Female Sexuality in Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s Christabel
Written between the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s Christabel is a provocative and elusive example of dark Romantic poetry. Christian La Cassagnère describes the poem’s ‘familiar though strangely distorted ballad design’ – a design which plays a significant role in creating a setting that is both Romantic and nostalgic, evoking the romanticised Medieval era. The poem's evocative language and Gothic sensibilities invoke the Romantic tradition, and Coleridge's unsettling exploration of female sexuality and the sinister forces that threaten the characters provides a window into not only Coleridge’s imagination but also into the complex cultural attitudes towards female sexuality during this period. Many scholars have noted the significance of female sexuality in Romantic poetry, which is unsurprising for a literary movement based on emotional self-expression and a reconsideration of modern society. Coleridge presents the titular character as a vulnerable and innocent girl, beguiled and ensnared by the seductive Geraldine. This interpretation of female sexuality through the lens of predation and victimisation reflects the anxieties and power dynamics of the era. However, the poem is not merely a condemnation of female sexuality or a warning against female promiscuity— rather, it is a complex exploration of the relationship between female sexuality and the patriarchal system. The narrative questions ‘Christabel's complicity in her own corruption’ while also presenting a compelling and sympathetic female villain. Through an examination of both the text itself and critical interpretations, the following essay will explore the ways in which Geraldine’s sexuality undermines the patriarchal system and how the story of Christabel exposes the inherent instability of the patriarchal system in the face of a sexually liberated woman.
Geraldine’s first appearance in the narrative is unsettling, and an undertone of supernatural influence heightens the terror of the dark forest. Christabel is terrified by the sounds coming from behind the tree, but upon seeing Geraldine, Christabel is struck by her appearance, remarking that the girl is ‘beautiful exceedingly’. Thus, her fear turns to intrigue and concern. This initial, almost hypnotic attraction quickly asserts Geraldine’s power to captivate and disarm. However, the supernatural elements that accompany Geraldine's entrance into Christabel’s home—her inability to pass through the iron gate, the sudden lighting of burnt-out torches as she walks by, and the dog’s distressed whining—remind the audience not to fall under Geraldine’s spell. As she stealthily infiltrates the Baron’s household, moving, as instructed by Christabel, ‘from stair to stair,/ Now in glimmer, and now in gloom,/ As still as death, with stifled breath!’, Geraldine’s journey to Christabel’s room paints the image of a clandestine meeting between lovers, and Christabel finds herself intoxicated by the thrill of the forbidden—namely, sleeping with a beautiful stranger. Despite this, Christabel’s entreatment for Geraldine ‘this night, to share your couch with me’ is steeped in innocence. Her extension of medieval hospitality is not inherently sexual; it is the intimate scene within Christabel’s bedroom that truly illuminates the underlying tension between the two women. The language is erotic without being overt– Christabel’s ‘gentle limbs did she undress,/ And lay down in her loveliness,’ then, ‘half-way from the bed she rose,/And on her elbow did recline/ To look at the lady Geraldine’. The imagery is charged with sexual tension as Geraldine undresses, making the reveal of her ‘mark’ all the more terrifying for Christabel. Geraldine addresses her mark as a shameful secret that, having viewed it, Christabel must now share. Through no fault of her own, Christabel has become a bearer of Geraldine’s secrets, and the connection between the two grows more intimate and enrapturing. Geraldine’s arms become ‘the lovely lady’s prison’, and Christabel is irreversibly influenced by Geraldine.
As the narrative progresses, Geraldine’s true nature becomes increasingly apparent, and Christabel is eventually tortured by a vision of the seemingly innocent maiden’s true form: ‘A snake's small eye blinks dull and shy;/ And the lady's eyes they shrunk in her head,/ Each shrunk up to a serpent's eye’. Despite Christabel’s realisation of Geraldine’s inherent evil, the spell cast by Geraldine renders her powerless to communicate her fears: ‘She had no power to tell/ Aught else: so mighty was the spell’. This inability to speak out against the danger leaves Christabel powerless as Geraldine utilises her manipulative influence on the Baron. Geraldine’s immediate and complete influence over the Baron, who is blinded by nostalgia and emotion, demonstrates the terrifying ease with which she is able to manipulate patriarchal figures.
Geraldine’s manipulation does not go entirely unchallenged. The Bard’s dream of the serpent and the dove serves as a warning that goes unheeded. According to Jonas Spatz, ‘the serpent represents the primal sexual sin, death's origin, and thus embodies the phallic potency that frightens the young girl and compels her to cling to her father’. While the bard does not seem to suspect that his dream indicates Geraldine’s true nature, he does argue for its significance in the situation. However, the Baron ignores his requests to delay the journey to Geraldine’s home. Christabel’s pleas– ‘By my mother's soul do I entreat/ That thou this woman send away!’ – are similarly discarded. Despite the protests, the Baron remains under Geraldine’s spell, unable to perceive a young, beautiful woman as a threat, and he is indignant in his dismissal of those who question his judgment.
Geraldine is a manifestation of ‘unnameable evil and repulsive yet irresistible desire’, as described by Jonas Spatz in his analysis of sexuality in Christabel. According to Spatz, Christabel acts both as an exploration of human sexuality and a representation of Coleridge’s own repulsion to sexual desire. Contemporary letters indicate that Coleridge disliked ‘the beast that man becomes when erotically aroused’, and this aversion to human sexuality likely influenced his portrayal of the sexual relationship between Christabel and Geraldine. Coleridge does not reveal precisely what shameful acts occur in the bedroom, whether it is due to this aversion or to increase the poem's mystery. The consummation of Christabel and Geraldine’s relationship in Christabel’s bed is an event that, while relatively agreed upon, is not explicitly described. Coleridge’s poem is vague throughout, so it is never stated outright whether the embrace shared by the women was sexual or platonic. Spatz also supposes that the ‘shame’ shared by the two women in the conclusion of part one is the shared shame of their bodies and sexuality. While, again, this is never made clear in the text, this interpretation does further bolster how Geraldine sexually taints Christabel.
This ambiguity leaves just enough room for speculation, but the implication of lesbian sex is undoubtedly present in the narrative. Christabel carrying Geraldine across the threshold is inherently sensual imagery, invoking the image of a lustful newlywed couple. It is unlikely Coleridge was attempting to make a statement on the concept of lesbianism through his portrayal of the same-sex relationship in Christabel– rather, the relationship between the two women in Christabel acts as an effective way to emphasise the theme of sexuality without being overly explicit or scandalous. After all, Christabel could not have shared a bed with a strange man in the way she did with Geraldine; thus, the use of a female sexual interest allows for ambiguity and interpretation in a way that a male interest could not. In order for the story to exist as it does, Geraldine’s role must be performed by a woman. Additionally, women were and still are viewed as much less dangerous than men and are, therefore, more easily trusted, infantilised, and underestimated. In order for Geraldine to avoid arousing an excess of suspicion, she must utilise her femininity to maintain a pure and well-meaning demeanour.
The depiction of same-sex relations in Romantic literature was an extremely effective method, and in these cases, lesbianism became the marker of an immoral, promiscuous, and dangerous woman. Christabel’s own hesitations and fears about Geraldine represent her internal struggles with her sexuality, and Jonas Spatz describes how, in Christabel’s mind, ‘Pleasure and disgust struggle for control, but her psyche cannot resolve the battle’. However, Geraldine's intoxicating and seductive influence is more potent than Christabel’s internal struggle. Her powers of seduction and manipulation are seemingly supernatural, and several critics have drawn comparisons between Christabel’s Geraldine and other more explicitly evil and magical female figures in literature, such as Le Fenu’s Carmilla. Both Carmilla and Geraldine experience romantic and sexual tension with their female victims; both are incapable of prayer, and both are received by their victims in some form of distress. Coleridge's representation of female sexuality simultaneously dehumanises and empowers the female characters, attributing their authority and control to some sort of otherworldly influence or magic. James Craig Holte notes the impact of this portrayal of female villains in his analysis of female vampires, describing how ‘sexuality begets jealousy and violence and male authority [...] is questioned by strong, intelligent, sexually active females. Thus, monsters are created out of perceived threats to patriarchal order’. According to Holte, the true terror of these female vampire narratives lies not in the supernatural threats but rather in the anxieties surrounding female sexuality and the perceived threat to male dominance.
This idea of female sexuality as monstrous or corrupting is further explored by Ray Balser, who notes that ‘it is no accident that the modern meanings of enchanting, charming, bewitching, et cetera have usually an association (in describing women at least) with sexual attractiveness’. It is not uncommon for female agency, beauty, and sexuality to be associated with dark magic and witchcraft, and Balser makes clear that Geraldine’s beauty foreshadows her evil intentions. Further expanding on this point, Arthur Nethercot points out Carmilla and Geraldine’s shared desire to quickly become physically intimate with their victims– a detail that should be immediately suspicious to an audience accustomed to the meek and mild female protagonist. Nethercot recognises, however, that both vampiress villains are at the mercy of their existence as magical creatures, and he notes of Carmilla and Geraldine, ‘they both attract and repel. They are not fully responsible for their actions’. Both women are simultaneously sympathetic characters– hesitant and unwilling victims of their fates– and evil characters who intentionally and knowingly manipulate those around them. Geraldine, in particular, seems to begrudge what she must do– she describes the mark on her body as physical proof of her ‘shame’ and seems to indicate that her monstrousness is a part of her that, although she dislikes, she cannot deny. By implicating Christabel in her shame, Geraldine succeeds in gaining control over Christabel, driving her to inner torment and fear. As explained by Spatz, the ‘witchcraft’ that makes Geraldine ‘beautiful or ugly, inviting or menacing, depends on Christabel's changing attitude toward herself’. Christabel’s perception of Geraldine is influenced by her inner feelings, which Geraldine is directly manipulating to force Christabel to switch between terror and longing. In other words, Geraldine represents parts of Christabel’s subconscious that she is both scared and excited to access, and ‘Geraldine is the woman she at once yearns and fears to become’.
Coleridge’s Christabel is an enigmatic work of Romantic poetry with no one definitive interpretation. That being said, there are undeniable themes of seduction and female sexuality. The idea of the pure, innocent woman being tainted by sexuality is not unique to Christabel or to the female vampire troupe in general. Still, it is especially poignant in this genre. Geraldine enters Christabel’s home and, in a matter of hours, expertly manipulates both Christabel and her father to fulfil her wishes. The undermining of a patriarchal system and the ensuing endangerment of the women who are supposedly protected by this system are clear themes of the poem. A woman who not only embraces her sexuality but also utilises it to manipulate men and women alike is detrimental to the structure of the patriarchy. Geraldine’s beauty dazzles Christabel and her father, but the effect drastically differs for each character. To the Baron, Geraldine represents a connection to innocence and childhood, packaged in a beautiful woman who, as Spatz puts it, can ‘compete for [Christabel’s] father's love in the only way the conscious Christabel cannot: sexually’. This fear is realised when her father turns his back on her to walk arm-in-arm with Geraldine.
To Christabel, Geraldine acts as a physical manifestation of sexual desire—a tainting force that her distracted father will not be able to protect her from. The Baron does not see a beautiful young girl as a threat to himself or his daughter, and Christabel’s insistence that Geraldine leave only makes the Baron more aggressive. By not allowing his judgment to be questioned by his daughter—or the Bard, for that matter—the Baron is unknowingly bending to Geraldine’s will, allowing her to effectively take over the role of Patriarch. The Baron is being controlled by his passionate emotions, and the poem describes how ‘such giddiness of heart and brain/ Comes seldom save from rage and pain,’ or more clearly, how the Baron ‘sust needs express his love's excess/ With words of unmeant bitterness’. He is attempting to do his duty as patriarch to care for these young women, and in being questioned, he gives in to his emotions, which Geraldine has warped and manipulated. A system designed under the assumption that women are incapable of caring for themselves and need to be protected and controlled by men cannot effectively stand against a woman who weaponises her womanhood. The patriarchy has no defence against a woman like Geraldine because, for the patriarchy to thrive, women like Geraldine cannot exist. By harnessing the destructive power of female sexual empowerment, Geraldine is immediately able to subdue her victims, overtake the household, and lead them to an unnamed but inevitable doom.
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