What is your impression of Geraldine in ‘Christabel’? Answer with textual references.

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..............................................

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