Alexandre Dumas was born in 1802 in the village of Villers-Cotterêts, fifty miles northeast of Paris. His father, Thomas-Alexandre Dumas, had been a general under Napoleon, though in 1799 the two men had a falling out and never reconciled. Thomas-Alexandre never received the pay due to him as a former
officer, so his family was left poor. In 1806 the elder Dumas died, and his wife and two children struggled to keep afloat. Despite the problems that Napoleon caused to the Dumas family, Alexandre remained a lifelong admirer of the former emperor. Indeed, there are strong democratic leanings evident in Dumas’s literary works.
The younger Dumas was not a good student, but he had excellent handwriting. When he moved to Paris in 1823, hoping to make his fortune as an author, his lovely handwriting earned him a job as a minor clerk. Dumas spent six years as a clerk, during which time he wrote plays, conducted torrid love affairs, and lived beyond his means, until, in 1829, he had his first dramatic success, with
Henry III and His Court. This play thrust Dumas into the limelight as one of the forerunners of the emergent French Romantic movement, which emphasized excitement, adventure, and high emotion in an attempt to rebel against the conservative climate of the Restoration period that followed the French Revolution.
Like his Romantic , Dumas believed in the principles of social equality and individual rights, and he tried to infuse his dramatic works with these principles. Dumas went further than writing about his beliefs, however. He took an active role in the Revolution of 1830, helping to capture a powder magazine at Soissons, and he was appointed organizer of the National Guard at Vendée. Encountering strong local opposition, Dumas gave up the position, refusing to act against the wishes of the majority.
Returning to the literary community of Paris, Dumas continued to write popular plays, sticking to historical works that he filled with melodrama. He also began to write travel literature, which led to a walking tour of southern France in 1834 (a tour that would later be put to use in
The Count of Monte Cristo). In the late 1830s, Dumas began writing novels, as much for financial gain as for artistic reasons. It had become common for cheap newspapers to run novels in serial form, and if a writer was adept at writing quickly and melodramatically, as Dumas was, the financial incentives were enormous. Dumas was so good at this sort of writing that he sometimes had three or four serial novels running simultaneously. His writing soon made him the most famous Frenchman of his day, and he gained renown throughout the Western world. In 1844, the same year he published
The Three Musketeers, Dumas began the serialization of
The Count of Monte Cristo. He continued writing prolifically for most of his life, publishing his last novel,
The Prussian Terror, in 1867, three years before his death.
Dumas also found the time to live like one of his dashing, dramatic, reckless heroes. He was constantly engaged in love affairs, foreign adventures, and exorbitant spending. He was also a generous man, granting money and gifts to virtually anyone who asked. Dumas’s self-indulgent lifestyle and excessive generosity eventually took a toll on his finances. By the time he suffered a stroke in 1870, he was far from a rich man, despite the fact that he had earned millions of dollars in his lifetime. He died in December 1870 at the home of his son, the novelist Alexandre Dumas the younger.
Dumas’s liberal borrowing from outside sources occasionally brought him accusations of plagiarism. While he lifted many of his plotlines from the works of other authors and from historical events, he molded these stories in his own characteristic way, making them his own.
The Count of Monte Cristo is an example of the appropriation process Dumas frequently employed. His inspiration for the novel was an anecdote he read in
Mémoires historiques tirés des archives de la police de Paris, a collection of intriguing criminal cases recorded by Jacques Peuchet, a former police archivist. The anecdote relates that in 1807, a man named François Piçaud became engaged to a pretty and wealthy girl, inspiring the envy of his friends. One of these friends, Loupian, persuaded the others to join him in denouncing Piçaud as an English spy. Though innocent of the charge, Piçaud was arrested and kept in prison for seven years. While in prison, he befriended a rich Italian cleric who left Piçaud his vast fortune when he died. Piçaud returned to Paris in 1815 as a wealthy man. Using his wealth, as well as numerous disguises, he enacted a complex plan to avenge himself on his enemies, murdering several of them. Though this real-life story has the all the essential plot elements of Dumas’s novel, it lacks the fantastical, epic proportions of great melodrama. Dumas’s greatest gift was his ability to grant epic proportion to existing stories.
Napoleon Bonaparte &
The Count of Monte Cristo
Napoleon Bonaparte & The Count of Monte Cristo
The Count of Monte Cristo is a novel set firmly in history, with many key plot points based on external political events. The key figure in French politics during the first quarter of the nineteenth century was Napoleon Bonaparte, who, though he does not appear in the novel, plays such a significant role that he can almost be counted as one of the major characters. Napoleon was a general who rose to prominence during the French Revolution, which occurred in 1789. He saved the revolutionary government from an angry mob and led the French army to victories over Austria, Italy, and Egypt, claiming all of these lands for France. In 1799, Napoleon led a coup against the existing government of France and formed a consulate, installing himself as its dictatorial leader.
In 1804, Napoleon revised the constitution he had written several years earlier, and the French senate voted him emperor of all of the vast lands he had conquered. Napoleon remained widely beloved by the people, largely because in all the lands he conquered, he abolished serfdom and feudalism and guaranteed basic human rights. He simplified the court system, took steps to make education universally available, and standardized national codes of law to ensure that the rights and liberties won during the French Revolution—equality before the law and freedom of religion—could not be taken away.
In 1814, dogged by an increasing number of enemies and looming military defeat, Napoleon was forced to abdicate his throne. He was exiled to the Mediterranean island of Elba, where Edmond Dantès finds him at the beginning of
The Count of Monte Cristo. In March 1815, Napoleon escaped from Elba, secretly sailed to France, and marched on Paris, defeating the royal troops. It is information about this return to power that is contained in the letter Dantès is caught conveying to Paris.
After his return to power, Napoleon advocated an even more liberal constitution than the one he had first instituted. After a brief period, however, Napoleon was forced to make a preemptive strike against encroaching enemies, and he met defeat at the Battle of Waterloo. Parisian crowds, supporting Napoleon as fervently as ever, begged him to keep fighting. Several key politicians withdrew their support, however, and Napoleon surrendered. His short second reign is known as the Hundred Days. With Napoleon defeated, France fell back into the hands of the ultraconservative Louis XVIII. Napoleon was exiled to the South Atlantic island of Saint Helena, where he lived until his death in 1821. However, Napoleon’s absence from France only intensified his mythic status, and he became an even greater hero than at any time he was actually present in France. Dumas’s idealization of Napoleon is not at all rare, as Napoleon, in his time, was hailed as though he were a patron saint of France.
Plot Overview
At the age of nineteen, Edmond Dantès seems to have the perfect life. He is about to become the captain
of a ship, he is engaged to a beautiful and kind young woman, Mercédès, and he is well liked by almost everyone who knows him. This perfect life, however, stirs up dangerous jealousy among some of Dantès’s so-called friends. Danglars, the treasurer of Dantès’s ship, envies Dantès’s early career success; Fernand Mondego is in love with Dantès’s fiancée and so covets his amorous success; his neighbor Caderousse is simply envious that Dantès is so much luckier in life than he is.
Together, these three men draft a letter accusing Dantès of treason. There is some truth to their accusations: as a favor to his recently deceased captain, Dantès is carrying a letter from Napoleon to a group of Bonapartist sympathizers in Paris. Though Dantès himself has no political leanings, the undertaking is enough to implicate him for treason. On the day of his wedding, Dantès is arrested for his alleged crimes.
The deputy public prosecutor, Villefort, sees through the plot to frame Dantès and is prepared to set him free. At the last moment, though, Dantès jeopardizes his freedom by revealing the name of the man to whom he is supposed to deliver Napoleon’s letter. The man, Noirtier, is Villefort’s father. Terrified that any public knowledge of his father’s treasonous activities will thwart his own ambitions, Villefort decides to send Dantès to prison for life. Despite the entreaties of Monsieur Morrel, Dantès’s kind and honest boss, Dantès is sent to the infamous Château d’If, where the most dangerous political prisoners are kept.
While in prison, Dantès meets Abbé Faria, an Italian priest and intellectual, who has been jailed for his political views. Faria teaches Dantès history, science, philosophy, and languages, turning him into a well-educated man. Faria also bequeaths to Dantès a large treasure hidden on the island of Monte Cristo, and he tells him how to find it should he ever escape. When Faria dies, Dantès hides himself in the abbé’s shroud, thinking that he will be buried and then dig his way out. Instead, Dantès is thrown into the sea, and is able to cut himself loose and swim to freedom.
Dantès travels to Monte Cristo and finds Faria’s enormous treasure. He considers his fortune a gift from God, given to him for the sole purpose of rewarding those who have tried to help him and, more important, punishing those who have hurt him. Disguising himself as an Italian priest who answers to the name of Abbé Busoni, he travels back to Marseilles and visits Caderousse, who is now struggling to make a living as an innkeeper. From Caderousse he learns the details of the plot to frame him. In addition, Dantès learns that his father has died of grief in his absence and that Mercédès has married Fernand Mondego. Most frustrating, he learns that both Danglars and Mondego have become rich and powerful and are living happily in Paris. As a reward for this information, and for Caderousse’s apparent regret over the part he played in Dantès’s downfall, Dantès gives Caderousse a valuable diamond. Before leaving Marseilles, Dantès anonymously saves Morrel from financial ruin.
Ten years later, Dantès emerges in Rome, calling himself the Count of Monte Cristo. He seems to be all knowing and unstoppable. In Rome Dantès ingratiates himself to Albert de Morcerf, son of Fernand Mondego and Mercédès, by saving him from bandits. In return for the favor, Albert introduces Dantès to Parisian society. None of his old cohorts recognize the mysterious count as Edmond Dantès, though Mercédès does. Dantès is thus able to insinuate himself effortlessly into the lives of Danglars, Mondego, and Villefort. Armed with damning knowledge about each of them that he has gathered over the past decade, Dantès sets an elaborate scheme of revenge into motion.
Morcerf, is the first to be punished. Dantès exposes Morcerf’s darkest secret: Morcerf made his fortune by betraying his former patron, the Greek vizier Ali Pacha, and he then sold Ali Pacha’s wife and daughter into slavery. Ali Pacha’s daughter, Haydée, who has lived with Dantès ever since he bought her freedom seven years earlier, testifies against Morcerf in front of the senate, irreversibly ruining his good name. Ashamed by Morcerf’s treachery, Albert and Mercédès flee, leaving their tainted fortune behind. Morcerf commits suicide.
Villefort’s punishment comes slowly and in several stages. Dantès first takes advantage of Madame de Villefort’s murderous intent, subtly tutoring her in the uses of poison. As Madame de Villefort wreaks her havoc, killing off each member of the household in turn, Dantès plants the seeds for yet another public exposé. In court, it is revealed that Villefort is guilty of attempted infanticide, as he tried to bury his illegitimate baby while it was still alive. Believing that everyone he loves is dead and knowing that he will soon have to answer severe criminal charges, Villefort goes insane.
For his revenge on Danglars, Dantès simply plays upon his enemy’s greed. He opens various false credit accounts with Danglars that cost him vast amounts of money. He also manipulates Danglars’s unfaithful and dishonest wife, costing Danglars more money, and helps Danglars’s daughter, Eugénie, run away with her female companion. Finally, when Danglars is nearly broke and about to flee without paying any of his creditors, Dantès has the Italian bandit Luigi Vampa kidnap him and relieve him of his remaining money. Dantès spares Danglars’s life, but leaves him penniless.
Meanwhile, as these acts of vengeance play out, Dantès also tries to complete one more act of goodness. Dantès wishes to help the brave and honorable Maximilian Morrel, the son of the kind shipowner, so he hatches an elaborate plot to save Maximilian’s fiancée, Valentine Villefort, from her murderous stepmother, to ensure that the couple will be truly happy forever. Dantès gives Valentine a pill that makes her appear dead and then carries her off to the island of Monte Cristo. For a month Dantès allows Maximilian to believe that Valentine is dead, which causes Maximilian to long for death himself. Dantès then reveals that Valentine is alive. Having known the depths of despair, Maximilian is now able to experience the heights of ecstasy. Dantès too ultimately finds happiness, when he allows himself to fall in love with the adoring and beautiful Haydée.
The Count of Monte Cristo
Alexandre Dumas
←
Analysis of Major Characters
→
Character List
Themes, Motifs & Symbols
Edmond Dantès
Before his imprisonment, Edmond Dantès is a kind, innocent, honest, and loving man. Though naturally intelligent, he is a man of few opinions, living his life instinctively by a traditional code of ethics that impels him to honor his superiors, care dutifully for his aging father, and treat his fellow man generously. Dantès is filled with positive feeling, admiring his boss, Monsieur Morrel; loving his father; adoring his fiancée, Mercédès; and even attempting to think kindly of men who clearly dislike him.
While in prison, however, Dantès undergoes a great change. He becomes bitter and vengeful as he obsesses over the wrongs committed against him. When his companion, Abbé Faria, dies, so too does Dantès’s only remaining deep connection to another human being. Dantès loses the capacity to feel any emotion other than hatred for those who have harmed him and gratitude toward those who have tried to help him. He moves through the world like an outsider, disconnected from any human community and interested only in carrying out his mission as the agent of Providence. It is not until Dantès finds love again, in a relationship with Haydée, that he is able to reconnect to his own humanity and begin to live humanly again.
Danglars
A greedy and ruthless man, Danglars cares only for his personal fortune. He has no qualms about sacrificing others for the sake of his own welfare, and he goes through life shrewdly calculating ways to turn other people’s misfortunes to his own advantage. Danglars’s betrayal of Dantès starts him on the path to utter disregard for other people’s lives, but this betrayal is not the cruelest of his acts. Danglars abandons his wife and attempts to sell his own daughter, Eugénie, into a loveless and miserable marriage for three million francs.
Though he manages to claw his way into a position of great wealth and power, Danglars’s greed grows as he grows richer, and his lust for money continues to drive all his actions in the two decades that the novel spans. Even when faced with the prospect of starvation, Danglars prefers to keep his fortune rather than pay an exorbitant price for food. Finally, Danglars relents in his pathological avarice, allowing that he would give all his remaining money just to remain alive. Only after Danglars repents for the evil he has done does Dantès consider Danglars redeemed and pardon him.
Mercédès
Resigned to the blows that fate deals her, Mercédès acts as a foil to her onetime fiancé, Dantès. Though she is a good and kind woman, her timidness and passivity lead her to betray her beloved and marry another man, Mondego. Mercédès remains miserable for the rest of her life, despising herself for her weakness and longing for Dantès, whom she has never stopped loving. Yet, for all her avowed weakness and fear, Mercédès proves herself capable of great courage on three occasions: first, when she approaches Dantès to beg for her the life of her son, Albert; second, when she reveals her husband’s wickedness in order to save Dantès’s life; and third, when she abandons her wealth, unwilling to live off a fortune that has been tainted by misdeeds. At the end of the novel, Mercédès is left with nothing to live for, aside from the hope that Albert might somehow improve his own life. She is the character whose suffering is the most complete, despite the fact that there are others who bear far more guilt.
Caderousse
Caderousse exemplifies human dissatisfaction, helping to illustrate that happiness depends more on attitude than on external circumstances. Though fate—or, more precisely, Dantès—treats Caderousse fairly well, he is never truly satisfied with his life. No matter how much he has, Caderousse always feels that he deserves more. With each improvement in his position, Caderousse’s desires only increase. He is pained by the good fortune of his friends, and his envy festers into hatred and ultimately into crime. Not only covetous but also lazy and dishonest, Caderousse consistently resorts to dishonorable means in order to acquire what he wants, thieving and even murdering in order to better his own position. Ultimately, Caderousse’s unending greed catches up with him, and he dies while trying to rob Monte Cristo.
Posts
