Marisa Coulter - Description

Description

Mrs. Coulter is described as being 35 years old in the third novel, The Amber Spyglass. Physically, she is described as 'beautiful and young' with 'sleek black hair' that 'framed her cheeks' and slim. Given that the details of characters' physical appearances are not often given in His Dark Materials (for example, it is a long time before it is mentioned that the protagonist, Lyra, is blonde), this is an unusual attention to physical detail. (Philip Pullman did not disapprove of the physical change made in the film adaptation The Golden Compass, claiming to regret not making her blonde in the first place.) There is a reference in Lyra's Oxford to Mrs. Coulter having written an academic work called 'The Bronze Clocks of Benin'

In the books she is portrayed as an elegant and cool-minded sophisticated lady; her social savoir faire concealing the more selfish and manipulative aspects of her personality – she is also an extremely determined, very calculating and ruthless power-seeking character with wide political connections, who is highly placed and trusted in the Magisterium's hierarchy with a large degree of autonomy, which she uses for her own as well as the Church's purposes. She arranges for the heir to the throne of the Ice-Bears to be exiled, and plots to dominate the new king, turning the bears into her subordinates. When Lyra is in danger in Bolvangar, her instinct for motherhood overrides her other loyalties and she rescues Lyra, although in the second book of the trilogy she still expresses no qualms about killing her to prevent the Fall. However by the third book she finds herself torn, ultimately feigning loyalty to betray the Church and finally giving up her life for Lyra's sake. Metatron, the Regent of the Authority describes her character in "the most searching examination Marisa Coulter had ever undergone", stripping away "all shelter and deceipt" and describing that he sees:

"Corruption and envy and lust for power. Cruelty and coldness. A vicious probing curiosity. Pure, poisonous, toxic malice. You have never from your earliest years shown a shred of compassion or sympathy or kindness without calculating how it would return to your advantage. You have tortured and killed without regret or hesitation; you have betrayed and intrigued and gloried in your treachery. You are a cess-pit of moral filth."

Despite this searching insight, Metatron describes her as lovelier than any wife he had as Enoch, and appears agreeable to take her as a consort. She manages to conceal among her other deceptions, one final deception; by this point she has privately formed the intention to betray Metatron himself to safeguard her daughter. She in turn described her self-perception to Asriel just prior to their joint sacrifice:

"I told him I was going to betray you, and betray Lyra, and he believed me because I was corrupt and full of wickedness.... I wanted him to find no good in me and he didn't. There is none. But I love Lyra. Where did this love come from? I don't know; it came to me like a thief in the night, and now I love her so much my heart is bursting with it. All I could hope was that my crimes were so monstrous that the love was no bigger than a mustard seed in the shadow of them, and I wished I'd committed even greater ones to hide it more deeply still..."

Mrs. Coulter's dæmon takes the form of a golden monkey with long fur, who is not named in the books, but was given the name "Ozymandias" in the radio adaptation. A few times throughout the books, the golden monkey is shown to be capable of going much further from Mrs. Coulter than other dæmons are able to separate from their humans. For instance, the golden monkey was snooping around in Lyra's room to look for the alethiometer, when Lyra lived with Mrs. Coulter in London. How the golden monkey can go far from Mrs. Coulter is never explained within the books; Mrs. Coulter has not undergone intercision (as evidenced when she struggles against members of the Church attempting to intercise her and her dæmon), and she never mentions forcible separation from her dæmon on earth or in the Land of the Dead, the means by which Lyra, Will and John Parry, and all witches are separated from their dæmon without severing the link between them. Her final act in the trilogy occurs when she is reconciled with Asriel, and they together drag Metatron into an endless abyss, the three thus ceasing to exist.