Bienvenue à Marseille | 2025 The Count of Monte Christo, read-a-long

[AgualusasLover]

Following the success of the continuing Dickensalongs, Fallen Women and various other classics, please join The Count of Monte Christo read-a-long, kicking off on 1 January 2025.

The ultimate tale of revenge, with swashbuckling, chicanery and bare faced lies - The Count of Monte Christo has it all.

Editions: most important point is an unabridged version, coming in at just over 1,200 pages. This thread discusses the various translations – the Penguin Classics, trans by Robin Buss is very popular and the one I am reading but what you have already is likely fine and the nuances of translation are always fun to discuss.

What’s the best translation of The Count of Monte Cristo? • We Love Translations

I’ve been thinking about the best way to read-a-long. There have been red-alongs by the day, in chunks and every which way.

I think we have two options:

There are 118 chapter and my proposal is we do one a day, starting on 1 January, 2025. (W&P and all the Fallen Women books worked well this way)

We could also convene weekly e.g. no spoilers until Sunday and read it as it was released, in 18 parts c.65 pages per week. (I remember The Woman in White worked well this way and so do the Dickensalongs)

For now, I have assumed a chapter a day as it has served us well so far, if the majority strongly object, I have put placeholders in my copy breaking it down and can update in readiness for January.

Schmoop very handily has chapter by chapter breakdowns. Here is the Intro https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/count-of-monte-cristo/

MN meet up in Marseille 2025!

I found that scene with Ali in today’s chapter just awful and can’t imagine someone who has been through what Dantes has speaking of another human as such. I can only hope that it was a ruse for his disloyal valet. And who is he connected to?

And thanks for the schedule @AgualusasLover !

@AgualusasLover Thanks for the schedule. I am now somehow a day behind after being ahead for weeks. Finding this page-turner makes it hard to stay on schedule!

On the melodrama… it came out in instalments didn’t it? It’s a bit penny-dreadful/ soapy in places but I guess that was to build “ratings” or sales… no different to something like Game of Thrones today I guess.
Yes, it is far more sensationalist than I expected but I am still enjoying it. So glad for the updates though as I keep on forgetting key pieces of the puzzle.

As an aside, Benedetto means "blessed" in Italian which I guess is ironic?! Maybe he will turn out to be a blessing in the future.

However, there were still dissenting voices at the time. The woman writer George Sand wrote feminist novels like Indiana and Lelia that predate The Count of Monte Cristo.

And in the modern day we have The Handmaids Tale and Fifty Shades of Grey. Dumas was no angel when it came to women, his famous son was illegitimate and removed from his mother to be live with Dumas and be educated.

The racism and orientalism in the book is interesting, as someone said above his father was mixed race and born into slavery in Saint-Domingue. He was taken to France by his father to be educated and rose higher in the military than any black man previously, he was General-in-Chief of the French Army of the Alps. However he publically criticised Napoleon during the campaign in Egypt and then was imprisoned in Naples for several years. Napoleon reinstated slavery in 1802 (it had been abolished by France in 1794) and Dumas (general) died 4 years later when Dumas (novelist) was just a child so Dumas (novelist) presumably grew up very aware of the impact of race.

That’s interesting context @JaninaDuszejko - I knew but had forgotten about Dumas’ parentage. Really hoping that what the Count tells people about Ali is not true and he’s actually much nicer than he makes out…we shall see…

And thanks for the schedule, @AgualusasLover !

I'm agreeing with everyone regarding The Count's treatment of Ali. I'm struggling to like him to be honest. It's off-putting.

Thank you for the background information on Dumas Senior, Janina.
Very interesting.

So confusing isn’t it as Dumas Père is the one we’re reading, son of M Dumas le general, and Dumas Fils went on to write La Dame au Camellias later in the 19thC (which became the basis for the opera La Traviata). A very interesting grandfather, father and son!

In the French version I’m reading, some of the footnotes explain the references and there are a few made to other books Dumas wrote (being so prolific), some of which were “true crime” (his “Crimes célèbres”) - I guess both he and the paying public had a taste for the sensational and he knew what sold!

Just skipped 8 pages to see where everyone else is!

Thanks @AgualusasLover for the overview. I am on a train journey and going to try and catch up to The Dapple Greys chapter today. No idea how far behind I am 🤣

Not loads of idea what's going on in the book either. I still can't quite the reason for the time jump!

It was awful… but I’m not convinced. I think it was just a show for the disloyal servant, after he’d [servant] left it said something like the Count and Ali retired ‘and conversed for some time’. I wondered whether Ali can speak after all, or they’ve developed a sign language of sorts, I don’t know. I might be way off the mark: it just seems to me Ali is possibly the closest thing Edmond has to a friend now, and is playing a role - like Edmond himself in a way.

Another one hoping that Ali isn’t in fact mute - fairly confident it’ll make for a dramatic reveal at some point!

thanks for the history about the Dumas family - how fascinating.

This has been a really interesting few pages of posts. I'm finding a lot of the behaviours of the Count very challenging in the context of his history.

I also hope there is more to see from Ali as, if not, the racism is putting me off.

I have found a book I now want to read about Dumas father: The Black Count: Glory, revolution, betrayal and the real Count of Monte Cristo by Tom Reiss. It won the Pulitzer Prize for biography. Amazing family, Dumas son was more famous than his father when they were both alive. Incredible to have 3 generations of men so celebrated in their country.

That looks fascinating Janina, can well imagine he must have had Edmond’s charisma.

Given the Count’s evident contempt for Danglars’ titles, and that we know he’s out for vengeance on the people he’s seemingly cultivating, perhaps we need not despair for Ali.

@Orland0 agree, I’m hoping that’s the case. The events / interactions that occur in The Dapple Greys chapter seem to suggest that Ali and Dantes are indeed working closely together on this scheme and the slave talk is just for show.

Thanks for the schedule confirmation @AgualusasLover , pleasantly surprised to see I'm on track as I tend to fall behind on almost every readalong.

Yes, thanks for the schedule @AgualusasLover , much appreciated!

Thanks too to @JaninaDuszejko for the historical info!

@MotherOfCatBoy I have also been trying to keep the three generations of Dumas men straight! Ours is the middle of the three as you say.

@Orland0 I did use the term 'racist' but I very much agree that we have to read non-modern novels through a historical lens. I think it's important to distinguish between the Count (as a character who sometimes exhibits a racist mindset) and the author Dumas himself, who was obviously mixed race. The character and the author are different.

I feel a strong desire for the Count to be a good guy through and through, but clearly it's more complicated than that. A couple of you mentioned the term Orientalism, and that's very helpful. Now that I think about it, the reincarnated Edmond Dantes is a bit of walking cliche of Orientalism (that is, the East as perceived and stereotyped by the West, rather than the East as it actually is in reality). Luxury, soft furnishings, gold and jewels, despotism and slavery, a beautiful slave mistress, hashish smoking.

I'm sure there must a wealth of literary criticism on race in Dumas but I'm not familiar with it.

My sense is that Dumas is exploiting Orientalist stereotypes to the fullest in order to give his French audience what they want. At the same time, in today's chapter ('Ideology') the Count insists on his cosmopolitanism: he sees himself a as a citizen of the world.

He is characterised as foreign (we are told that he is already being referred to as the Noble Foreigner or 'noble etranger'). Yet Dumas is deploying his foreignness not just as a way to titillate and seduce French readers, but also as a way to criticise French justice. French people might expect their justice system to be far superior to 'Eastern' forms of justice, but which we already know the French justice system is NOT superior (because Villefort is self-serving and immoral).

I confess I'm not really expecting the Count to end up having a more equal relationship with Ali. I think his relationship with Ali will remain despotic and yes, racist. That said, it seems to me that Dumas is challenging racism on a broader level, by using Orientalist stereotypes to expose the hollow hypocrisy of the French justice system.

I really enjoyed the Count's verbal battle with Villefort in today's chapter. The Count did come across as very arrogant, but he demonstrated via his argumentative skills that he's very much Villefort's equal. He is not born an aristocrat, but he can match and best the aristocrat Villefort when it comes to debate and intellect.

And of course there's always the irony of the fact that although the Count is now presenting himself as foreign, we readers know that he is born and bred French... so other, but also not other.

In short, I am interpreting the novel as BOTH racist and anti-racist, if that makes sense!

Thank you @cassandre for your post!
Really very good. It helped to make it clearer for me.

thanks @FuzzyCaoraDhubh !

Every year I teach Montaigne's essay 'On cannibals' to students, which is a 16th c. essay about the French view of the so-called New World (part of modern-day Brazil). And I see a very similar dynamic in that essay. On the one hand, Montaigne 'others' the Brazilian tribe, by describing them as very simple and close to nature, but on the other hand, he uses the Brazilian tribe to critique his own contemporary 'civilised' French society, which he sees as far more corrupt than the so-called 'cannibals' of the New World. So again you see racist and anti-racist trends working together.

The 19th c. is far less familiar to me, but I can see that race is working in Dumas' novel in complex ways. And the fact that Dumas himself is mixed-race, and has slavery in his immediate family history, gives him a certain authority that Montaigne doesn't have (as Montaigne is white French).

In some ways Montaigne is incredibly far-seeing and eloquent, but the fact remains that he is describing an ethnic minority culture not first and foremost in its own right, but more as a foil or device that he can use to expose the flaws in French society. I suspect the same is true of Dumas. What we learn about the culture of 'the East' is limited, but the idea of the East is being used as a device to make French readers question the superiority of their own culture.

Firstly, the PPs who suspected that Villefort was still alive were right!

It did seem unlikely that Dumas would bump him off before Edmond got his revenge, especially as it was his abuse of his official position that is really crucial to the whole plot.

I love Villefort's discomfort in this chapter!

Oh yeah, I got so carried away, I totally forgot Villefort was meant to be dead 😂

I wonder what happened to his first wife, as he's now on wife number 2!

Villefort's back story seems a bit sketchy at this point, I did notice that this son is portrayed as being as malevolent as the one rescued by Bertuccio.

Very interesting @cassandre
I can definitely see the parallels there.
Off topic; I saw an original copy of Montaigne's Essais in Bordeaux last summer in the Musée d'Aquitaine and I was rather blown away. I took a photo of it.

I also had that delayed reaction about Villefort not being dead :) Ha ha!
Agree with TonTon that the man seems incapable of having offspring that are not malevolent (hmm...) The description of this lad was not the prettiest. I thought it sounded rather odd in French so I checked the English version which seemed only marginally less odd.

I only started today's chapter.