Kareem’s Reviews > The Count of Monte Cristo > Status Update

Forgot to mention earlier: Madame Danglars had the fright of her life due to her crime of being accessory to infanticide being partially exposed. She would go on to blame her fainting spell on vaguely being a woman, and everyone else just accepts that.

I'm torn between laughing while congratulating her and also disliking her because she tried to have her newborn child buried alive.

Porque no los dos I guess.

So, twenty years ago Villefort happened to have an affair with Danglars’ wife during her first marriage, leading to her husband committing suicide, causing Danglars to marry her and accidentally tie himself further to Villefort. Villefort and Danglars’ wife had a baby together, whom they tried to bury alive and was only saved by a random dude’s revenge attempt. That baby is Benedetto, who is now a character.

The Count is casually cruel toward the people he cares about just so he can further his revenge.

Unrelated, but Danglars’ downfall being money related means we get a lot of short chapters going “and the Count did this minor scheme that lost Danglars this amount of money” with not bearing on the plot besides.

I’m definitely going to rate this book 3 stars. It’d be better if it was 400 pages shorter.

“My mother is remarkable, and if there were a woman like her but 20 years younger, I’d already be married.”

WOAH SLOW DOWN THERE ALBERT

A) welcome back Oedipus
B) you’re saying this to her first love who was secret policed the day he was to marry her
C) you’re literally describing Haydee (and it’s why I think Haydee and Edmond are gonna be together even though she’s like a quarter century younger)

This chapter where Edmond discusses toxicology might be the most racist chapter. As with a lot of what he says, it’s unclear how much is the Count playing to the racism of the Parisians and how much is from Dumas himself.

Considering Dumas was half black, I give him SOME benefit of the doubt, but that doesn’t mean I won’t go, “Wow, that was racist”

It’s interesting the way Edmond pursues the downfall of his nemeses.

To Danglars, who only cares about money, he says, “I am richer than you.”

To Fernand, who only cares about social status, he says, “I am more loved than you.”

To Villefort, who only cares for his ambition, he says, “I am better than you.”

Ali simultaneously being Edmond’s best friend and slave is quite the whiplash. With the added context that slavery was abolished in France two years after Dumas finished writing this book, I can’t tell if it’s a condemnation of Edmond or of Dumas himself.

Maybe there’s more to it that I’m not aware of yet, but I doubt it. Rich people loved grateful slaves, and this book was for them

Edmond: trickster hero? Or dastardly wraith? In his disguise as the abbey, he saved Bertuccio’s life and listened to the traumatizing stories of witnessing Villefort try to kill his own newborn bastard son, and then later saw the aftermath of Caderousse’s murder of the jeweler (as well as the corpse of Caderousse’s wife). Then in his Count alter ego, forces him to tell the story in full again. Chill on him bro?

Me, earlier: Poor Caderousse. Wrong place, wrong time, too cowardly to speak up for fear of his own life, but carrying the hand he had in Edmond’s “death” with him for the rest of his life

Me, now: 👁️ 👄 👁️

It’s extremely clear to the reader that Mercedes recognizes the man-formerly-known-as-Edmond. Unfortunately, I’m given to understand that this book has abandoned the Count as a POV character and is now reliant on the people around him’s POVs, so who knows when we’ll get his thoughts on the current her.

Also, Dumas apparently loves Corsicans, but man are the French just casually racist against them.