labeled as a vampire. Geraldine, the threat, must be expelled or everything will be disrupted in this world.In examining traces of feminism in Coleridge's period, it is difficult not to think of the most influential feminist thinker in this period, Mary Wollstonecraft. It is interesting to wonder how Wollstonecraft would have reacted to some of the arguments currently presented. In "The Vindication for the Rights of Woman" Wollstonecraft attacked the educational restrictions that kept women in a state of "ignorance and slavish dependence." She was especially critical of a society that encouraged women to be "docile and attentive to their looks to the exclusion of all else." Wollstonecraft described marriage as "legal prostitution" and added that women "may be convenient slaves, but slavery will have its constant effect, degrading the master and the abject dependent."In "The Vindication for the rights of woman", Wollstonecraft states:It is vain to expect virtue from women till they are in some degree independent of men; nay, it is vain to expect that strength of natural affection which would make them good wives and mothers. Whilst they are absolutely dependent on their husbands they will be cunning, mean, and selfish. The preposterous distinction of rank, which render civilization a curse, by dividing the world between voluptuous tyrants and cunning envious dependents, corrupt, almost equally, every class of people. In "Christabel", Coleridge depicts these dependent qualities of Christabel at the beginning of the poem as righteous and good. The minute she leaves the protection of the castle and of societies constraints, Christabel's dependency shifts from the male to the female. The world in which the man seems to be naturally in control is almost corrupted by the appearance of the threatening woman, Geraldine. Christabel is a personification of an ideal woman in this society, encompassing traits such as innocence, purity, chastit...
