Farewell to Middlemarch and onward to The Count of Monte Cristo

Paul’s reflections on the Middlemarch readathon, and initial thoughts on The Count of Monte Cristo

This blog post comes very late, as listeners to the Bookylicious podcast will know. I should have been writing about finishing George Eliot’s Middlemarch way back in May 2022 but, as with the ever-changing provincial life in Middlemarch, my summer has proved very busy with a lot of unplanned activity along the way. However, I am back and ready to finish one journey and share some thoughts on the next long read: Alexandre Dumas’s The Count of Monte Cristo.

The truth is that Middlemarch never quite leaves you long after you put the book down. Somewhere in the deep recesses of my memory, characters or scenes still re-emerge. For instance, whilst watching some reality TV such as ‘Married at First Sight’ or ‘Love is Blind’ (not to be recommended), I find myself thinking back to Dorothea dashing headlong into her doomed relationship with Casuabon and shouting, “No, don’t do it!” Back in April, at the Wrexham Carnival of Words, we had a lovely farewell event to conclude our Middlemarch long read. It was fascinating to hear people’s different responses to the book; someone even tried to persuade me to feel sympathetic towards Casuabon and I almost agreed with her! In the closing sections of the book, George Eliot skilfully draws the complex web of plot lines and relationships together brilliantly, a technique that often eludes modern writers in my opinion. Even though I am not a regular re-reader, I shall definitely be returning to Middlemarch in the future. Daniel Deronda and Felix Holt are the remaining novels of George Eliot that I haven’t read, so I think they may have to come first. Yes, I have even read her historical novel set in renaissance Italy – Romola – although I might not be returning to that one in a hurry!

In June I embarked on our next long read, Alexandre Dumas’s The Count of Monte Cristo. I have picked it up and read a few hundred pages at a time, then gone away for a while and returned for more. This has worked well for me, as I always have a massive ‘to be read’ pile. The Count of Monte Cristo has been sitting on my shelves for many years, and I have to admit to always being a little daunted by its size: over 1100 pages in my edition. Although it doesn’t fall into the neat sections that Middlemarch does, the reader is led rapidly through some hugely dramatic scenes and set pieces, sometimes unputdownable. Dumas knew what he was doing as a master storyteller of great adventure stories such as The Three Musketeers, The Black Tulip and The Man in the Iron Mask. The hero of The Count of Monte Cristo is Edmond Dantes, who is wrongly convicted of assisting the exiled Emperor Napoleon and cast into oblivion in the island prison of Chateau d’If. His subsequent escape and adventures centre on Dantes seeking retribution and revenge. You have to stay alert as a reader, because Dantes adopts various personae and the story plays out over a wide geographical canvas with an array of colourful characters.

Alexandre Dumas was a fascinating character. He was the son of General Thomas-Alexandre Dumas, himself born in Haiti the son of a French nobleman and an African slave. Having aristocratic connections helped Dumas begin his writing career under the employment of Louis Phillipe, Duke D’Orleans (later King of France 1830-1848). His articles, novels and plays were immediately popular, although he had to flee France and live in Belgium and then Russia in 1851 when Louis Napoleon Bonaparte became president. He also lived in Italy in 1861, as the country united, and became a friend of Garibaldi. He was very successful in marketing his work and has become one of the most widely read of all French authors, translated into over 100 languages and made into more than 200 films. He suffered racial prejudice throughout his life, being mixed race; his ashes were finally buried alongside Victor Hugo and Emile Zola in the Pantheon in Paris on his 200th anniversary in 2002, in an attempt to redress the balance. A fun fact about Alexandre Dumas is that it was his version of the story of The Nutcracker that Tchaikovsky based his ballet on.

Let us know how you have got on with reading The Count of Monte Cristo. Lara will also be writing a blog post or two about her experience of reading the book in the next week or so.