Baroness Orczy's The Scarlet Pimpernel

In the novel, The Scarlet Pimpernel by Baroness Orczy, a hero with an unlikely identity saves the French aristocrats from a horrific fate of death by the guillotine, in this swashbuckling tale.

Orczy’s book, The Scarlet Pimpernel, is set in 1972 during the beginning stages of the French Revolution. Marguerite St. Just, a young a beautiful French women, is married to Sir. Percy Blakeney. Blakeney is a rich man who appears to be a fool. Before Blakeney and Marguerite’s marriage, Marguerite took revenge on the Marquis de St. Cyr for ending a romantic relationship that her brother had the the marchis’ daughter. Unintentionally, Marquis de St. Cyr was went to the gillentine. When Blakeney found this information out, he distanced himself from his wife.

Every woman would want to be Lady Marguerite Blakeney, née St Just. Having recently made her debut at the Comedie Francois, Marguerite married Sir Percy Blakeney alias the Scarlet Pimpernel. Charming, clever, beautiful, with childlike eyes and a delicate face, Marguerite captures everyone’s attention. Yet Marguerite is portrayed as a stereotypical woman who is weak, impulsive, and whose identity revolves around her husband.

In the novel The Scarlet Letter written by Nathaniel Hawthorne, all of the characters possess specific traits of the seven deadly sins which are lust, gluttony, greed, pride, wrath, envy and sloth. My character Roger Chillingworth possesses the sins, greed, wrath and pride. I will attempt to make a connection between the sins committed by Chillingworth and his motivation behind those sins and sins committed by people in our world today. For example, one could compare wrath to the destructive and horrible feats of today’s murders that feel they have been treated unjustly, therefore, take the lives of those they feel have wronged them. Another comparison is the effects that pride can have on today’s role models such as professional athletes and the result of greed on some of today’s entertainers who need more and more stuff, such as cars, homes, jewels and the list goes on and on.

Charles I of England was sentenced to death by guillotine in 1649 due to his crimes. Similarly to the once loved king, many aristocrats during the French Revolution faced this same dreadful fate. Throughout The Scarlet Pimpernel this is shown numerous times. In 1792 during this Revolution, France was taken over. Many Aristocrats attempted to escape their executions but were hopelessly blocked by barricades around the city.

The French Revolution was a gruesome part of history for all French aristocrats of all wealth and is considered one of the worst events to happen in the history of France. Baroness Orczy’s The Scarlet Pimpernel perfectly portrays what it was like during the French Revolution for Aristocrats. This portrayal is seen through a few different characters but one character that depicts the revolution through neither nobility nor commoners, but through an Englishman. The Englishman is none other than Sir Percy Blakeney.

The nobility’s failure to address the plight of the lower classes causes the people to seek justice and avenge the wrongs that the nobility inflicted upon them. In both France and England, it is the best of times for them, and they believe that “things in general were settled forever” (3). The nobility’s belief that the existing circumstances and their rank in society will last forever makes them feel that they are immune to the consequences of exploiting the people below them. However, the wrongs that the nobility inflicts upon the lower classes, traumatize them, and that motivates them to seek justice. Madame Defarge became an orphan because the Evremonde brothers abused and killed her family.

"All oppression creates a state of war" -Simone de Beauvar, French Philosopher. Animal Farm by George Orwell is an allegory for the Russian Revolution. Each animal was a key character in the Revolution such as Napoleon being Joseph Stalin, Mr. Jones being Tsar Nicholas and Boxer, being an ignorant. Mr.Jones was run off the farm because the animals were tired of the drunken man mistreating them. What the animals didn't know was that they went from one dictator to a whole group of them. The pigs. Ignorance contributes to political and social oppression and is proved by the inability to comprehend what the pigs are doing to the other animals. The animals cannot read or write as well, are perplexed easily, couldn't see the blemishes in the pig's leadership, or how the pigs changed things and didn't see or completely ignored how the pigs had acted.

The novel clearly reiterates the notion that more people conform than rebel when confronted with authoritarian control. The animals in the novel are divided into two categories. Those who have knowledge and therefore power, and those who lack knowledge and therefore are submissive. The main difference is that the submissive animals such as the horses and sheep represent the people that chose to stay uneducated, as it is a much less difficult pathway. They chose this because knowing consequences creates threatening actions against the livelihood of the animals. Despite the animals suffering from violence, poor conditions, and being overworked, they continue to conform as it becomes an easier lifestyle for them. The repetition of the lines “Napoleon is always right” and “I will work harder” showcases how the farm animals follow the routine of others and resign to conformity as their means of life, for it is an easier, simpler outlook to life for them. The idea of being an outlier and having a voice is forsaken by the animals, as the narrative evolves they witness more and more unruly acts of behaviour from the pigs, who are controlling the farm. The emotive language used within the line “Silent and terrified, the animals crept back into the barn” effectively demonstrate how a wave of melancholic and frightened emotions flood through the farm animals, creating a sense of compliance within. The use of threatening tone within the lines “At this there was a terrible baying sound outside, and nine enormous dogs wearing

The Scarlet Letter was once a man’s life living experiences in the puritan society where religion reign superior, people were harsh to those with different beliefs or ideas. The refurbished, rewritten, localized, and the updated book gave millions the ideas of how adultery was seen as sinful, Puritans had harsh punishments, and overall society during the 1700’s was difficult compared to the 21st century. Today, published more than 45 books, scarlet letter was considered his best work to many during his 60 years on earth, yet people are finding multiple hints and nudges to other ideas in the text. For example, at the beginning of the book ( mainly chapter 3) Nathaniel Hawthorne goes into great about a bearded, queered stranger angrily stating

The Story is a fictional story based on the Russian revolution, in which the story is told from the point of view of animals in a fictional world. One of the main points of this book tend to deal with tyrannical leaders and focuses on the corruption that follows government leaders. George Orwell uses allegory in a rather strange way in this particularly piece. He uses allegory through incorporating it into the plot by putting animals in the roles of humans in a historical event. This event in which he did this was the Bolshevik revolution, he put the animals in the position of the revolutionaries. The animals went into the revolution equal and as one, but soon there was a divide in the classes and different species. This was done to show the

Everyone’s heard of how peasants were nothing more than lowly villagers with virtually nothing, listened to everything the lord told them to do, and even lived in time cottages that could barely fit 4 people. But what people don’t know about the peasant is that they didn’t live like animals, due to many recent findings about how the medieval peasant lived historians have come to find that many peasants lived as pleasant peasants. Per Terry Jones the common myths we know today about the peasant came about from an unreliable source called The Chronicles of Froissart which was also found that Froissart wasn’t such a good social commentator. Many people would immediately think of uneducated, poor, hungry, and feral when someone says

Animal Farm is used as a literary device to symbolize the rise of Soviet Communism in an animal based story. In a more broad perspective, it is also a metaphor for human society and government, no matter the form. The pigs show the nearly inevitable development of tyranny in a the upper, more powerful classes, and how this is detrimental to the integrity of democracy and freedom. On the other hand, the lower class animals are used to display the dangers of having a naive, or uneducated working class that allows itself to be manipulated and lied to by the people that reside above them in the social

The animals go from a society in which they believe to be unacceptable to a life which becomes even worse than it began. The worst part, however, is that the oppression stems from an animal himself. Napoleon, the totalitarian leader, changes the founding ideas in which their ideal society was formed in order to increase his control, but continuously tells the animals that things are significantly better than before. Eventually, “the lower animals on Animal Farm did more work and received less food than any animals in the country.” The animals allow this to happen because they placed their trust in leadership and were wrongly educated on the circumstances. They are fed lies until they no longer remember their history, which allows the oppression to come full circle.

In Animal Farm by George Orwell, he uses the animals to represent everyone in our society today. In this novel, satire is the use of animal characters as a representation to show the Russian Revolution. The humans, portrayed by animals, are being ridiculed and it shows the breakdown of political ideology, and the misuse of power. Each of the characters portray an individual in society that expresses how humans can act similarly to animals. We can be perceived as animals because we can be separated by classes, or by our appearances. We often become what we don’t want to be, as in the novel the animals make rules to not become humans. We soon find out that the pigs are standing and becoming just like humans. The pigs hold all the power, and everything is fitted around them.