First thing that becomes clear, the poem is describing Lesbian themes. Furthermore, the demonic presence is captured in the “Spell” which is the unnatural romantic love between women.
Coleridge seems to have been fantasizing about a love triangle between he, his wife and his paramour.
It makes sense, that Coleridge would entertain such ideas. He loved his wife, and his paramour. Frankly, the theme of the successful love triangle has been a strange one to espouse upon, though the poem is not explicitly about this.
The poem is merely a naughty daydream, giving the moral tone significance that the relationship is not right. The “Spell” as is the case, “Spell” in the traditions of the romantic poets is likened to a wicked thing.
Why the protagonist’s name is “Christabel”, frankly, duly understood I don’t believe the poem was finished for a reason. I think Coleridge had initially entertained the gruesome thought of bedding two women who were romantically involved, and played the subconscious moral play out in this little poem.
Coleridge is almost entertaining a modern attitude about it. Which, to say, I think in this regard the correct attitude is to understand the poem as Erotic, Lesbian, but to not shy away from the cultural taboos of the day. I don’t think Coleridge would be completely aware of why he was writing it, nor what he was writing.
It seems to me that the poem was a fancy which captured Coleridge, that he would have greatly desired a romantic ménage à trois between he and the two lovers of his life. Passively, though. The poem is not conscious of diving into the material, so neither is the reader consciously aware of the true meaning of the poem. There is a mystery of the Lesbian eroticism in the poem, disparaging it nonetheless. The tone is utterly negative, taken in the context that the woman has become the desired object of both a father and daughter. It is in effect bibliomancy, and should the poem continue it would most likely end in the father and daughter’s utter destruction. Hopefully the reader cannot assume that this theme is taken lightly, and is possibly why the poem was abandoned by its author, because the subject was inappropriate. Scandalous, even for today’s day and age.
There is something unnatural in the thought of two so closely related being romantically involved with the same person, therefore, it might be a testament to the utter disparity of adultery, that such thoughts will even be allowed to be entertained. It is a testament to how wrong sin is, that if there were a boundary broken by our modern standards, this one surely will not be. Which should disturb the reader’s opinion on the legality of Homo-eroticism, whether it is Malum in Se, or Malum Prohibitum.
Coleridge, Samuel Taylor. The Complete Poems. Edited by William Keach. “Christabel”, pp. 187 – 205. Penguin Classics, 2004. Text.
B. K. Neifert 