Two Essays on The Count of Monte Cristo
I love The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas. I have read the unabridged version more than once, and my most recent reread was in 2023. At that time, I wrote a couple of brief essays which I posted on Tumblr, one of which was about a canonically queer character and the other discussed a character who is often left out of the various adaptations. I present for you these essays with expansion and alteration, because I keep returning to them as pieces of writing and because I don't want them to be limited to those original posts.
I'd like to thank longtime Patron Case Aiken, who receives a monthly shoutout, as well as new patrons DivineJasper and Sasha Khan.
(Quotes are from Robin Buss’ English translation of Alexandre Dumas’ work.)
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Canonical Queerness in The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas
You’d need to change surprisingly little of The Count of Monte Cristo to confirm Eugénie Danglars as a trans man (or a masc-leaning nonbinary person). Most of the quoted passages happen in discussion with her companion, Louise.
‘So, there we have the second point more or less cleared up, said Eugénie, quite undisturbed, expressing as usual an entirely masculine composure in her words and gestures.
Eugénie declares that she will not go along with the second attempt at an arranged marriage. The narration seems to hint that there’s something humorous about characterizing her as a daughter.
‘I can see you are surprised because, since this whole business started, I have not shown the slightest objection, being sure that, when the moment came, I would always frankly and absolutely express my opposition to people who do not consult me and things which I do not like. This time, however, this calm, this passivity, as philosophers say, originated elsewhere. It came from the fact that, as a submissive and devoted daughter’ (a faint smile appeared on the young woman’s crimson lips) ‘I was trying the path of obedience.’
Here follows some brief support for aromantic representation:
‘And it’s not because my heart is less moved by him than another: that sort of answer would do for a schoolgirl, but I consider it quite beneath me. I love absolutely no one, Monsieur: you know that, don’t you?
After the second attempt at marrying her off falls through, Eugénie executes her preparations to run away with her companion, Louise… while disguised as a man.
And Eugénie, with her usual sang-froid, unfolded the document and read: ‘Monsieur Léon d’Armilly, twenty years old, an artist by profession, black hair, black eyes, travelling with his sister.’
Eugénie closes a difficult trunk in their final packing flurry after Louise was unable to:
‘Of course,’ said Eugénie with a laugh. ‘I was forgetting that I’m Hercules and you’re just a feeble Omphale.’
This clearly isn’t the first time Eugénie has dressed as a man, and the narration makes a point of it. She pulls out a complete set of men’s clothes that fit her perfectly.
Then, with a rapidity that showed this was surely not the first time that she had, for fun, put on the clothes of the other sex, Eugénie pulled on the boots, slipped into the trousers, rumpled her cravat, buttoned a high-necked waistcoat up to the top, and got into a frock-coat that outlined her slender, well-turned waist.
Eugénie cuts her hair to look like a man:
‘Don’t I look a hundred times better like this?’ Eugénie asked, smoothing down the few curls left on her now entirely masculine hair cut. ‘Don’t you think I’m more beautiful as I am?’
And, to top it all off, the final line of narration after the pair effects their escape via carriage, is this:
Monsieur Danglars had a daughter no longer.
I’ll happily accept most interpretations/adaptations which have Eugénie asa queer and masc-leaning person, because she’s definitely not allocishet.
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Edmond No Longer -- The Importance of Haydée in The Count of Monte Cristo
The Count of Monte Cristo revolves around a young man named Edmond Dantès who, newly returned from a sailing voyage and ready to marry his sweetheart, Mercédès, catches the eye of a small group of men who each for their own reasons decide to ruin his life by framing him as conspiring with Napoleon Bonaparte, then in exile on the Isle of Elba. Edmond is thrown in prison, where he meets a man who claims to have knowledge of a treasure on the island of Monte Cristo, if only he could get out of prison to claim it. During his imprisonment, Edmond speaks with this man, the Abbot, And is educated by him in history, multiple languages, and in an understanding of how he was betrayed by the men he had thought were his friends. Through a series of machinations, after many years in prison, Edmond is able to escape and go to the island of Monte Cristo, where it turns out that the treasure is real. After another decade or so, the story picks up by following the children and other associates of the men who destroyed Edmond's life.
Mercédès has married one of the betrayers, her cousin Fernand, who became quite rich as a result of his actions. They have a son, Albert, who is now a young man in his late teens or early twenties. Mercédès has no idea of her husband's role in destroying Edmond's life, and she believes Edmond Dantès died in prison.
When the Count of Monte Cristo reappears in French society, he is obscenely wealthy, able to buy properties and matched horses at his slightest whim, and has a slave girl, Haydée, who only speaks Greek (or, at the very least, does not understand French). She is treated as a ward rather than a slave, albeit one whose freedom he literally purchased from her former masters.
In adaptations of The Count of Monte Cristo, the character of Haydée is frequently removed. The unabridged story is very long and it does make sense to streamline some things, but I think that versions which remove Haydée (especially if they include a second romance or substantial reunion with Mercédès) lose some of the point of the story. Part of why I care about this story is because it makes clear that the process of revenge, however well deserved, cannot reclaim the person who existed before the harm or betrayal, and that's okay. It leaves room for someone to be utterly changed by something, and take steps to stop the perpetrators from doing anything again, but also to move forward as someone who has had this devastating experience.
In the original, dastardly deeds and betrayal by Fernand (now Monsieur de Morcef) are brought to light with Haydée as a witness. His wife (Mercédès) and son (Albert) flee France and he kills himself after they depart. Even though Mercédès is now theoretically free to pursue a relationship with the Count of Monte Cristo (formerly Edmond Dantès), and he knows of her change in circumstance and could try to follow her, instead he looks upon Haydée, his ward (now a young woman), and realizes there might be a “second Mercédès” and he might be happy with Haydée instead. She’s already half in love with him and he hadn’t noticed before because he was too caught up in the idea of having lost Mercédès. She's an adult by 19th century standards by the end of the book, and might even be an adult by modern ones at that point.
Part of the point is that through the act of single-mindedly fixing himself upon revenge against those who threw him in prison for the crime of holding a letter and for daring to love a woman who was coveted by her cousin, Edmond Dantès died in the Chateau D’Ilf prison and the Count of Monte Cristo rose in his place, like a strange vampire. Edmond who loved Mercédès is gone, irrevocably, and the things which could have satisfied him are likewise lost. Instead there is only the Count, who was only pursuing the cold comfort of vindication and success, measured by the wreckage of his enemies and the unhappiness of their children. He sees her one more time, after learning of a terrible death he did not intend, which nevertheless stems from his machinations. Mercédès, also, has been changed into someone who couldn’t be happy with Edmond and makes no moves towards the Count.
Haydée then, is essential, because whether or not they pursue a relationship beyond that of rescuer and ward, she represents the possibility of new connections, the idea that the Count can be happy even though poor Edmond cannot.
A story which reunites him with Mercédès is one which pretends that the way he was broken will fit the (lesser but still present) ways she was altered, with more than twenty years and completely disparate lives in the gap between them. It’s not a bad story, but it’s not the one the original book was telling.
To be the Count is to be someone who is no longer trying to reclaim the past, but to avenge it. Eventually he becomes someone who is ready to move forward, and letting go of Mercédès while looking forward to the possibility of a different relationship with Haydée is part of that.
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