Sympathizing with The Aristocracy
A Look at Emmuska Orczy's Book, The Scarlet Pimpernel
Since I started college, I’ve been fascinated by the French Revolution. Stories like A Tale of Two Cities, The Count of Monte Cristo, and Les Miserables have captured my imagination for some time (admittedly, I’ve had difficulty finishing some of these novels). Over time, I’ve been specifically interested in the differences between the American Revolution and the French.
Having that as the context, several years ago my wife introduced me to a movie she grew up watching: The Scarlet Pimpernel.1 I thoroughly enjoyed it, precisely because of my fascination with the French Revolution. Despite enjoying it, I haven’t rewatched it since. I knew, though, that it was based on a book and, since then, have wanted to read it. A few weeks ago, I saw an audio version of the novel available on Canon+ and decided it was time. Not only had it been a while since I’d read anything touching on the French Revolution, but I was also at a point in my reading where I was looking for some good fiction.
The Scarlet Pimpernel
If you’re not familiar with the story, let me set the scene for you. The circumstances are those surrounding the French Revolution in Paris. The characters are from both England and France. The aristocracy is being eliminated through daily executions via the guillotine. However, the republicans continue to be thwarted by a band of Englishmen whose leader goes by the pseudonym, the Scarlet Pimpernel. This band of Englishmen continuously succeed in smuggling French aristocrats, or “aristos” as the republicans frequently refer to them in the book, over the channel to England.
This Pimpernel and his men have deceived even some of the republic’s best investigators. Not only do his men continually slip past the republicans looking for aristocrats, but the Pimpernel himself has escaped Paris right under the nose of the agents of the republic numerous times. You get the idea as you’re reading the novel that this Pimpernel character simply enjoys seeing the French Republicans vexed. As the novel goes on, though, you also realize he and his band of merry men also care deeply for these hunted French aristocrats.
I don’t want to give any spoilers, so I won’t go into too much detail about the events of the story. However, I will say that the author does an excellent job of tying in personal themes and relationships with the broader context of the revolution and the Pimpernel’s mission. This book is a blend of serious topics (obviously, when you have families fleeing execution), mystery, and love. And by love, I don’t mean fluffy romance, I mean actual love that acts in the interest of the beloved. Yes, it’s somewhat sentimental, but that sentimentality is in the broader context of difficulty, sacrifice, repentance, and forgiveness.
And that ties in beautifully with one of the primary takeaways from this book.
Takeaways
This book has a fantastic example of a husband and wife doing for each other what they should, with a particular focus on the wife in this case. That’s part of what made it so refreshing. It’s not at all a feministic story, where the wife (although I suppose nowadays a couple being married would in and of itself be too traditional) decides her husband needs her and rescues him from whatever danger his foolishness has landed him in. Instead, she comes to his side to help him accomplish the mission to which he’s committed himself. And, even as he’s accomplishing that mission, he has to find a way to both accomplish his goal and save her from danger. It was a breath of fresh air.
Something else I realized about this book is that it takes a different angle than a lot of French Revolution stories. In this novel, your sympathies are guided to lie with the aristocracy, not the republic. The atrocities, except for one as far as I remember, are committed by the republic and its agents, not the aristocracy. Many stories I’ve heard dealing with the French Revolution are sympathetic to the republic. “Yes, they committed crimes against the people they were supposedly serving, and yes, they murdered the aristocrats, some unjustly, but we all know that the aristocrats as a class deserved whatever they got,” these stories seem to say.
Not so in this novel. The injustice, the consequences of the actions of the republic, are made plain. Wives and children flee to England leaving husbands and fathers behind in France because, if they don’t take this opportunity, they may all be executed. Then, even if the fathers escape France, the families then must live lives as refugees for a time before they become established in their new home. The French people show contempt for anyone who tries to put himself above anyone else (except for the republic’s agents, of course) because Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity demand all be equal (again, except for the republican officials). The way the republic sees the “aristos” as no better than animals worthy of slaughter for the crimes of their class. Truly, the Enlightenment at its best.
The perspective is a healthy antidote to our time. While the author clearly takes the side of the aristocracy, that’s often the perspective we moderns need to challenge our assumptions. This novel opened my eyes to how close we are to a kind of veiled version of what the revolutionaries believed. It can be veiled now because we’ve already digested on a societal level some of the assumptions of the Enlightenment on which the Revolution was founded: individual autonomy, hatred of hierarchy, identity politics, etc. A good French Revolution story like this one can remind us of the consequences of such ideas.
Conclusion
I recommend this book, especially if you’re interested in the French Revolution. As I wrote above, it’s funny, serious, eye-opening, and convicting. And, to top it off, it’s just a roaring good story that’s plain fun to read.
No, it’s not at the literary level of A Tale of Two Cities or War and Peace. But it is a story that displays a world being put right side up, and that is like a sip of cold water to the parched modern soul.
In Him and For His Glory
This was the 1982 film, starring Anthony Andrews, Jane Seymour, and Ian McKellen.