De Monfort

by Joanna Baillie

Genres: Plays, Classics, School, Romanticism, Grad School

88 pages, ebook

First published January 1, 1798

About the author

Joanna Baillie was a Scottish poet and dramatist who was well known during her lifetime. She was educated at Miss MacDonald's Boarding School in Glasgow and it was in Glasgow that she began to write plays and poems.

Baillie was admired for her literary powers and hosted a brilliant literary society in her cottage at Hampstead. Her intelligence and integrity were allied to a modest demeanour which made her, for many, the epitome of a Christian gentlewoman.

She was shrewd, observant of human nature, and persistent to the point of obstinacy in developing her own views and opinions. Her brand of drama remained essentially unchanged throughout her life, and she took pride in having carried out her major work, the Plays on the Passions, more or less in the form she had originally conceived. Her inventive faculties were remarked upon by "practically everybody whose opinion on a literary matter was worth anything" (Carswell 275), and she was on friendly terms with all the leading women writers of her time.

Reviews

[Starless One · Rating 4 out of 5]

Oh! The side glance of that detested eye!
That conscious smile! That full insulting lip!
It touches every nerve: it makes me mad.
What, does it please thee? Dost thou woo my hate?
Hate shalt thou have!

I read this play mistakenly assuming it would be about the life of thirteenth-century rebel baron Simon de Montfort. Let's just say that was not the case.

Our eponymous hero, the Marquis De Monfort, resembles his almost-namesake in the way that he, too, tends to go against the expectations of society with spectacularly violent results. Instead of rebelling against the king, De Monfort resorts to the good old trope of murdering your rival under false assumptions because you can't be bothered to fact-check a rumour.

Born into the nobility and yet isolated among his peers, De Monfort is immensely proud of his own status and resents his erstwhile school rival Rezenvelt because of his inferior origins and social success. Rezenvelt on the other hand regards it as his personal mission to deflate De Monfort's monstrous ego by mocking him and belittling his passionate hatred, acting in the eyes of the world as if they were actually good friends. He even goes so far as to (le gasp) spare De Monfort's life after the latter forces a duel on him, which De Monfort naturally interprets as a dreadful insult to his own masculinity.

Rezenvelt's and De Monfort's mutual obsession with each other is so homoerotically charged that critics have tended to identify the title character as a closeted homosexual whose only way of expressing his passionate attraction to his rival is through hatred. This is hard to contest, but I would argue that Baillie's depiction of the rivalry between the two men - further complicated by De Monfort's intense bond with his sister whom Rezenvelt admires - also stems from the struggle of living up to the impossible gender ideals of the eighteenth century. How is an introverted, oversensitive, passionate man like De Monfort who hates violence as much as the false politeness of society supposed to comply with the role of the ideal gentleman? Presented with the model of the far more gender-conforming Rezenvelt, De Monfort is expected to be sociable, politely restrained and virtuous, yet vigorously masculine and dominant at the same time. Needless to say, he fails horribly.

Baillie treats hatred as a passion which manifests itself similarly to a mental disease, but she does not shy away from presenting the social factors that lead to the emergence of such a disastrous obsession. Although Baillie claims in her Introductory Discourse that she intended her portrayal of the passions as a negative example for others, she also expresses her intention to entertain by stirring her reader's/audience's empathy for the suffering individual. In the case of De Monfort, she succeeds at creating a character whose descent into madness and brutal violence is believable because it results from the suffocating restraints of society. Maybe De Monfort is a worthy successor of the indomitable Simon after all.

[Lawrence · Rating 4 out of 5]

A dense and striking play, though always balanced right on the edge between tragic and ridiculous. It would be fascinating to see it staged.

[Alan · Rating 3 out of 5]

very funny bc imagine killing someone bc you hate them

[River · Rating 4 out of 5]

“Anger is a passion that attracts less sympathy than any other, yet the unpleasing and distorted features of an angry man will be more eagerly gazed upon, by those who are no wise concerned with his fury or the objects of it.”

De Monfort is an intricate observation of the effects of anger on man. Though Joanna Baillie wrote what she supposed to be a more ‘simplistic’ tragedy, the realism in the character’s actions and thoughts, the torment of anger is so enticing it is hardly simplistic. The play evokes Gothic imagery, with murder and storms. But the most gripping part of the play is the vivid emotions, and the tormented character of De Monfort.

[witchling · Rating 4 out of 5]

the way this is so over the top dramatic is amazing

[Emma · Rating 3 out of 5]

Decent enough, read in 2 days online for my romanticism module. Hadn't heard of it before.

[Kyana · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really interesting, I liked it better than I thought

[eleanor · Rating 4 out of 5]

for scottish literature, can always count on women to save the day and make men dramatic

[kayla michelle pisano ✮ · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not bad but not really... good either. Shakespeare ripoff (I feel like a bad feminist for saying that but its true) messy and boring for most of it and then stuff just kinda happens...

[Lucy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Bros called freb

[Amaranta · Rating 5 out of 5]

2021*
esta vez ya no me costó terminarla, se me fue super rápido, viva saber leer inglés del xix.
amé a jane de monfort, pero podría haberle ido mejor



2018*
FINALLYYYYYYY
Me costó trabajo terminar de leerla no porque no sea interesante, sino porque mi inglés del siglo xix no es tan bueno. Yo no entiendo a la gente que supone que estas obras quedaron olvidadas por ser "no representables" me imaginé cada escena y hasta tengo ganas de montar esta obra. Además, al final me encontré con la grata sorpresa de la nota que hace Baillie sobre las últimas tres líneas y lo que espera que signifiquen.

[Connor · Rating 1 out of 5]

shallow and one dimensional.