The Scarlet Pimpernel

Posted on Jan 9, 2012 by in Book Reviews, Books, Featured Articles, Quotes, Reflections | 0 comments

I don’t read a lot of fiction (aside form children’s books ;) ) so I decided my first book of the year should be one.

A classic (somewhat historical) fiction at that :)

“The Scarlet Pimpernel” by Baroness Emmuska Orczy.  This is a first and most popular of her adventure series.  The setting is 1972 during the Reign of Terror. I like to think of it as the Batman of the 18th Century: a disliked persona by day and a mysterious hero by night!

What I liked:

  • Themes of adventure, bravery, heroism, romance,  and clever disguises.
  • Easy flow of the plot and narrative.
  • I read some parts of the book through Google Books and listened to the entirety of it in audio format.  I must say I enjoyed listening to the French and English accents!
  • the heroine Marguerite’s devotion to her brother and to her husband.
  • the willingness of these clandestine heroes to be thought of as shallow, brainless, and spineless men by the public in order to mask their courageous gallantry.
Odds Life!

 What I didn’t like:

  • Not all of the Scarlet Pimpernel’s followers have noble motives for risking their lives but for the mere mere “sport” of it!
  • Seeming lack of depth to their character development.
  • Characters:  The vanity and pride of the main protagonist. They also use cursing exclamations ( though nothing tantamount to today’s profane expletives!), smoking, drinking, and vanity (I already said that didn’t I?).
“We seek him here, we seek him there,
Those Frenchies seek him everywhere.
Is he in heaven?–Is he in hell?
That demmed, elusive Pimpernel”
Chapter 12-p266
.
“..and by the time they all landed at Dover he had found time to get into some of the sumptuous clothes which he loved, and of which he always kept a supply on board his yacht”. Chapter 31  p.695

Final thoughts

I found the book The Scarlet Pimpernelquite entertaining (the English and French accents of the audio reader was an excellent addition!).  The conflict between Lady Marguerite and her husband Percy reached my romantic side. I look forward to listening through this one again with my husband.  He’s really good at copying accents!

But behind the entertainment I am reminded of a dark truth that proves the depravity of mankind evidenced in the horrors of the French Revolution atrocities.

“A surging, seething, murmuring crowd of beings that are human only in name, for to the eye and ear they seem naught but savage creatures, animated by vile passions and by the lust of vengeance and of hate.” Chapter 1 -p9

“Their ancestors have oppressed the people, had crushed them under the scarlet heels of their dainty buckled shoes, and now the people had become the rulers of France and crushed their former masters –not beneath their heel, for they went shoeless mostly in these days—but with a more effectual weight, the knife of the guillotine” -Chapter 1 p10

“Yet with all that, no one dared to interfere.” -p.57

 

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