The Scarlet Pimpernel
267 pages
The Scarlet Pimpernel is an eighteenth century novel that takes place in England and France during the French Revolution. The story takes places during the months September and October in the year 1792. In England we see the characters in a rural area free from death. For example, The Fishermen’s Rest is a small countryside pub where many of the characters such as Marguerite St. Just, Percy Blakeney, Lord Antony, and Andrew are seen safe. In France, however, the mood is very different. It is of civil unrest and the French aristocrats and people who help them must fear for their lives.
As it takes place during the French Revolution, the time set of the novel plays a vital role. During this time in France, the absolute monarchy collapsed and the people of France were executing aristocrats and important government figures with the guillotine. These aristocrats attempted to escape from France and seek safety in other countries such as England. This was difficult with all the security, but some managed to succeed. The French Revolution was the reason for the Scarlet Pimpernel to help French aristocrats escape safely, which ties in to one of the major plots of the novel. Without the French Revolution the story could not be told.
One of the main characters is Percy Blakeney who we later learn is also the Scarlet Pimpernel. He is Englishman who is also the husband of Lady Blakeney. Percy is characterized as the richest and most fashionable man in England, but also as a complete dunce. He is called a dull turkey. Physically, he is solidly built with large shoulders and muscles. He is also mentioned as being handsome. However, Percy is seen as very dull to many people including his wife. Percy ca...
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...hen she agrees to help Chauvelin, she betrays him. She feels passionately for the Scarlet Pimpernel and her brother Armand, and that’s the reason that she betrays Chauvelin and France for them. It forces her decide what is more important, loyalty to herself and her ideals, or loyalty to her country and its ideals. Her ideals include saving her brother and the Scarlet Pimpernel where as her country’s ideals include capturing them. This universal message can relate to anyone. Where does your loyalty lie?
I enjoyed the novel The Scarlet Pimpernel. It was filled with adventure and I liked how both conflicts were resolved at the end. I chose this book because Mrs. Donius recommended it to me. She said she loved it and it was one of her favorites. I would recommend this book to a wide range of readers. Anyone from the age of thirteen and older could enjoy this novel.
The Scarlet Pimpernel, by Baroness Orczy, is a book that has been loved and revered for more than a century since its original publishing in 1905. This book is set in the year 1792 amid the Reign of Terror in which aristocrats are getting slaughtered daily by guillotine. The Scarlet Pimpernel and his band of followers are out to save them. From the perspective of Lady Blakeney, a great struggle between the mysterious Scarlet Pimpernel and Chauvelin, a french agent, is revealed. Orczy wrote using excellent foreshadowing and syntax, but at times there was poor plot development.
In the novel, My Antonia, by Willa Cather, society seems to govern the lives of many people. But for the others, who see past society's stereotypical values, had enough strength to overcome this and allowed them to achieve their dreams. Throughout the book, everyone seems to be trying to pursue the American Dream. While they all have different ideas of just exactly what the American Dream is, they all know precisely what they want. For some, the American Dream sounds so enticing that they have traveled across the world to achieve their goal.
The characters Hawthorne develops are deep, unique, and difficult to genuinely understand. Young, tall, and beautiful Hester Prynne is the central protagonist of this story. Shamefully, strong-willed and independent Hester is the bearer of the scarlet letter. Burning with emotion, she longs for an escape from her mark, yet simultaneously, she refuses to seem defeated by society’s punishment. Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale claims the secondary role in The Scarlet Letter; he is secretly Hester’s partner in adultery. Conflicted and grieved over his undisclosed act, he drives himself to physical and mental sickness. He fervently desires Hester, but should he risk his godly reputation by revealing the truth? Dimmesdale burns like Hester. Pearl, the child produced in Hester and Dimmesdale’s sin, is the third main character. She is fiery, passionate, perceiving, and strikingly symbolic; at one point in the novel she is referred to as “the scarlet letter endowed with life!” Inevitably, Pearl is consumed with questions about herself, her mother, and Dimmesdale. The reader follows Pearl as she discovers the truth. Altogether, Hawthorne’s use of intricately complex, conflicted ch...
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.
The Scarlet Letter is full of many psychological and moral aspects, and most of them relate very well to things that are going on right now in the world. They all go hand in hand meaning that the aspects that were explained in The Scarlet Letter, can also be explained in the same way as they can be explained now. Although times were very different in the times where The Scarlet Letter took place, they are all relevant for what people have to say about certain things in today's world. The moral aspects of the Scarlet Letter are almost the same as moral aspects of today.
The Scarlet Letter is a story about human reaction to circumstances and the justification behind these actions. Each of the central characters in the novel represents a side of an extremely serious situation, adultery. Each of the characters has a certain amount of justification behind their actions and each searches for a way to rise out of his/her condition.
The Scarlet Letter is a novel about a Puritan woman who has committed adultery and must pay for her sin by wearing a scarlet “A'; on her bosom. The woman, Hester Prynne, must struggle through everyday life with the guilt of her sin. The novel is also about the suffering that is endured by not admitting to one’s wrongs. Reverend Mister Dimmesdale learns that secrecy only makes the guilt increase. Nathaniel Hawthorne is trying to display how guilt is the everlasting payment for sinful actions. The theme of guilt as reparation for sin in The Scarlet Letter is revealed through Nathaniel Hawthorne’s use of northeastern, colonial settings, various conflicts, and characters that must live with guilt for the sins they have committed.
Memories are a stockpile of good and bad experiences that are retained of a people, places. How do you remember your childhood memories? Do certain people, places or things trigger these memories to the past? Does the knowledge of these experience still affect your life today? Throughout the novel My Antonia, Jim's nostalgia for the past is represented by nature, symbolic elements, and above all Antonia.
The Scarlet Letter is a novel revolving around a woman who committed the sin of adultery in a small Puritan town in seventeenth-century Boston. Hester Prynne, the adulteress, refuses to reveal her lover’s name, and as a result is forced to wear a large, red "A" on her bosom. This is to tell everyone of her sin. Hester is also forced to live isolated with her daughter, Pearl, who is the result of her sin. Meanwhile, the small Puritan town remains very devoted to and very proud of their young minister, Arthur Dimmesdale. What they do not know is that it is Dimmesdale who is Hester’s Lover and Pearl’s father. The fact that Dimmesdale keeps his sin a secret is tearing him up, both physically and emotionally. To complicate matters even more, Hester’s old and slightly deformed husband is back. He had stayed in England for quite a while allowing Hester to settle into their new home.
Percy Blakeney, one of the richest noblemen in England, often risked his life as the Scarlet Pimpernel, an intelligent, courageous man, who, despite being such a great hero, also possessed a more compassionate side. Percy Blakeney was a very intelligent man, who, as the Scarlet Pimpernel, devised numerous plans to save French aristocrats from the guillotine. The Scarlet Pimpernel courageously went to France in order to save these doomed aristocrats, even though he knew that he himself would be executed if he were caught. In addition to being intelligent and courageous, Percy Blakeney deeply cared for his wife, Marguerite St. Just, and for his fellow men. Percy Blakeney, although he was the great hero known as the Scarlet Pimpernel,
The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne is considered by many to be a classic novel. In The Scarlet Letter, Hawthorne provides his audience with a real sense of the consequences of unconfessed sin, isolation from society, and the presence of evil everywhere. Through his portrayal of the main characters, his choice of setting, and his implied moral lessons, he teaches lessons that must be learned for humans to continue living in harmony with one another.
Bensick, Carol. “His Folly, Her Weakness: Demystified Adultery in The Scarlet Letter.” New Essays on The Scarlet Letter. Ed. Michael J. Colacurcio. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985. 137-159. Print.
The story setting is the impetus in The Scarlet Letter because New England during the mid- 17th century had unique customs and values that impelled conflicts and character transformations. Throughout the novel, Hawthorne accentuates certain settings within New England to portray the strictness and hardships in the town, while he counters with the forest and the isolated cottage settings. Hawthorne’s The Scarlett Letter portrays a strict, rigid Puritan town through utilizing both the physical and historical settings of the time period.
Mrs. Marian Forrester strikes readers as an appealing character with the way she shifts as a person from the start of the novel, A Lost Lady, to the end of it. She signifies just more than a women that is married to an old man who has worked in the train business. She innovated a new type of women that has transitioned from the old world to new world. She is sought out to be a caring, vibrant, graceful, and kind young lady but then shifts into a gold-digging, adulterous, deceitful lady from the way she is interpreted throughout the book through the eyes of Niel Herbert. The way that the reader is able to construe the Willa Cather on how Mr. and Mrs. Forrester fell in love is a concept that leads the reader to believe that it is merely psychological based. As Mrs. Forrester goes through her experiences such as the death of her husband, the affairs that she took part in with Frank Ellinger, and so on, the reader witnesses a shift in her mentally and internally. Mrs. Forrester becomes a much more complicated women to the extent in which she struggles to find who really is and that is a women that wants to find love and be fructuous in wealth. A women of a multitude of blemishes, as a leading character it can be argued that Mrs. Forrester signifies a lady that is ultimately lost in her path of personal transitioning. She becomes lost because she cannot withstand herself unless she is treated well by a wealthy male in which causes her to act unalike the person she truly is.
The historical context, psychological exploration of the characters, and realistic dialogue make this fictional novel more realistic. The symbolic representation of the scarlet letter, Pearl, and the settings along with the morals taught by the stories of the characters make the novel more insightful, symbolic, and allegorical. These aspects of The Scarlet Letter make the novel a brilliant combination of the literary devices of Realism, symbolism, and allegory, and fill the novel with profundity, suspense, romance, and tragedy.