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The Scarlet Pimpernel
by Emmuska Orczy
by Emmuska Orczy
So boring. So boring.
I read this weeks ago, and I've been waiting ever since for someone else in the group to come out with a great review. Something transformative. It would compare this to Radcliff and nineteenth-century opera and talk about modes of romanticism. Or it'd be one of those intensely personal reviews about a grimey, sweaty summer spent singing in the chorus line for a production of Pimpernel, and the backstage affair whose passions ebbed in counterpoint to the story. Or, I don't know, something.
*crickets*
It's not like I got anything either. Except maybe one thing.
Of all the times in recent years for this book to hit my radar screen, this is probably the worst. It's not about rescuing people from the violence of the French Revolution. It's about those poor, persecuted rich people. It's horrible, they've never hurt anybody -- well, except for the starvation, and the institutionalized remnants of feudal pseudo-slavery, and the "I'm not concerned about the very poor" -- oh sorry, wrong guy. "let them eat cake." There. That's the one. This is a book convinced that people are interesting and worthy of respect by virtue of being very wealthy, and I just.
It's a small part of my job to absorb national political mood and reflect it back in different analytical modes. And I was not in the fucking mood for "let them eat cake."
I read this weeks ago, and I've been waiting ever since for someone else in the group to come out with a great review. Something transformative. It would compare this to Radcliff and nineteenth-century opera and talk about modes of romanticism. Or it'd be one of those intensely personal reviews about a grimey, sweaty summer spent singing in the chorus line for a production of Pimpernel, and the backstage affair whose passions ebbed in counterpoint to the story. Or, I don't know, something.
*crickets*
It's not like I got anything either. Except maybe one thing.
Of all the times in recent years for this book to hit my radar screen, this is probably the worst. It's not about rescuing people from the violence of the French Revolution. It's about those poor, persecuted rich people. It's horrible, they've never hurt anybody -- well, except for the starvation, and the institutionalized remnants of feudal pseudo-slavery, and the "I'm not concerned about the very poor" -- oh sorry, wrong guy. "let them eat cake." There. That's the one. This is a book convinced that people are interesting and worthy of respect by virtue of being very wealthy, and I just.
It's a small part of my job to absorb national political mood and reflect it back in different analytical modes. And I was not in the fucking mood for "let them eat cake."
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Ceridwen
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Apr 25, 2012 08:19pm
Yeah, not the best people to rescue in your Scooby Doo missions.
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I would point out that The Scarlet Pimpernel doesn't save just aristocrats. Since it was necessary for the purposes of the story to have Marguerite's friend's family rescued, they have aristocrats. But actually, aristocrats were a very small percentage (much less than a third) of those who were killed in the French Revolution and Orczy follows that when her hero rescues lower-class people in some of the sequels.
