We start off the novel with Madeleine, Erik's mother.
Every time I read the original novel, I always had to suspend reality a bit when Erik spoke of a mother that never kissed him. For some reason, this was always hard for me. I couldn't think how to imagine the person that Erik described, that could think that way about her own child... all because he was ugly. Kay finds a way to do it and make it completely believable.
The first section of the story is told from Madeleine's point of view. We find out very quickly that she was a spoiled child, the daughter of a wealthy gentleman that didn't let his daughter feel any sort of worldly hardships. She marries Charles at a young age, gets pregnant, they buy a house in the country and start there life together. All seems well in this woman's life... until she's 7 months pregnant and her husband dies in some work related accident and her perfect little life begins to crack and crumble.
It isn't until Erik is born that her life shatters. I feel that her madness begins here, when the midwife and her maid run from the house to fetch the priest and never return after seeing this infants face. She couldn't give the child her husbands name, like she'd planned, so instead tells the priest to christen him after himself. She asks the priest if she refused to feed him, if she ignored him and let God take him, if she would be sent to hell.... but being a "devout catholic" she recognizes this as murder and tries to bring herself to find a way to care for this devil's child.
So... she covers his face with a mask.
Madeleine's section of the book rushes through a lot of little stories. It covers 11 years in only 75 pages, but serves as an effective way to paint the picture of the child genius. At only a few months old, he plays a tune with a string of bells that Madeleine's friend strings above his crib like a mobile. He develops a love of architecture and scribbles and draws plans for beautiful buildings to perfect scale. He composes music, and frequently takes singing lessons from the priest who gave him his name.
One part of this that I found odd, and perhaps I didn't quite understand, but Madeleine can not be in the room when Erik takes his singing lessons from the priest... because she find his voice so beautiful that it is almost incestuously sensual. Not that she is suddenly attracted to her son, but that his voice fills her with emotions that manifest a physical reaction as well that she can't seem to control. On one hand I like the idea that not even Erik's own mother can ignore the beauty in his voice... but on another hand I wish she could ignore it just as piously as the priest seemed to...
When Erik is old enough to begin to doubt his mother's words and push the boundaries of discipline, as all children do, Madeleine's punishments are clearly just as insane as she is. When she's not beating him to bruises and broken skin, she always seems to do something to him that she admits will never leave him as long as he lives. On his fifth birthday, for example, she rips off his mask and takes him to the only mirror in the house and shows him his face. Erik doesn't understand and thinks it's a monster in a window... and not a reflection of himself... The realization of this fact seems to take Erik much longer to realise (I felt like it was months before he truly understood, which is an eternity for this very smart child) and he tried first to rationalize the monster by saying that the mask was magic and would keep the monsters away.
Scenes like this happen every year or so for Madeleine, and as she reflects on them she always seems to admit that she has scared him for life and she truly feels guilt... but this doesn't stop her from doing something else just as stupid and immature when she's angry again, or even try to fix it by being nice to Erik for a few days afterwards. No, she just sort of shrugs, says she made a mistake (to herself, never would she actually admit the mistake to Erik) and goes on about life as normal.
The end of this section was a bit slow to me. Madeleine found herself a love interest that tried to convince her to put Erik in an asylum so that they can be together. Erik's dog and only friend passes away, and after he's told that dog's do not have souls and wont go to heaven he renounces any faith in God and runs away. Madeleine doesn't go after him, and we presume that she goes on and starts life over again with her new man and forgets the last 11 years with this child.
While I found this section of the book dragging a bit at times, I feel that it helped me understand a lot of the developmental aspects of his childhood that shaped him to have the attitude towards himself that manifested in his later life. He was ugly, because the only person that should have loved him thought he was ugly. He was a monster because she thought he was a monster. It really makes me want to know what would have happened, how he would have developed, if he'd had a normal and supportive family.
Madeleine's section helped to form Erik's views of himself and of God, while the next section, told by Erik's point of view, will help us understand how he developed his view of the human race.
So, until next time, be good Angels,
- Maya
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