Maximum Melodrama

[mtvessel]

Nov 2023 - Jan 2024
The Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas, tr. David Coward – Oxford World's Classics, 2008
* * *
This is an oddly structured book. The first 200-odd pages is an exciting adventure tale starring Edmond Dantès, a dashing midshipman promoted beyond his years for his heroic qualities, and featuring evil conspirators, lovers torn asunder, Napoleonic spies, family secrets, a prison break and an Arabian Nights-style quest for fabulous treasure. But then it bizarrely veers into social comedy set in Rome at carnival time, introducing two characters, Albert de Morcerf and Franz d'Epinay, who have nothing to do with what's happened previously, and featuring what is perhaps the most insouciant kidnapping by bandits in literature. The rest of the book (around 800 pages) remains firmly focused on the French upper classes, with the action transferring to post-Napoleonic Paris where Edmond hatches a set of improbable plots (in even more improbable disguises) to ensnare and bring down those who have wronged him.

Apparently this was an editorial decision. Dumas wrote the opener at the request of his publisher to explain Dantès' motivations, and it evidently got away from him. It's a shame because it is by far the most compelling part of the book.

The difficulty is that the later episodes lay bare Dumas' tendency to wring every last drop of emotion from a scene at the expense of common sense or consistent characterisation. In the adventure section this is forgivable - the genre practically demands that Edmond be arrested just as he is about to marry his sweetheart Mercedes - but once we reach the main part of the book it renders his actions absurd. If you'll forgive a slightly spoilery example, Edmond discovers that his saintly ex-boss M. Morrel is about to go bankrupt, having lost a ship in a storm, but leaves it until he is moments away from blowing his brains out to send a message that the ship is actually fine and is about to enter the harbour. I suppose you could ascribe Edmond's bizarre behaviour to a saviour complex, but more likely Dumas just wanted to maximise the melodrama.

This could have been an interesting study of how unjust incarceration and desire for revenge warps and twists a mind, but since we never get Edmond's point of view until right at the end of the novel, his motivations remain obscure, particularly when it comes to Mercedes, whom he appears to blame for getting on with her life rather than pining away from grief. I also don't buy Edmond's transition from noble hero-sailor, who is too naive to realise that following his captain's dying command to deliver a package to Napoleon's court-in-exile in Elba would be viewed dimly by the French authorities, to a Moriarty-like evil genius manipulator. To be fair, Edmond's character failings are addressed in the denoument, but it does make a novel where you are supposed to be rooting for him a bit of a chore, particularly when it is so long. The melodrama is fun, but it isn't enough.