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Christine's mother
Jun. 11th, 2022 05:32 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
igenlodeIt has just occurred to me that I don't *think* there is actually anything in musical canon to say that Andrew Lloyd Webber's Christine doesn't have a living mother -- just as musical-Raoul can perfectly well have both parents still alive (and in fact movie-Raoul apparently does!) ;-)
It's implied that Christine doesn't have a mother by the fact that only her father is ever mentioned in their childhood reminiscences, and of course it was almost certainly intended that her mother died when she was young because that section is clearly based on Leroux. But I'm not sure that there is any ALW dialogue that would contradict the possibility that Christine in the musical has a dead father to whom she is devoted, but a surviving mother out there somewhere.
(I think the fact that her mother doesn't turn up in the managers' office à la Carlotta and make a fuss when she first goes missing overnight does tend to prove that she isn't *living* with either parent at this point; likewise the fact that she goes to her father's grave when she is in trouble rather than seeking advice from her mother. Unless her mother is as eccentric as Madame Valerius, I think she probably doesn't know what is going on, which implies that she is either shut away in some institution -- an asylum, sanitorium, convent or even a jail -- or else is living overseas or otherwise estranged from her daughter. So from a practical fic-writing perspective it probably isn't all that useful as a plot suggestion...)
It's implied that Christine doesn't have a mother by the fact that only her father is ever mentioned in their childhood reminiscences, and of course it was almost certainly intended that her mother died when she was young because that section is clearly based on Leroux. But I'm not sure that there is any ALW dialogue that would contradict the possibility that Christine in the musical has a dead father to whom she is devoted, but a surviving mother out there somewhere.
(I think the fact that her mother doesn't turn up in the managers' office à la Carlotta and make a fuss when she first goes missing overnight does tend to prove that she isn't *living* with either parent at this point; likewise the fact that she goes to her father's grave when she is in trouble rather than seeking advice from her mother. Unless her mother is as eccentric as Madame Valerius, I think she probably doesn't know what is going on, which implies that she is either shut away in some institution -- an asylum, sanitorium, convent or even a jail -- or else is living overseas or otherwise estranged from her daughter. So from a practical fic-writing perspective it probably isn't all that useful as a plot suggestion...)
