Review: Agnes Grey, by Anne Brontë

Review: Agnes Grey, by Anne Brontë

by Rich Horton

My latest Victorian novel is Anne Brontë's first novel, Agnes Grey. This was Anne's first novel, published simultaneously with her sister Emily's only novel, Wuthering Heights, in 1847. I had read Charlotte's first published novel, Jane Eyre, long ago, and quite liked it; and I read Wuthering Heights for a high school class, and hated it. But -- to some extent because I accepted the long held notion that Anne was the least of the three sisters as a novelist, I hadn't read either of her novelsI think this notion is less accepted these days, or, at least, Anne's novels (perhaps particularly her second, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall) are held in much higher critical esteem now than in the past. (Perhaps this can be laid in part at the feet of Charlotte, at least in the case of The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, of which she wrote it "had an unfavourable reception. At this I cannot wonder. The choice of subject was an entire mistake." Charlotte also prevented republication of Wildfell Hall after Anne's death in 1849.)

I had determined I should read Anne's work, and also Charlotte's later novels. I bought copies of both of Anne's novels, and decided to read Agnes Grey first, primarily because it is significantly shorter, at perhaps 70,000 words. I have a copy of the Oxford World's Classics edition, edited by Robert Inglesfield and Hilda Marsden, with a useful introduction, and endnotes, by Sally Shuttleworth, as well as a copy of Charlotte Brontë's somewhat notorious "Biographical Notice of Ellis and Acton Bell" (signed as by Currer Bell,) written for the second edition (1850) of Wuthering Heights/Agnes Grey.

The novel is told in first person, from Agnes' point of view. She is the younger of two surviving daughters of Richard Grey, a clergyman. Agnes' mother is from a richer family than Richard Grey's, but she was disinherited because her father disapproved of the marriage. However, they live happily enough until Richard decides to make a risky investment (out of guilt over his poor circumstances relative to those his wife grew up in) and inevitably loses all his money. Eventually the two sisters try to make some additional money to help the family make ends meet -- Mary, the elder, is a talented artist and will try to sell some paintings, and Agnes resolves to become a governess.

Her first situation is with the family of a Mr. Bloomfield, a wealthy man, though but a tradesman. There are three children, all quite young. The mother is convinced they are angels, but of course they are utterly horrible. The boy is a bully, tortures small animals, etc., while the older girl is incorrigibly lazy. Neither will attend to their lessons, and both know very well how to complain to their parents about Agnes' efforts to correct them. Both parents are quite horrible to, as are the grandmother and uncle, and before long Agnes is dismissed.

After a little while back home, Agnes determines to get another position, taking care to insist on higher pay, and on clients of a better class. The new family, the Murrays, live at the excellently named Horton Lodge, rather further from her home than she has yet been. There are four children, all somewhat older than the Bloomfield children. Mr. Murray is described as a "roystering country squire", while Mrs. Murray is a handsome woman, apparently much interested in fashion and parties. The elder Miss Murray, Rosalie, is a budding beauty of 16, a pleasant enough girl but vain and shallow. Her sister Matilda, at 14, is a hoyden, something of a tomboy, rather impolite and inconsiderate but not quite terrible. The two boys are 11 and 10 -- the elder a somewhat normal boy, though not much of a scholar, the younger being more of a piece of work, an habitual liar. But with a year or two both are bundled off to boarding school.

So most of Agnes' efforts are to educate Rosalie and Matilda. And both girls are capricious, not much interested in learning, and not willing to hew to any schedule, so that Agnes is required sometimes to be up very early, only to have them sleep in, and otherwise put to much inconvenience. Still and all, this situation proves a bit better than at the Bloomfields, and Agnes stays for a few years, and thus we see the main action of the novel.

This concerns a couple of things ... Rosalie's "coming out" and eventual marriage (with sad results); and in the interim her very unwise flirting ways with numerous local young men. Secondly, there is drama at the church: the vicar is a youngish man, very conceited and not terribly religious, and soon he gets a new curate, Mr. Weston, a poorer man, but devoted and virtuous and very religious. The vicar takes an interest in Rosalie -- but is not rich enough for either she or her mother. And, the reader soon realizes, Mr. Weston is just the man for Agnes Grey. The novel quite nicely wends it ways through various complications and misunderstandings -- Rosalie setting her cap at Mr. Weston just to be mean, Agnes and Mr. Weston both help some of the poorer and older members of the parish but sometimes this becomes awkward, and eventually Mr. Weston gets a new position, and Agnes also leaves Horton Lodge, as her charges age out and, more importantly, her father dies, and she decides to open a school with her mother.

It's a fine novel, if not a great one. Honesty forces one to admit that Agnes can be a little prosy, and rather prudish (if in response to true provocations.) Brontë's prose is just fine. Her depiction in particular of Rosalie's fate, very much driven by her character (and that of her mother) is effective, and Agnes' love story is nice. On the whole, I enjoyed the novel but didn't love it. I understand that The Tenant of Wildfell Hall is a different animal, more challenging, more modern, and I will get to it sometime. 

I should add that there are very distinct autobiographical aspects to Agnes Grey, particularly as to the two governess jobs Agnes holds. Both are apparently based to some extent -- a very considerable extent, it seems, in the case of the first one -- on Anne's own experiences as a governess. (I wonder if the models for these characters read the novel and were embarrassed or enraged.)
In addition, the novel appeared at a time when the general mistreatment of governesses had become, or was becoming, something of a national issue, and this novel certainly contributed to that conversation.

Review: The Count of 9, by "A. A. Fair" (Erle Stanley Gardner)

Review: The Count of 9, by "A. A. Fair" (Erle Stanley Gardner)

by Rich Horton

A few months ago I read and reviewed my first "A. A. Fair" novel. "A. A. Fair" was the pseudonym Erle Stanley Gardner used for his books about Cool and Lam -- that is to say, Bertha Cool, a rather portly 60ish woman who owns a detective agency, and her partner, Donald Lam, a scrawny ex-lawyer who is pretty much the brains of the outfit. That book was Crows Can't Count, and it didn't fully work for me. This book is somewhat later in the series than Crows Can't Count, and I have to say it didn't quite work for me either. I have a couple more Cool and Lams, and I'll try them some time.

I have two copies of this one, actually. I bought the Hard Case Crime reprint at Worldcon last year, with a nice Robert McGinnis cover. And a few months later I was at an estate sale and there were some '60s Gardners on sale for a buck apiece, and why not? So I bought the 1962 Pocket Books reprint (in the 5th printing, from 1969), with a very nice Mitchell Hooks cover. I note for the nitpickers that the Hard Case Crime edition claims "First publication in 50 years", but as it appeared in 2018, it was really only 49 years!

Gardner wrote an introduction to this novel, urging a more humane approach to penology, especially the treatment of prisoners, and better efforts at rehabilitation. He dedicated the novel to Douglas C. Rigg, warden of the Minnesota State Prison at Stillwater, and apparently a leading light, as of the late '50s, in that movement. (The novel itself does not really touch on those themes.)

As the novel opens, Bertha Cool is arranging for some publicity for their detective organization, via some photographs, conveniently featuring the new and quite attractive filing clerk. These pictures have been arranged by the publicist for Dean Crockett, a rich "explorer" type. In exchange, Crockett wants Bertha to handle security at an upcoming party, where he'll be discussing his latest trip, and also showing off some of his collection. But a jade Buddha figurine had recently been stolen, so he figures he needs protection.

Bertha is only too dazzled by the prospect of a magazine article about her, and she agrees. (The file clerk, as well, is perhaps only too dazzled by the photographer's compliments, but that's another story, sort of.) But Donald has concerns, and they are justified when Bertha calls in the middle of the night, demanding he come to Crockett's penthouse. And when he gets there, he finds that another Buddha figurine has been stolen, and also a poison dart blowgun Crockett had acquired in a trip to Africa.

What follows is a dizzying sequence, concerning things like Donald cleverly recovering both stolen items (which seems to be not wholly satisfactory to Crockett,) Donald uncovering the photographer's sleazy side business, some intrigue with the latest Mrs. Crockett, a beautiful woman, a painter, who's on the outs with her husband; more intrigue with Mrs. Crockett's also lovely friend and sometime model; the murder of Dean Crockett; dealings with a noted fence; questions about the nature of Crockett's business; and a lot of sometimes strained examination of the security at the penthouse (including an x-ray machine in the elevator), and of the murder itself, and the weapon -- the recovered blowgun. Donald gets badly beaten (apparently a common occurrence,) the police get involved and bungle everything except that Donald saves them ...

It's pretty fun, but also a bit implausible. It's a very fast-moving book. Donald's techniques are outrageous -- he plants evidence, lies all the time, frames people he knows are guilty, but of course he gets results. He deflects the attentions of the bad women who want to use their wiles on him; but (it's implied, not shown) that he's happy to sleep with innocent women if they want it (though he seems to have on ongoing relationship with his secretary, Elsie Brand.) (All the sex in these books is implied, not at all shown, and I waver between thinking that's effective, and thinking that a bit more directness (as I think would have been the case not much later) would be nice.) As I said above, I don't think it wholly successful -- a bit too pat in some ways, and a bit too implausible. 

Review: Travel Light, by Naomi Mitchison

Review: Travel Light, by Naomi Mitchison

by Rich Horton

This weekend, at the Montreal convention Scintillation, I bought a book from the Montreal bookstore Argo Books (which is Scintillation's bookdealer) -- a book I'd never heard of. This is Travel Light, by Naomi Mitchison. I have known of Mitchison for a long time, but only for one book, the 1962 SF novel Memoirs of a Spacewoman. But this book, first published in 1952, looked enticing -- a fantasy about a girl who is saved from her evil stepmother by her nurse, who turns into a bear and spirits the girl away to live with the bears. This edition is from Small Beer Press's Peapod Classics line, and was published in 2005.

First a bit about Mitchison. She lived a very long time -- from 1897 to 1999. She was born in Scotland, and her maiden name was Haldane -- and, yes, the great scientist J. B. S. Haldane was her older brother. The longevity may have been in her genes -- three of her children, all prominent biologists, lived to be 98, 94, and 89. Her husband, Dick Mitchison, was a Labour MP, later named a Life Peer as Baron Mitchison. In her own right, Naomi was named a Commander of the British Empire. Mitchison was a very prolific writer, publishing over 90 books, and is considered one of the giants of Scottish writing. She was a committed Leftist, though she was frustrated by such things as their defense (or at least avoidance of criticism) of the Moscow Show Trials, and by the end results of the Russian Revolution, and she was good friends with J. R. R. Tolkien, and indeed helped edit The Lord of the Rings. She also worked with her brother on some genetic experiments, so she had scientific chops as well. She was a regular visitor to Africa, especially Botswana (which may account for me thinking at one time that she was a South African writer.)

Her best novel may be The Corn Kings and the Spring Queen (1931), though Memoirs of a Spacewoman is also highly regarded (especially in the SF community), and I suspect there are likely many neglected jewels in her oeuvre. She's probably best known for her historical fiction, but she wrote a lot of Fantasy, some SF, and some contemporary fiction (including the notorious We Have Been Warned (1935), which was censored (more, I gather, for the controversial treatment of sexual issues that for its warning about fascism) and which nearly got her publishers prosecuted.

As for Travel Light ... Halla is the daughter of a King, but when the King remarries her stepmother insists that "the brat must be got rid of." And so her nurse, who is part bear, takes her away to live with the bears. Quite soon, however, she encounters a dragon, who offers to adopt her himself (thus avoiding the issue of hibernation.) And for some long time, Halla lives with the dragon, and considers herself a dragon as well. She learns to hate human "heroes", who only want to kill dragons; and to covet treasure in the dragonish way. But she won't ever grow wings ... and when her dragon father is killed, she is off again (rescued from the murderous hero by a Valkyrie).

Then comes her traveling time, for she comes across a wanderer, whom she recognizes as Odin, the All-Father. And he gives her some advice -- travel light -- as she has decided to go to Micklegard (Constantinople) where she thinks the dragon emperor might live. On her journey she joins with a small band of men who have a petition to bring to the Emperor, concerning a corrupt Governor. As Halla can speak all languages (human and animal) she offers to interpret for them. In Micklegard they encounter more troubles -- a complicated bureaucracy, and more corruption, and lack of money. Here Halla's ability to speak to horses comes in handy ...

And things do resolve themselves, but with complicated results. For one of the man, his hometown is not worth returning to, so he and Halla head up the river to Holmgard (Novgorod), and a final resolution, again with ambiguities, and violence and sadness mixed with hope; and with some revelations about Halla as well.

This really is a delightful book. It is often funny -- the attitudes of bears, and horses, and the Valkyrie, and especially dragons are amusing. The syncretic mixing of myths and fairy stories is very well handled. But it's no pure comedy -- there are very dark events, real pain, real growth. It's also effectively "out of time". It's honest and deep when it needs to be, extravagantly imagined, morally affecting, and at the core optimistic despite depicting much tragedy and human wrongs. The (unsigned) introduction is quite good, but its opening claim -- that, with luck and the right illustrator, Travel Light could have become one of the last century's most popular children's books. That's all fine except -- I don't think it's a children's book. It's an adult book (though fine for children to read.) But I do endorse this comment from the introduction: "more than just a story: it is a map for living."

Review: The Burning Air, by Eugene Mirabelli

The Burning Air, by Eugene Mirabelli

a review by Rich Horton

Eugene Mirabelli was born in Massachusetts in 1931 -- same state, a month earlier than my father. He became a professor of literture, and wrote his thesis on Faulkner, and taught for a few years. His first novel, The Burning Air, was published in 1959, and a few more followed. He married Margaret Black in 1959, and they had three children, and Gene published three novels. She worked as an editor, and after Gene stopped teaching he worked for a left wing weekly, and returned to academia later. More novels such as The Language Nobody Speaks (reviewed here) and The Goddess in Love with a Horse followed. Margaret died suddenly in 2010, and Renato the Painter was published soon afterwards. In 2003 he had published a very fine story in F&SF, "The Only Known Jump Across Time", and several other SF and Fantasy stories followed, in F&SF, Asimov's, and Not One of Us. (I reprinted three of these stories, in my Best of the Year volumes and in Lightspeed.) Gene is still alive at 92.

I think his SF/F stories from the decade between 2003 and 2013 are remarkable and deserve a collection. I decided to explore his non-SF work a few years ago, and I read The Language Nobody Speaks (1999), an erotically charged and quite effective book, reviewed here. Just a couple of months ago I saw a post about the paperback edition of The Burning Air, which, not unusually for paperbacks in that era, emphasized the erotic aspects of the novel (which are present, but hardly in a sleazy way.) (The cover, which is really not sleazy at all, is by the great Robert McGinnis, and it's fairly faithful to the novel except giving Giulia blond hair.) I looked for a copy to try, and bought the first edition, and I've finally read it. 

It's a short novel, just under 40,000 words. It's told by a young man named George, who is visiting his girlfriend Giulia Molla's parents for the first time, with the intention of getting their approval for the couple to marry. But the novel's first sentence tells us how it's going to end: "The last time I saw Guilia was at the train station in Bayfield." The rest of the book tells the story of a seemingly rather nice weekend, but over it all hangs a sort of dread as the reader knows that George and Guilia's relationship is doomed.

Both young people are Italian-Americans, nominally Catholic, well-educated. There may be hints to fissures early in some of that -- does George's name as opposed to Giulia's hint his family is more assimilated? (After all Giulia's grandmother insists on calling him Giorgio -- but also, Giulia's teenaged brother is named Michael. And, we learn eventually, the Molla's have been in the US much longer than George's family.) George may have been raised Catholic, but he never goes to Mass, and indeed Giulia conspires to skip Mass this weekend. As for education, George is working as a free-lance journalist, but vows to get a teaching job if his finances remain vulnerable; while Giulia has a chance for a graduate fellowship in Italy, which her mother desperately wants her to attend. But there are other issues -- the couple have been dating for about three years, but for a period they had broken up, and Giulia had had another boyfriend, of whom George is very jealous. They are sleeping together -- and they take the chance to make love a couple of times over the weekend -- but it's clear they feel a bit guilty about doing this knowing that Giulia's mother and grandmother, at least, are very opposed to premarital sex.

The weekend involves some awkward conversations between George and the rest of Giulia's family -- as he helps her father do yard work (and fixes the lawnmower), as he washes some dishes, goes to the beach with Giulia and Michael, visits with married friends of Giulia, shares a big family dinner, and as the two tell Mr and Mrs Molla of their plans to marry. Mr Molla gives his approval though Mrs Molla is clearly against it. But Giulia and George are determined, almost to the point of eloping. And in the end -- which is ambiguous in a sense but clearly a true end as the first sentence indicates -- it seems that the real problem is with George himself.

This is a fine first novel, though I'd say clearly a first novel, and not wholly successful. The structure is elegant, but the long middle does drag just a bit, though the events portrayed are all important. The conclusion is strong and moving, as George seems to ultimately shy away from trusting himself. This isn't by any means Mirabelli's best work, but it's a good debut that presaged a strong and varied career -- though I'm not sure Mirabelli's novels ever had broad commercial success.

Review: Clovis, by Michael Fessier

Clovis, by Michael Fessier

a review by Rich Horton

A couple of months ago I read an issue of F&SF with a story by Michael Fessier, an author with whom I was completely unfamiliar. I read up on him, and learned that he had written a couple genre or genre-adjacent novels, and, especially after I enjoyed his story in that issue, I decided I'd track down the novels. And here then is Clovis, a very short novel (about 33,000 words), published in 1948. (It was reprinted as recently as 2000.)

Fessier (1905-1988) published several SF or Fantasy stories (three of them reprinted in F&SF and another anthologized by Murray Leinster) and a couple of fantastical novels. He's better known as a screenwriter, with credits including the Fred Astaire/Rita Hayworth musical You'll Never Get Rich and even an episode of Gilligan's Island. In the '30s and '40s he worked in Hollywood, writing a couple of dozen produced screenplays, then he moved to New York and wrote for television, with his final contributions being six episodes for The High Chaparral, ending in 1969. From 1961 until his death in 1988 he was married to the actress Lilian Bond, but he must have been married at least once before because the jacket copy on this novel states that as of its publication in 1949 he is married with two children. (The 1940 census shows that his wife was named Suta, and he had two children, Josephine (3 years old) and Michael (10 months old).) He also wrote a good deal of short fiction -- not just the SF but a fair amount of crime fiction and some fiction for the slicks. He wrote at least one other novels: Fully Dressed and in his Right Mind, a noirish novel with fantastical elements, from 1935. His papers are at the University of Oregon, and their catalog claims manuscripts for three novels -- I can't find the third unless it is Nessuno l'avrebbe detto, published in Italy in 1949 (but in translation). That means "Nobody Would Ever Say", and I'm inclined to believe it's a translation of Clovis.

Clovis is an intelligent parrot, the result of hundreds of years of breeding by the von Lerner family. The last of the von Lerners is August, and Clovis is the last of his line of parrots. They live in Brazil. Clovis is remarkably intelligent (much more so than August) and he is cynical, and he is tired of his life. He decides to leave August, and find some parrots, and give them the benefit of his greater knowledge. He also might get some female action. But of course, as he learns to his displeasure, life in the jungle is harder than he had realized, and the parrots don't have any interest in his intellectual discourse.

He is captured by some local Indians, who are ready to roast him when an American named Thad rescues him -- only to cage him and put him on a boat to New York, figuring a talking parrot will fetch him a tidy sum. But Clovis escapes, and ends up in a pet shop. He manipulates his potential buyers until he ends up with a nice-seeming old lady, but of course that doesn't go well either. And his adventures continue -- he uncovers a plot to murder a young heiress, cures her cousin of alcoholism, and ends up back in the hands of Thad, who has fallen for the heiress, and she for him except she is convinced she has no sex drive and frustrated when Thad won't confirm the diagnosis by giving in to her attempts at seduction. Thad's moneymaking schemes come to nothing until he runs into a crooked evangelist -- and suddenly Clovis' cynicism and ability to talk have an outlet. But ...

Well, I won't say more. The book is out and out satire, though mostly somewhat gentle (except in the treatment of the evangelist.) And it is often very funny. The romance plot with Thad and the heiress, and the drinking cure, are almost Wodehousian. Clovis' cynical utterances are quite amusing as well. The murder plot is very light-hearted, and doesn't come off quite as amusing as the rest of the book. The book doesn't outstay its welcome -- though it probably reaches the limits of its welcome! Fun stuff on the whole, and I have to say I'm glad I read it.

Old Bestseller Review: The Count of Monte Cristo, by Alexandre Dumas

The Count of Monte Cristo, by Alexandre Dumas (with Auguste Maquet)

a review by Rich Horton

This is one of the most famous 19th Century novels, and has never stopped being read, and adapted. The central story has been the basis for any number of works, including one of the greatest SF novels of all time: The Stars My Destination, by Alfred Bester. I myself have known the vague outline of the story for a long time, partly due to osmosis, partly due to such fractional adaptions as the Mr. Magoo cartoon version. I found a free audiobook version, from Librivox, and figured it would be a good thing to listen to for the next 54 hours of driving! It's read by David Clarke, and he does an excellent job, if on occasion his accents get a touch hammy. (That said, his versions of the Count's many voices are very nice.) I should mention that I complained about the last Librivox audiobook I tried, because the narration was pretty amateurish. This is much much better. (I will note that there's at least one other Librivox reading of The Count of Monte Cristo, and the reviews of it suggest that it is not nearly as good as the one I've read.) I don't know which translation Clarke is reading, but I also have the 2003 Penguin Classics edition, translated by Robin Buss. I believe the Buss translation is better than the one Clarke is reading, but that one is not bad. (I suspect it may be the earliest English translation, from 1846; or one of the later translations that were largely based on that one, such as an 1894 version that Robin Buss mentions a few times in his introduction.)

Alexandre Dumas was born in Picardy in 1802. His father was born in Haiti, the illegitimate son of a Marquis and an enslaved woman. His mother was an innkeeper's daughter. Dumas was his grandmother's family name, adopted by Alexandre's father after a break with his noble father. Alexandre's father was a successful general under Napoleon, but died of cancer in 1806. Dumas's family connections got him a decent position with Louis-Philippe, future King of France. Dumas soon began writing articles and then plays, and after a couple of successes became a full-time writer, and turned to novels. His most significant works appeared in quick succession between 1844 and 1847: The Three Musketeers and its sequels; The Corsican Brothers, and The Count of Monte Cristo. Dumas died in 1870. His son, also named Alexandre, also illegitimate (the elder Dumas had multiple marriages and many affairs) became a successful writer as well, by far best remembered for La Dame Aux Camellias, the source material for Verdi's La Traviata, one of the greatest operas of all time. The father is often styled Alexandre Dumas père, the son Dumas fils. 

I have above given co-credit to August Maquet. Dumas, incredibly prolific, ran a sort of fiction factory, employing other writers to plot his books and to research them. It does appear that Dumas, in most of the books, did the bulk of the page by page writing. But Maquet, his most common assistant, eventually sued him for credit, and while Maquet did not get credit, he did get a considerable financial settlement. In the case of The Count of Monte Cristo, Robin Buss suggests that it was Maquet who insisted on adding the early chapters in which Edmond Dantès is framed and thrown in jail.

So, what to say about the story itself? Any kind of detailed plot summary seems silly -- to say too much might give away some of the pleasure, and would take a while -- it's a long book. And most everyone knows the basics. I'll quickly summarize them anyway. The novel tells of Edmond Dantès, a young sailor just returned from a voyage on which his Captain died, leaving him in charge. He is chosen by his employer to take the permanent position of Captain -- and thus he can marry his beloved, the Catalan girl Mercédès. But the jealousy of another Catalan, Fernand, who loves Mercédès, plus that of Danglars, supercargo on his ship, who dislikes Edmond, leads to them accusing him of Bonapartist sympathies. (This part is set in 1815, just as Bonaparte is leaving Elba for his last "100 days".) Villefort, the prosecutor in charge of the resulting case, realizes that Dantès is innocent but has him imprisoned in the Chateau D'If anyway, as it will benefit his political advancement and also because his own father is a Bonapartist.

Dantès remains in jail for 14 years, and befriends another prisoner, the mad monk Faria, who, over many years, gives him a remarkable education, and also reveals the location of a fantastic treasure, on the island of Monte Cristo. Dantès finally escapes (in a wonderful sequence), and manages to locate the treasure ... and, nine years later, he emerges, first in Rome, then in Paris, as the Count of Monte Cristo. In the mean time, he has learned, his enemies have reached high positions (partly through additional corrupt actions): Villefort is the Crown Prosecutor, Fernand has become the Comte de Morcerf, and Danglars is now a Baron. The Count makes a sensation, partly because of his money, partly his mystery. But his goal is revenge on those who betrayed him -- and all three of the main villains begin to see their luck strangely turn ...

Well, that's rather skeletal, and it misses a lot. But that's OK! The fun is in the discovering. I will mention as many other key characters as I can: Maximilien Morrel, son of M. Morrel who owned the ship Edmond worked on; Albert de Morcerf, son of Fernand; Franz d'Epinay, a close friend of Albert's; Haydée, a beautiful young Greek-Albanian woman, the companion or slave of the Count of Monte Cristo (Haydée's back story (which is loosely historically based) is central to the book, but I'll leave it for the reader to learn); Valentine de Villefort, the daughter of M. de Villefort by his first wife; Mme. de Villefort, Villefort's sinister second wife; Eugénie Danglars, the daughter of one of Dantès' betrayers, and a rather sympathetically portrayed Lesbian (some people nowadays suggest she is a trans man) who is unwillingly supposed to marry Albert; Caderousse, a baker and neighbor of Edmond's father, who by inaction abets Fernand and Danglars' plot against Edmond, and whose greed sends him on the path to ruin; Luigi Vampa, a Roman bandit; Mme. Danglars, a beauty who married Danglars for his money, and who has carried on serial affairs, including one with M. de Villefort which leads in the end to tragedy; Bertuccio, the Count's faithful Corsican servant, who coincidentally is entangled with the lives of Villefort and Danglars and thus the Count himself (though, as becomes clear, almost every seeming coincidence in the novel is the result of the Count's knowledge and planning); Benedetto, an habitual criminal who the Count hires to portray an Italian nobleman as part of his plans of revenge; and Noirtier, M. de Villefort's father, who ends his life horrifyingly paralyzed, with only his granddaughter Valentine to care for him.

This list of characters, most of whose stories are significantly and entertainingly elaborated, is one reason the novel is so long -- and also never boring. And there are many more minor characters -- the newspaperman Beauchamp, Caderousse's sickly and shrewish wife La Carconte, Major Cavalcanti, Maximilien Morrel's sister Julie and her husband Emmanuel, the Count's mute Nubian servant Ali, to say nothing of such pivotal but secretive people as the English Lord Willmore and the Italian cleric Abbé Busoni; and even such minor characters as the telegraph operator who appears only in the chapter with the delightful title "How to Rescue a Gardener from the Dormice who are Eating his Peaches".

The novel is well-written if not beautifully so (as always, I should caution that I am basing such an evaluation on the translation(s) I read and heard.) Dumas was a very witty writer. The characters are nicely limned, if (as Buss argues, and I agree) it is somewhat difficult to square the early depictions of Fernand and Danglars with their later incarnations as the Comte de Morcerf and the Baron Danglars. It is clearly a work of popular fiction in that the plot is far from realistic -- that said, the depictions of 1830s Paris and Rome seem pretty solid (and Dumas sprinkles in mentions of things like a couple of his favorite inns and hotels.) And for all the unrealism of the plot, and the near magical nature of the Count's powers and his fortune, the central themes: corruption, vengeance, and the ultimate dangers of living for vengeance (especially with regards to collateral damage) -- all leading to a paean to forgiveness -- are quite powerful.

The bottom line is simple: this novel has been extremely popular since it first appeared in 1844. And it wholly deserves this -- it is glorious, sometimes delirious, fun. It is first of all entertainment, but entertainment with some depth behind it. It is a very long novel -- roughly half a million words -- but always interesting, never a slog. And you know what -- a long TV adaptation -- in a dozen or twenty hour long episodes, say -- could be really wonderful. 

Another Victorian Novel: Orthodox, by Dorothea Gerard

Review: Orthodox, by Dorothea Gerard

by Rich Horton

I found this slim novel at the St. Louis County Book Fair. It is a British Library facsimile reprint of the first edition, from Longman's, Green and Co., in 1888. I could not resist a Victorian novel by a woman of whom I had never heard. And it is quite short (not quite 40,000 words) so it wouldn't take up much of my time anyway.

Dorothea Gerard was born in Scotland in 1855. Her father was a Colonel, and maternal grandfather a somewhat notable inventor, Sir John Robison. She spent several years in Austria as a child, and upon her mother's death in 1870, moved there again to live with her sister, who had married a Polish cavalry officer. The two sisters began collaborating on novels in 1877, and had some success with Reata and The Waters of Hercules and other books, written as by "E. D. Gerard". (Emily also published non-fiction, notably a couple of books about Transylvania, and its legends, which are said to have inspired Bram Stoker when he wrote Dracula.) Dorothea also married a military man, an Austrian officer who eventually became a Major General, and was given the title "Longard de Longgarde", so that some of Dorothea's later novels were published as by "Dorothea Longard de Longgarde". 

Dorothea largely stopped collaborating with her sister upon her marriage; and she was a very prolific author in her own right. Her novels were often, not surprisingly, set in Eastern Europe where she lived; though she always wrote in English. According to Wikipedia, her later books often were published by the German firm Tauchnitz, and marketed to English travelers and expatriates. She died in 1915, having lived in seclusion for many years after the death of her husband and her sister.

Her novels often seem to have been romances, apparently set among the Eastern European upper classes. She was politically conservative, but had a reputation for addressing controversial subjects, in particular prejudices across divides of class, nationality, and ethnicity, and also antisemitism. This is interesting in the context of the novel at hand.

Orthodox opens "I propose to tell the story of how my friend and comrade, Rudolph von Ortenegg, fell into the hands of the Jews ..." This did not seem terribly promising. The narrator is a 23 year old Polish officer in the Austro-Hungarian army, stationed in Poland. His friend Rudolph is the only son of an old German aristocrat, and he grew up in near isolation, so his social skills are minimal, and he has some ideas that the narrator thinks are foolish. Among these is disgust at the mistreatment of the local Jews -- which disgust the narrator finds shocking, for in his view why shouldn't one treat vermin like vermin.

Things get worse when, by chance, they encounter an astonishingly beautiful young Jewish woman, Salome. Before long Rudolph is smitten, and so too, it seems, is Salome. Against his friend's advice, Rudolph and Salome begin to plot a way for them to marry -- which of course will involve Salome converting to Catholicism. Naturally her family are aghast at the thought of this (and so too will Rudolph's father be) -- their only ally is Salome's spunky younger sister Surchen. But Rudolph manages to spirit Salome away to a nearby convent. All seems to be going well -- but Salome's father has different plans.

As I've described this, it seems nice enough, and arguably a somewhat "anti-antisemitism" book. But -- it's not, really. (Maybe it is relative to many of Gerard's contemporaries, I suppose.) Although Rudolph is quite sincere in his belief that the abusive behavior of the Polish Christians towards Jews is terrible, his primary motive for improving their lot is to convert them. And the book itself -- and its narrator -- lean in a wholly unchallenged way fully into the most offensive descriptions of the Jewish characters. They are all money grubbers, and sinisterly clever, and dishonest. Salome's sister Surchen is perhaps the most appealing character in the book -- she is as I said spunky, and quite intelligent -- but she is depicted as doing everything she does to make a bit of money. There are constant slurs as to hygiene and so on; and even the praise of some of them (for example, of Salome's beauty) is heavily tinged with Orientalist cliches. Add to that the character of Salome herself -- she is weak and really sort of a cipher -- Rudolph appears to care only about her looks. I don't know how accurate Gerard's depiction of Orthodox Jewish customs in Poland at the time is -- perhaps it is quite accurate, and as such the women seem quite oppressed -- only, I think the same could likely be said about Christian women in Poland in that era.

All in all, not a book I can recommend. I will say that Gerard could write, and with considerable wit. I dare say some of her other novels might be more palatable, but this one was -- well, offensive is the main thing.