Wednesday, August 19, 2015

The Scarlet Pimpernel, by Baroness Emmuska Orczy

When this was chosen for one of my book groups, I was looking forward to re-reading it for the first time in many years.  Sadly, meeting the Scarlet Pimpernel again in his book form did not live up to my expectations.  Since I first read it, I've seen both the Leslie Howard and the Anthony Andrews film versions several times.  It turns out that most of my memories of the story are from the films, and alas for the Purist Principle, I think in this case the film versions might actually be better.

The opening of the story is certainly exciting enough, set in "Paris: September, 1792," amid "A surging, seething, murmuring crowd of beings that are human only in name..."  But once the story shifted to England, it seemed to slow down to a crawl.  Everyone was always sitting around waiting, for someone to arrive, a signal to be given, the tide to turn.  Emotions were at a fever-pitch as people waited, hearts surging with fear and anger and love and desperation - but still they sat and waited.  For such a classic adventure story, there wasn't nearly as much action as I remembered.  Hardly a buckle was swashed, in the end.  We heard a lot about the daring feats of the Scarlet Pimpernel, but we didn't get to see much of the action. 

On the other hand, Marguerite Blakeney certainly played a heroic part, in her determination to save her husband.  Though she mostly had to sit around and wait (for a ship, in the hovel, on the beach), it was still bravely done, and she earned her happy ending.  I did feel that the romance at the heart of the story was more than a bit overblown, but that might have been partly the effect of the ripely purple prose.  If I had been the Baroness's copy editor, I would have pointed out that the words "merry" and "merrily" appear on every page in some chapters.  Everyone who laughs does so merrily, except perhaps M. Chauvelin. I found it annoying, after a while.  I would have also pointed out to her that an agent as experienced as M. Chauvelin would never leave a valuable hostage like Lady Blakeney sitting unguarded on the beach, however deserted it may appear.

With almost no memory of the book, Chapter XXVI, "The Jew," came as quite a surprise to me.  With all due latitude for a book written in 1905, I was uncomfortable with the appearance of Benjamin Rosenbaum and the part he plays in the story.  Orczy is at pains to point out the anti-semitism of Chauvelin and the French in general, contrasting it with the more liberal attitudes of the British.  But Rosenbaum is presented in stereotypical terms: greasy, greedy, obsequious.  Does the fact that this is a disguise negate the negative portrayal?  It doesn't feel that way to me, not when it is described as "the weird and distorted mask of the Jew."  I think Orczy is having it both ways, condemning anti-semitism while playing to its stereotypes.  I realize this is of its time.  I just found it particularly jarring in this story.

I'll be interested to see what the group makes of this book.  I think I will be donating my copy to the library book sale.

14 comments:

  1. I read this a few years ago and really enjoyed it, but it was the first time I'd read it - and I had never seen any of the film versions either - so I had nothing to compare it with. Since then I have also read two of the sequels but they were both disappointing and I'm not sure if I'll be reading any more in the series.

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    1. Helen, I think I was expecting more of a Dumas story - more action. One of the group members is interested in the sequels, but I don't think I'll be looking for them.

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  2. Awww. I mean, all of your points are valid, and at the same time, I love this book with an unreasoning devotion. It's one of the first books I can remember that really made me lose track of where I was (on the school bus, age eight), and I love it for its silliness as much as in spite of it. But, yeah, I accept that objectively it is not the world's greatest book.

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    1. I know, I felt kind of mean posting this. Not that Baroness Orczy will read it or anything. I'm glad you still enjoy it! I think the first books I really got lost in would have been the Little House books.

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  3. There are some books that fall short of their adaptation's quality, and this definitely sounds like one of them. I've never read it, not seen any of the adaptations, but the general premise is very appealing!

    I remember having a similar jarring moment to the one you describe about the stereotype of the Jewish character when I read Georgette Heyer's The Grand Sophy. I wrote a post about it, in fact. For that very reason, I've been putting off a reread of Oliver Twist.

    Great review, btw.

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    1. Jane, the premise is a lot of fun. Someone in the book group described it as a "Zorro kind of story" ! You might enjoy this as much as Jenny does!

      Oh yes, the moneylender in The Grand Sophy. That is always a shock. So many of her characters talk of "going to the Jews," but that usually happens off-stage.

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  4. Thanks for this. I have so many classics which I want to read so I'll be glad to give this one a miss.

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    1. You might enjoy it though, Katrina - lots of people do! And I did the first time I read it.

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  5. I adored this book when I was about 11, reading it over and over again (perhaps about 20 times in all) as well as most of the sequels. I still have a soft spot for it, though I wouldn't willingly re read it now as I'm fairly sure I'd be far to critical. At 11 the romantic bits seemed wonderful, now I suspect I'd be entirely unimpressed. The anti semitism in books like this made I impact on me as a younger reader, but I find them interesting now in terms of how we view other minority groups in current society.

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    1. This book seems to make a deeper impression on younger readers, and I can see why. And I remember really enjoying it, the first time I read it. I've never come across any of the sequels, though I do have her Lady Molly of Scotland Yard in the TBR stacks.

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    2. There are quite a few of them, even as an impressionable young reader they provided diminishing returns. I read them all 30 odd years ago from the library but think I have seen some of them reprinted recently. On the whole not worth the effort though.

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    3. Someone from the book group has already tried Eldorado, but she gave up on it pretty quickly.

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  6. I so agree that it seems to impress young readers - I read it a couple of times 'back then' and I wonder how I would see it today. I suspect it combined adventure, romance and history into a package that worked at that time for me. Now, of course, I really want to re-read it to see...

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  7. Oh good, someone who isn't completely turned off it by what I wrote :) I'm feeling oddly guilty about not liking it more this time around.

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Thank you for taking the time to read, and to comment. I always enjoy hearing different points of view about the books I am reading, even if we disagree!