well behaved women

I'm reading The Phantom of the Opera right now, and I'm enjoying it a lot.

I cannot believe, however, that some moron actually had the nerve to romanticize the Phantom. He's a sleazy bastard who spies on Christine and preys on her precious memories of her father in order to manipulate her into depending on him, causing her considerable strife, displeasure and distress.

That new Phantom of the Opera is almost as much a travesty as the Dracula film with Gary Oldman. (Gerard Bulter? Seriously?) In general I'm pretty enamored of that kind of dynamic/relationship--moral ambiguity, beauty and the beast, etc--but this is just handled so wrong. I'm really tired of Hollywood's obsession with romanticizing characters that prey on women.

Also, Raoul and Christine are so cute! When he was itty-bitty he ran into the sea to fetch her scarf, they grew up together loving music, they snuck out at night to search for phantoms and she pretended she saw them and he remembered...how can anyone believe she's better off with a petty psycho stalker who psychologically abuses her?

Although the tone of the text irritates me sometimes with its condescension towards Christine, I suppose it's a product of that time period.