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Never Trust a Beautiful Damsel in the Woods: Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s “Christabel”
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Never Trust a Beautiful Damsel in the Woods: Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s “Christabel”
A beautiful stranger who can act terrified one moment and exert dark charisma the next…
By Ruthanna Emrys, Anne M. Pillsworth
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Published on April 16, 2025
Art by H. J. Ford and Lancelot Speed for The Blue Fairy Book, 1891
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Art by H. J. Ford and Lancelot Speed for The Blue Fairy Book, 1891
Welcome back to Reading the Weird, in which we get girl cooties all over weird fiction, cosmic horror, and Lovecraftiana—from its historical roots through its most recent branches. This week, we celebrate National Poetry Month with Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s “Christabel” (parts I and II), first published as a pamphlet in 1816, alongside Kubla Khan and The Pains of Sleep. Spoilers ahead!
The wealthy Baron, Sir Leoline, owns a toothless mastiff bitch who from her kennel answers the castle clock. Some say when her howls are soft and low, she sees the late Baroness’s shroud. This April midnight, owls wake the cock, who drowsily crows. The late hour notwithstanding, Lady Christabel, pride of her father, walks in the castle-encompassing woods. Yesternight she dreamt of her betrothed knight; now she kneels beneath a huge old oak to pray for his welfare.
A moan interrupts her devotions. Behind the oak lies a damsel in a white silk robe. Her feet are bare, but gems glitter in her hair. It’s frightful to see a lady of her beauty lying unprotected in the night woods! In a faint, sweet voice, she tells Christabel she is Geraldine, a nobleman’s daughter. Yestermorn, warriors abducted Geraldine and brought her here. They’ve gone on some errand unnamed, soon to return. She remembers nothing more until the sound of castle bells woke her.
Christabel comforts the stranger. Her father, Sir Leoline, will see she’s brought home safe. For tonight, she’ll share her chamber with Geraldine. The servants are abed now; besides, Sir Leoline is unwell and shouldn’t be disturbed. The two reach the castle unmolested. Just before the iron-clad gates, Geraldine sinks to the ground as if overcome by pain, but after Christabel lifts her inside, she recovers. Christabel invites Geraldine to join her in prayer to the divine Virgin, but Geraldine says she’s too weary. As they cross the castle courtyard, the mastiff bitch moans angrily in her sleep. As Geraldine passes, the embers of a dying fire send up a tongue of flame.
When they’re safe in Christabel’s room, she offers Geraldine a cordial her mother made. Her mother, she confides, died at Christabel’s birth. Geraldine seconds her wish the Baroness was here now. Then, as if she can see the “bodiless dead,” she warns some “woman” that though she may be Christabel’s “guardian spirit,” she must be off, for this hour is given to Geraldine.
Christabel believes her new friend is “wildered” by her ordeal and assures her the danger’s over. Geraldine tells Christabel that heaven’s denizens love her and that even she, Geraldine, will try to “requite” her well. She bids Christabel go to bed while Geraldine prays. Christabel obeys, but can’t sleep. While watching Geraldine undress, she sees “a sight to dream of, not to tell,” for Geraldine’s bosom and half her side are, well, unspeakable. Geraldine seems torn with indecision, but “collect[ing] herself in scorn and pride,” lies down and embraces Christabel. The touch of her bosom, she claims, will render Christabel unable to tell what’s happened that night, except that she found in the woods a “bright lady, surpassingly fair,” whom she has brought home to shelter.
Later Christabel lies in her seducer’s arms, no longer the innocent who ventured out to pray for her betrothed. Geraldine, “the worker of these harms,” has had her hour and her will, during which all the nightbirds were still, but as they sing again, Christabel both weeps and smiles. She knows “that saints will aid if men will call: For the blue sky bends over all!”
Since his lady died, Sir Leoline says that each matin bell “knells us back to a world of death.” It’s now custom and law that at dawn the sacristan will pause between strokes, as if adding funeral knells to morning song. The bell’s toll sounds throughout Leoline’s domain, but “the devil mocks the doleful tale/With a merry peal from Borodale,” hearing which Geraldine shakes off dread and rises to array herself. Christabel wakes perplexed to find the lady she rescued more beautiful than ever and radiating “gentle thankfulness.” Surely she, Christabel, has sinned, but praise heaven if all’s well!
Leoline welcomes Geraldine, but pales to learn her father is Roland de Vaux of Tryermaine. Leoline and Roland were youthful friends whom words of “high disdain” sundered. For decades they’ve been apart, but neither ever found another friend so dear. Seeing Roland in his daughter, Leoline swears to punish her kidnappers and embraces her. Watching, Christabel sees again the monstrous bosom Geraldine revealed the night before. Her hissing gasp draws Leoline’s attention. Geraldine, a picture of sorrow and grace combined, says that if she’s offended Christabel, let her be sent home at once.
Leoline objects – instead he’ll send his bard, Bracy, to tell Roland that Leoline will ride forth in “numerous array” to bring Roland’s daughter home. Meanwhile Roland may ride out to meet them. And Bracy must tell, too, how much Leoline repents losing Roland’s friendship.
Bracy is moved, but begs this boon: Let his journey be delayed. Last night he dreamt he saw Christabel as a dove alone in the forest, moaning in distress, coiled around by a green snake. Bracy fears something unholy lurks, and he’s vowed to go out and cleanse the forest with “music strong and saintly song.”
Leoline, gazing in wonder and love at Geraldine, has only half listened to his bard. He tells Geraldine that he and Roland together have arms more strong than harp or song – they’ll crush that snake together. Geraldine accepts his kiss with maidenly blushes, but looks askance at Christabel, her eyes shrinking to snake’s eyes. In her dizzy trance, Christabel’s eyes mirror the look of “dull and treacherous hate” in Geraldine’s. She kneels and begs Leoline to send Geraldine away. Leoline’s incensed by the dishonor on the hospitality of his house, all for jealousy of his friend’s daughter. He orders Bracy to leave for Tryermaine at once.
Bracy obeys. Leoline turns from “his own sweet maid” to lead the lady Geraldine from the hall! What strange perversity, how a doting father could “express his love’s excess with words of unmeant bitterness.”
What’s Cyclopean: The power of the language varies wildly here. I admit myself unmoved by “Is the night chilly and dark?” But then the Dungeon-ghyll (I think that last is a variant spelling of “jail”) is memorably and foully rent with “ropes of rock and bells of air,” so vividly contrasted with the peals of a church tower.
Another good line: Leoline promising to rend Geraldine’s attackers “reptile souls” from their bodies.
Weirdbuilding: Are the whippoorwills in Dunwich the same birds that call “tu-woo, tu-woo” over Christabel’s moonlit woods?
Note: Anne’s not available to comment this week. She may or may not be lying dovelike in the woods, coiled by a wicked serpent.
Ruthanna’s Commentary
I’m apparently not the only person to read Christabel and think, oh, this sure does remind me of Carmilla. There’s a whole paragraph on it in the Wikipedia Influence section. The influence goes the other way, obviously. No time-traveling evil innocent-looking ladies here, nope!
But there are certainly parallels. Beauty and apparent goodness to attract the innocent youth, so that she begs her father to give aid. A beautiful stranger who can act terrified one moment and exert dark charisma the next. Power to control, and attract, and perhaps drain, the beloved daughter. Scary and sexy and much more interested in the daughter than the father. And a distinct distaste for Christian protective symbols.
We know Carmilla’s nature. It’s not clear what Geraldine is, precisely, because we only have two parts out of Coleridge’s planned five. We know there’s some sort of horror visible on her unclothed bosom and “half her side.” That’s not just a distressing tattoo; this is someone who only looks like a normal human with the disguise of a 18th century noblewoman’s garb. Plus it’s the touch of her bosom that works a spell to bind Christabel’s tongue – suggesting not merely gore but inherent magic. My first thought for the “sight to dream of, not to tell” was a body half-corpse. But she could as easily be half-cow, or hollow shell, a la the hulder, or scaled like a dragon.
Geraldine’s sob story intrigues me, though, perhaps because Carmilla never did anything with that aspect of her deception. Because while it’s Christabel with whom she lies down, it’s Leoline whose old regrets she so dramatically invokes. Her ostensible father is the beloved friend of Leoline’s youth. They quarreled horribly and haven’t spoken in years. And Leoline, now old and “weak in health,” is particularly vulnerable to the opportunity to heal that rift – so that, when Christabel resists the spell enough to voice her own more immediate regrets, he is sure to dismiss them. How dare his daughter undermine his hospitality? How dare she suggest spurning the daughter as he once did the father? So if one manages to resist, the other will offer Geraldine all the protection she desires.
Leoline will even ignore his bard’s visions—never a good idea. So Bracy can’t save them either.
And then…? Coleridge got writer’s block, so it’s left to the rest of us to fill in the blanks. This isn’t Coleridge’s only incomplete poem, and he can’t even blame the visitor from Porlock this time. To me, though, this is what most surely gives the poem its place in the weird ancestral canon. The fickleness of the muse echoes the attraction-repulsion of an author approaching and pulling away from the terror at the heart of a story. What, after all, can be more unnamable than the thing that you truly fail to name? If the tale were finished, we might rest easy with the knowledge that saints and dead mothers really do protect the worthy. As it is we are left, 225 years later, still wondering what lies beneath Geraldine’s white dress. That void makes for a fascination that’s unlikely to subside.
Next week, we’re taking off to go play harp in the woods, for reasons. Then join us for the only-slightly-delayed start to Hildur Knutsdottir’s The Night Guest.[end-mark]
The post Never Trust a Beautiful Damsel in the Woods: Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s “Christabel” appeared first on Reactor.
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