Introduction

In his book Myth and Meaning, anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss states that myths should be read like a musical score because "the basic meaning of myth is not conveyed by the sequence of events but ... by bundles of events even although these events appear at different moments in the story" (45). I kept this in mind while watching Tim Burton's stop-motion, animated musical Corpse Bride and focused not only on specific scenes but also on the tragic love story as a whole. Corpse Bride is "a tragic tale of passion, romance, and a murder most foul" that explores the human capacity and desire to love (Burton). It contains key Orphic mythemes,* including the power of music, the transgressive journey, the separation of lovers, and the backward gaze. Before I dive into each of them, let us watch the brief trailer of Corpse Bride to get an overview of what it is about. You'll notice that even in the trailer, we can already see the presence of a few of the aforementioned Orphic mythemes.

*mythemes: units of narrative structure from which myths are constructed (Lévi-Strauss)

The Orpheus & Eurydice Myth

Orpheus was the son of the god Apollo and the muse Calliope. He was a musician known for playing his lyre captivatingly. According to Ovid's account of the myth, Orpheus fell in love with Eurydice, and on their wedding day, Eurydice died due to a snake bite. Orpheus traveled to the underworld to bring his wife back to the world of the living. After hearing Orpheus's speech about his love for Eurydice and how she will return to Hades eventually, Hades agrees to let Orpheus take Eurydice with him back to the world of the living. He gave one condition though: Orpheus must not look back at any point until he leaves the underworld with Eurydice. Right when they were about to officially leave the underworld, Orpheus makes a fatal mistake and looks at Eurydice who had been following him. Immediately, Eurydice vanishes and dies a second time because Orpheus disobeyed Hades. Orpheus spent his remaining days in grief until the maenads—female followers of Dionysis—murdered him, reuniting him with Eurydice (Ovid).

Like the Orpheus and Eurydice myth, Corpse Bride is a tragic love story that contains the following mythemes and Orphic elements:

1. The power of music
2. The dangerous, transgressive journey
3. The underworld
4. The separation of lovers
5. The backward gaze
6. The transformative journey

Background photo credit: Painting called Orpheus Leading Eurydice from the Underworld by Jean-Baptiste Camille Corot in 1861. From Museum of Fine Arts, Houston.

Corpse Bride’s Main Cast & Characters

Victor Van Dort

Star actor Johnny Depp voices the protagonist Victor Van Dort, a clumsy and kind bachelor from a family of fish merchants. Victor runs into the woods to practice his marriage vows because he is to be married to Victoria Everglot soon. While he is practicing, he accidentally marries a corpse, Emily.

Emily (the corpse bride)

Voiced by Helena Bonham Carter, Emily is a lonely, sweet bride who longs for love after having been robbed of it during previous engagement in which her fiance murdered her.

Victoria Everglot

Emily Watson voices Victoria Everglot, a sweet young woman whose parents have arranged for her to marry Victor. Victoria's parents, Lord and Lady Everglot, have lost all their money and are using her marriage to escape from poverty.

Lord Barkis Bittern

Richard E. Grant voices Lord Barkis, the main antagonist in the movie. Over the course of the movie, we learn that he marries women for their money and then kills them. He did this to Emily, and he plans to do this with Victoria until he learns her family has no money left.

The Power of Music

In the Orpheus and Eurydice Myth

Orpheus is a musician, and his ability to play the lute beautifully grabs Eurydice’s attention before she marries him. His exceptional lute skills also help him pass through obstacles in the underworld so he can ask Hades to loan him Eurydice (Ovid). Through musical seduction, Orpheus gains access to Eurydice in the underworld (Gallagher).

In Corpse Bride

In Corpse Bride, Victor’s musical ability gives him access to Victoria’s heart. At the beginning of Corpse Bride, Victor visits Victoria with his parents for a wedding rehearsal. As Victor and Victoria’s parents go to a room to discuss the marriage, Victor stays behind and plays the piano. He plays it so beautifully that Victoria hears it from her room and follows the melodious sound to him. This is their first encounter and their first time speaking to each other. In this scene, you can see that Victor has already made a beautiful first impression on Victoria and that he is clearly nervous because he likes Victoria. Music allowed for this intimate moment to occur and sparked their love for each other.

The instrumental piece Victor plays is an original composition by Danny Elfman for Corpse Bride. It is important because it is a recurring track in the film, and we specifically hear it during emotional scenes that involve mutual love, like the example above, and unrequited love. For example, the melody also plays when Emily waits by a tree for Victor to return after telling his parents about her, but Emily does not know Victor is lying. Here, the music signifies unrequited love. After Emily finds Victor with Victoria and steals him back into the underworld, she and Victor enthusiastically play the same melody on the piano. Emily is angry and upset with Victor for lying to her, but as Victor plays the piano with her as a form of apology, Emily forgives him. She finally relaxes her arched eyebrows. The music rekindles her love for him and brings about a sense of peace and unity. This is also a turning point in the movie because it feels like Victor is finally starting to admire—or even love—Emily. Thus, with the help of music, Emily's unrequited love seems to have blossomed into mutual love.

The final and most significant scene that contains this musical score is at the end of the movie. After Emily sacrifices her dream to be legitimately married so Victor and Victoria can be together, she transforms into butterflies and dissolves into the night sky. During this scene, I noticed that the same song plays in the background, but it was a happier rendition of it with certain notes being held for longer. I believe by altering the music in this way, Burton tries to tell us something different from when the music plays in the other scenes. He conveys that Emily leaving is not is another instance of heartbreak, but rather the opposite; it is an act of true love.

The Dangerous & Transgressive Journey

In the Orpheus and Eurydice Myth

Orpheus travels to the underworld even though he is alive, temporarily changing the law of death and nature. He journeys to an impossible destination that cannot be visited by normal people. He is also able to return to the land of the living easily (albeit he did lose Eurydice because he did not follow Hades’ one rule: don’t look back).

In Corpse Bride

Corpse Bride challenges the forces of death and nature, as well. Victor journeys to an impossible destination that cannot be visited by normal people, and throughout most of the movie, he tries to journey back to Victoria. Emily is able to pull Victor into the underworld even though he is alive. When Victor arrives at the underworld, a skeleton announces, “We've got ourselves a breather!” and a skeleton child comments that Victor is still soft (Burton).

Later, when Victor and Emily ask an elderly skeleton for his help to visit the land of the living, the elderly skeleton replies, “I don’t know. It’s just not natural.” Later, by using a simple Ukrainian spell, Victor and Emily leave the underworld and enter the land of the living with ease, even though Emily is dead. Then, Emily easily brings Victor and herself back to the world of the living by reciting the word, “Hopscotch.” Near the end of the movie, the dead inhabitants of the underworld crash Victoria and Lord Barkis's wedding in the land of the living, and everyone freaks out. The town crier even yelled, "The dead walk the earth!" signifying the transgression. These examples indicate how Victor and several dead characters in Corpse Bride challenged the law of death, which connects them to Orpheus's character, in a way.

Two Underworlds

The movie makes the land of the dead appear as the more lively, joyous place by using light, colors, and music whereas it makes the land of the living seem like a dull, gloomy place full of dread and torment. While asking myself why Burton would choose to depict the two worlds like this, I remembered Professor Gallagher's words in a lecture: Any place where humanity is denied or degraded is hell—an underworld. The movie depicts the land of the living as a prison and makes death feel like an escape or freedom. I believe that the land of the living can be interpreted as an underworld, as well. The land of the living is a land of betrayal, murder, forced marriages, snobby rich people, oppression, and entrapment. Let's look at Victoria, for example. Victoria stays in the land of the living throughout the movie, and until she finally reunites with Victor at the end of the movie, she is a prisoner in her parents' home. Her mom even says, "Lock the doors and bar the windows, so she doesn't escape" (Burton). Victoria also has no say in who she marries, she is not allowed to play the piano in her own home, and her parents call her ugly and use her as a pawn to gain wealth. Victoria is degraded and her parents have no humanity. Another example involves Mayhew, the Van Dort family’s servant. Mayhew is bossed around and is constantly coughing and in pain in the movie until he dies. When he transports into the underworld, he finally looks healthy and happy and is treated respectfully and appreciated. The collages I have assembled below show the dramatic difference in color and liveliness between Corpse Bride's underworld and the land of the living. While the movie says that the first collage is the underworld, it shows that the world above is a different kind of underworld.

Below, I have edited clips together to show the dramatic difference in energy, color, facial expressions, and even cake sizes as those in the land of the dead gather for Emily and Victor's wedding and those in the land of the living gather Victoria and Lord Barkis's wedding.

Separation of Lovers

In the Orpheus and Eurydice Myth

A key Orphic mytheme is the separation of lovers because that is the main plot of the Orpheus and Eurydice myth. Eurydice is separated from Orpheus when she dies and goes to the underworld. Orpheus reunites with Eurydice when he meets her in the underworld. However, they are separated again when Orpheus turns backward and looks at Eurydice—his fatal backward gaze. This results in Eurydice staying in the underworld, while Orpheus goes back to the world of the living himself. When Orpheus is murdered days later, he is finally reunited with Eurydice in the underworld.

In Corpse Bride

In Corpse Bride, there are a couple of meaningful instances of forced separation between lovers between Emily and Lord Barkis, Victor and Victoria, and Emily and Victor. I've ordered the examples below to show the progression of Emily's character over the course of the movie.

Emily and Lord Barkis

The skeletons in the underworld sing to Victor about how Emily ended up in the underworld's backstory. The lead musician named Bonejangles sings that Emily and her lover made a plan to get married "next to the grave yard by the old oak tree" and, after she waited for a while, a man approached and "everything went black" (Burton). Bonejangles continues singing:

In this song, we learn that Emily was murdered by a man she thought loved her but who was only interested in her wealth. He doomed her to live as a dead bride in the underworld. The man is confirmed to be Lord Barkis at the end of the movie when Emily exposes him at the wedding. Thus, Lord Barkis caused the separation between two seeming lovers: himself and Emily. Emily's tragic backstory shows that she has been waiting so long to find actual love and thinks she found it with Victor, the "groovy young man / who vows forever to be by her side" (accidentally). I feel sorry for her because all she wants is to be loved, and even after waiting so long that she has become half skeleton and half rotting flesh, she had hope that her true love would come. And it is this fierce hope that prompts this next example of the separation of two lovers.

Victor and Victoria

Near the beginning of the movie, Emily forces Victor into the underworld via a kiss because she thinks he is officially her new husband. She separates Victor from Victoria in two ways. By accepting his accidental marriage vows and saying "I do," Emily takes Victoria's spot as Victor's wife and legally separates Victoria from Victor. By stealing Victor from the land of the living and bringing him into the underworld, Emily physically separates Victor from Victoria, as well.

Near the middle of the movie, Victor desperately wishes to return to the world of the living to escape his “marriage” with Emily and marry Victoria instead. He pretends that he is actually happy about being Emily's husband and tells her he wants her to meet his parents who are still living. With the help of a dead old man, Emily and Victor poof into the world of the living, and Victor leaves her in the forest to confess his love for Victoria. They are about to kiss until Emily appears and dramatically pulls Victor away from Victoria, taking him back to the underworld, as both lovers' outstretched arms emphasize the forced nature of their separation.

Emily and Victor (and us)

The final scene of the Corpse Bride is the most memorable scene in the movie and for good reason. Burton displays not only a separation between Emily and Victor, but also a separation between Emily and viewers. Emily leaves us as she transforms into butterflies and her essence flutters into a world we cannot see. This is an emotional moment for myself and many fellow viewers because Emily makes a great sacrifice—one that Orpheus couldn't make. She decides to let go of her obsession with marriage and instead helps bring Victor and Victoria together. By this point, it seems that Victor had grown fond of Emily and one can argue that he was beginning to love her. In this way, Emily is the agent in another separation of lovers—herself and Victor—but this time, it's a willful separation (not like the forced separation she had with her previous "lover" Lord Barkis).

Margaret Atwood's Orpheus

Emily's selfish side character reminds me of Margaret Atwood's perception of Orpheus in her poem "Orpheus 1". Through Eurydice's voice, Atwood describes Orpheus as having a tight rope (lines 11-3) or a "leash" (line 14) between him and Eurydice and pulling her after him as he leads her to the world of the living. In Corpse Bride, Emily acts similarly. Since she believes she is legitimately married to Victor and therefore tied to him, she forces him into her world—the underworld. By doing this, she acts like Atwood's selfish, oppressive Orpheus.

Atwood's Eurydice

However, Emily also acts like Atwood's Eurydice. In Eurydice's voice, Atwood writes, "I had to / fold like a gray moth and let go" (lines 36-7). She conveys that Eurydice made Orpheus turn back and that she let go. Eurydice exerts agency by deciding that she wants to stay in the underworld and manipulating Orpheus to achieve that. In Corpse Bride, even though Emily kept Victor on a leash for most of the movie, she eventually makes up for her selfish acts and sets not only Victor free but also herself, unlike Atwood's Orpheus. At the end of the movie, when Emily and Victor are about to get officially married at their wedding, Emily sees Victoria's distressed face and realizes she has been selfish. While tearing up, she tells Victor:

I was a bride. My dreams were taken from me. But now - now I've stolen them from someone else. I love you, Victor, but you are not mine.

Just like Eurydice let go of the rope that tethered her to Orpheus, Emily lets go of Victor. There's a saying, "If you love someone, set them free," which is exactly what Emily does and what Atwood's Orpheus fails to do.

Ovid’s Eurydice and Adrienne Rich’s Eurydice

Emily’s character is so interesting and complex that she also fits Ovid’s portrayal of Eurydice in Metamorphoses and, ultimately, Adrienne Rich’s opposite portrayal of Eurydice in the poem “I Dream I’m the Death of Orpheus.” In the song above, Bonejangles claims Emily has been waiting “for her true love to come set her free.” This brings to mind Ovid’s Eurydice, whom he writes as a damsel in distress stuck in the underworld, waiting for her hero, Orpheus, to set her free. At the end of the movie, Emily finally stands up against her murderer, Lord Barkis. She confronts him, boldly stands in his way when tries to stab Victor, and watches as he unknowingly drinks poison and dies. Like the speaker in Rich's poem, she seems to have become "A woman with the nerves of a panther / a woman with contacts among Hell’s Angels / a woman feeling the fullness of her powers" (lines 11-3). Emily goes from a damsel needing someone to a strong woman who brings about the death of her Orpheus. This also brings to mind the Orphic mytheme of revenge murder of Orpheus. He is fatally assaulted by a Dionysian cult of women called “Maenads” because Orpheus ignores them. Connecting this back to Corpse Bride, Emily indirectly murders her original Orpheus, Lord Barkis, who ignored her love for her riches.

The Transformative Journey

The Significance of Butterflies in Corpse Bride

The fact that those in the underworld are so lively despite being dead brings to mind the idea that death is not the end, but rather a transformation to an alternate state of being in an alternate world. I believe that the motif of butterflies in the movie supports my argument. A blue butterfly is in the opening scene of Corpse Bride. Victor has trapped it in a glass container to draw it, and then he sets it free. We follow the butterfly’s journey as it flutters through the town, passing by the main characters in the movie. At the end of the movie, we see similar blue butterflies appear as Emily decides it is her time to move on. As she looks toward the night sky with an expression of acceptance and peace, her body transforms into several, delicate, blue butterflies as we saw in a clip above. However, we get a feeling that it is not the end of Emily. It feels more like she is moving on to the next stage of her life, much like a butterfly does as it transforms from a caterpillar to a chrysalis to a beautiful butterfly. This also reminds me of how myths, such as the Orpheus and Eurydice myth work. Myths mutate over time, and I believe each transformation adds to the beauty of the myth.

Conclusion

There is something Professor Gallagher said about Orphic mythemes that stuck with me: "As we move on to tales that don't seem to have much to do with Orpheus, if we can find a group of mythemes, we can reconstruct how that tale is entering into Orpheus legend and playing with it. Through the mythemes, we get an understanding of how the myth is working.” The fact that we can identity ancient Orphic mythemes in a 2005 movie that does not aim to do so speaks to the timeless power of myth and how a myth can live on generation after generation. While the Orpheus and Eurydice myth mutates along the way, and authors like Margaret Atwood and Adrienne Rich add new perspectives to it, the core concept of the Orpheus and Eurydice myth as a tragic love story survives.

What does Corpse Bride teach us about...

Love?

Both the Orpheus and Eurydice myth and the movie Corpse Bride demonstrate the complexity of love, and how an emotion so beautiful can also cause so much pain. Near the middle of the movie, Emily sings about how she is dead and does not feel physical pain from being stabbed or touching a burning candle, but she still feels the pain of heartbreak and unrequited love. Through Emily, Burton shows how the human capacity to love and suffer from heartbreak transcends death.

Life?

At the beginning of the movie, both Victor's and Victoria's parents sing about how everything about Victor and Victoria's wedding must go "according to plan," that nothing unexpected should happen even with "every microscopic detail" (Burton). Immediately, things do not go according to plan as Victor cannot accurately recite his vows or light his candle during the wedding rehearsal. Over the course of the movie, we see that almost everything does not go according to plan. However, we also see that everything works out in the end. Victor gets the girl, Lord Barkis gets what he deserves, and, while Emily does not find her true love, she finds peace and acceptance. Burton shows us that life is filled with crazy twists and turns and that the path to love, freedom, or justice may not be linear, but that everything will be fine in the end.

Surprise!

I've adapted a Corpse Bride music video edit and inserted the song "Eurydice" by Sleepthief that was featured in our Orphic Avatar Gallery because I think it fits so well.