Orczy and Sarah Juliette Sasson - The Scarlet Pimpernel

I remember when I first heard the movie of the same name as the book, I was four years old, and of course the first thing I thought was, ?The scarlet pimple? Why would anyone name a movie that?? Hey, I was only four! Well, fast forward ten years and I decided to pick this book up at the library (actually based on the recommendation of an Epinions member). It was a classic and it was a swashbuckler, and that was enough for me.

The Scarlet Pimpernel by Baroness Emmuska Orczy (what a name!) is the story of two nations caught up in the war of human souls and the responsibility to do right. France is in the middle of its revolution and its nobles are being slaughtered in the hundreds, and the only one who cares enough to do something about it is the heroic Scarlet Pimpernel and his nineteen followers, a group of Englishmen who are dedicated to getting past the brutal republic commoners and rescuing the royalists. Trapped in the middle of this is Marguerite St. Just, a beautiful and dazzlingly clever French actress who married a dull-witted Englishman, Sir Percy. When her brother Armand is threatened by the evil French investigator Chauvelin. Marguerite is given a terrible choice: reveal the Scarlet Pimpernel?s location or her brother will die. Too late she discovers the dreadful truth about the Scarlet Pimpernel and the daring action that honor and love demands of her?

This is one of those ?once you?re into `em, you can?t put `em down? books with a plot to die for. The pure romance of the Scarlet Pimpernel, a dashing hero with all the allure of a man who lives with danger, fills the book with intrigue and spice. It?s an exciting, thrilling story that captures much of the exotic appeal that seems to be necessary for an adventure novel. With the right storytelling, this novel has the potential to be a truly awe-inspiring book, and even as it is it?s got a tight, heroic plot that starts a little slow but holds your attention till the end and gives you all the drama you could want.

Sounds wonderful, doesn?t it? Well I mentioned the good parts first so it doesn?t seem like I?m a horrible person incapable of seeing goodness in a classic. :-) Let me just mention in passing that I loved The Three Musketeers, The Prisoner of Zenda, and other swashbuckler novels, so I?m not at all against the genre. It?s just this particular book that I have some objections to.

The most obvious flaw in it is the way the story is told. The writing is extremely poor; I don?t know how to sugar-coat it. Somehow this gripping, inspiring plot is divulged with a narrative that is about as ordinary and unadorned English as you can find. With some books the simplicity lends an air of naturalness and relaxed beauty. With this book, it just makes the writing stick out as bare and somewhat ugly, lacking the refinement, beauty, or flair that set a book apart. There?s nothing explicitly wrong with the writing except that it?s plain and uninteresting. There are occasional moments of humor, though rather few instances of good laughs. I don?t really think the heavy-handed humor employed is enough to rescue The Scarlet Pimpernel, although its roller-coaster drama certainly might be.

The other critical flaw in the book is the characterization. I never felt like I intimately knew any of the characters in this book, even though 260-odd pages are spent with them. Perhaps it?s because the author mostly ?tells, not shows? what the characters are like that I got the impression the people populating this book were more like stick figures than real living breathing people. I was especially appalled at the way the Baroness portrays Marguerite as suddenly acquiring an undying passion and devotion for her husband, and from the middle of the book on, Marguerite continues to grow more and more passionate and tender even though there?s no real explanation for it and her husband is absent most of that time! It gets rather ludicrous toward the end where the main characters are in a desperate impasse and Marguerite, a key player in it all, just continues to fall more and more in love with her absentee spouse. It?s a pretty far-fetched romance that feels unrealistic if lovely in its idealism.

I must say, this book left me wondering two things: why it?s a classic and why it can be enjoyable when several crucial elements are severely lacking. How can the plot be so exciting and the writing so boring and one-dimensional? There?s no reasonable explanation, so I must simply lump this book in with other ?summer reads? that are fast-paced and thrilling with no real substance to them. It?s surprising that it made the classics list, and I can?t really give it my stamp of approval, but I do confess with a little shame-facedness that I stayed up all night reading this book, so it can?t be that bad. I enjoyed reading it somewhat, but I didn't think it was a very worthwhile or substantial book. It's one of the more fast-paced, absorbing, easy-to-understand classics out there, so those who can't stand complicated, ornate descriptions and slowly unwinding stories should like this book. But I found it rather flat and bare underneath the exciting plot, and I don't recommend it for anyone looking for an intelligent read.


Plot

Like a number of other great books, including several lengthy French classics, The Scarlet Pimpernel starts out low-key and incremental, spending a while on little fairly unimportant scenes and then gradually climaxing to dreadfully important ones. In this sphere, at least, the book excels. The flow of the novel is well executed, catching the reader along in the adventures of its daring protagonist and the men and woman who surround him. You might be surprised to learn that the Scarlet Pimpernel himself does not appear very often, but he?s still always very close, lurking just beneath the surface of the story and shadowing every event that takes place.

I?d definitely advise that you clear a block of time for devouring this book if you decide to check it out. You can read the first, oh, third of the book and put it down whenever you want, but from then on you will be hooked! The plot is very absorbing, soon abandoning the small incidental scenes for a solid, steadily increasing story line. It?s perhaps not as swashbuckling as you might think, since it follows Marguerite most of the time, but it is dramatic and thrilling and everything else an adventure novel should be.


Characters

Other than the vague concept of the true Percy, noble and proud, I didn?t connect with any of the characters in The Scarlet Pimpernel. Marguerite, who gets most of the stage time and seems to be the main character here, is fairly well-developed, although lacking compared to other great heroines in literature, yet somehow the witty, shallow woman she was shown to be in the beginning put me off so much that I couldn?t bring myself to like her even though she became deeper and more compassionate as the story progressed. I didn?t think she was all that sympathetic a character, but perhaps other readers would.

I wish Percy had gotten more scenes (despite his utterly wussy name). The author keeps mentioning how slow-witted, annoying, and ?inane? he is (she uses that word a thousand times), but she doesn?t really convincingly show how idiotic he is. What she does do well is portray his spine-tingling transformation to?well, let?s just say a far nobler and more intelligent character. But then he?s gone, and we don?t see any more of him till the very end. We do see quite a bit of the villain, Chauvelin, who is a very good villain as they go. He?s evil to his fingertips, very cunning and oh so witty, as a proper villain should be. And then of course there?s the Scarlet Pimpernel, but I?ll leave him to be a mystery?

Incidental characters are fairly poorly drawn, kind of thrown in there because there needed to be extra characters to fill the scene. Like who is Sir Andrew really? Or what?s up with the haughty Comtesse in the beginning ? whatever happens to her? I guess Orczy didn?t think it especially worthwhile to fill us in on the details, but she could have done a better job of portraying the background characters even in the brief time she gives them.


Storytelling

About the second or third chapter (the chapters in this book are fairly short, by the way), I said to myself, ?Boy, whoever translated this thing really did a poor job. The writing is so?so?boring!? So I checked the title page but I didn?t see any translator name. Then I read the short biography of the Baroness in the front where it said, ?Although all her manuscripts were written in English, she did not learn the language until?she was fifteen.? Ah-hah! So the deficiencies in the writing were not due to any sloppy translating, but to the writer herself!

So what is the writing like? It?s fairly easy to understand, with a slight twist of the sentences that is common in classics and that makes it just a bit demanding to read today. But this novel is much ?better? than most classics in that the writing isn?t at all challenging, or stimulating I should say. The narrative is exceedingly plain and bare, with no grace or beauty or creative turn of phrase to enliven it. The storytelling feels somewhat like other foreign novels like The Three Musketeers in the exaggerated situations and flamboyant dialogue, but the difference is that The Scarlet Pimpernel is told in English, a language that the author did not have mastery over and thus could not use with style and creativity.

The part that she did tend to get creative with is the history. Yes, it?s sad to say that the one area that might have redeemed this novel, the historical value, is another aspect that condemns it. Baroness Orczy takes the far right side of the French Revolution, the view that the poor nobles holed up in France were being killed in the millions by the brutal, ignorant, horrible commoners who did nothing but clamor for royal blood. The only sketches she gives of the common people of France, whom she broadly calls the republicans (the ones who favored the republic and revolution), are of evil and filth, squalor and ignorance, rudeness and violence. But even though she places all her sympathies with the royalists, the pictures she paints of them are not all that flattering either! She portrays them as cold, arrogant, haughty, and infinitely blue-blooded. So the only people who are unequivocally good in her book are the wonderful English, who are virtuous and heroic-hearted to the core. Whoah baby!

Now, she never comes out and says all this. But reading closely and analyzing the way the author tells the story, it?s easy to see the prejudices and sweeping representations that fill this book. The lines that these draw are startling in their rigid ?good and evil? message, which would be fine except that what Orczy calls good and evil isn?t really good and evil! She does illustrate the theme that good is found in the honor and goodness of love and doing right, but she overlooks the truth that evil is not found in ?the enemy? or ?the bad guys? but rather in the sin and depravity in all men?s hearts, to be conquered by love and goodness.


Bottom line

It?s fast-paced, entertaining, and a pretty good read if you?re not fussy about language and subtly and all that. But for someone who?s been cruising with the great works of literature for years, The Scarlet Pimpernel is rather disappointing. I?d much rather go back and savor The Count of Monte Christo or even a children?s classic like The Lost Prince by Frances Hodges Burnett, both of which have a similarly exciting plot and foreign flavor but much more complexity and maturity. The final verdict on The Scarlet Pimpernel? It's a fine summer read and light page-turner, and not at all the classic that it?s labeled. (Ah, the perplexities of human nature: why am I scouring the town for the sequel Eldorado? Because I?m an incurable bibliophile and I can?t help holding out hope that it gets better.)