little Jammes

Little Jammes is a young ballet dancer at the Paris Opera House in Gaston Leroux's The Phantom of the Opera, a minor character whose chief function is to give voice to the superstitious terror that the Opera Ghost inspires among the corps de ballet. She is the first to cry out "It's the ghost!" on the evening of the farewell gala for the retiring managers, MM. Debienne and Poligny, and her panicked exclamations recur at crucial moments, marking her as a barometer of the collective fear that the spectral figure generates. Though she has little individual agency in the plot, her reactions help establish the atmosphere of dread that pervades the opera house and foreshadow the tragic events to come.

Identity and Introduction

Little Jammes is introduced in the opening chapter of the novel, described as "the girl with the tip-tilted nose, the forget-me-not eyes, the rose-red cheeks and the lily-white neck and shoulders." She is one of the half-dozen young ladies of the ballet who invade the dressing-room of Sorelli, a principal dancer, after performing in Polyeucte, rushing in "amid great confusion, some giving vent to forced and unnatural laughter, others to cries of terror." It is Jammes who, in a trembling voice, gives the explanation for their fright: "It's the ghost!" and she locks the door. Her physical description, with its emphasis on youthful prettiness and delicate coloring, contrasts sharply with the ugliness of the ghost she fears, and her dramatic entrance establishes her as a figure of girlish hysteria.

Role in the Ghost's Appearances

Jammes is central to the first reported sighting of the ghost. When Sorelli asks if she has seen him, Jammes replies, "As plainly as I see you now!" before her legs give way and she drops with a moan into a chair. She later insists, "Still, we saw him!" and describes the ghost as having "his death's head and his dress-coat, just as when he appeared to Joseph Buquet!" She also relays the story of Gabriel, the chorus-master, who saw the ghost in broad daylight behind the Persian, a tale she tells "ever so quickly, as though the ghost were at her heels," leaving her quite out of breath. Her testimony, though secondhand in part, is presented as credible enough to spread alarm among the ballet girls, who crowd around her for details.

The Farewell Gala and Its Aftermath

At the farewell ceremony in the foyer of the ballet, Jammes is the one who spots the ghost among the crowd of dandies. She yells "The Opera ghost!" in "a tone of unspeakable terror," pointing to "a face so pallid, so lugubrious and so ugly, with two such deep black cavities under the straddling eyebrows, that the death's head in question immediately scored a huge success." Her outburst "broke the smile of the managers so brutally that the expression of distress and dismay that lay beneath it became apparent to all eyes." The ghost slips away through the crowd, and while others hunt for him, two old gentlemen try to calm Jammes. Earlier in the evening, she had been the only one of the dancers who seemed to have forgotten the ghost and the death of Joseph Buquet, laughing and playing practical jokes until the managers appeared, when she was "severely called to order by the impatient Sorelli." Her sudden shift from gaiety to terror underscores the unpredictable power of the ghost over the imaginations of the ballet girls.

Thematic Significance

Little Jammes embodies the superstitious credulity that the novel treats with a mixture of irony and sympathy. Her fear is contagious, spreading through the corps de ballet and contributing to the legend of the ghost that the managers dismiss as nonsense. Yet her terror is not entirely misplaced, as the ghost does exist, and her cries serve as an early warning of the supernatural forces at work in the opera house. She is also a figure of youthful innocence, her "fifteen summers" allowing her to bounce back from fear more quickly than the older dancers, though her susceptibility to the ghost's legend makes her a representative of the collective psychology that the ghost exploits. Through Jammes, Leroux dramatizes how rumor and fear can take on a life of their own, shaping the perceptions of an entire community.