Like Cyrano, The Hunchback of Notre-Dame acknowledges that the link between physical desire and the “higher” yearning for a kindred spirit are not easily reconciled. Roxane vows that she’d love Christian even if he was grotesque. Cyrano knows the truth.
There’s also Frankenstein’s monster, the sadly hideous lab-fashioned being who yearns, in vain, for a female companion. The destruction of this possibility, for all its apparent life-saving logic, is one of the most chilling moments in Mary Shelley’s novel. “The wretch saw me destroy the creature on whose future existence he depended for happiness, and with a howl of devilish despair and revenge, withdrew…”
Prejudice about appearance can, of course, engender the monstrosity it so callously infers. These stories are often touched with a brooding darkness that speaks of the malign power of social and amorous rejection.
The “courtship” between the masked Phantom and the beautiful Christine whom he takes into his netherworld, in the bowels of the Paris Opera, is steeped in sinister, obsessive forces. As the success of Lloyd Webber’s musical attests, we come to love the Phantom, yet the anti-hero conjures the darker side of desire, where the thrill of danger goes hand in hand with the stuff of nightmares.
These stories aren’t just gripping in themselves, then, they allow us to get a grip on the most crucial questions of who we are, who – and how – we love, and how we see ourselves. They maximise the sense of how fiendishly difficult the closest relationships are.
We have all been, or will find ourselves, on islands of loneliness and lovelessness. We approach these great fictional social castaways with the confidence that they’re not us. To our shock we realise that, of course, they absolutely are.
Cyrano de Bergerac is at the Harold Pinter Theatre, London SW1, from February 3: haroldpintertheatre.co.uk. Cyrano is in cinemas from Feb 25
