31 Days of Books: The Scarlet Pimpernel

Title:  The Scarlet Pimpernel

Author:  Baroness Emmuska Orczy

Published:  1905

Year I read it:  2004

One sentence summary:  Dazzling, French, former-actress Marguerite St. Just seems to be enjoying her socialite life but is privately distant and bored with her aristocrat English husband, Percy Blakeney, until one day she is threatened by a French investigator and pulled into the hunt for the elusive "Scarlet Pimpernel" - an agent smuggling French aristocrats to safety during the reign of terror.

Interesting fact:  While the "Scarlet Pimpernel" seems to be inspired by the Sherlock Holmes-type of costume and out-witting people, his character in turn inspired the "secret identities" of many of our recognized heroes, like Bruce Wayne's alter-ego, Batman.

Three reasons to read it:

• Mystery - Baroness Orczy does a good job of weaving and then unraveling the mystery of what's going on and who's who.
• Action - with high stakes, both socially and personally, these characters cut some close calls, and it makes for some wonderful action.
• Romance - at it's heart, this is really a beautiful romance story!

One reason you maybe shouldn't:

• Being one herself,  it is very apparent that Orczy deeply sympathizes with the aristocracy.  Some authors do a better job of keeping a balanced approach, acknowledging the fact that there were gross injustices leading up to the French Revolution.

Great quotes:

“She said nothing, and Sir Andrew, too, was silent, yet those two young people understood one another, as young people have a way of doing all the world over, and have done since the world began.” 

"Her love for him had been paltry and weak, easily crushed by her own pride”  

“Had she but turned back then, and looked out once more on to the rose-lit garden, she would have seen that which would have made her own sufferings seem but light and easy to bear--a strong man, overwhelmed with his own passion and despair. Pride had given way at last, obstinacy was gone: the will was powerless. He was but a man madly, blindly, passionately in love and as soon as her light footstep had died away within the house, he knelt down upon the terrace steps, and in the very madness of his love he kissed one by one the places where her small foot had trodden, and the stone balustrade, where her tiny hand had rested last.”  [ah! one of the most romantic passages ever!!]

31 days of Books: The Woman in White

Title:  The Woman in White

Author:  Wilkie Collins

Published: 1860

Year I read it:  2012

One sentence summary:  In the (arguably) first ever English mystery novel, Collins explores class and family through the lens of artist and perfect gentleman, Walter Hartright, loving, losing, and learning about one family's strange past and how they could possibly connected to the woman in white.

Interesting fact:  Dickens published it as a serial in his publication All the Year Round.

Three reasons to read it:

• It's a 700 page, Victorian page-turner.  This mystery is so much more than "whodunnit."  The characters, the motives, the psychology - they're all so riveting.
• Collins far exceeds his friend Dickens when it comes to female characters (and, in my opinion, his prose in general... but I don't want to offend).  I remember thinking I was reading a cross between Charles Dickens and Charlotte Bronte.
• Looking back on this book I remember and cherish it not for its resolution, but for itself.  The process is a beautiful one.

One reason you maybe shouldn't:

• Although I applaud Collins advance of the female character, I felt he gave into the trope of women who were either beautiful & helpless or ugly & active.  Why not a woman who both has agency and is desirable?  [There were times I almost wished Walter had fallen for the active Mariann rather than the stunning Laura.  But only almost.]

Great quote:

“I have always held the old-fashioned opinion that the primary object of work of fiction should be to tell a story.” 

“Women can resist a man's love, a man's fame, a man's personal appearance, and a man's money, but they cannot resist a man's tongue when he knows how to talk to them.”  

“This is the story of what a Woman's patience can endure, and what a Man's resolution can achieve.”