Geraldine, the "damsel bright," seems very beautiful, perhaps too beautiful, dressed in white and barefoot. She is shadowy in the moonlight. She has a long neck, bare arms, and blue veined feet. Her blue-veined feet suggest she has fair skin. She glitters with jewels that are "entangled" in her hair and glitter "wildly." She is, as told, a compelling, even mesmerizing, but mysterious and otherworldly, figure on first sight. She is also described as "frightful" because of her rich clothing. Later, we will find she is "tall," or "lofty."
At bedtime, we get hints of Geraldine's witchy power. Christabel speaks of her staring "unsettling" eye and asks if she can see spirits. As Christabel gets into bed and Geraldine is about to join her, we learn that Geraldine takes off her silken robe and undergarment to expose her breast and half her side, but we are not told exactly what...
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Christabel sees. We know, however, that Geraldine puts a spell on Christabel.
Where is the 'damsel bright' in Coleridge's poem "Christabel"?
Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s poem ‘Christabel’ takes place in April, ‘a month before the month of May’ (line 21). It is a chilly night, and Baron Leoline’s only child Christabel, who ‘had dreams all yesternight / Of her own betrothed knight’ (lines 27-28), leaves the warmth of her bed to go to the woods to pray for the well-being and safety of the man she is supposed to marry. The woods are a furlong, or about an eighth of a mile (220 yards), from the castle (line 26). Christabel is kneeling to pray beneath an oak tree that is bare of leaves (lines 33-36) when she hears a soft moan, the source of which she cannot immediately ascertain, but after crossing herself, she goes around the oak tree and
There she sees a damsel bright,
Drest in a silken robe of white,
That shadowy in the moonlight shone:
The neck that made that white robe wan,
Her stately neck, and arms were bare;
Her blue-veined feet unsandl'd were,
And wildly glittered here and there
The gems entangled in her hair. (lines 58-65)
So it is on a chilly night in April in the woods, about 220 yards behind the castle, huddled on the ground behind a large oak tree, that Christabel meets the ‘damsel bright.’
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