Review: Sense8, Episodes 1-4

My first review since I went radio silent!

I submitted my thesis on Friday 29th May and I’m slowly trying to figure out what it is to live in a world where I am not constantly guilty about not writing my thesis. It’s been a strange and emotional week. I have been looking for jobs and sleeping and playing Dragon Age II. And mostly not watching as many shows as I’d like because so many of them are over and the only currently airing ones I’m watching are Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell (great) and Game of Thrones (problematic). I was badly in need of some new fodder and despairing of finding any. Sense8 came out of nowhere and… and it’s fantastic, to be honest.

Sense8 is the new Netflix Original released on 5th June. Having originally been blown away by Netflix Original output, I’ve since been pretty disappointed. The difference between Hemlock Grove seasons one and two was astounding. House of Cards was so patriarchal I’ve given up in frustration. And as for Daredevil, there’s so much sexist disappointment I wouldn’t even know where to begin. So I’ve come to look at Netflix Orignals rather warily. And then I saw a post on Tumblr giving trigger warnings for it (but saying it was great), and my interest was piqued. Tumblr has a not unjustified reputation for liberal criticism, and when the Tumblrites I follow say something is painful but good, I pay attention. Particularly when they say it’s painful but good in its depiction of trans folk, and the programme in question was also created by a trans woman.

So, with nothing to lose and not yet ready to go to bed at midnight last night, I decided to give it a go. At 4am, I forcibly tore myself away.

What is Sense8, then?

Sense8 is a twelve episode show about a bunch of people who discover that they are telepathically and empathically connected – they are ‘sensates’. They find themselves feeling what each other are feeling, seeing what each other are seeing, and being able to act on each other’s behalf. Find yourself in a fight? Wouldn’t it be hella convenient for your body to be taken over by a Korean martial arts expert? It would certainly help!

The eight sensates we follow were ‘created’ when a woman being pursued by an Evil Scientist shoots herself in the head. They each witness her death and then start seeing images of her as they go about their daily business, and then they start seeing and feeling what each other are seeing and feeling.

These people are refreshingly diverse: a Korean business woman who participates in underground fighting in her spare time, a white cop in Chicago, a lesbian trans woman former hacktavist, a gay Latino film actor, a coach driver in Nairobi trying to get together the money for his mum’s AIDs medication, an Icelandic DJ in London, a Hindu woman in Mumbai who is about to marry a man she doesn’t love, and a German safe cracker. Different backgrounds, different levels of wealth, different sexualities, and a blessedly even number of women and men.

How is it?

It’s good. I mean, it’s stay-up-to-4am good. And maybe it’s the emotional week I’ve had, but I was weeping from complex feelings at the end of the last episode I watched, and for me that’s always a good sign. The characters all have complex plot arcs and relationships, the episodes are well paced and gripping, and it’s shot in a visually engaging manner.

That said, the trigger warnings on the Tumblr post mentioned above are well given. The trans woman’s plot, in particular, is painful and may cut awfully close to the bone for some viewers. Nomi Marks (Jamie Clayton) is a woman in a healthy, loving relationship with a cis woman named Amanita (Freema Agyeman (!<3)), but her family are not so awesome. When she faints in the middle of a Pride march she wakes up in a hospital with her family, who misgender her, prevent her partner from seeing her, tell her she needs brain surgery, and sign papers that (somehow) mean she is unable to leave the hospital – her door is locked.

As a non-binary person I don’t feel equipped to speak with authority as to whether this is well handled, but it seemed so to me. It’s certainly wonderful to see a trans character who was both created by a trans woman (Lana Wachowski) and played by a trans actor. I have no sense that the character herself is portrayed with anything but sympathy. Nevertheless, of the few trans characters that exist in TV and film, they are so often shown only through their pain – its a trope familiar across LGBT protrayals in film, what has been described as ‘dead gays for the straight gaze’ or ‘queers die for the straight eye‘ (although I hasten to add that we are not talking about literal death in this case, although identity death certainly looms as a possibility). I know some of my trans friends have lamented the fact that there are so few portrayals of trans people that are not difficult and painful to watch.

Whilst we’re here, I’d just like to add that it’s a pleasure to see the awesome Martha Jones Freema Agyeman on screen again, and whilst her American accent is somewhat wobbly, her portrayal of Amanita as Nomi’s compassionate, vibrant, sex positive partner is wonderful. Her presence on screen is a balm in difficult scenes.

I’m a little less comfortable about some of the scenes given to Lito (Miguel Ángel Silvestre) who winds up in an awkward three-way relationship with his boyfriend and Daniela Velasquez (Eréndira Ibarra) the actress who discovers Lito’s secret relationship and imposes herself as an unasked for live-in ‘beard‘. Miguel Ángel Silvestre and Alfonso Herrera are accomplished and subtle actors who play the motions of a couple living in a difficult, closeted situation well, but the comic relief offered by Daniela sits uneasily with their more serious portrayal. Overall, it just doesn’t work for me.

I also wonder about racial and national stereotyping. Sun Bak (Bae Doona) is engaging and convincing as the secretly badass Korean woman who can fuck you up but bows meekly to sexist treatment in the day. I recall all too well the questions raised by my Asian friends about the protrayal of Mako Mori in Pacific Rim. Ami Angelwings was particularly articulate on the issue of white women saying how wonderful Mako was whilst East Asian women had issues with the portrayal that were overlooked. There’s a culture of white feminists drowning out voices whenever there’s a meek feminine woman who is also shows strength, on the basis that there are so few of such characters, despite the fact that there are (to my eyes) more portrayals of this than any other type of female character. And I find it worrying that Mako Mori springs immediately to mind when I see Sun Bak. I wonder how much the charactisation of the extreme sexism against which Sun Bak must work reflects racist assumptions about South Korea. The truth is, as a white British woman, I simply don’t know, but if I’m noting a pattern in how East Asian women are being represented in American shows, there is a chance we are being presented with a type, and not a character.

Similarly, the poverty stricken black people beset by crime and AIDs in Capheus’s (Al Ameen) plotline raise flags. As does the fact that the Indian woman is facing the prospect of a marriage supported by her family and friends that she does not really want. Do people like this exist? Perhaps – I’m wary of making any judgements as to the truth of that as a British white woman – but I think it’s worth asking whether there weren’t other characters and plotlines we could have had for a woman in India or a man in Nairobi, ones that didn’t fit so very neatly into Euro-American stereotypes of what life is like in those places.

From a less significant aspect, we also see stereotyping of white characters based off their nationality. There’s an Australian girl (not a main character) who is very blunt spoken, and everytime she makes a faux pas either she or her boyfriend says it’s because she’s Australian. I’ve known a lot of Australians in my time, but none who acted like that. They… were as varied as other people? And then there’s the Icelandic DJ. She’s has whiffs of Manic Pixie Dream Girl, and her general nightclub/alternative music aesthetic makes me think of Björk. Part of me wonders if a musical alternative girl is the only kind of woman they could imagine coming from Iceland.

I also have questions about the use of the suicide of Angelica Turing (Daryl Hannah) as the inciting incident. Especially as it is at the urging of one man in order to escape another and to ‘give birth’ to the sensates. Whilst this is not a classic case of ‘fridging‘ a woman in order to advance a man’s plot – as she advances the plots of several woman, too – it is using the death of a woman as a plot device, it is to fulfil the designs of a man, it is also to escape man-on-woman violence, it substantiates a sense of men as patriarchal figures, and the ‘giving birth’ metaphor gives it an unnecessary veneer of reporductive violence as well.

All of which is not to undermine the fact that these are still engaging and rounded characters or that I find myself incredibly moved by their stories. Rather, it is to acknowledge that these stories are not perfect. In comparison to everything else I am watching right now the show is still infinitely more diverse, it does provide a range of female characters such that I don’t feel any of them particularly stands as representing what it is to be a woman, it also provides a racially diverse cast (including the beautiful Naveen Andrews as Jonas <3), as well as an array of LGBT characters. One could wish for some disability diversity too, but overall, it’s a refreshing improvement.

And as for the science fiction… well, it’s more fantasy than science fiction, but that’s OK. The light-touch on scientific explanations offered so far is better than the Heroes route of talking absolute rubbish about evolution in order to justify the plot. I would like to see more consideration given to the dodginess of just taking over someone else’s body, but it’s early days, yet. Bodily autonomy is definitely a theme. I feel for these people. I engage with these people. I see both male and female characters I don’t often get to see on screen, and that means something to me. And they have superpowers. And those superpowers are both making them awesome and giving them emotional problems. Which is right up my alley, basically.

If you’re in need of some quality drama and starved of shows that don’t give centre stage to straight white cis men, Sense8 is a really wonderful choice, and I commend it to you.

Whitsle-stop review: The Amazing Spider-Man 2

I wish I could devote more time to reviews, but it’s crunch-time in Rhuboland, so here’s a whistle-stop tour of The Amazing Spider-Man 2, good and bad.

The Good:

They beefed up Gwen’s (Emma Stone) role and gave her interests outside of her bf. They also showed her thinking about how kind of self-centred he can be and how she’s not content to wait around for him.

Plus, Gwen had some agency and some role in saving the day.

The character, Max (Jamie Foxx), is initially interesting, as a black guy getting to play something other than the tough guy, the guy presented as animalistic in some way. Although I wonder if the black nerdy, socially inept scientist is getting to be another stereotype. I was reminded strongly of Lem from Better off Ted, but I’m aware that I may be blinded by my own privilege in trying to assess what makes for a stereotypical black male character.

Max also gets to voice legitimate concerns of vanishing identity and feeling invisible, which can affect people of colour who are not recognised and rewarded for their achievements in the way that white men tend to be. Both Max and Harry cut sympathetic figures, at first.

The CGI is fucking fantastic. Second to none. And worth seeing in 3D, if that doesn’t affect you negatively.*

Emma Stone and Andrew Garfield shine, instantly lifting both the acting and (one feels) the script in any scene in which they are in.

The Bad

Hopefully it isn’t too much of a spoiler to say that things do not go well for Max. And whilst they toy initially with making him a human dude who doesn’t want to do bad things when he first gets his (basically very destructive) powers, he rapidly descends into the violent revenge trope and becomes a basic monster figure with almost nothing of his original character left. Fear of the Other. Terror of the Black Man (complete with hoodie, argh). It’s just all the worst stereotypes.

And they make him blue. Instantly cutting in half the number of obviously PoC characters I noticed in the film (the other being an anonymous cop).

And he cedes Chief Monster Spot extremely quickly to the spoiled rich white guy, swiftly assuming a Henchman role.

Prior to that he had been Comic Relief, aspiring to be Side-kick (but not actually cool enough for that). It’s basically a race ‘You wanted a “You Tried” sticker, but you really don’t deserve it’.

I think the moment where Random Unnamed Woman Secretary-I-Don’t-Know-What-Her-Role-Was-Meant-To-Be-That’s-Not-How-Oxbridge-Interviews-Work told Gwen she could go in for her interview was meant to make this film pass the Bechdel Test. But, honey, no, that’s not good enough. She could have easily been a professor, btw, but she wasn’t.

Peter Parker stalks Gwen and she finds this romantic. PETER PARKER STALKS GWEN AND SHE FINDS THIS ROMANTIC. NO, Hollywood! Stop putting this crap in our mouths. You want to have your hero stalk a lady, represent it as every bit as creepy as it is, and not ‘poignant’. NO, NO, NO.

Mental illness = evil. Illness that alters conventional beauty generates mental illness. People who get sick have cooties. White able-bodied men are better than everyone.

All the people in any position of power, from the unnamed people in dealing with a potential air crash in the powercut, to Harry Osborn (Dane DeHann), were white men. Harry delegates some power to Felicia (his father’s assistant, played by Felicity Jones) on a whim, but even if she is capable, her power is 100% derived from him and, as far as we are given any reason to believe, given to her because she is pretty and not currently trying to seize power from him.

And, last, but only so you can skip it if you don’t want spoilers…

.

.

The fridging. I knew (because people tell you these things) that Gwen Stacey was not slated to live that long, but this still pissed me off. I don’t care that that’s how it happened in the comics. I know fridging happens in comics, that’s how come we have a name for it. We are living in the 21st century, and if you are remaking something, you can make it BETTER and MORE SUITED to the world we now live in. The whole movie I was sitting there, trying to work out if it was going to go somewhere sexist or not. And I guess the moment Peter says he’ll go with her to England so that she can follow her dream (a totally legit thing to do that needn’t compromise his dreams in any way, as they discuss) she was doomed. Allow a woman too much agency, and she has to die to fuel the mangst. And we were treated to a longish epilogue to that effect. Not to mention the fact that Peter, for no apparent reason than just because he likes to be in control, never loses an opportunity to deny her agency. Webbing her hand to a car because she (rightly) points out that she knows more about how to solve the issue at hand than he does, is perhaps just the most painfully obvious of these.

Also, the pacing was really patchy, and the (exquisitely CGI’d and very impressive looking in terms of FX) fight scenes were too long and not punchy enough. Again, I felt like the Multiple Villain Factor was a problem – why not let Electro at least be head villain? Green  Goblin is totally up to fronting another movie.

So, there it is. I really wanted to like this. I did enjoy parts of it quite a lot. But it had a LOT of problems. And I’m kind of done making excuses for studios unthinkingly churning out this shit anymore. I’m done with saying ‘Maybe the next one will be less ableist/sexist/racist’. It’s not good enough. It doesn’t make the mark.

But do stay after the movie for the mid-credit Marvel Thang. Mistique kicking arse is a wonderful palate cleanser.

*On that note: please also be aware that this film contains strobing effects.

Reviewing through the Time Machine: The Count of Monte Cristo

Title: The Count of Monte Cristo (Le Comte de Monte-Cristo)
Author: Alexandre Dumas
Series/Standalone: Standalone
Genre: Adventure/Revenge/Historical
First Published: 1844-1845 (serialised in Journal des Débats)
Edition Reviewed: Project Gutenberg ebook (released 1998, accessed 2012) and the 1997 Wordsworth Classics edition (introduction and notes by Keith Wren)
Hb/Pb: ebook/Paperback
Price: free to download from Project Gutenberg, available in numerous editions from £0.01 on Amazon/Amazon Market Place

I started reading The Count of Monte Cristo after having gone on a spree of downloading books that are available free because they are out of copyright. In all honesty, I’m not sure I would have ever got around to it otherwise, but boy! I’m glad I did. Even though I broke my Kindle shortly after I began reading and had to find a copy in the library to finish. Woo libraries!

It’s a curious trend that’s emerging from the popularity of ereaders – more and more people are exploring older texts they might otherwise have neglected simply because these texts are now out of copyright and hence, effectively, free. Some are available from Amazon for no charge (although The Count of Monte Cristo will still set you back at least 77p as an ebook), more are available through charitable entities like Project Gutenberg – a fabulous website that has been set up as a globally available, free repository of classic works that are out of copyright. Of course, with works in translation it can sometimes be hard to find accessible editions that are out of copyright (for example, to my mind, the John Cottingham translation of Descartes’s Meditations on First Philosophy is by far the best, but it was first published in 1986, and thus not available for free). However, most editions of TCoMC still rely on the ‘classic’ translation of The Count of Monte Cristo produced by Chapman and Hall in 1846 (I was unable to identify a named individual as the translator), and from my perspective it hasnt aged badly at all.

Plot

Edmond Dantès starts the novel as a young man with everything good in life to look forward to. After the captain of his ship dies, Edmond assumes responsibility of the crew, and gains the preferment of the ship’s owner for assuming the role of captain, despite his youth. This is particularly good news as Dantès has an aging father to support and is planning to marry a beautiful fisherwoman called Mercédès. The future is so bright it practically glows off the page with signals of ‘something bad is going to happen’.

Dantès’s success breeds jealousy in others. The scheming Danglars coveted the captain’s position for himself, and the love-lorn Fernand has been courting Mercédès, despite her protests that she is in love with, and promised to, Dantès. Dantès’s is also subject to jealousy from his father’s avaricious neighbour, Caderousse. Unfortunately for Dantès, Danglars overheard the captain pass to Dantès a mysterious letter, sent from the exiled Napoleon to someone in Paris. Whilst drinking with Caderousse and Fernand he learns of Fernand’s jealousy of Dantès and eggs him on in a plot to frame his rival. Danglars writes an anonymous note exposing the unwitting Dantès of working against the king, advising of where the incriminating letter from Napoleon may be found. When Caderousse drunkenly protests that this is going too far and starts defending Dantès, Danglars declares that it was all in jest and throws the note away; although he does so with care that it should still be easy for Fernand to take up, which he does.

Dantès is arrested at his own wedding feast, before his marriage, completely unaware of the incriminating content of the letter that has been entrusted to him. He is interrogated by Villifort, who can see that Dantès was an unwitting mule, and promises him leniency. However, upon opening that letter, Villefort sees that it incriminates his own father as a conspirator for Napoleon. Knowing that his own ambitions will be thwarted if his father is exposed, Villefort destroys the letter and condemns Dantès to imprisonment.

Shipped off to the fearful Chateau d’If, Dantès is condemned to the deepest dungeons as he continues to protest his innocence and is judged mad. After years, Dantès finally gives up, and begins to starve himself as his only means of taking his life. As he is enacting this resolution, however, he hears a mysterious scraping, and realises he has a neighbour who is endeavouring to escape. Together they make a tunnel between the two cells. His neighbour is the Abbé Faria, who has also been isolated because he is believed to be mad, on account of his insistence that he knows the location of a great fortune, which he says he will give to anyone who sets him free. Faria is disappointed to find that he has misjudged his calculations in reaching Edmond’s cell and not escape, but they are each glad for the company, and Faria begins to educate Dantès – teaching him not only languages and science, but the principles behind them so that he will have the tools of extending his knowledge further. He also reveals the location of the treasure to Dantès, on the rocky island of Monte Cristo.

When Faria dies, Dantès conceals himself in the sack into which Faria’s body is placed, and escapes. He makes his way to Monte Cristo and is stunned to find that the treasure is just as astonishing as Faria promised. Dantès uses this fortune to travel the world and plot for the downfall of those who condemned him to living death for fourteen years.

How was is?

Gripping, exciting, thoughtful, escapist, and surprisingly progressive. The Count of Monte Cristo is not what I expected it to be at all. The basic premise, a wronged man who escapes prison and enacts revenge with a massive fortune, had long appealed to me. Indeed, I now recognise it as what must have been some of the inspiration for the wonderful televisions series, Life, which could be described in much the same way, and which I thoroughly enjoyed. But even as a student of English literature I sometimes found that the ‘classics’, admirable as they were, could be a bit of a struggle. I was not expecting such an exciting romp.

The style of TCoMC changes over the course of the book. The earlier parts, which deal with Dantès’s happy beginning and his imprisonment, read almost like a modern YA novel. The style is simplistic and easy to read, which is not a thing you expect of a book that is nearly 900 pages long. There is an odd break, however, perhaps a third of the way through, as we move from Dantès’s perspective to viewing the introduction of the Count of Monte Cristo to aristocratic society through his interactions with others. The style becomes more detached from Dantès’s viewpoint just as Dantès becomes more detached from himself, assuming the guise of the Count, and so consumed by his revenge that he believes he can hold himself apart from those around him, sitting in cold judgement, helping only those who win his friendship. At the same time, the description becomes much more detailed and full. The text does not become difficult and impenetrable in the manner of some classic works I have struggled through, but it does contrast starkly with the free and easy style of the first third.

Another way in which the book changes after Dantès’s escape and inheritance of Faria’s treasure is that we move from a close focus on his story to a presentation of lots of different stories. We not only see the world from different characters’ eyes, but each frequently has cause to digress to tell some other tale which informs the present circumstances. It took a bit of time to adjust to this, as it was an unexpected and unfamiliar style. However, I soon realised that this was a deliberate stylistic choice, mimicking the embedded narrative structure of One Thousand and One Nights, which is frequently mentioned (indeed, Dantès takes ‘Sinbad the Sailor‘, the hero of some of Scheherazade’s tales, as one of his aliases).

I suspect the embedded multi-narrative technique is employed to highlight the sense of multiple perspective. As Dantès becomes more narrowly focused on his revenge and the ways people have wronged or helped him, we see more of other people’s perspectives. Dantès is our protagonist, and we are clearly meant to sympathise with him, but the text constantly encourages us to take a broader view, and to be aware of how each character has not just one tale to tell, but many – that all of us have not only secrets, but also simply other parts of our lives that our friends, enemies, and family members may be completely unaware of as they make assumptions about us and judgements upon our actions.

There is a surprising psychological depth realised. It’s tempting, at the beginning, to read Danglars as a flat villain, or as an Iago figure who encourages others to commit crimes, but stands back from action himself. But even he is shown as capable of having complex relationships. I wouldn’t say he is ever sympathetic, rather, I felt we were presented with a rather modern portrait of a sociopath. Not that I am attributing to Dumas psychological theories of which he could not have been aware, but I see in his writing the product of a careful observer of people and their characters. Danglars is not ‘evil’ as such, he simply doesn’t care about other people. He marries and raises a daughter and interacts in society as is expected of him, but he views everything as a transaction, always looking for what benefits himself. He thus hardly seems bothered by his wife’s infidelity, as long as it does not affect him financially. Nor does he evince any evidence of shame or pity, as other characters do when the Count’s revenge falls upon them. It’s a careful line to walk, presenting such a character and not making him a stereotype. There is clearly a condemnation of bankers and of Danglars’s obsession with money over people, but in a choice between money and his personal comfort, Danglars ultimately chooses his own comfort and safety.

Despite the psychological realism, the dialogue remains somewhat stilted. Some of this may be a product of translation, as well as the passing of time, but some of it is not. The dialogue of Maximillien Morrel and his secret love, Valentine, is the most striking example. Pages and pages are filled with them explaining in excruciating detail exactly what they mean as they describe to each other the passions of their love and debate how they may resolve the fact that Valentine is promised to someone else, and that her father, Villefort, would never condone the match. It’s a tedious exposition that one doubts would get past a modern editor’s red pen. And yet, this still only makes for minor inconvenience. There’s a lot of what we’d now describe as ‘telling rather than showing’ in this novel which would no doubt be dismissed by those who subscribe rather too fiercely to writing-by-numbers, but most of it adds to the style of the piece more than it detracts. We hear the narrator’s voice in the description of events, and that voice is often accompanied by a wry wit that, whilst it might lack the immediacy of ‘showing’, compliments the work in other ways.

The origins of the novel in a serialisation no doubt account for its gripping pace over what would usually be regarded as an unweildy length, each chapter leaving us with something new to anticipate and wonder about. One might expect a tale with such a premise to be characterised more as a revenge than as an adventure, but the genre fits. Fantastic wealth has enduring appeal, as do charismatic and enigmatic strangers (as the Count is, both to the aristocracy of Paris, and to us, as he differs from the Edmond we met at the start of the novel). It’s action packed escapism and suspense as much as it is dark and psychologically deep.

What was really surprising was how progressive the novel is.

Not in every way, I hasten to add. There are some serious issues of presentation of race. Dumas was mixed race himself, and the descendent of a slave, but some of the attitudes of the time are still present. People are not represented as evil on the basis of their race, but they are certainly exoticised. The characters of Haidée and Ali especially. Haidée is the Count’s slave – a greek princess whose father was overthrown. She is consistently described as exotic and oriental. Far more attention is devoted to her appearance than her character, and although she is presented as beautiful, the terms in which her beauty is described are othering. She is interesting because she looks different and dresses differently to what is normal in France. Ali is similarly exoticised and described as a slave (and seems happy in his slavery). Moreover, he is mute – literally robbed of voice, although he is able to communicate through signs. The Count himself is presented as a very cosmopolitan man, and, in truth, the French society is not held up as superior to any other. Indeed, although countries are presented with reference to distinctive national characters, none are prized or vilified above others – the consistent characterisations of Englishmen in comedic terms is an amusing mirror on my own culture. Nonetheless, the othering and exoticism of non-white people remains disquieting.

In other ways, however, the novel is progressive. The treatment of women was strikingly egalitarian. Although characters at certain points express their own prejudices, the rest of the text provides ample examples to contradict them. There are plentiful female characters, each an individual (with the exception, perhaps, of Haidée, whose sense of self seems almost non-existent) with a character just as rich as that of any male character. Be it the fragile Valentine, the independent Eugénie, the scheming Madame de Villefort, the passionate Madame Danglars, or the intelligent and virtuous Mercédès, each is unique and has qualities that are directly opposed to some of the others.

The most interesting of these is Eugénie. Frankly, I was shipping Eugénie with her friend Louise long before I realised that Dumas was intentionally presenting them as gay. Slight spoiler here: I couldn’t have been happier than when they ran off with each other, leaving very little doubt that the author conceived of them as a couple, and did so with no condemnation whatsoever. There are references to transgender characteristics, too, although I’m not sure our modern concepts map perfectly on how it would have been regarded at the time. Eugénie is frequently described as ‘masculine’, and describes herself as ‘Hercules’ to Louise’s ‘Omphale’ – referencing a tale in which Hercules dresses as a woman. Moreover, when it comes to disguising herself as a man so that she and Louise may travel together, Dumas writes:

… with a promptitude which indicated that this was not the first time she had amused herself by adopting the garb of the opposite sex, Eugénie drew on the boots and pantaloons, tied her cravat, buttoned her waistcoat up to her throat, and put on a coat which admirably fitted her beautiful figure

There is absolutely no sense of condemnation of Eugénie for assuming a masculine role or masculine clothes. And when Eugénie and Louise are rudely interrupted in a hotel room later on, they are found to be sharing a single bed in their twin bed room.

Although one male character dislikes Eugénie for her ‘masculine’ characteristics, they don’t stop most people (or the author) from describing her as very beautiful, and there is no doubt in my mind that Eugénie and Louise’s running away together is meant to be regarded as a positive side-effect of the Count’s revenge.

As regards the revenge itself… Dantès makes a curious character. I’m more familiar with revenge tragedies than tales of this kind, which bring in elements of romance – even happy endings. One expects to sympathise with the character’s motives, even if one personally disapproves of revenge. And it’s hard to blame Edmond Dantès for any action he may take, given what he has been through. And yet some of his decisions made me uncomfortable. Whilst the Count has the power to be very good to his friends, and frequently is, he seems perfectly content to allow them to suffer excruciatingly first – indeed, he almost seems to think it necessary. That true happiness can only be awarded to those who have suffered terribly. In particular, his treatment of the Morrel family, whilst presented as an act of friendship, seems heartbreakingly cruel. (Minor spoiler:) He risk’s his mentor, Morrel senior’s, suicide so as to be able to leap in and save the day at the last possible moment, and he never reveals to the old man that he did not die in prison. The extreme lengths he goes to to punish his enemies are understandable, but it is harder to see why he does not reveal the truth to his friends and simply give them the money they need.

My sense is that we are to take it that this is a consequence of Dantès’s sufferings and long imprisonment. Like his conviction that he is an agent of Providence, Dantès does seem, in some ways, rather unhinged. I can accept this as an aspect of the psychological realism of the novel – I can even praise it. To have endured such punishment only to receive such incomprehensible wealth could conceivably impart odd beliefs about the balancing of happiness with pain, and a general desire to inflict pain on others as one has received unjustified pain one’s self. It is natural to search for reasons to explain suffering in one who has done no wrong. I can accept and even enjoy that Dantès has become rather broken in this way.

It doesn’t mean I don’t think he’s also a bit of a tosser.

And I think we’re meant to. A bit. But, the paperback I borrowed from the library has a note from the donor of the book which reads ‘I adore Dantes. A hero.’ and I just can’t get behind that. He’s likeable and charismatic and he has suffered and his actions are understandable. But he’s also arrogant, cruel, and flawed. His actions are not what I would call heroic. Even where he saves lives he does so with the feeling that it is his right to do so. I enjoy flawed characters, and I like to acknowledge that he is flawed.

Lastly, I want to discuss one thing that really didn’t chime with me, but it’s a bit of a spoiler, so you may wish to leave this part of the review until later, if you haven’t read the book. Be content to know that I enjoyed it and heartily recommend it. For the rest of you, read on:

The part that read wrongly to me regards who Dantès ends up with at the end. All through the book I was rooting for him to get back with Mercédès, but he leaves her in poverty and takes up with Haidée. I’ve seen criticism of the book for its outdated morality, and for the most part, I disagree. I think that Dumas presents us with the flawed actions of a man who believes he is the agent of Providence, but who is really a broken man, struggling to deal with an experience of incomprehensible suffering, which leads to consequences where even slight crimes are awarded disproportionate punishment. Perhaps the punishment of Mercédès was motivated by an outdated attitude to an unfaithful woman, but the flaw is more one of the dramatic expectations set up in the novel. One is encouraged to root for Mercédès and Dantès, and those hopes are disappointed. Moreover, one is given real reasons to believe in their relationship as real love, whereas his relationship with Haidée is not at all satisfying on this point. Haidée serves as more of a plot-point than a fully fledged character. She is presented as beautiful and exotic, and as having had terrible things happen to her, but I never really felt like she had a personality beyond ‘has a tragic back story and loves the Count’.

I’m also just squicked by the fact that she was his slave, still regards herself as his slave even after he has freed her, and that both of them regard their relationship as parental. There’s really just no way not to see Dantès taking her as a lover as an abuse of power. Sure, she begs for it, but he’s still taking advantage of a woman whose sense of self has been so destroyed that she cannot conceive of herself other than as his slave. A slave that he has raised since childhood. Maybe that is my modern sensibility, but I think it is backed by an otherwise empty characterisation of Haidée. She’s basically a male fantasy – a beautiful woman who adores you and begs to be your slave to use however you like. It’s creepy, and I don’t think you can use the defence of the times having been different to claim that it’s not.

This note gave the novel an unsatisfying ending, for me, but I would not eschew the rest for this flaw. I was disappointed by it, but the journey up to that point was exciting and consuming. This is a wonderful book, rightly remembered and deserving of your time, which is all that you need sacrifice, given that it’s available for free.