Marguerite St. Just was a beautiful, anti-Monarchist, French actress who fell in love with and married Sir Percy Blakeney, a handsome, rich, stupid, English aristocrat. Her brother, Armand, fell in love with a French Marquis’ daughter and was beaten almost to death for daring to love above his class. In revenge, Marguerite exposed the Marquis’ plot with Austria to overthrow the French government, resulting in the execution of the Marquis and his family. Now, Marguerite feels terrible guilt and is lightly resented by her husband and her wealthy peers over it. (But she mostly doesn't care because she's busy telling anyone who will listen how stupid her husband is, and also because no one actually shuns her because that would be common.)

Meanwhile, a League of wealthy English aristocrats are secretly working together to rescue wealthy French aristocrats from the common people of Paris, led by a mysterious man who signs his correspondence with a red flower (scarlet pimpernel). A French envoy to England, Chauvelin, discovers that Armand is helping the Scarlet Pimpernel (why would he do that? no reason given) and blackmails Marguerite into giving him information about the Pimpernel’s identity. Marguerite discovers that her husband is the Scarlet Pimpernel and is only pretending to be stupid and so now she loves him again, but it's almost too late. She races to France to warn Percy before Chauvelin captures him, but only finds an incredibly racist stereotype of a Jewish man. After hours of hiding in the back of an inn and then in the back of a wagon waiting for her husband, Marguerite is surprised to learn that the Jewish man was the Pimpernel all along! No one recognized him because Percy is super hot and the incredibly racist Jewish stereotype was so ugly. He has already tricked Chauvelin and rescued Armand, and Marguerite was so brave to hide in the back of that wagon so he forgives her for, uh, calling out a traitor.

It's really hard to put into words how much I hated this. The entire premise of the story relies on the “truth” that aristocrats are unquestionably superior to everyone else. The one non-aristocratic character whose thoughts we are privy to, an innkeeper, sincerely believes that he is privileged to be allowed to serve the members of the League who visit his business. The evidence that the commoners of France are bad people is that a similar French innkeeper only provides room and board in exchange for money without being deferential enough to the “well-born” customers. Quelle horreur! The only interesting dynamic here is that the English hate the French so much that it's almost subversive to care about even their most privileged elite. Nothing brings sworn enemies together like class war, I guess.

The age of the book is no excuse. 1905 is fifty years after Dickens was writing about social justice and over a century is plenty of hindsight to write about the French Revolution. Even Shakespeare managed to tell stories about aristocrats while writing their servants as fleshed-out human beings with their own thoughts and opinions. The book is only a “product of its time” in that the author was desperately clinging to the empire that gave her barony its power as it was about to decline and fall.

There is no doubt that the French Revolution and the Reign of Terror far overreached its original objective and executed many clergy and commoners accused of crimes without evidence or trial. However, the Scarlet Pimpernel does not care about them. There is no discussion among the members of the League about stopping the Reign of Terror, rescuing anyone else, or even destroying a guillotine or two. He only rescues wealthy and powerful aristocrats (whom the book repeatedly calls “innocents”).

The alleged cultural value of this story is as the prototype of a swashbuckling hero with a secret identity and a love triangle where two of the sides are the same person in disguise. However, I wouldn't consider rescuing aristocrats to be particularly heroic, and the only swashbuckling actions we see the Pimpernel take are disguising himself as an old woman and a gross stereotype. The doltish Percy is admittedly a great ruse, but Marguerite never has strong feelings about the Pimpernel one way or the other until after she discovers he's really her husband. I did enjoy that the book was so close on Marguerite's point of view throughout, so we always know her thoughts and the story is revealed to the audience at the same time as her, but that becomes a detriment in the second half of the book when she spends hours hiding in small spaces so she can watch the real action happen.

There could be some purpose in teaching this book in school literature class to show how the values and beliefs of an artist are reflected in their art, but there doesn't seem to be much critical analysis to that end around the internet. The story is culturally beloved but I didn't find anything to appreciate here aside from the audiobook narrator's hilarious foppish accent. ( )

Lady Blakeney, the sine qua non of fashionable English society, hides behind her quick wit the secret sorrow of a husband who is no longer the man she fell in love with. Little does she know the secret pain behind her husband's own mask...

Also there is dashing derring-dos - but really (if you've ever seen the movie) it's quite startling how nearly-entirely the novel is from Marguerite's point of view and how focused it is on their marriage.

This book isn't really "good literature" but it is awfully fun. ( )

I'm quite surprised this book appears on so many classic romance lists, because I'm not even sure if it was a romance.

It's a story of beautiful Marguerite, called the most intelligent woman in Europe, who married a very stupid, but extremely rich man, Sir Percy Blakeney. Their marriage is not a happy one, they are disappointed in one another and they hardly even speak. Marguerite is blackmailed into helping a French agent to discover the identity of a mysterious English hero, the Scarlet Pimpernel. Then, feeling guilty about what she'd done, she goes to France to save the great man.

I had two main problems with this book: first, most of the plot didn't make any sense whatsoever. Why did the Pimpernel's people keep writing notes to one another, why didn't they simply talk? They were oficially friends, why didn't they visit each other? All this plot at the ball was stupid. Next - Marguerite went to France to help her hero and she did absolutely nothing, she didn't even try to help the Pimpernel. The French agent was trying to catch a dangerous, elusive enemy - so he rented the slowest possible carriage, which Margueritecan could easily follow on foot? It is all so silly and pointless, that I kept rolling my eyes. The second problem was that the book was generally quite boring. It felt much longer than it really was.

I'm really sorry that we didn't get Sir Percy's perspective, I'm sure it would make this book much more interesting and deeper.

Generally, I didn't enjoy this book very much, but I'm glad I finally read it.

(I first published this review here: https://dominikasreadingchallenge.blogspot.com/2019/01/the-scarlet-pimpernel-by-... ( )

I am a few chapters into the book and noticing that the narrative tone is very pro-aristocrat, which feels odd for my time. I guess the Baroness lived at a time when wealth and education were less morally compromised in our imagination. The story is more adventurous, less philosophical.

Further on the story becomes more engrossing. The action is attention-grabbing, and the machinations of Chauvelin, the compromised position of Lady Marguerite, combine to create a higher level of tension. I also notice that the identity of the Scarlet Pimpernel remains hidden, unlike the film. In fact, the point of view stays almost exlusively with Marguerite, which adds to the layer of mystery, but sometimes detracts from the sense of plot.

As I finish the story, it seems that the best part was in the middle: Marguerite's climactic confrontation with Percy, her discovery, and then her rapid adventure to France. I see all the elements that made the Leslie Howard film so powerful and atmospheric. But the final heroic act stretches the imagination a little too far. ( )

*3.7

Book club pick ;)

I am quite fond of the 1982 film starring Anthony Andrews, Jane Seymour and Ian McKellen (as the villain☺). It is one of my husband’s “things to watch on a rainy day”…

So, naturally, I was curious when my book club decided to give the original novel a try. Just to get it off my chest at once – I like the film much better.

Things I liked:

- Once again, seeing the beginnings of all these superheroes with a double life. (And Marguerite is about as clueless as Lois Lane, he-he.)
- Percy and Marguerite as a couple and their dialogues.
- Marguerite has quite a bit of agency – courage under fire, getting shit done in a crisis etc.
- And the story is fun, of course.

Things I really did not like:

- Every time Marguerite has agency or does something brave, the author seems to say, “oops, that was too much” and pulls her back, and it’s “weak woman”, “childlike” “only a woman” etc. To me it seemed that Baroness Orczy was having a tug of war between what she wanted to write and what she was expected to write. I make allowances for the time and the place, but it was still very visible and annoying.
- I got tired of Marguerite being described as "cleverest woman in Europe" every five pages or so. (Who did the IQ tests, I wonder? ;))
- I wanted better writing! I struggled a bit with the pompous style.
- Lots of class bias. (According to what I read about the French revolution, most of the people executed during the Reign of Terror were peasants and workers.)
- Casual anti-semitism. Ouch.
( )