The Silent Monkey: Mrs. Coulter, Daemon Abuse, and the Cycles of Trauma in His Dark Materials
In HBO Max’s His Dark Materials, Mrs. Marisa Coulter is easily one of the most enigmatic and terrifying characters in the series. Beautiful, brilliant, and unrelentingly cruel, she exerts control over others—especially children—through manipulation and psychological warfare. But perhaps her most unsettling dynamic is the one she shares with her own daemon: a mute, golden monkey who rarely leaves her side and who suffers beneath the surface of every episode in which they appear together.
The golden monkey, unnamed and unheard, is one of the only daemons in the world of His Dark Materials that does not speak. While daemons are external manifestations of the human soul, bound to their humans in both pain and emotion, Coulter’s relationship with hers is uniquely disturbing. She physically assaults the monkey. She rejects it. She locks it away. She seems to loathe it.
And that loathing may be the key to understanding not only the daemon’s silence, but Mrs. Coulter’s deep psychological disintegration.
A Daemon That Cannot Speak
In the His Dark Materials universe, daemons speak as naturally and frequently as their humans do. They are confidants, extensions of thought, and a source of emotional support. That the golden monkey never speaks, despite its constant presence, has been a focal point for both fans and scholars.
Ruth Wilson, who portrays Mrs. Coulter, offered one explanation in an interview with ScreenRant (2022): “She’s basically silencing part of herself. She doesn’t want to communicate with that part. She’s ashamed of it. She’s terrified of it. She’s disgusted by it.” This aligns with the broader theme of His Dark Materials, in which daemons symbolize one's true self and inner nature. To abuse one’s daemon is, quite literally, to harm oneself.
In a particularly brutal scene from Season 1, Coulter slaps the golden monkey after it reaches out affectionately toward Lyra. In another, she locks it in a room, slamming the door and walking away as it howls in silence. These are not just acts of cruelty; they are acts of emotional self-destruction.
Abuse Repeated: A Cycle Unbroken
Mrs. Coulter’s abuse of her daemon fits a well-established psychological pattern: the cycle of abuse. Research shows that individuals who experience childhood trauma and neglect often perpetuate harm, either onto themselves or others, if the trauma remains unprocessed. According to a 2018 article published in Trauma, Violence, & Abuse, survivors of childhood abuse frequently develop insecure attachments, emotional suppression, and an impaired ability to empathize—all hallmarks of Coulter’s character.
The golden monkey becomes an object of this displaced rage. As a daemon, it is intrinsically linked to Coulter’s emotions, yet it is never a source of comfort or insight. Instead, it is treated as an alien threat, a symbol of everything she wishes to repress: vulnerability, tenderness, perhaps even love. In His Dark Materials, physical harm to a daemon directly injures its human. Yet Coulter's violent behavior continues, suggesting a deep compulsion to inflict pain on herself by proxy.
A 2022 meta-analysis from the MDPI Animals journal explored the correlation between interpersonal violence and animal abuse, emphasizing how childhood exposure to abuse often fosters externalized aggression. In Coulter’s case, the “animal” is not an external creature but her daemon, part of herself. The abuse she enacts on it mirrors the trauma she internalized as a child.
The Mute as the Shamed Self
The silence of the golden monkey is more than a stylistic choice. It is, in many ways, a metaphor for Coulter’s inability to emotionally connect with herself or others. According to psychological models of dissociation and attachment theory, early abuse can lead individuals to “split off” parts of the self, especially those associated with tenderness, vulnerability, and need. The daemon’s silence, then, may be a result of emotional neglect, not just narrative mystery.
In their 2018 article published in Psychiatry Research, Shackman and Pollak argue that childhood abuse disrupts emotional processing at a fundamental level. Children who experience early trauma may come to perceive affection as dangerous and intimacy as a threat. Coulter, a character who recoils from comfort and strikes out against her own soul, appears to be a tragic realization of this hypothesis. Her daemon cannot speak, because it has never been allowed to exist safely.
When asked whether the monkey is silent by choice or by force, Ruth Wilson answered: “I think it’s because he can’t. I don’t think he has a voice. I don’t think he’s allowed a voice.” That phrasing, not allowed, echoes the dynamics of both abuse and control. Silence becomes a condition of survival.
The Hand That Strikes Is Also the Hand That Caresses
Mrs. Coulter is, above all, a paradox. As much as she abuses her daemon, there are moments, fleeting and desperate, where tenderness leaks through the cracks in her emotional armor. She strokes the monkey’s fur after episodes of violence. She clutches it close while hiding or grieving. She murmurs apologies in the privacy of dimly lit rooms, not always in words, but in fragile, fractured gestures.
“The hand that strikes is also the hand that caresses.” That ancient, tragic formulation is particularly apt in this context. It is not a contradiction but a pattern often seen in survivors of childhood trauma who develop disorganized attachment styles. Abuse and affection become entangled. Love is fused with pain. Intimacy becomes both a yearning and a terror.
In the 2017 article published in Trauma, Violence, & Abuse, researchers describe this behavior as "caregiver reenactment": the abused child, now an adult, recreates abusive dynamics because they are familiar, even if they are horrifying. Within Coulter, affection is never far from aggression. Her daemon represents this duality perfectly: a creature to be hated and loved, struck and soothed, silenced and yet always present.
This behavioral pattern is common among individuals with high Adverse Childhood Experience (ACE) scores, which predict disrupted emotional development, impulse dysregulation, and risk of perpetuating abuse. Coulter fits this profile exactly. Her history, though not fully explored in the series, is shaded with hints of abandonment, loss of control, and a brutal social order that punished her for ambition, intellect, and motherhood.
Projection, Power, and a Fractured Self
There is also a grim elegance to the way His Dark Materials externalizes the psyche through daemons. Coulter’s treatment of the golden monkey offers a visual representation of internal psychological abuse, something nearly impossible to depict otherwise. Rather than turning violence inward in the traditional sense (through self-harm, for example), she projects it onto the part of herself that still feels.
Her daemon is the seat of intuition, conscience, and vulnerability. And so, she torments it.
In a 2022 MDPI Animals review, scholars note that cruelty toward animals often correlates with a lack of empathy and an excessive need for control. These traits emerge in individuals with histories of personal victimization. The article notes that "victimization itself may become the foundation for later abusive behavior," especially when the person has not been permitted to safely express vulnerability. For Coulter, vulnerability is dangerous. It is, perhaps, what first caused her pain. She cannot risk letting it live. And so, she punishes the daemon every time it behaves in a way that reflects care, softness, or conscience.
And yet… she cannot abandon it.
In His Dark Materials, human beings cannot survive long without their daemons. The separation is an existential rupture. Even Mrs. Coulter, who discovers through brutal experimentation that she can create distance between her body and daemon, never severs the bond entirely. That bond, abusive and tormented as it is, still anchors her to life.
The Daemon as Symptom, the Silence as Diagnosis
The mute golden monkey is not just a character. It is a symptom. A creature whose lack of voice reveals not emptiness, but injury.
In the MEAWw analysis of Season 1, Episode 4, the relationship between Mrs. Coulter and the monkey is described as "brutally one-sided," with emotional and physical violence layered into every scene. And yet, the monkey remains loyal. It follows her, reaches for her, curls against her in moments of distress. This loyalty echoes a pattern familiar in victims of long-term abuse who internalize the abuser’s worldview, a phenomenon known as trauma bonding.
The monkey, though silent, still expresses pain and longing. Its eyes widen in fear. Its gestures recoil or reach. The absence of speech is not the absence of feeling, but the result of chronic suppression. In psychological terms, this occurs when parts of the self are deemed unacceptable or dangerous. They are silenced not by choice, but by survival.
The golden monkey never speaks because, in Coulter’s world, feeling is punished. Affection is weaponized. And the voice of the soul must be smothered to keep power intact.
Toward the End: A Fractured Redemption?
As His Dark Materials nears its conclusion, there are signs - subtle and not - that Mrs. Coulter is beginning to soften. Her love for Lyra, for all its twistedness, becomes a force that breaks the old patterns. Her connection to her daemon deepens; it no longer flinches quite so violently at her touch. And in a pivotal moment, the monkey touches Lyra's daemon, Pan, with what appears to be genuine care.
Perhaps the silence will not last forever. Love, however battered, may have the final word.
But until then, the golden monkey’s mute presence remains one of the most devastating symbols of the series: the soul of a woman so deeply wounded she cannot allow even her own heart to speak.
References:
Comments
Post a Comment