you do. And we will talk about this book so far. We won't do any spoilers, but we'll talk about the book so far. You can ask me any questions. There's already... some questions that people have been posting in the drawing room. So we'll get to those. You can ask me anything at all, really. And I would love to answer questions about my novel, Wooing Jane, if you have any of those. And of course, questions about this book, questions about anything. So please do join us. If you haven't yet joined us for tea time, I would love to see you there. I know some people have joined the drawing room since the last tea time. So hopefully you guys will show up. And if you'd like to join the drawing room and you're not yet a member, just scroll into the show notes, the description. of this episode and you'll find a link there. It won't automatically sign you up or anything, but if you just click that link, you'll learn more. And I hope that you will join us at tea time. The other date to mention, well, actually two dates to mention this week, which is so exciting that it is in fact now this week. The first is that my novel, Wooing Jane. comes out on Friday. It comes out Friday, October 2nd. And actually, I just checked Amazon. And if you have pre-ordered the book, it looks like it might actually get to you before the second, which is kind of cool. And if you haven't yet, and you go and click on the link in the show notes to find the book, you will find, I think, that it's not a pre-order anymore. It's just an order. It'll come to you, I think, in a couple of days. So if you haven't yet... pre-ordered or now ordered a copy of Wooing Jane, I would love it if you would do that. It's a way that you can support me in the work that I'm doing. So even if you don't like to read romantic comedies, maybe you know someone who does. So you can do some early Christmas shopping or just get a gift just because for somebody that you know who likes rom-coms. And I would love it if you would pick up a copy because the book means a lot to me. It's really close to my heart. I'm very, very fond of it. And so I hope that... you will like it too. So I hope you'll get a copy. And when you get yours, let me know. You can send me an email. You can, I don't know, post it somewhere or something. Let me know that you've got your copy. I would love to know that they're actually shipping out to you guys. That's so fun. And of course, when you read it, let me know what you think of it. Send me an email. But the other date that is this week is Saturday. This Saturday, October 3rd, I will be in Franklin, Tennessee with my brother, Spencer Claven at the landmark. booksellers at 5pm. And we will be talking about wooing Jane, I might even read a little bit from it, we'll see. And I will be signing books. So if you would like to come, I know that many of you are coming. I just spoke with the bookstore, the books have come in. So they're really excited. I'm really excited. And I hope that you will come. I really am so excited to meet some of you. This is like a dream come true. So I can't wait to meet you at the landmark booksellers in Franklin, Tennessee at 5pm. on October 3rd. So that's the other date that I wanted to tell you about. But scroll into the show notes. Everything is there. All the information about the event, the book, anything to do with this show is in the show notes. So just check that out. You might find something that interests you. Okay, enough of that. Let's get into this episode. Today, we're going to be reading chapters 10 and 11. Last time we read chapters 8 and 9. So let's go over what happened last time. Then I've got some great comments to read and a lot to talk about, and then we'll get to the chapter. So here is the recap. All right, so where we left off. After the disaster at the opera house, Carlotta stays homesick and Christine totally disappears. Raoul is distraught and he thinks that she is the victim of some unscrupulous man. He decides to go and see Madame Valerius, the woman who is like a mother to Christine. He finds her old but totally alert. She explains to Raoul that the angel of music has been visiting Christine in her dressing room and giving her singing lessons and that now Christine has gone away with the angel. Madame Valerius tells Raoul that Christine speaks. of him often, but can't marry him because the angel of music has forbidden her to marry. She says that it was the angel who played the violin at Peros, and that he isn't a man, he's an angel, and he lives in heaven. Raoul decides that this angel must actually be some guy who is Christine's lover, and that Christine has been making a fool of him all of this time. He goes home totally devastated. Seeing him so upset, Raoul's brother tells him that Christine has been seen in a carriage with a man at a certain place each night, and Raoul decides to go there. and find out what's going on. He waits, and finally he sees the carriage, and he sees that Christine is inside, but when he calls out to her, the carriage rushes away. Raoul decides that Christine has been toying with him, and he falls into despair. But the next day, he receives a note from Christine that seems to have been flung out of a carriage window in the hopes that someone would give it to him. It asks him to come to the masked ball wearing a white domino and wait in a certain place. Raoul isn't sure if Christine is in danger and needs help, or if she's still messing with him, but he puts on the domino and he goes to the appointed place that night at the ball. A figure in a black domino finds him and tells him to follow. It's Christine, and he follows her through the crowds of people. As he's following her, he sees someone dressed as a skeleton in a red cloak and hat with a sign that says that he is the Red Death and no one should touch him. When they pass him, Raoul recognizes the same death. head that he saw at Peros. Christine takes Raoul to an empty box in the theater and tells him to keep out of sight. As they're going in, he sees the Red Death passing and he wants to confront him, but Christine won't let him. He says that he's ready to unmask this person who is both Red Death and the Angel of Music. Christine asks him to stop in the name of their love, which stops Raoul because she's never said before that she loves him. But then he decides he doesn't believe her and that she's just trying to buy the Red Death some time to get away. He berates Christine who says, that he'll one day ask her pardon for his unkindness to her, but for now, she says that she will never sing again, and that he will never see her again. She takes off her mask to show him that she is deathly pale and clearly in some kind of trouble. He apologizes to her, but she leaves him. He follows her to her dressing room, where he hides, and he sees Christine writing something down, and she says, poor Eric. Eventually, Raul hears a beautiful voice singing through the walls. Christine greets the voice as Eric, but Raul can see that there's no one there. The voice is singing about two people being joined together in marriage. Christine runs to the mirror and as Raul is watching, she disappears. Raul has no idea where she's gone or who the man is who sang so beautifully. Okay, I'm going to read three comments today and all of them come from our online community, The Drawing Room. They're having... an amazing conversation over there. It's so much fun to check in. So another reason to join the drawing room if you don't want to come to tea time, but you do want to talk to people about this book. It's going on over there. So great conversation. So I just picked three comments from that conversation. The first one is from someone who goes by the handle at Mary MM. She says, I would say at this point, Raul is not exactly covering himself in glory. Come on, Raul, step up. Be a man, not a petulant, jealous schoolboy. She needs you. That line about to think I almost gave my name to an opera wench made him a lot less sympathetic in my mind. And this next one comes from someone who goes by the handle at Aker. He says, I'm kind of wondering who the protagonist is, Raoul or Christine? Raul seems to be the one uncovering the mystery, and he's being framed as the hero saving Christine from the ghost. Christine seems to be the primary motivator of the ghost and holds the keys to some of the mysteries, yet we haven't really had her point of view. And the last one comes from at Phil V. He says, what's up with the colors in chapters 8 and 9? There's a black carriage on a white road, and then the black and white domino costumes, followed by the red death. Okay, so yes, what I love about these chapters and about your comments about these chapters, by the way, but what I love about them is that suddenly we're dealing with themes. So last time, last episode, I said that we hadn't really talked much about themes yet, but then in chapter seven, with the whole thing about Faust, we got a sense that maybe there is a theme here about angels and devils, right? Who is the angel and who is the devil? And is it the people that we originally thought? Or might angels turn out to be devils and devils turn out to be angels? And... I said that we should keep that theme in mind and see if we can track it as we go along. And now, suddenly, we're being like steeped in metaphors and thematic ideas because I think Phil is absolutely right. There is stuff going on here with colors, with black, white, and red. And the idea of angels and devils is huge in these two chapters as well. And it sometimes is related to the colors. And there's also a lot going on about... about spirit and flesh, essentially, about whether people are flesh and blood people or incorporeal entities like angels or devils. So we're suddenly being sort of inundated with ideas when before we were just kind of trying to keep track of the plot. But of course, there's a lot of plot going on in chapters eight and nine as well. So let's dig into some of these. thematic ideas a bit, because that's always fun to do. And because I think it'll help us to get at Mary's comment about Raoul, which I think is really astute and really interesting. So we'll talk about that. And I think it'll help us to think a bit about Ocker's question of who the main character is, because I think that's also a really interesting question and a totally valid one to bring up at this point in the story. So the big question of chapter eight, I think, is... Is the opera ghost and or the angel of music, are they supernatural entities or is it a man? Are these people, are these creatures actually men? Essentially, are there actually such things as ghosts and angels or... is the world that we're living in a completely material one? So the chapter begins with the managers, right? Richard and Montcharmain, and they're kind of rethinking their assessment of this question because all along, the managers have been firmly in the materialist camp. They have not believed in the opera ghost. They have felt that they were the victim of some sort of practical joke. But now, now that they have heard the ghost talking in their box and they saw the chandelier fall down on its own, now they are starting. to question their initial assessment of the situation. They have reinstated Madame Giry, because that's what the ghost wanted, and they seem to be kind of like completely changed men. They're no longer yelling at everyone who believes in the ghost that they're crazy. They themselves now seem a little crazy. It says, their own friends did not recognize them. They had lost all their gaiety and spirits. They were seen crossing the stage with hanging heads, careworn brows, pale cheeks, as though pursued by some abominable thought or a prey to some persistent sport. of fate. So do Richard and Montcharmant believe in ghosts now? It seems like maybe they do. But Raoul, on the other hand, he is becoming more and more convinced that Christine's angel of music is not an angel, but is in fact some kind of ill-intentioned man who's trying to seduce Christine by lying to her and telling her that he's the angel of music. The idea being that Christine is a good girl, she wouldn't have an affair out of wedlock, so a man who wanted to get her into bed with him would have to trick her into it somehow. And Raoul thinks that whoever this guy is, is doing that by pretending to be an angel. But of course, that would make him much more of a devil, right? Much more of a kind of Faust character, seducing a young innocent girl with the aid of a supernatural being. Although, of course, in this case... If Raoul's right, there isn't actually a supernatural being. This man, whoever he is, is just pretending to be one. He's pretending to be an angel. Here's what we're told. He, he being Raoul, he remembered the strong phrases in