{Susan Kay-verse} Erik, The Phantom (of the Opera) (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
not_mephistopheles) wrote2018-05-22 07:12 pm
not_mephistopheles) wrote2018-05-22 07:12 pmEntry tags:
not_mephistopheles) wrote2018-05-22 07:12 pm
(M) Chapter 1
Erik was delivered by a very bitchy midwife and everyone was quite horrified. Initially, Erik's mother Madeleine wanted to let the baby starve, but the priest warned her that it would be committing a sin. Priest actually seemed half decent, pretty ready to accept that god made Erik with love, despite his deformity.
Madeleine had no idea what to name her kid; told priest dude to name him after himself. Poof, Erik.
Once mother and child were alone Erik-- well, he didn't exactly cry. I think the raw unrefined power of his magical voice just did... funny things, to Madeline. The spell had a powerful effect on her body, but the spell was broken as soon as Erik started to suckle.
Then she. Threw him on the floor. And curled up in the corner. And went a little cray.
Trauma, probably. Being a baby probably means he can't grasp much, but he is noted as being oddly sentient and sad. So Imma say a general distrust in the world, since his first impression of it was... really brutal. All these judging, horrified faces, jeez.... =( Poor little guy... there are so many things worse than physical ugliness, which I think is one of the driving points of this book.
So Madeline refers to events "this last summer", and later states something about waiting three months for Erik's birth.
Is she's referring to a summer that has passed some time in the past three months, I think that could roughly place his birthday anywhere from September to November.
I feel like it's maybe around September/October. I kind of want it to be October but that's also rather corny. The shadows swirling around Madeline's consciousness as she was giving birth gave me a vaguely Samhain feel.
Hmmmm... maybe I should look up zodiac signs for those months?
Seriously though, that midwife was unnecessarily bitchy! At least she trampled off without worrying about pay? Silver lining, Madeleine!
(M) Chapter 2
We learn some background information about Madeleine and her upbringing. She was lovingly spoiled by her eccentric architect father, whose love of music led him to indulge her talents as a singer and violinist. Her father was pulling strings to prepare her for a career on the stage, but Madeleine met Charles, her future husband, and decided to hell with all that jazz, Imma marry me this sexy manbeast!
... or something.
And the guy is almost twice her age, too. Sssssooooo hawt. Leave me alone while I have my perv moment. Anyway, Charles works with Madeleine's father already; he's a master perfectionist stone mason. Everyone is down with Madeline marrying Charles up and they fly off for a honeymoon, in which they do little else other than bone like bunnies.
22's and Madeleine's parents are dead, because her dad was too nice to kick out a sick dude and he infected them all till they dead. Yup. Charles is sad and yets super protective of Madeleine and his bebe. Madeleine gets the inheritance, and doesn't want Charles to get crap for marrying above his station. That, and she didn't want to live in a place full of painful memories.
An invite from her friend Marie meant Madeleine and Charles went to the tiny village of Boscherville, where Madeleine fell in love with a gorgeous inconvenient house on the edge of town. At her insistence, they move there immediately.
It's May when the house is furnished and ready, and May 3rd when Charles dies at some building accident. Considering this scene/memory leads directly back to the moments after Madeleine gives birth, I would say maybe this is the point where the 'three month wait' began.
If so, it would place Erik's birthday in August...?
Anyway, cue some random bullshit and Madeleine half-jokingly refers to unborn Erik as 'a little beast', and Marie seems to think this is a bad idea. Marie is smart, be like Marie. Also, unborn Erik seemed especially unsettled the night his father died...
Returning to the present, Madeleine wakes to more quiet cries from her baby and, not wanting to go completely batshit, covered his face to tend to him. She wouldn't breast feed him again, and gave him some milk she had in the kitchen, because GREAT parenting Karen. Madeleine, I mean Madeleine.
OMG WHERE DO I EVEN BEGIN. To me, it feels like we're seeing the very basic aspects of Erik's personality here, before they are alchemized into one person. Madeleine's father is a master architect and a music lover, Charles is a master stonemason, and Madeleine herself can be seen to represent Erik's swift anger, impatience, as well as his taste for luxurious items... Madeleine and Charles are both painted as perfectionists, and it noted that Madeleine did have some musical talent of note.
I think a little bit of all three of these people went into the creation of Erik's persona-- or at least, the part of it one could reasonably claim as genetic.
And it's really sad because Madeleine loses her parents and Charles as well, when she's basically got the essence of her father and charles returned to her in the form of her son. Erik obviously has strongly inherited traits from both his father and grand father, and it sucks that Madeleine can't even see how Erik is the closest she can come to being with these people again. She's so blinded by his ugliness, that she doesn't even want to imagine that he could be anything worthy of love...
SAD. But yeah. In my view, we kind of see the building blocks of Erik's personality here.
Possible August Birthday?After chatting with a knowledgeable Phan, we decided August 22 makes the most sense for his birthday, based on what is said in the book, and how Erik's personality fits with zodiac signs around that time of year.
Also, it's cool to understand his family, and how much they affected him without ever meeting him.
And a mask was the first piece of clothing he ever wore...
I'M NOT CRYING YOUR CRYING
(M) Chapter 3
People treating Madeleine like a leaper
maybe that's karma I mean wut, a decision made to keep Erik inside for his own safety. His bedroom was the attic, where he was often left alone, and yet he remained quiet unless he was hungry. Madeleine commits horrible child neglect but Erik was already special, playing tunes upon the bells strung over his cradle.(Some theories state that before brain pruning, many infants could experience something like synesthesia, so... could you imagine what the inside of his head could look like right now? It' kind of daunting ._.)
Madeleine feels like a horrible mother but it's okay because she is. She's frightened of the mind developing behind the little white mask, realizing that this kid is going to be on a whole other level, and she is absolutely correct. When Erik is roughly six months old he meets Sacha, his mother's dog, who is pretty chill about the whole thing.
(Actually, I'm not even sure he spent much time at all out of that cradle, until Sacha gave him a reason to bother.)
First word spoken at six months old: Sacha.
Also, the first time he ever laughed was when Sacha accidentally knocked him over and sniffed/pawed at him. So in terms of Inside Out, that was his very first happy memory. Animal Person Island created and forever set in place.
Nine months old, Erik was walking and mimicking words. He happily slept in the dog's basket with her, which makes sense, considering Sacha was his only source of affection. Maybe it was from her Erik learned a kind of universal animal 'language' or 'sense'-- some kind of awareness that allows him to communicate with/understand the animals he interacts with later in life.
Madeleine then decides for whatever effing reason that she wants to be the one to teach Erik. Partly, I feel like this might be her way of trying to get herself closer to him in a way she feels like she can control, but on the other hand, I feel like she goes about this all wrong.
(Age 4; Erik reads/recites the bible with perfect clarity and plays 8th year level violin/piano pieces.)
Already a skilled climber, there wasn't much out of Erik's reach. He would dismantle clocks and then rage when he couldn't figure out how to put them back together and someone really should have been like it's cool dude you're only 4. You got time to learn. BUT HM HIS TEMPER IS SO BAD WHERE COULD THAT HAVE COME FROM MADELEINE I WONDER...???????
This is also the age at which Erik discovers his grandfather's architecture stuffs and is instinctively like NEAT. After that he was drawing endlessly-- on the walls and in other books, if he had no paper. This leads me to believe some kind of information overload might be happening, creating a powerful need to express everything at once-- BUT MAYBE I'M JUST WEIRD.
He started to steal/hide things, she goes from a child neglect charge to a child abuse charge, and we all wonder why Erik gets violent when he gets mad.
bitchErik seemed to have no instinctive sense of right from wrong, severely inclined to coldly logical thinking. He drew endlessly but struggled with writing-- a skill I believe he could develop more easily after learning to write music. Also, when Erik starts writing letters as the opera ghost, I'm not sure his perfectionist nature would allow him to produce subpar calligraphy.
Already Erik's obsession is music; he created lyrical sound from almost everything he touched. Even when he tried to stop (when Madeleine smacked him) a lapse in attention would having humming/tapping/making music again. When he was nearly five, he could accompany his mother's singing on the violin, as well as patiently correct her vocal errors-- and masterfully demonstrate the correct technique.
Madeleine sees that his genius is growing, and anticipates some shit will soon go down by the whims of his deviance.
Gurl aint wrong.
I think keeping Erik trapped and alone for so long greatly influenced his lifelong habit of getting swept away by his own thoughts/emotions/creativity-- because for the very beginning of his life, all he had was his own mind. I imagine that level of escapism would imprint quite strongly on a young mind, and it doesn't surprise me that he becomes a person so easily lost in/swallowed by his rapid shifting thoughts.
Also in this chapter Erik learns that the closest he can be to his mother is when they share music, which I believe totally influences how he seeks affection/attention in the rest of his life.
Obviously this is also where his love of animals comes from-- as Sacha made him feel safer than any human ever had. I think it's really significant that she caused him to laugh for the first time in his life-- like he didn't even know joy before her.
We also see the manifestation of his passions here-- music and architecture. You could say they might have been inspired by what he knows of his family-- his musical mother, and is architect grandfather-- as well as influenced by whatever talents he may have inherited genetically. Nature and nurture, in short.
He developed very quickly, especially considering the huge amount of abuse he suffered in early life. He was gifted from the moment he was born, and it was becoming apparent even before he could walk or talk. I feel like we get a good explanation as to wear some parts of his personality come from-- his temper, his love for animal, his affinity to solitude and his obsession with music and beauty.
We learned that he was inclined to learn and explore endlessly when he could move under his own power, and I have to wonder if that was driven by being trapped in that one attic bedroom for so long initially. We see that he wasn't taught to deal with his own anger-- he was only punished for it, and never had a solid model of a person who could handle thier anger at all (in this point in life).
Basically, we can see the foundation of personality, and how these traits are being built and enforced with each case of abuse or mixed kindness.
Through Sacha, we also see that Erik is capable of great joy and affection, but we don't see it focused on any of the other humans in his life. I think this implies a very instinctive trust for animals-- a safety he doesn't feel when interacting with humans, who have only ever caused him pain. It's sad that no one noticed how affectionate and sweet he was capable of being, and tried to bring that part of him out.
BECAUSE I CAN