What
is your impression of Geraldine in ‘Christabel’? Answer with textual references.
In
Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s Christabel,
we meet Geraldine, a woman shrouded in mystery.
She comes to young Christabel near the beginning of the poem, and for
the remainder of the story, Coleridge makes it rather difficult to discern
whether she is a benevolent spirit or a malevolent specter. She never makes her intent clear at anytime
during the story and an explanation of why she does the odd incantations in the
poem is never offered by her or the narrator. So this leaves the decision to
the reader as to what would be Geraldine’s ultimate purpose in Christabel.
When she appears to Christabel, Coleridge’s
description of Geraldine paints an innocent picture:
“There she sees a damsel bright,
Drest in a silken robe of white,
That shadowy in the moonlight shone;
The neck that made the white robe
wan,
Her stately neck, and arms were bare;
Her blue-veined feet unsandal’d were,
And wildly glittered here and there
The gems entangled in her
hair”(58-65).
Geraldine
is obviously a beautiful woman, almost angelic in appearance, with her white
robe and pale complexion. White has
always been the color associated with innocence, and it is also linked to
virginity in women. The pale skin and
bare feet help lend to the innocent look, as most beautiful women in any poem
are attributed with pale skin; the bare feet could be an obscure reference to
pregnancy, since it is often believed that women who are pregnant are usually
seen barefoot. All of these attributes
lead the reader at this point to find it hard to believe that Geraldine is
anything other than harmless. Coleridge
keeps this theme throughout the poem, making Geraldine seem frail and helpless,
like when she faints as she crosses the threshold of Christabel’s castle: “And
Christabel with might and main/Lifted her up, a weary weight,/Over the
threshold of the gate:”(130-132). A
woman fainting can be interpreted as a weakness due to their weak constitution
and frailty. Though this particular
fainting spell could signal to the reader that something is amiss, it can also
be seen as a result of the trial that Geraldine has supposedly been through at
the beginning of the poem.
