The Count of Monte Cristo

By Alexandre Dumas

With an Introduction and Notes by Keith Wren, University of Kent at Canterbury.

The story of Edmund Dantes, self-styled Count of Monte Cristo, is told with consummate skill. The victim of a miscarriage of justice, Dantes is fired by a desire for retribution and empowered by a stroke of providence. In his campaign of vengeance, he becomes an anonymous agent of fate.

The sensational narrative of intrigue, betrayal, escape, and triumphant revenge moves at a cracking pace. Dumas' novel presents a powerful conflict between good and evil embodied in an epic saga of rich diversity that is complicated by the hero's ultimate discomfort with the hubristic implication of his own actions.

Our edition is based on the most popular and enduring translation first published by Chapman and Hall in 1846. The name of the translator was never revealed.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Wordsworth Editions
• Release date: Oct 1, 2011
• ISBN: 9781848703483

Alexandre Dumas

Alexandre Dumas (1802-1870), one of the most universally read French authors, is best known for his extravagantly adventurous historical novels. As a young man, Dumas emerged as a successful playwright and had considerable involvement in the Parisian theater scene. It was his swashbuckling historical novels that brought worldwide fame to Dumas. Among his most loved works are The Three Musketeers (1844), and The Count of Monte Cristo (1846). He wrote more than 250 books, both Fiction and Non-Fiction, during his lifetime.

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The Count of Monte Cristo

Alexandre Dumas

with an Introduction and Notes

by Keith Wren

WORDSWORTH CLASSICS

The Count of Monte Cristo first published by Wordsworth Editions Limited in 1997

New introduction and notes added in 2002

Introduction and notes © Keith Wren 2002

Published as an ePublication 2011

ISBN 978 1 84870 348 3

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Contents

Chapter 1: Marseilles – the Arrival

Chapter 2: Father and Son

Chapter 3: The Catalans

Chapter 4: Conspiracy

Chapter 5: The Marriage Feast

Chapter 6: The Deputy Procureur du Roi

Chapter 7: The Examination

Chapter 8: The Château d’If

Chapter 9: The Evening of the Betrothal

Chapter 10: The King’s Closet at the Tuileries

Chapter 11: The Corsican Ogre

Chapter 12: Father and Son

Chapter 13: The Hundred Days

Chapter 14: The Two Prisoners

Chapter 15: Number 34 and Number 7

Chapter 16: A Learned Italian

Chapter 17: The Abbé’s Chamber

Chapter 18: The Treasure

Chapter 19: The Third Attack

Chapter 20: The Cemetery of the Château d’If

Chapter 21: The Island of Tiboulen

Chapter 22: The Smugglers

Chapter 23: The Island of Monte Cristo

Chapter 24: The Secret Cave

Chapter 25: The Unknown

Chapter 26: The Pont du Gard Inn

Chapter 27: The Story

Chapter 28: The Prison Register

Chapter 29: The House of Morrel & Son

Chapter 30: The Fifth of September

Chapter 31: Italy: Sinbad the Sailor

Chapter 32: The Waking

Chapter 33: Roman Bandits

Chapter 34: The Colosseum

Chapter 35: La Mazzolata

Chapter 36: The Carnival at Rome

Chapter 37: The Catacombs of St Sebastian

Chapter 38: The Compact

Chapter 39: The Guests

Chapter 40: The Breakfast

Chapter 41: The Presentation

Chapter 42: Monsieur Bertuccio

Chapter 43: The House at Auteuil

Chapter 44: The Vendetta

Chapter 45: The Rain of Blood

Chapter 46: Unlimited Credit

Chapter 47: The Dappled Greys

Chapter 48: Ideology

Chapter 49: Haidee

Chapter 50: The Morrel Family

Chapter 51: Pyramus and Thisbe

Chapter 52: Toxicology

Chapter 53: Robert le Diable

Chapter 54: A Flurry of Stocks

Chapter 55: Major Cavalcanti

Chapter 56: Andrea Cavalcanti

Chapter 57: In the Lucerne Patch

Chapter 58: M. Noirtier de Villefort

Chapter 59: The Will

Chapter 60: The Telegraph

Chapter 61: How a Gardener May Get Rid of the Dormice that Eat his Peaches

Chapter 62: Ghosts

Chapter 63: The Dinner

Chapter 64: The Beggar

Chapter 65: A Conjugal Scene

Chapter 66: Matrimonial Projects

Chapter 67: At the Office of the King’s Attorney

Chapter 68: A Summer Ball

Chapter 69: The Inquiry

Chapter 70: The Ball

Chapter 71: Bread and Salt

Chapter 72: Madame de Saint-Méran

Chapter 73: The Promise

Chapter 74: The Villefort Family Vault

Chapter 75: A Signed Statement

Chapter 76: Progress of Cavalcanti the Younger

Chapter 77: Haidee

Chapter 78: We Hear from Yanina

Chapter 79: The Lemonade

Chapter 80: The Accusation

Chapter 81: The Room of the Retired Baker

Chapter 82: The Burglary

Chapter 83: The Hand of God

Chapter 84: Beauchamp

Chapter 85: The Journey

Chapter 86: The Trial

Chapter 87: The Challenge

Chapter 88: The Insult

Chapter 89: A Nocturnal Interview

Chapter 90: The Meeting

Chapter 91: Mother and Son

Chapter 92: The Suicide

Chapter 93: Valentine

Chapter 94: Maximilian’s Avowal

Chapter 95: Father and Daughter

Chapter 96: The Contract

Chapter 97: The Departure for Belgium

Chapter 98: The Bell and Bottle Tavern

Chapter 99: The Law

Chapter 100: The Apparition

Chapter 101: Locusta

Chapter 102: Valentine

Chapter 103: Maximilian

Chapter 104: Danglars’s Signature

Chapter 105: The Cemetery of Père-la-Chaise

Chapter 106: Dividing the Proceeds

Chapter 107: The Lions’ Den

Chapter 108: The Judge

Chapter 109: The Assizes

Chapter 110: The Indictment

Chapter 111: The Expiation

Chapter 112: The Departure

Chapter 113: The Past

Chapter 114: Peppino

Chapter 115: Luigi Vampa’s Bill of Fare

Chapter 116: The Pardon

Chapter 117: The Fifth of October

General Introduction

Wordsworth Classics are inexpensive editions designed to appeal to the general reader and students. We commissioned teachers and specialists to write wide ranging, jargon-free introductions and to provide notes that would assist the understanding of our readers rather than interpret the stories for them. In the same spirit, because the pleasures of reading are inseparable from the surprises, secrets and revelations that all narratives contain, we strongly advise you to enjoy this book before turning to the Introduction.

General Adviser

Keith Carabine

Rutherford College

University of Kent at Canterbury

Introduction

By the time he came, at the age of forty-two, to embark on writing The Count of Monte Cristo, Alexandre Dumas was already a giant on the French literary scene. From humble beginnings in the small provincial town of Villers-Cotterêts, fifty miles north-east of Paris, he had risen to become, if not the most significant, then certainly the most prolific, dramatist of the French Romantic movement in the late 1820s and 1830s. He sub­sequently turned his attention more to prose fiction: indeed, to cater for the explosion in readership of the popular daily press and the public’s increasing appetite for novels in serial form, he reinvented himself not merely as a novelist, but as a theatre critic and (somewhat implausibly) a political columnist to boot. His success in what was essentially writing to a formula and maintaining the interest of his readers caused him to be much in demand: when he wrote The Count of Monte Cristo – a trifle sporadically, between 1844 and 1846 – he was simultaneously writing different serials on different subjects for a number of other newspaper proprietors. As one of his biographers, André Maurois, remarks, ‘never in the whole course of French literature has there been anything comparable to Dumas’s output . . . novels of from eight to ten volumes showered down without a break on the newspapers and bookshops’. [1] Dumas’s readers proved insatiable, and Dumas, the John Grisham or Stephen King of his day, was always ready – perhaps too ready – to oblige them.

The background to The Count of Monte Cristo is complicated, but it is instructive because it helps to illustrate exactly what Dumas was doing and how he was doing it. Novels had been published in instalments from the late 1820s, but in twice-monthly literary magazines such as La Revue des Deux Mondes and La Revue de Paris, and in very long sections. For example, George Sand’s Mauprat (1837), which runs to nearly 300 pages in a current French paperback edition, was issued in just four parts by the Revue des Deux Mondes. But in 1836 the face of journalism in France changed almost overnight. Two rival daily newspapers, La Presse and Le Siècle, were able to cut their cover price by some 50% thanks to the simple – but revolutionary – wheeze of accepting commercial advertising. This was more important than it may sound, because the previous annual cost of a newspaper (80 francs) had been broadly equivalent to a month’s wages for a Parisian worker. Of course, the proprietors more than recouped the cost of this apparently selfless gesture, since, as well as vastly increasing their readership, they racked up their charges to their advertisers, a full-page advertisement costing as much as 500 francs. In those days, newspapers depended for sales on a subscription system: the consequence of the dramatic price reduction was an equally dramatic increase in the number of subscribers. [2] The proprietors then had to devise ways of hanging on to their new readers, and although they did not initially see serial fiction as the trump card it rapidly turned out to be, they did see the value of including regular features to keep the punters coming back for more. By 1838, Le Siècle had already developed the nineteenth-century equivalent of the modern trailer, boasting of the coming fictional attractions in store for the public, and the serial-fiction juggernaut was in the process of developing an unstoppable momentum. Other newspapers followed the lead of La Presse and Le Siècle, and competition to retain the services of superstar authors who could pen blockbusters that kept readers loyal began to resemble today’s market for Premiership footballers. There was serious money to be made: the papers would pay up to 100,000 francs for the exclusive rights to a novel by a top-ranking author. The most popular and highly regarded of these were not necessarily writers who have held on to their places in the literary Pantheon: who now reads (or has even heard of) Frédéric Soulié or Eugène Sue? On the other hand, revered luminaries such as Balzac came a horrible cropper because they could not tailor their style to the public’s demands. [3]

Emile de Girardin, the founder of La Presse, wrote that ‘when the people is sovereign, it is crucial that the sovereign learn to read. With six sous I can give him an education.’ [4] But this somewhat pompous assertion could not conceal the reality that serial fiction was not a particularly highbrow affair. Certainly Dumas insisted on the ostensibly higher purpose of his fictional endeavours. In a rather convoluted formulation, he wrote in The Companions of Jehu (1858): ‘I have had a twin goal, to educate and to entertain: and I place education first, because for me entertainment has only ever been a way to disguise education.’ [5] However, he was not entirely consistent in maintaining this view. In a sideswipe at his great rival Balzac, he sourly remarked:

All right, so I’m only an entertainer, a comedian, maybe. But at least I have the reputation of being an entertainer who can entertain . . . . [6]

Essentially, serial fiction is escapist stuff, ‘a break with reality, the present, the everyday’, with the dim routine of the lives of the great majority of its readers. [7] Contemporary critics like Louis Reybaud cleverly mocked the formulaic nature of stories:

You take for example . . . a young woman who is unhappy and persecuted. You add to her a bloody and brutal tyrant, a sensible and virtuous hero, and a sly and perfidious friend. When you have all those characters in hand, mix them vigorously in eight, ten or more instalments, and serve hot . . . Each number must end well. Tie it to the next issue by a sort of umbilical cord . . . that creates the desire, indeed the impatience to read on . . . [8]

Indeed, everything about the genre was derided, from its stylistic inadequacies (‘empty words, idle descriptions, redundant epithets,’ sniffed Sainte-Beuve) to the simple fact that it was just so popular. [9] Alfred Nettement superciliously remarked about The Count of Monte Cristo: ‘In the public reading rooms [cabinets de lecture, the precursor of the modern lending library], its success is unprecedented . . . you have to sign up in advance in order to read it, as if it were one of those beautiful dancing girls around whom suitors cluster from all sides.’ [10]

Sour grapes, maybe. At all events, the success of the serial novel continued unabated – and the novels themselves got longer and longer, as authors and newspaper proprietors capitalised on the success of the genre. Dumas developed the habit (probably borrowed from Balzac) of bringing his popular characters back in sequels. D’Artagnan and the Musketeers assured him a steady income between 1844 and 1850, and the Journal des Débats mendaciously promised an Epilogue at the conclusion of the serialisation of The Count of Monte Cristo. [11] In this regard, it is interesting that the end of the novel, like that of so many of Dumas’s others, is left open: it is not just Valentine and Maximilian who are left to ‘ ‘Wait and hope’ ’ for the count’s return (p. 875). [12]

It was quite by chance that Dumas came to write The Count of Monte Cristo. He had signed a contract with Béthune and Plon, the publishers of the Journal des Débats, to furnish a series of articles on historical tourism in Paris. However, unnerved by the runaway success of Eugène Sue’s The Mysteries of Paris for a rival paper, they pleaded with Dumas (to whom they had already paid an advance) to turn this into a novel. [13] Dumas agreed. A voracious and compulsive reader, he already had the basis for his story in an anecdote that he had noted earlier in the Mémoires historiques (1838) of the police archivist Jacques Peuchet, called The Diamond and the Vengeance. It told the story of François Picaud, whose friends, jealous of his impending marriage, denounced him as an English spy. Incarcerated for seven years, he emerged, enriched by the hoard of a fellow prisoner, to take murderous revenge on his betrayers, before he himself was done to death by one of his victims. This provided Dumas with the basic material for the first and third parts of the novel (set in Marseilles and Paris respectively). The not entirely successful second section, set mainly in Rome, Dumas cobbled together from some earlier travel writings and reminiscences of a trip to – or, rather, round – the island of Monte Cristo with the nephew of Napoleon Bonaparte. His original intention was to start the novel with the Roman chapters and to do the Marseilles chapters in the form of a flashback. It is thanks to the persuasion of Dumas’s collaborator, Auguste Maquet, that modern readers have the lively and exciting first part of the novel in its present form, and encounter Edmond Dantès before he transmogrifies himself into the mysterious and sinister Count of Monte Cristo.

As the title suggests, the character of Edmond Dantès is central to the novel, both in terms of what he is and what he becomes. His story, as he himself retrospectively defines it, is one ‘ which would almost make us doubt the goodness of Providence, if that Providence did not afterwards reveal itself by proving that all is but a means of conducting to an end ’ (p. 850). There is, however, little hint of this sombre, if ultimately consoling, morality in the opening chapters of the novel, where his contention that ‘man does not appear to me to be intended to enjoy felicity so unmixed’ (p. 29) equates somewhat unconvincingly with the situation in which he finds himself. Nineteen years old, a devoted son, calm, energetic, ambitious, resolute and deplorably good-looking withal, he is on the brink of captaining his own vessel and marrying the girl of his dreams – it is not the least of Dumas’s achievements to engage our sympathy for such an impossible paragon of manly virtue! But his life and prospects disintegrate like a house of cards, and the man who miraculously escapes from the Château d’If some fourteen years later has been radically transformed by his experience. What ensues is perhaps as much about Edmond Dantès’ subconscious quest to reconnect with his former self – his journey through hell, if you like – as it is about visiting condign punishment on the wreckers of his life. [14] Indeed, the message of the entire novel might be said to hover uneasily between these twin poles.

In all of this the Abbé Faria’s role is catalytic. He rescues Edmond from the brink of suicide and from a concomitant loss of his sense of self (Edmond’s individuality has been eroded to the extent that he is seen as a number, prisoner no. 34, rather than a name). He is also instrumental in providing the young man with the means, both intellectual and material, to assume the new identity that will enable him to achieve both justice and revenge. The problem, however, is that the justice that Edmond envisages is of the Old Testament variety, la loi du talion, ‘an eye for an eye’. As a consequence of Faria’s explanation of the conspiracy to which he has fallen victim, ‘he had formed a fearful resolution, and bound himself to its fulfilment by a solemn oath’ (p. 117). Faria regrets that his enlightenment of Edmond has caused the latter to pronounce his vow of vengeance, since he himself exemplifies the higher attribute, its renunciation and a reconnection with the self through love of others: ‘ I have forgiven the world for the love of you ’ (p. 125). Significantly, Dumas contrasts the differing objectives of Faria and Edmond in respect of the treasure of Monte Cristo:

Now that this treasure . . . could ensure the future happiness of him whom Faria really loved as a son, it had doubled its value in his eyes, and every day he expatiated on the amount, explaining to Dantès all the good which, with thirteen or fourteen millions of francs, a man could do in these days to his friends; and then Dantès . . . reflected how much ill, in these times, a man with thirteen or fourteen millions could do to his enemies. [p. 133]

Once free of the Château d’If, Edmond renews his ‘oath of implacable vengeance’ (p. 150), although ‘his heart . . . petrifying in his bosom’ (p. 154) does not entirely displace a sense of fairness and balance – he is conscious, too, of ‘ some friends to reward ’ (p. 140). It is perhaps important to note that he treats the simple sailor Jacopo with much the same generosity of spirit as Faria had treated him, that he saves Morrel and his family from bankruptcy and humiliation, and that he gives Caderousse at least a chance of redeeming himself. None of this, however, is entirely devoid of an element of game-playing and manipulation, consonant with the impulses of superiority and domination that become such a feature of Dantès when he takes on his new identity as the Count of Monte Cristo.

It is at this point that the urge to revenge becomes interfused (or perhaps just confused) with the notion of a providential mission, and the count embarks single-mindedly on his role as the avenging angel: ‘ . . . now the god of vengeance yields to me his power to punish the wicked ’ (p. 215). The attributes with which Dumas invests his protagonist underline his objective. The fashionable oriental gloss of his new personality carries with it connotations not just of luxury and exoticism, but an underlying acceptance of, and indulgence in, cruelty – Franz notes the ‘gleams of extraordinary ferocity’ (p. 226) in his eyes – and a fatalistic sense of the inevitability of his purpose. The repeated comparison between the count and the heroes of Byron – Lara, Manfred, Werner – suggests, not just ‘his dark and melancholy eye’ (p. 552), but even darker and more melancholy secrets, nameless suffering, allied with a dismissive view of humanity: ‘ Oh, man, man – race of crocodiles . . . how well do I recognise you there, and that at all times you are worthy of yourselves! ’ (p. 282). In his self-appointed role as an agent of Providence, he is therefore assisted by man’s post-Edenic fallen state. His victims are found out by their own sins that come home to roost and the count is the catalyst that brings this about. This is shown in his justification of the destruction of Fernand de Morcerf:

‘Well, the French did not avenge themselves on the traitor, the Spaniards did not shoot the traitor, Ali in his tomb left the traitor unpunished; but I, betrayed, sacrificed, buried, have risen from my tomb, by the grace of God, to punish that man. He sends me for that purpose, and here I am.’ [p. 699]

But the resurrection imagery, with its forcefully Christian overtones, is disturbing, because at this stage the Old Testament vision of justice remains paramount. This is not to say that the count does not waver. An encounter with Mercédès causes him to reflect on the way in which the emotions can play havoc with the best-laid plans. However, Albert’s subsequent withdrawal from the duel confirms Monte Cristo’s original perceptions: ‘ Providence still . . . now only am I fully convinced of being the emissary of God ’ (p. 710). A sterner test comes when Héloïse de Villefort poisons, not just herself, but her seven-year-old son Edward: the count ‘felt that he had passed beyond the bounds of vengeance, and that he could no longer say, God is for and with me’ (p. 833). But the impact of Edward’s death is diminished by the fact that he is deliberately presented as a singularly unpleasant child. In addition, twenty-four hours later, Monte Cristo has recovered his equanimity to such an extent that he can (in a scene rather too obviously borrowed from the end of Balzac’s Old Goriot) apostrophise Paris, the ‘modern Babylon’: ‘ I believe that the Spirit of God led my steps to thee and that he also enables me to quit thee in triumph ’ (p. 837). An apparent recurrence of the ‘abyss of doubt’ (p. 844) into which he has (contradictorily) been cast since Edward’s death leads to a return visit to the Château d’If: the sight of his former prison dissipates the abyss fairly promptly. The ‘sign’ for which he begs Faria’s shade appears in the shape of an oddly unFaria-like injunction drawn from a random consultation of the abbé’s prison manuscript: ‘ ‘Thou shalt tear out the dragons’ teeth, and shalt trample the lions under foot, saith the Lord’ ’ (p. 849). The matter is settled: ‘The victory was complete; twice he had overcome his doubts’ (p. 849).

In a way, however, Dumas’s justification of his hero seems to act as a form of exorcism. If victory is complete, then so is revenge. The chapter that recounts the return to the Château d’If is entitled ‘The Past’, and the past has been purged for ever. [15] The mysteriously anonymous Count of Monte Cristo now becomes self-confessedly ‘ Edmond Dantès, Count of Monte Cristo ’ (p. 875). The course of history cannot be changed, but Edmond Dantès can, in a sense, re-embark on his life where he left it twenty-three years earlier, sailing east towards the sunrise with his beloved Haidée. [16] If it is a trifle fanciful to equate him, as does Jean-Yves Tadié, with Lohengrin, it is perhaps not entirely gratuitous that Edmond approaches from the sea in Chapter 1 and returns to the sea in Chapter 117. Dumas appears to take a broadly ‘Rousseauistic’ view of humanity: thus Faria tells Edmond that ‘ from an artificial civilisation have originated wants, vices, and false tastes, which occasionally become so powerful as to stifle within us all good feelings ’ (p. 112). This leads Claude Schopp to argue that ‘Society . . . is the home of all that is evil, whereas the sea . . . is the domain of freedom and the possibility of communion with God.’ [17] Such an assertion unfortunately sits rather oddly with the description of the sea as ‘that terrible barrier against freedom’ (p. 56), preventing escape from the Château d’If, and it is perhaps dangerous to try too hard to identify a consistent set of symbols and image patterns in a novel written to order and at such speed. [18] Certainly Dumas still seems to hedge his bets as to exactly where the count now stands, with continued references in the last chapter to ‘ the evil I have wrought ’ (p. 870) and his remorse for this. Yet the inference is clear. Danglars (in a gesture that somewhat offends our sense of fair play) is allowed to survive: Monte Cristo reveals himself, now in overtly Christian terms, as ‘ he . . . who yet forgives you, because he hopes to be forgiven ’ (p. 866). But this forgiveness is the forgiveness that God extends to every representative of fallen humanity, not a recompense for repenting of any specific wickedness. In forgiving Danglars, Monte Cristo refers to the former’s ‘ good fortune ’: he certainly does not imply that the less ‘fortunate’ Fernand and Villefort got anything other than their deserts. Dumas causes Monte Cristo finally to embrace Faria’s values, but, unlike Faria, he cannot quite in the final analysis bring himself to believe that his hero might be blamed for what he has done en route.

It is odd that, of the three villains of the piece, it should be Danglars who comes off best. He survives with his sanity and 50,000 francs of spending money, though the magnitude of the shock he has experienced is underlined by the fact that his hair turns white overnight, a highly unusual phenomenon given that it is either false or dyed (p. 373). Perhaps he exemplifies the biblical precept that much shall be forgiven to those who have sinned greatly (although the condition for this forgiveness is repentance, which appears conspicuously absent in Danglars’s case); certainly he is initially, and by some way, the nastiest of three nasty pieces of work, and primarily responsible for Edmond’s imprisonment. However, by the time he reappears in the third part of the novel, he has changed from a figure of opprobrium to something approaching a figure of fun. Dumas uses him (slightly anachronistically) to guy certain aspects of the contemporary political regime of Guizot that he despised. [19] Hence Danglars is satirised for his philistinism, his hypocrisy, his sham of a marriage and his political opportunism, as well as for his selfishness and his avarice – he refuses to bail out the firm of his benefactor Morrel, but is ‘ inflexible in any resolutions formed for his own interests ’ (p. 801). In this way he ceases to be an individual in order to become representative of a class of which Dumas was overtly scornful and dismissive.

If Danglars’s transition from the straitened circumstances of a ship’s supercargo to the wealth of a Paris financier is a little hard to swallow, the metamorphosis of Fernand is utterly implausible. In 1815 he is a Catalan fisherman. In 1838 he is a representative of one of the great titled houses of France. Dumas never really manages to explain this. Indeed, he hardly tries. Albert tells Monte Cristo that the Morcerf family is ‘ one of the oldest of the south of France ’ (p. 334), albeit ‘ ruined by the revolution ’ (p. 443); but a little later Dumas has changed his mind again, and Danglars implies that the Morcerf nobility, like his own, is of very recent creation (p. 529). It does not greatly matter, since Fernand makes little impact anywhere in the novel, other than in the early chapters as the importunate but unsuccessful suitor of Mercédès. Even so, a nineteenth-century readership that had not forgotten the Greek war of independence and the accompanying upheavals in the Balkans some twenty years earlier would undoubtedly have felt a greater antipathy towards this rather cardboard character than we in the twenty-first century are able to summon.

In Villefort, however, Dumas successfully creates a character whose transition from Marseilles to Paris is plausible (he is a dedicated social climber) and whose evolution is consistent. This is a man whose public probity is constructed on the basis of personal iniquity, and who is destroyed when the two come face to face. His crime is to allow the imprisonment of Edmond Dantès, of whose innocence he is in little doubt, in order to preserve and promote his own social and political prospects. His punishment derives from an adulterous liaison with the future Baroness Danglars, of which the offspring, thought dead and buried, resurfaces first as Benedetto, then as Andrea Cavalcanti. It is not that he has no sense of right and wrong: he suffers remorse for his treatment of Edmond, and reflects, later in life, that ‘ all our actions leave their traces . . . on our paths; . . . every step in our lives is like the course of an insect on the sands; it leaves its track! ’ (p. 531). But his downfall is to believe that the efficient execution of his public functions can compensate for his personal inadequacy: ‘ Oh, work, work – my passion, my joy, my delight – it is for thee to alleviate my sorrows ’ (p. 783). As an embodiment of the law, he clearly prefigures (and may possibly have influenced) the pitiless Javert of Hugo’s Les Misérables (1862). ‘ What am I? – the law. Has the law any eyes to witness your grief? ’ (p. 764). Thus, as an exponent of the full vigour of the law, he cannot but recognise and accept the justice of his punishment: exposed in court in full public view by Benedetto, ‘behind the event that had overwhelmed him he saw the hand of God’ (p. 829). The madness that afflicts him and leaves him frantically digging in search of the vanished corpse in the grounds of the house at Auteuil links back to his criminal attempt to dispose of the (sadly) criminal product of a criminal liaison, now returned to haunt him.

The other characters are a mixed bag. Caderousse is rather well done, a shrewd and sensitive cameo of a fundamentally decent, but fatally weak and easily influenced individual who ultimately disintegrates under the pressure of evil. Noirtier is another success, an earlier generation’s example of the disreputable father who humiliates his offspring. Even when reduced to communicating only by blinking his eyes, he retains the capacity to bemuse and wrongfoot his family, convincing the notary that he is sufficiently compos mentis to make a rather unpalatable change to his will. Edmond’s anorexic papa, who seems to do little else than smile and suffer, is rather less engaging, and the young men about town are rather tedious – the over-prominent role of Albert and Franz is partly what causes the second, ‘Roman’, part of the story to drag. And Dumas’s attempt to portray (exceptionally in this novel) a happy family fails to avoid the ever-present trap of saccharine sentimentality. The depiction of Emmanuel and Julie’s Parisian love nest (or ‘charming retreat’) is just too glutinous to be convincing: moreover, the couple’s combined IQ must indeed be of surpassing lowness for them to fail to recognise the count in Chapter 50. Probably Dumas was not very interested in them, since he cannot even remember Emmanuel’s surname. [20] About the star-cross’d lovers, Maximilian and Valentine, perhaps the less said the better. [21] Vapid and verbose just about sums it up.

Mention of Valentine leads us to consider Dumas’s somewhat curious view of women. The two most intriguing female characters in this novel are Mercédès and Eugénie Danglars. Mercédès is interesting not so much as the heroine (heroines in nineteenth-century serial fiction were rarely very interesting) but as the failed heroine. This is not a matter of sexual peccadillo. Given the climate of the times and the expectations of the reading public, it obviously goes without saying that her romance with Edmond is decorous in the extreme, and that she will go to the altar a virgin, pure and unspotted. This is made quite clear in the opening chapter when Edmond ‘gravely’ refutes Morrel’s chirpy assumption that Mercédès is his mistress (p. 7). As to whether Edmond is in a similar state of grace, Dumas gives us little to go on, though if he resembled his creator in this respect, he would certainly not have been. What is more unusual is the development of the relationship, and the ultimately dismissive view of Mercédès (by Edmond, but, implicitly, by Dumas too) as someone who, in the final analysis, is weighed in the balance and found wanting.

Let us briefly review the facts. On the day of his wedding, Edmond vanishes. Mercédès intercedes with Villefort, but to no avail. Eighteen months after Edmond’s disappearance, she succumbs to Fernand’s persistent pleading and marries him. Caderousse, who tells the story, presents this as ‘infidelity’ (p. 190), but suggests a mitigating factor (the death of old Dantès severs her remaining link with her fiancé’s family). Edmond, disguised as the Abbé Busoni, is far less charitable, and since throughout the novel it is from his perspective that events are viewed, Mercédès fails the acid test. Like Louise de la Vallière in Dumas’s more or less contemporary novel The Vicomte de Bragelonne (1847–50), she simply falls short of her lover’s high standards. After all, has she not proudly told Fernand that ‘ none but Edmond shall ever be my husband ’ (p. 17), and Edmond himself, somewhat grandiloquently, that ‘ if misfortune should occur to you, I would ascend the highest point of Cape Morgion and cast myself headlong from it ’ (p. 18)?

I do not think it would be doing Dumas an injustice to suggest that these standards, although high, are a bit muddled. Mercédès turns into a blameless (if bored) wife and a model mother, and, in persuading Monte Cristo not to kill her son in a duel, occupies the moral high ground, advocating the redemptive power of forgiveness that Monte Cristo himself subsequently recognises to be paramount. Later in the novel, Monte Cristo, if he does not precisely absolve Mercédès from blame, none the less tells her that ‘ you judge yourself with too much severity ’ (p. 842) – this at a point where he has begun to see himself as far from guiltless – and even asks, ‘ Will you not even say you will see me again? ’ (p. 843). Aha! we think. All is not lost. Cue violins, middle-aged lovers melt into each other’s arms, roll credits – but no. The reunion is to be in the hereafter (so how does this square with Monte Cristo sailing off into the sunrise with Haidée at the end of the last chapter?), and Mercédès is left alone: ‘Her eyes were straining to see the ship which was carrying her son over the vast sea; but still her voice involuntarily murmured softly, Edmond, Edmond, Edmond! ’ (p. 843). Monte Cristo, though, on his subsequent visit to the Château d’If, relives and revives the sense of Mercédès’ infidelity and betrayal, involuntarily murmuring not her name but that of Haidée as he sails back past the Catalans. If the count’s last memory of Mercédès is that she was ‘faithless’ (p. 851) – worse, he says, than the death to which we recall she had vowed herself – then the inference must be that Dumas has reverted to his original view of the situation and that Mercédès receives the punishment she merits. [22]

For Dumas then, it seems, a woman’s role lies in submission and obedience to her vows, Scott’s ‘ministering angel’ living through and for her man. This is the fate that clearly awaits the pallid Valentine and her tiresome beloved, as they aspire to emulate the domestic felicity of Emmanuel and Julie, everything about whose bijou abode, ‘from the warble of the birds to the smile of the mistress, breathed tranquillity and repose’ (p. 406). It is a fate that Eugénie Danglars would clearly flee a million miles to avoid. Dumas has a good deal of fun with this hussy, a disappointment to her parents in that she takes after neither, having no interest in money or in men: at the end of the novel, she runs away to go on the stage. Eugénie is – as we might pithily term her these days – a dyke. Not that Dumas says so in so many words – the characterisation (quite daring for its time) is very much of the nudge-and-wink variety – but there can be no mistaking it. References are regularly made to her masculine appearance and attitudes, including her cross-dressing; and she spurns the society of her apparently eligible suitor in favour of the company of the ‘little fairylike figure’ (p. 598) of Louise d’Armilly, her singing teacher, with whom she finally absconds. It is interesting to compare her with the central character in Charlotte Brontë’s almost contemporary (1849) Shirley, who affects a military mien and masculine habits, calls herself Captain Keeldar and has learned to whistle, but who dimples prettily when the man of her dreams (inevitably) comes along and settles dutifully down to Victorian married bliss. Not so Eugénie, although, amusing as she may be in asserting herself against social hypocrisies, she is ultimately, in Dumas’s view, not quite nice. Twice she is unfavourably contrasted with Valentine: first by Maximilian, who sees ‘one fair, with soft languishing eyes, a figure gracefully bending like a weeping willow; the other a brunette, with a fierce and haughty expression, and as straight as a poplar’ (p. 466). We are reminded of the contrast in Scott’s Ivanhoe between the droopy Rowena and the spirited Rebecca: we know to which of them Wilfred will cleave, and we think he is mistaken. Valentine herself cannot quite fathom Eugénie, but as she compares the two of them, she dimly perceives that something is wrong: ‘the timid girl could not understand that vigorous nature which appeared to have none of the timidities of woman’ (p. 723). In this regard, her final appearance in the novel is telling. Dumas undermines her bold pretensions by allowing Benedetto to humiliate her publicly with a manifest untruth (he accuses her of running after him) and to leave her and Louise ‘a prey to their own feelings of shame, and to the comments of the crowd’ (p. 758). As Chactas, the old Indian brave, sententiously remarks in Chateaubriand’s René (a text Dumas could not fail to have read): ‘Happiness lies in following the way of the majority.’ Eugénie’s Lesbianism is really no more than a stick with which to beat her despicable parents. For Dumas there is no such thing as a liberated woman.

Dumas thought of The Count of Monte Cristo as a novel of contemporary manners. Three-quarters of it is set in 1838, and the author provides an abundance of (occasionally rather vague) period detail, ranging from the tastes and activities of his young men about town to literary and musical references and topical political allusions. It is in this respect a rather unusual novel for Dumas, whose preferences lay more in the realm of historical fiction (The Count of Monte Cristo was written alongside such novels as The Three Musketeers and Twenty Years After), and it needs to be seen both as an attempt to outdo Eugène Sue’s Mysteries of Paris and, probably, a demonstration that he could compete with Balzac. But if we value this novel – and we would be wrong not to – it is for qualities that do not immediately spring to mind when we think of Balzac. Dumas’s greatness lies neither in his ability incisively to characterise and describe people and places, nor in his detailed dissection of the workings of an entire society. Most of his characters are, if not exactly run-of-the-mill, then not particularly remarkable for their psychological complexity. We do not emerge from the saga feeling that we know and understand Albert de Morcerf in the same way as, for example, we know Eugène de Rastignac in Balzac’s Old Goriot or even Edward Waverley, the eponymous hero of Scott’s celebrated historical novel. And Dumas’s descriptions are essentially utilitarian and functional (where they are not dictated by fashion, as in the slightly spurious emphasis on the Orient), a backdrop largely separable from the characters who act out their lives against it. He clearly has no taste for the society he evokes, as is evident in his satirical treatment of such of its denizens as Danglars and Lucien Debray. But, unlike his fellow proselytising Romantics, he seems to have little idea of what should replace it. Monte Cristo may be many things, but he is no social reformer. Once justice has been meted out to those who betrayed him, he turns his back on Paris and sails away to spend the rest of his life, as he has repeatedly promised, in the mystic East.

But if The Count of Monte Cristo tells us relatively little about what made Dumas’s society tick, it tells us an awful lot about how to write a compelling story. Its central character’s psychology may be perfunctory, even confused, but what is consistent about the count is his resolve to be avenged. In that respect it is possible to agree with Jean Molino that he moves from being a realistic to being a mythic character, the imposing embodiment of righteous retribution.23 So successful is Dumas at foregrounding the horror of what happens to Edmond Dantès on his wedding day that we never, throughout the entire novel, lose sight or track of the hero’s fell purpose, anxiously willing him on to his final triumph. At each twist of the narrative, we rack our brains as to how the new development relates to this central theme. Even when the count is not present, his brooding shadow falls over the events that are being described. Dumas has often been characterised as the master of suspense, and rightly so. But in this novel, despite its initial publication in serial form, the suspense is not fundamentally of the cliffhanging variety. This is not to say that Dumas disdains the cliffhanger, although he always used it with much greater sobriety than some of his rival practitioners.24 The best one in this novel is to be found at the end of Chapter 20, as Edmond plunges into the frozen deep: ‘The sea is the cemetery of the Château d’If’ (p. 143). But this sort of overt and superficial suspense is not really needed, because suspense is inherent in the very subject matter of the novel, the starkly metaphysical confrontation between good and evil, a conflict drawn in the boldest of brushstrokes that constitute the essence of a successful serialisation. Here myth combines with melodrama, a heightened and simplified vision of characters and events: the epic tone and implications seem to justify the occasional bout of bombastic speechifying or chewing of the furniture. Sometimes Dumas himself gets carried away in the torrent of his enthusiasm: there is a wonderfully acrobatic moment when Maximilian, overwhelmed at the realisation of the count’s true identity, ‘still on his knees, had thrown himself into an armchair’ (p. 795). Mostly, though, we just do not notice what, taken out of context, would be no more than overstrained grandiloquence, because it fits so well into the compelling framework of crime and retribution. Héloïse de Villefort’s ‘frightful, demoniac laugh’ (p. 819) as her husband requires her to kill herself, Villefort’s own self-mutilation and descent into madness when he discovers who the count really is (p. 833) – this is what we, like Dumas’s own public, feel, atavistically perhaps, but none the less instinctively, to be appropriate. The impetus of the narrative carries us along: we never pause to ask ourselves whether it is entirely realistic that ‘the veins of [Villefort’s] temples swelled and boiled as though they would burst their narrow boundary, and deluge his brain with living fire’ (p. 833). And, as we read on, we can put up with the dreary love scenes between Valentine and Maximilian or the tired and hackneyed story of how Luigi Vampa became a bandit because we understand that sooner or later Dumas will return to the theme that really involves and enthrals us. Wrongs will be righted, evildoers will be punished, the just will be rewarded – there is no need to pussyfoot around with the paraphernalia of subconscious motivations or the minutiae of psychological analysis where such momentous issues are at stake. Dumas consoles us for the disappointments of life. The world of his novel is one where the rank outsider always wins at Wimbledon, Billy Elliott’s ambition to be a dancer overcomes obstacles within family and community, and where we believe – Dumas compels us to believe – that the Count of Monte Cristo is indeed the instrument of Providence so that – just fleetingly, just once – ‘everything is for the best in the best of all possible worlds’.

Keith Wren

University of Kent at Canterbury

Introduction notes

1. A. Maurois, Three Musketeers, Jonathan Cape, London 1957, p. 182

2. Fernande Bassan (‘Le Roman-feuilleton et Alexandre Dumas père (1802–1870)’, Nineteenth-Century French Studies, XXII (1993–4), nos. 1–2, pp. 100–12) suggests that by 1846 Le Siècle had nearly 33,000 subscribers, with La Presse and Le Constitutionnel boasting the loyalty of between 20,000 and 25,000 each. The historian Jules Michelet calculated that the daily press at this time was actually reaching 1.5 million readers.

3. The author and critic Jules Janin encountered Dumas in the stagecoach returning, loaded with copy, from a short holiday in Normandy at the end of August 1844: ‘ . . . he was bringing with him, so he said, eight or ten thousand francs worth . . . What it is to be a genius! You coin money! He writes a volume a week, from what he said yesterday . . . ’; quoted in A. Dumas, Le Comte de Monte-Cristo, ed. C. Schopp, Robert Laffont, Paris 1993, p. xxxv.

4. quoted in J. S. Allen, Popular French Romanticism, University Press, Syracuse 1981, p. 124

5. quoted in A. Dumas, Le Comte de Monte-Cristo, ed. Y. Azoulay, Flammarion, Paris 1998, p. xiii

6. quoted in M. Bouvier-Ajam, ‘Dumas au travail et dans la vie’, Europe, vol. 48 (1970), no. 490, p. 26

7. J.-Y. Tadié, Le Roman d’Aventures, Presses Universitaires de France, Paris 1982, p. 35

8. quoted in Allen, p. 204

9. quoted in C. Grivel, ‘Alexandre Dumas: mal écrire, bien écrire’, in Les Trois mousquetaires, Le Comte de Monte-Cristo, Cent cinquante ans après, ed. F. Bassan & C. Schopp, Champflour, Marly-le-Roi 1995, p. 195

10. quoted in Azoulay, pp. vi–vii

11. Dumas’s contract of 16 December 1853 with the publisher Alexandre Cadot indicates that he was still thinking of continuing the story: it specifies that Cadot would have first refusal on ‘the sequel to Monte Cristo’; quoted in Schopp, p. li, note 3.

12. It was left to writers other than Dumas to continue the Monte Cristo saga. Jean Du Boys produced La Comtesse de Monte-Cristo in 1869, a year before Dumas’s death. Jules Lermina followed this with Le Fils de Monte-Cristo in 1881, and Paul Mahalin, a great enthusiast for finishing what Dumas had started, produced Mademoiselle Monte-Cristo in 1896.

13. D. Coward, in his Introduction to the World’s Classics edition of the novel (Oxford University Press, 1990), notes the sixfold rise in circulation of Le Constitutionnel three weeks into its serialisation of Sue’s The Wandering Jew.

14. Edmond’s surname is uncannily reminiscent of the thirteenth-century Italian poet Dante, whose Divine Comedy, especially the first part, Inferno (Hell), was widely read in nineteenth-century France. Just as Dante, guided through Hell by the Latin poet Virgil, witnesses the punishment throughout eternity of terrestrial wrongdoers, so Edmond, as the Count of Monte Cristo, witnesses the retribution visited on those who have wronged him.

15. Inexplicably, the Oxford World’s Classics translation of the novel omits this vitally important chapter.

16. Or so we are entitled to assume, as the count has previously announced his intention to retire to the East when he has completed his business in Paris. See pp. 229 and 422.

17. A. Dumas, Le Comte de Monte-Cristo, ed. Schopp, p. lxxix

18. Like Dumas’s other excursions into serial fiction, The Count of Monte Cristo is riddled with errors and inconsistencies. Even a cursory reading will provide a long list of dates and names that do not match. A few of these Dumas subsequently corrected when they were brought to his attention (cf. Note 1 on the date of the Pharaon’s return to port), but the vast majority subsisted even when the story was published in book form. The author, working at breakneck speed, and frequently on more than one story at a time, quite simply never got round to reviewing and revising his texts.

19. Guizot was Louis-Philippe’s prime minister from 1840 (two years after the ostensible setting of the novel) until the fall of the regime in 1848. He refused to extend the franchise, which was contingent upon property and income, arguing that those who sought to exercise the right to vote should obtain it by self-enrichment.

20. In the standard French text (though not in this translation) Emmanuel’s surname is given in Chapter 29 as Raymond. Both original and translation give it as Herbaut in Chapter 40.

21. Dumas admitted that he had got the idea for Valentine’s ‘suicide’ from Shakespeare, but was impenitent about this: ‘ . . . it did certainly resemble Romeo and Juliet, but where on this earth would you find an idea that did not more or less resemble another one?’ (quoted in A. Dumas, Le Comte de Monte-Cristo, ed. J.-Y. Tadié, Gallimard, Paris 1998, p. xxv)

22. A similar fate awaits Louise de la Vallière in The Vicomte de Bragelonne (1847–50). For failing to remain true to her childhood sweetheart Raoul de Bragelonne and allowing herself to be swept off her feet by Louis XIV, she will pay a lifelong penalty when the king abandons her for another mistress. Again, Dumas is unforgiving of what he perceives as feminine weakness.

23. J. Molino, ‘Alexandre Dumas et le roman mythique’, L’Arc (1978), no. 71, pp. 56–69

24. According to F.W.J. Hemmings, the prime example was Eugène Sue, who ‘had not the slightest idea, when he sat down to write one instalment, how he could satisfactorily extricate his characters from the perilous predicament in which he had left them in the last’ (The Age of Realism, Penguin, Harmondsworth 1974). Dumas, on the other hand, always planned in advance.

Historical note [1]

[1. Footnote: the purpose of this Historical Note is primarily to provide some explanation of certain events and individuals referred to in the novel. The Notes at the end of the volume provide additional detail.]

Revolution broke out in France in 1789, most cogently symbolised then as now by the storming of the Bastille on 14 July. Initially, there was little thought of abolishing the monarchy, although many other reforms were pushed through, notably the nationalisation and sale of aristocratic and church lands. The moderate revolutionaries in the 1791 Legislative Assembly (the Girondins) wished to come to an accommodation with the Bourbon king, Louis XVI, but his obstinacy largely sealed his fate. In the Convention, which succeeded the Legislative Assembly in 1792, the more extreme revolutionaries (the Jacobins, otherwise known as the Mountain, because they sat in the higher reaches of the chamber) gained the upper hand, putting the king (and many Girondins) on trial and executing them. The partisans of royalty transferred their allegiance first to Louis XVI’s young son, whom they termed Louis XVII, and who died in mysterious circumstances, most probably in 1795. Thereafter the crown notionally passed to Louis XVI’s brother in exile, the Count of Provence, who took the title Louis XVIII.

In France, the revolutionary regimes of the 1790s were succeeded by Napoleon Bonaparte, who effectively held power from 1799 onwards as First Consul, then crowned himself Emperor of the French in 1804. Any lingering hopes the royalists may have had that he would restore the Bourbons to the throne were extinguished when he arrested and executed a member of the family, the Duc d’Enghien. Napoleon’s internal administration conciliated (or attempted to conciliate) both the church and the remnants of the old aristocracy: he also created his own aristocracy and placed members of his family on a number of different European thrones. It was megalomania in the form of external expansionism, most notably the invasion of Russia in 1812, that provoked his downfall. In 1814, the Allied powers (Austria, Britain, Prussia and Russia), having invaded France, forced his abdication. He was exiled to the Mediterranean island of Elba, and the Bourbon monarchy was restored in the portly shape of the elderly Louis XVIII. Napoleon, however, returned from Elba in 1815 and marched on Paris. Louis XVIII fled to Belgium and it was left to the Allies to defeat Napoleon at Waterloo and send him once more into exile, this time on the mid-Atlantic island of St Helena. His second brief spell in power is known as ‘The Hundred Days’.

The Bourbon monarchy, restored once more, lasted until 1830, Charles X succeeding his brother Louis XVIII in 1824. In the course of the Restoration, France intervened in Spain, restoring King Ferdinand VII to power. Many of the French wished their country to intervene in Greece, too, to assist in the war of independence against the Ottoman Empire, more especially after the romantic death of Byron at Missolonghi (1824) and the Turkish siege of Athens. Ali Pasha’s rebellion (1820) against the Sultan was seen as in some way related to the Greeks’ struggle, although it in fact predated this and was largely irrelevant to it. The Ottoman army drove him back to Janina and besieged him there: when he surrendered, he was executed in conformity with the Sultan’s orders. In 1830, one of the last acts of Charles X’s reign was the conquest of Algiers, which laid the foundations for France’s gradual occupation, over the following twenty years, of the whole of Algeria. Increasingly authoritarian, the king was overthrown in July 1830, and a younger branch of the family (the House of Orleans) succeeded to the throne in the shape of Louis-Philippe.

Louis-Philippe’s government remained socially very conservative: politically, the significant feature of the regime was the replacement in positions of power of the aristocracy and the clergy by the notables, broadly speaking a self-made and often ennobled upper middle class from mostly legal and financial backgrounds. Unlike his Bourbon predecessors, the new king did not intervene directly when problems in Spain flared up again in the mid-1830s as a consequence of difficulties over the succession. Ferdinand VII had no sons, and Spanish law (like French) forbade the accession of a woman to the throne. Shortly before his death, however, Ferdinand promulgated the Pragmatic Sanction, setting aside the claim to the throne of his brother Don Carlos (Charles V) in favour of his infant daughter Isabella. This provoked what is known as the First Carlist War, in which the partisans of Don Carlos fought those of Isabella and her mother, the Queen Regent Maria Cristina. The fortunes of war were variable, not least because Isabella’s supporters were themselves divided between Progressives and Moderates, but in August 1839 Don Carlos’s generals signed the Convention of Vergara with Isabella’s government, and the Pretender was forced into exile across the border at Bourges in Central France.

Louis-Philippe’s regime survived in France until February 1848, when yet another revolution replaced the monarchy by a short-lived republic. In December 1851, however, Napoleon’s nephew, Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte, who had been elected president three years earlier, consolidated his hold on power by a coup d’état, prior to declaring himself emperor a year later.

Bibliography

Dumas has recently been rediscovered by the French critical establishment (always something of a mixed blessing), but there is still relatively little written about him in English. The best introduction to him is the critical biography by F. W. J. Hemmings, The King of Romance (Hamish Hamilton, London 1979). This may be supplemented, for those who are more interested in what Dumas wrote, by Richard Stowe’s Alexandre Dumas père (Twayne, Boston 1976). Claude Schopp’s biography Alexandre Dumas – Genius of Life (Franklin Watts, Toronto 1988) is more recent, but poorly translated. Schopp is also responsible for an excellent French critical edition of Le Comte de Monte-Cristo (Robert Laffont, Paris 1993), which may be supplemented by Jean-Yves Tadié’s two-volume edition (notes by Gilbert Sigaux) for Gallimard (Paris 1998), and Yaël Azoulay’s slightly less useful edition of the same date for Flammarion, again in two volumes (notes by Jacques Bony). André Maurois’ Three Musketeers (Jonathan Cape, London 1957) is dated, but eminently readable. There are two other paperback editions of the novel in English, both of which carry helpful introductions and elucidatory notes. Robin Buss’s edition for Penguin Classics (Harmondsworth 1996) is a new translation, whereas David Coward’s for Oxford’s World’s Classics (Oxford 1990) is of the ‘classic’ translation (of which the one used for this volume is a variant). I owe a debt of gratitude to all these editions for assistance in preparing my own. For the historical and social background to nineteenth-century France, I would still recommend the second volume of Alfred Cobban’s authoritative and entertaining History of Modern France (Penguin, Harmondsworth 1992 – most recent edition) in conjunction with Russell Price’s A Social History of Nineteenth-Century France (Hutchinson, London 1987).

There are useful websites on Alexandre Dumas at:

http://www.acamedia.fr/dumas

(the more complete version is in French, but there is an English-language alternative);

http://www.cadytech.com/dumas, again available in either language.

The fullest documentation can be found at the Quebec University site:

(http://www.er.uqam.ca/merlin/dj091804/home.html)

but this is entirely in French.

The Count of Monte Cristo

Chapter 1

Marseilles – the Arrival

On the 24th of February 1815, [1] the lookout at Notre-Dame de la Garde signalled the three-master, the Pharaon from Smyrna, Trieste and Naples.

As usual, a pilot put off immediately, and rounding the Château d’If, got on board the vessel between Cape Morgion and Rion island.

Immediately, and according to custom, the ramparts of Fort Saint-Jean were covered with spectators; it is always an event at Marseilles for a ship to come into port, especially when this ship, like the Pharaon, has been built, rigged, and laden at the old Phocée docks, and belongs to an owner of the city.

The ship drew on and had safely passed the strait, which some volcanic shock has made between the Calasareigne and Jaros islands; had doubled Pomègue, and approached the harbour under topsails, jib, and spanker, but so slowly and sedately that the idlers, with that instinct which is the forerunner of evil, asked one another what misfortune could have happened on board. However, those experienced in navigation saw plainly that if any accident had occurred, it was not to the vessel herself, for she bore down with all the evidence of being skilfully handled, the anchor a-cockbill, the jib-boom guys already eased off, and standing by the side of the pilot, who was steering the Pharaon towards the narrow entrance of the inner port, was a young man, who, with activity and vigilant eye, watched every motion of the ship, and repeated each direc­tion of the pilot.

The vague disquietude which prevailed among the spectators had so much affected one of the crowd that he did not await the arrival of the vessel in harbour, but jumping into a small skiff, desired to be pulled alongside the Pharaon, which he reached as she rounded into La Réserve basin.

When the young man on board saw this person approach, he left his station by the pilot, and, hat in hand, leaned over the ship’s bulwarks.

He was a fine, tall, slim young fellow of eighteen or twenty, with black eyes, and hair as dark as a raven’s wing; and his whole appearance bespoke that calmness and resolution peculiar to men accustomed from their cradle to contend with danger.

‘Ah, is it you, Dantès?’ cried the man in the skiff. ‘What’s the matter? and why have you such an air of sadness aboard?’

‘A great misfortune, M. Morrel,’ replied the young man – ‘a great misfortune, for me especially! Off Civita Vecchia we lost our brave Captain Leclère.’

‘And

Reviews for The Count of Monte Cristo

[thedivineoomba · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I so was not expecting this book to so... fun. It is a near perfect book for what it is - drama, love, action, revenge, kindness, absurdity. You should totally read this book.Don't be afraid of the label of classic! Or that it is about a man in prison who escapes and gets revenge on those who put him there. Its not a dark story at all. It reminds me an Errol Flynn movie - where everybody is exactly what they seem, the good guys win, the bad guys get punished, and everybody lives the life they deserve at the end.But, the book isn't perfect - there is some aspects that are quite a stretch to believe. For example, Dante become an educated man by talking to a priest in the next cell over. Or how a ship was completely recreated, cargo and all. Or how the Count has a seemingly unending supply of money. There are a few ethical issues that will cause modern audiences some trepidation. The Count has a few slaves, even though slavery is illegal in France. Or his treatment of Mercedes - was she really suppose to wait for him for all the years he was gone?

[danielstj · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

A flawed yet still worthwhile masterpiece that shows the prowess of Dumas in creating a character that seems, and feels, real.

[karenduff · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Finally finished this, really good read much better than the three musketeers.

[doingdewey · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

The Count of Monte Cristo is a classic story of betrayal and revenge. Edmond Dantes has it all: a father he loves, a pending promotion, and a beautiful fiance. Unfortunately, others envy him his good fortune and conspire to have him sent to prison for a crime he didn’t commit. When a fellow prisoner informs him of a treasure located on the Isle of Monte Cristo, he determines to escape and use that treasure to enact his revenge.

From the great introduction to this book, I learned that Dumas wrote this to be published in sections in newspapers and was paid by the line. Reading The Count of Monte Cristo with it’s convoluted plot and inclusion of mundane conversations, that incentive is clear. However unnecessarily complicated the count’s revenge may be, it was still a lot of fun to read about. While some sections dragged a little, there was always some part of the plot which made me want to read quickly because I couldn’t wait to find out what happened next. The events could be cliched at times, but I enjoy cliches and to be fair to the author, he may be the originator of some of these now-cliched plot devices.

One small problem I had with this book was the dislikable nature of our protagonist. As time goes by he gets more and more arrogant, convinced that his revenge is the hand of God! Fortunately for us, a pair of young lovers shows up for us to root for instead, so I never found myself without a character to relate to. Overall, this was far from the best classic I’ve read. It gave little insight into human nature and wasn’t especially well written. Fortunately, these flaws didn’t stop if from being an amusing swashbuckling adventure which was a lot of fun to read. Given it’s success as a light adventure story, I might recommend searching for a well done abridged versions. While the idea of missing parts of a story makes me nervous, I don’t think anyone is going to want to pick up a 1000 page book for light entertainment.

This review first published on Doing Dewey.

[parp-4 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Interesting read for young people. It provides entertainment for many hours and lots of historical information.

[brodiew2 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

"This Count de Monte-Cristo is a singular man," said Emmanuel. "Yes," answered Maxmilian; "but I feel sure he has an excellent heart, and that he likes us." The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexndre Dumas is a singular novel. I can think of no higher praise than to say it now ranks as one of my top five favorite books ever. It is the story of a young sailor named Edmund Dantes who returns from voyage intending to marry his love Mercedes. On his return, he is praised by the ship owner (who trusts him and loves him like a son), and in wake of the captain's death, promotes Edmund to Captain. This does not sit well with Danglar, the ship owner's representative on the ship. It does not take Danglar long to conspire with Fernand, a soldier and friend of Mercedes who also loves her. The conspirators accuse Dantes of being a traitor and he sent before the magistrate the night before he is to be married. The Magistrate, Monsieur de Villfort, is ready to release Dantes, when evidence is provided that he must personally protect. For this reason, he ships Dantes to prison where he stays for 14 years. When he emerges from prison, he is a changed man. He is led to a treasure of unimaginable size which he plans to use to avenge himself against his enemies. This review will be unconventional as I have shared my thoughts with you along the way. Please forgive my rambling stream of consciousness praising this magnificent novel. Dumas is a master of character. This is present in Edmund Dantes/The Count himself. We begin with a simple man who is good and loves his simple life. After prison, his education by the Abbe, and his immense fortune, we have a magnanimous man on the surface, but a cold, seething man underneath. The mask of The Count reminds me very much of Batman and how Bruce Wayne is the mask. Dantes is a man who has everything the world says is success: knowledge, power, fame, riches. But in all of this he is driven by revenge. Thankfully, ultimately, he is not consumed by it. In fact, he takes just as many pains to bless those he loves as he does to cause the downfall of the those who wronged him.Dumas is a master of character. There are many characters in this book, major and minor. What amazes me is that Dumas gives every minor character a moment in the spotlight. An example of this is a scene in which Albert de Morcef, Fernand's son, challenges his good friend Beachamp to a duel over an item which appeared in one of his newspapers. This scene could have been short as Beachamp could simply have accepted the challenge. Albert is insistent that his father's honor has been impugned. Beauchamp takes extra care to try and deter his friend as the item got into the paper without his knowledge and that he cannot confirm or deny its truth. Beachamp skillfully, and lovingly, delays the duel long enough to resolve the issue. This scene, and others like it, show the love that permeates the novel. Whether is it romantic love, filial love, the love of a friend, or the love of a mentor, Dumas make this love inescapable. I'll wrap up by saying I loved that every bit of this book is central to the plot. There is little if any fat here. Every tangent that Dumas leads us on rounds back to the central story and bares on The Count's machinations. And, his machinations are great. This is the long con. The Count knows all. The Counts see all. At least, we are lead to believe this into the final pages of the book. I cannot leave without sharing that John Lee performed this book as a master of his craft. He uses multiple accents, of Italian, French, Arabian, and British. They are seamless. He builds dramatic tension so well and expressed anguish in such a way that I cannot help but get a lump in my throat. I would also say that this is my favorite audiobook ever. Lee's performance is so well rounded and so rich that I say it should be held up as a definitive example of the craft.

[melydia_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

When I started this book, all I knew of the plot was from the movie: Edmond Dantes gets wrongfully jailed, Dantes escapes jail, Dantes becomes rich, Dantes exacts revenge on the people who threw him in jail. But given it's nearly a thousand pages long, it comes as no surprise that there's a whole lot more to it than that. First of all, there are three people responsible for the jailing, and by the time Dantes returns for revenge, all his enemies have grown children with their own little dramas. There are loads of characters, but there's enough repetition in the narration that it's not too terribly difficult to keep track of who's who. And I found I enjoyed it a lot more than I'd expected. I mean, I liked both of the Musketeers novels I read, but this was on another level. And while I was disappointed with Mercedes's story arc and I thought Dantes's relationship with Haydee was kind of creepy, overall it was a really great story.

[rayski_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I found this book an absolute slug to get through. At times I couldn't put it down (e.g. his stint in prison) and other times I could find every excuse in the world to not read it. Mostly the latter was my experience with the book and maybe because of the slow read, many stops, only reading it for minutes at a time, all contributed to me finding it a tough read.

[keithgordonvernon · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Long but enjoyable

[electrascaife · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Oh, this is So. Good. The story of Edmund Dantes, his misfortunes, rise to riches and his deliciously intricate revenge is just as fabulous as the details of all of the intertwining characters and stories following along in his wake. A long one, but I was so sad for it to end. Dantes also enters the ranks of fictional fantasy boyfriends (move over, Mr. Holmes, and Gen, and...).

[gomezgarciagonzale_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A rollicking adventure story.

[wanderlustlover_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I am a massively, huge fan of "The Long Game" and any protagonist, evil or good, who does it at amazingly. Edmond Dantes is the master of the long game and this is the whole point of his story (not his two-a.m. saving grace).

I read this for someone dear to me and it took me off and on reading it for months, because it was really my at work lunch reading book. I got to keep her entertained with my endless commentary on it. And I stick by the two or three things I meant most that I said:


1. I love the story, but taking fifty-percent of your novel, in the very middle, to lead up to the exciting parts, does drag. A. Lot.

2. This novel nearly made me bitter with want to be in a class reading it. I even named my paper I would have written in that hypothetical class. Mice in the Garden: How the Smallest Decisions Makes the Largest Impacts.

3. The open ending is literally perfect. You don't need to know where it goes. Where it goes isn't the point. The point is in the words, and it beautiful, and its exquisite. And if it were written this way now it would have to be the hint to getting a sequel and I applaud the fact it's just a masterful ending.

[alincolnnut · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Alexandre Dumas' "The Count of Monte Cristo" is in many ways the classic story of revenge and justice. The falsely accused Edmund Dantes is imprisoned in an island jail, separated from the love of his life, the beautiful Mercedes. After wallowing in self-pity and anger, a fellow prisoner encourages Dantes to plan a dramatic escape, tempting him with a story of a fabulous treasure hidden on the foreboding island of Monte Cristo.After his audacious prison break, Dantes makes his way to the isle of Monte Cristo, using his experience as a ship's officer. There he does indeed find a staggering treasure, which he uses to finance his attempt to uncover who had him imprisoned. Dantes creates multiple personae to carry out his investigation and his later attempts at revenge, none more unforgettable than the mysterious and fabulously wealthy Count of Monte Cristo.Dumas offers a sprawling epic against the backdrop of the social upheaval in early 19th Century Paris. Insinuating himself into association with both the upper crust and criminals, Dantes stops at nothing to discover his betrayers and then to work revenge upon them by destroying their careers and social relationships. It is a gripping tale of intrigue and romance, the satisfaction of revenge and yet its hollowness.

[bookworm12_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This was one of the most intense, intricate plots I have ever encountered in the literary world. It is nothing less than spectacular and it is well worth the time commitment it takes to read it.*Most people know the basic premise of The Count of Monte Cristo. Edmond Dantes, a sailor who is beloved by his father and fiancé and all the men who work with him, is betrayed by a few jealous men and unjustly sent to prison. What follows is an incredible story of hope, survival and above all, revenge. That’s about all I can say without getting into spoiler territory.“The unhappy young man was no longer called Edmond Dantes – he was now number 34.”**SPOILERS**Edmund’s time in jail is so beautifully written. I felt his despair in every bone of my body. The sheer horror of what happened to him chilled my blood. Dantes was jailed for 6 years, considered mad and completely isolated before he heard the voice of someone other than his jailer. Just for one moment try to understand the absolute torture of that kind of solitude. The hope that he got from the mere thought of someone in the cell near him stopped him from committing suicide. “Seventeen months captivity to a sailor accustomed to the boundless ocean, is a worse punishment than human crime ever merited.”He spends years wasting away and when he finally meets a fellow inmate; their connection is so deep and profound that it truly renews his spirit and gives him a reason to live. He spends years learning from Abbé Faria only to lose him after he becomes his second father. He manages to control his grief and think on his feet and after 14 years in jail Edmund is able to escape. Instead of immediately racing to the island to claim the treasure Abbé Faria told him about, he spends time working on a ship. He gains the respect and love of those he works with and bides his time. When he finally gets his fortune he proves that once again he’s in no hurry. Throughout the whole book Dantes’ patience is mind-boggling. He does his homework, learning all the history that unfolded during his 14 years in prison. He then focuses on rewarding those who were loyal to him. Although his father died of starvation and his fiancée married another man, there are still a few people who he wants to anonymously thank. Dantes old boss Morrel is one of my favorite characters in the book. He is such a good man. He understands the true meaning of loyalty and Dantes remembers him and spends much of his time out of prison repaying that debt. Morrel fought hard to get him released from prison and when all his attempts fail he tries to care for Dantes’ father. He not only paid the funeral expenses when Dantes’ father dies, he did it with the full knowledge that Dantes was considered a Bonapartist and he would be judged harshly for it. In turn Dantes saves Morrel and his entire family in their moment of need. Just when Morrel is in the direst of situations, Dante swoops in and saves them, but he keeps his identity a secret. “Be happy, noble heart, be blessed for all the good thou hast done and wilt do hereafter, and let my gratitude remain in obscurity like your good deeds.” When he began his schemes for revenge things got a bit confusing. It was the one part of the novel that was a bit of a struggle for me. He takes on multiple aliases and secret identities, but at first we don’t know the new character is still Dantes. We’re also introduced to many new characters with little fan fare and it was hard to figure out who was who for awhile, but if you hang in there it all makes sense pretty quickly. I can’t even explain to you how satisfying it is when Dantes starts revealing his true plan and we see his long-awaited revenge finally come to fruition. He slowly inserts himself into the lives of his betrayers, earning their trust as an unknown stranger. The cyclical nature of the book is delightful. For each character there is a fitting end and it’s so satisfying! Both those who are good and evil get their just desserts. I loved how Mercedes and Albert found out the truth about Dantes situation and how the rest of their story concluded. The scene between Mercedes and Edmond just took my breath away. After his time in prison he had become so hard and calloused, yet with only a few words she still had the power to make him melt. Some corner of his heart never stopped loving her and the same was true for her. Their love story was a tragic one, but there was beauty in it too.Dantes calculated the perfect revenge for each of his betrayers. Fernand stole his love and the family he would have hard, so his punishment was the loss of his family. Danglars’ motivation for betrayal was greed and jealousy and so he lost his entire fortune and was forced to learn what hunger truly was like. He was the worst of the villains, goading the others into their acts of treachery, and his fate was equal to his crime. Villefort acted out of a loyalty to his father, but also out of a desire to protect his own reputation and future. You could almost understand it if it was only out of love for his father, but in the end it was really a selfish decision. So it was only fitting that Villefort's doom come from within the household he tried to protect. He lost his family and the respect of his entire community. In the midst of this tale of revenge there are a few beautiful stories of love and redemption as well. Maximilien Morrel’s love of Valentine de Villefort, Valentine’s devotion to her disabled grandfather and Haidée’s love of Dante are all powerful pictures of devotion in their own ways. It’s incredible that in addition to creating such a thrilling adventure story, Dumas also gave the book wonderful characters with depth that will stay with readers forever. **SPOILERS OVER**BOTTOM LINE: Read it! It’s a long haul, but unlike some long novels, the majority of the book flies by and it keeps you interested throughout. Many older classics that take time to get into and adjust to the language, but this one starts off at a run and doesn't let go. Besides one small section in the middle that dragged for me, I couldn't put it down. Curl up with this brick of a book and you won’t be sorry. “In politics, my dear fellow, you know, as well as I do, there are no men, but ideas – no feelings, but interests; in politics we do not kill a man, we only remove an obstacle, that is all.” “There are, indeed, some things which appear so impossible that the mind does not dwell on them for an instant.”“The overflow of my brain would probably, in a state of freedom, have evaporated in a thousand follies; misfortune is needed to bring to light the treasures of the human intellect. Compression is needed to explode gunpowder.” “There is neither happiness nor misery in the world; there is only the comparison of one state with another, nothing more. He who has felt the deepest grief is best able to experience supreme happiness. We must have felt what it is to die, Morrel, that we may appreciate the enjoyments of living.”

[bduke_15 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

How can you read 1243 pages and wish there were more? That's the way I felt about this book. I loved it!!! Action-packed clear through - never a boring moment. I will confess that I was picturing James Caviezel through the whole reading - even though the book is so different from the movie. This definitely moves right to my top 5 list. I read a quote a while ago that said, "Don't judge a person by the books they read, judge them by the books they re-read." This one will definitely be re-read!

[bohemima · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Just a rip-snorting good read; full of revenge, pathos, love, and adventure.

[benuathanasia · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

By the end of this book, I felt a little as though some of my best friends were going away, never to be seen again. :(The character development and investigation in this book is absolutely incredible. Dumas is an incredible story teller. He delves deeply into description and details, but knows just when to quit (unlike my other favorite French author - Hugo).

[ambia_2 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

When I first received my copy of ‘The Count of Monte Cristo’ I was a little over whelmed mainly due to the sheer size of the book (this edition was to my measurements just over 5 and a half centimetres of 1276 frightfully thin pages with small print but there is a delightful ribbon to help you keep your place) but also because I was about to read a tale that is worthy enough to be deemed a classic for well over a century (which is no minor feat) and I was slightly worried that if I didn't see how undeniably amazing it was then I’d be a fool not to recognise great literature even if I dropped it on my foot (don’t laugh, I'm so clumsy I'm almost disabled).It’s seems that in this day and age there is very little time to sit down and properly enjoy a good book, Dumas has the wonderful ability to spin a tale of imprisonment, deception, revenge and love that lets you simply lose yourself (and track of time) in the words, turning pages without even realising it, which isn't particularly helpful as I have oft stayed up later than I anticipated and even once missed the bus (I've honestly no idea why I thought it would be good to read before school). I can often pick up where I left off, twenty minutes here, a half hour there, and the tale still seems seamless but my younger sister is a person you takes a while to get in to a story (whether beginning, middle or end)and so she felt that she couldn't really enjoy it and gave up part way through. I think that perhaps for a lot of people the length of the book is a major obstacle which hinders our ability to enjoy and appreciate the book and so the difficulty lies not in interpreting the language as such (as many English lessons on Shakespeare were spent) but more in the length of time such a task takes.I'm think I enjoyed the book but I feel that it’s the kind of book that needs to be read more than once in order to fully appreciate or perhaps that is maybe my fault for skimming parts in anticipation of what was coming next. I hope though that everyone gives it a chance as it is really rather good.As a 21st century teen I am always looking for the next best thing to read but it seems that I've not realised that the stories we publish are immortal as long as there are those of us who continue to love it (badly quoted from JK Rowling) and thus in our search for a good read we must not just look to the new shiny books that are still in their infancy but look back to the tales who have braved the test of time and persevered, Golden in their old age (old relative to yesterday for example).So don’t hesitate, the classics are calling.

[5eva5 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Edmond Dantès is sent to prison for being a traitor, escapes, wins a fortune, and takes his revenge on the three men responsible of falsely accusing him and thus robbing him of his life. It's not surprising this has become a classic that has stood the test of time - it's an engaging tale of love, friendship, drugs, pirates, treasure, intrigue, history, crime, passion, art, politics, and, most of all, revenge (albeit indirect) - all with a perfect Romantic hero at its forefront, complete with flashing eyes and a mysterious past. There is already a huge number of great reviews for this one, so all I'll do is highly recommend this unputdownable page-turner - as Victor Hugo said of its author, "He created a thirst for reading." The original is long, but do not read an abridged version - if you're reading in English, Robert Buss' translation and accompanying notes are highly recommended.

[dulac3_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This is one of the books that I keep coming back to and re-reading whenever the urge strikes...and it strikes quite often; five times so far. Considering the sheer length of the book that might seem odd, but Dumas keeps things moving with his breakneck pace from the moment that poor Edmond Dantès is wrongly imprisoned by jealous rivals until the final consummation of his intricate plan of revenge.

Despite the speed at which Dumas keeps the plot moving, we are still treated to an in-depth story that examines the lives of the many characters that make up the main cast and are slowly initiated into the tangled ways in which their lives intertwine.

I think Dumas too often gets a bad rap for being some kind of early pulp 'penny-dreadful' writer who cranked out tales like sausages on a conveyor belt, but just reading the beautiful words he puts on the pages (admittedly in translation for me), and experiencing the fascinating characters and events to which he treats us, should be enough to dispel this myth. I find that the characters in his stories are often much more real, and multi-layered, than he is often given credit for and while their emotions may run quite high (it is romantic fiction after all) he never deviates from the kernel of truth about human nature that he seemed to know so well.

This book has it all, from revenge to murder, intrigue, escapes, love, hatred, damnation and salvation all tied to a plot that keeps on giving and urging you to turn the next page to see what strange adventure will happen next.

[cait815 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Over 3,000 people rated this book 1 star?! What... why... how...? To them I repeat what was once so eloquently stated in the timeless classic film Billy Madison: "I award you no points, and may God have mercy on your soul."

[lapomelzi-1 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

Not very impressed. I read it because Ioved "The Three Musketeers," but I didn't like it as much. After a great beginning, it gets dull and too chatty. Nothing much happens in the whole book and the characters speak so much and are so pompous that they turned me off. The biggest flaw for me though was how impersonal the novel is. After the great beginning when we are in Edmond Dantes's head and as soon as he becomes the Count of Montecristo, we stop hearing his thoughts and feelings and he is treated objectively. So much so that by the end of the book we know everything the victims feel and nothing about how he feels. Also, he is given too supernatural powers--nothing comes in his way; his plans roll in undisturbed. In the end also he is so pompous and facetious about his doubts that totally turned me off. The book is overlong like the Three Muskeeter, due to the fact that Dumas wrote in weekly installments at that time and made more money writing longer works. There are still nice things, but not worth 56 hours of listening. Read the "Rise and Fall of the Third Reich" instead, if you want something monumental, but worth it.

[clong_818048 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

SPOILER WARNING.....Don't read this review if you don't want to be spoiled...I read this obviously beloved classic for an online reading group. Overall, I thought the first third was promising, the second third was tedious, and the final third was silly. But I seem to be in the minority. I really struggled with several of the later developments in the book:1. When Dantès machinations lead to the death of Édouard de Villefort, the (reasonably innocent) child of one of the people who had done him wrong, causing our protagonist to wonder (briefly) whether he is taking this revenge stuff too far, only to conclude that no in fact he is only doing God's will.2. When he and Mercedes don't get back together again.3. When he lets Maximilien think that Valentine is dead, only to explain that you can't really be happy unless you've been truly miserable first.4. When at the end, his ward Haydee decides she wants to "be" with him.Honestly, this reminded me of nothing so much as the long running soap opera Days of our Lives (that's not a good thing, if you are wondering). The only character in the book that I really liked, Eugénie Danglars, got very little page time. I thought it was hilarious when the fleeing Benedetto finds her in bed with Louise d'Armilly.

[kassilem · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Well. Let me state that I only just found out, after I finished the book, that I was reading the abridged version of this story. It explains a lot. This is another book that I signed up to read with a LT group read but never got to in the month LT was hosting the discussion. Truth be told I couldn’t find it on audio book and it took me a while to work up the courage to pull Cristo off the shelves and actually take the time to sit and read it. But I knew I wanted this book in my reading history. It took a while to finish because of a few things. First, I thought the story was a little unbelievable. Second there was much more ‘telling’ than ‘showing’. Thirdly, the count sort of started to grate on my nerves with his arrogance towards the end. But the fact that I was reading an abridged version of the novel may explain all of these problems. This version is probably a washed out version of the real deal. Grr. Now I need to go read the real version! But not so soon. Sometime in the future. Man, and I was wondering what all the raving about the book was for. Now I know that I wasn’t getting the same story as those who really like the book. *grumpy face* This version gets a three star. Someday in the future we’ll see how many stars the book really gets.

[bunwat_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Raising my clasped hands to heaven and casting my eyes upward with an indescribable expression of suffering as the vital force deserts my body causing me to fall senseless to the floor only to rise a moment later filled with a restlessness that cannot be assuaged, pacing endlessly, unconsciously twisting and tearing between my ever moving hands a white cambric cloth soaked with the crystalline tears that drop ceaselessly from my swollen orbs, I cry "Why, why is this book so looong!!"
Finished at last. All due respect to those who love this book, and I see why they do love it it is an epic swashbuckling story, I just can't quite get with the extreme mood swings of the characters. I know its high melodrama, I know its a romantic product of a romantic age which elevated and cultivated feeling as a source of right knowledge. I still find all the fainting and gasping and palpitating and weeping and sweating and leaping to be faintly absurd. Also, probably because it was written as a serial, there are some continuity problems. Its a good book, I liked it, if there were three and a half stars I'd probably go with that and I'm glad I read it.

[deltaqueen50 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I found The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas to be a very readable, highly entertaining story that was great fun to read. I was quickly immersed into the story and found, other than a slight slow down in the middle of the book, that the story flowed smoothly and kept my curiosity peaked.I admit I was a little daunted by the sheer size of this book, but really, size didn’t matter in this case. I believe this book was originally released in a serial format so the writer knows how to keep his plot moving along with many peaks and valleys with the result being that the reader is quickly caught up in this story of ultimate revenge. There have been many books written since that have borrowed freely from the Dumas plot so it was a pleasure to actually read the original.I am very happy that I have read this book and can now number myself among the millions of fans of The Count of Monte Cristo.

[weeksc07-1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

First of all, this edition of the classic is just beautiful. It may not be the quality of Easton Press or other leatherbound companies, but it is still an attractive book.On to the story. I'm sure most people know the plot well enough for me to gloss over a summary, so we'll just move on to how much the story gets slowed down when events move to Rome. Along with spending far too much time devoted to Franz d'Epinay considering the minor role he plays in the later part of the story, this section introduces the reader to a version of Edmond Dantes who is completely unsympathetic. At first you're rooting for him, but this change is so drastic that it's hard to keep reading. However, things speed back up again when Paris takes center stage and the last quarter of the book really flies by as all the threads come together and conclusions are reached. This is a classic that everyone should read, not just to be familiar with a cornerstone of literature, but for a rip roaring tale of revenge (I apologize for the accidental alliteration).

[abigailadams26 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

One of Alexandre Dumas' most popular works, The Count of Monte Cristo is an epic tale of wrongful imprisonment and masterful revenge, standing at the apex of this kind of nineteenth-century adventure novel. The story of Edmund Dantes, a young sailor from Marseille whose happiness and good fortune arouse the jealousy of his enemies, the novel follows its hero from his terrible years of imprisonment for a crime he didn't commit, through his escape and reinvention of himself as the Count of Monte Cristo, a shadowy and charismatic figure who enacts his meticulous plan for revenge against the backdrop of Paris.As someone passionately interested in issues of translation, I should perhaps begin by mentioning that I read the edition published by Penguin Books as part of their "Penguin Classics" line, translated by Robin Buss. I understand from the introduction that it is the first complete English translation of The Count of Monte Cristo ever made, and I am quite glad that I never happened to read the novel before this edition was released in 2003. I am sure that my enjoyment was enhanced by Buss, who "disappeared" as it were, creating a literary product that never felt "foreign," despite its obvious French milieu.As for the book itself, this was my first foray into the work of Alexandre Dumas, but I certainly hope it will not be my last. I enjoyed the story immensely, and was amazed at how quickly I flew through the pages. Although quite long (1243 pages of actual text) I never found myself bored or impatient, never got bogged down in minute details, or felt confused by the many sub-plots. This is owing, I am sure, to the fact that The Count of Monte Cristo is narrative-driven, and less given to philosophical musings than a more psychological novel would be. Dumas, after all, is no Russian...Which brings me to my criticism. Although a most engaging story, with moments of true emotional impact, I found it somewhat lacking in intellectual depth and moral clarity, particularly as it concerned the hero's evolving rationale for his actions. While nothing could be more natural than the desire for revenge, Monte Cristo's vision of himself as an avenging angel of God was problematic for me; not because of the hubris implicit in such a position, but because of its reliance on emotion, rather than reason. I am aware that this is a hallmark of the Romantic Movement, and was therefore unsurprised when Dumas addressed his character's hubris, but not his emotionalism. Nevertheless, Monte Cristo's vacillation between certainty: "Yes, I am the agent of God," and uncertainty: "Perhaps it's wrong to punish the guilty and innocent alike in my quest for vengeance," was unsatisfying and unconvincing, largely because his uncertainty is answered, not by a counter-argument, but by a resurgence of his original anger. The moral ambiguity of this formulation meant that, unlike so many other readers, I was unable to appreciate the novel as a tale of redemption. I was struck, moreover, by the fact that I often had to read with a "dual consciousness," as it concerned the issues of gender and sexuality. When I could immerse myself in Edmund/Monte Cristo's perspective, when I could become him, I was largely untroubled by the many instances of chauvinism and misogyny. But when I could not become Edmund, I noticed the utter dearth of three-dimensional female characters, and the many ludicrous stereotypes and double-standards. Dumas was a product of his time, and my dissatisfaction with his flaws is tempered by that knowledge. I enjoyed The Count of Monte Cristo, despite my qualms. But it is still a melancholy reality, when we must divorce ourselves from a portion of our own self-knowledge, in order to appreciate a piece of literature...

[brendan.h · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

So it turns out that English language versions of The Count of Monte Cristo are often abridged and bowdlerized, without necessarily noting that fact. The edition I read was one of these, which I now realize accounts for the breakneck pacing of the plot, the inexplicable appearance and disappearance of apparently superfluous characters, and the fact that the chief villain appeared to escape w/ the lightest punishment. I still enjoyed it, but I'm mightily annoyed that I missed out on the lesbianism and infanticide and I'm sorry to say that I may not be bloody minded enough to barrel through the full 1200 page original in the aftermath of the 700 page kid's version.

[jmoncton_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

A few months ago, someone asked me the question, "What book would you bring if you were stranded on a desert island?" Embarassingly, my first inclination was to cheat. I'd bring The Lord of the Rings and of course, throw in The Hobbit, since it is a prequel. Or, the Harry Potter series - all 7 books. But, if I was limited to just one title, I think I've found my answer - The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas, and I would definitely bring the Blackstone audiobook version, narrated by John Lee. I just finished listening to this audiobook and I can't praise it enough. The story is wonderful. Although originally written in the mid 1800's, the book does not suffer from the blah blah wordiness of many classics. The plot is gripping and the characters are so wonderfully complex. The main character, Edmond Dantes, is on a mission to seek revenge for a plot that resulted in him spending 14 years in prison. The book has adventure, passion, love, justice and revenge - what a great story! And John Lee reads it perfectly, throwing in lots of accents and passion in his narration. And don't forget to bring a lot of batteries or a solar charger, because at 47 hours, it takes awhile to finish this one. But hey, you're on a desert island - time is not an issue.