Book Review: A Place of Greater Safety

[osprey_archer]

Although we began our voyage with high hopes, after three months littlerhymes and I have at long last limped to the end of Hilary Mantel’s A Place of Greater Safety.

Some of this is our fault, or rather the fault of our method of buddy-reading. As is our wont, we tried to read the book a chapter at a time. But this is a book made to be gulped, not sipped, and we would have done better to read it section by section or even to speed through the whole thing and reconvene only at the end, book club style, to yell “Can you BELIEVE what Danton/Camille/Robespierre did??”

Reading it chapter by chapter simply gives you too much time to dread the characters’ next appalling life choices (especially Camille’s, as he routinely makes six appalling life choices before breakfast), plus of course the inevitable awful ends of, well, pretty much everyone. I developed a certain aversion to picking up the book again to find out who was going to suffer horribly this time.

Part of it is perhaps a fault of the book, in that it expects the reader to be able to fill in a ton of background knowledge about the French Revolution. Now perhaps we could have been expected to bring to the book a bit more knowledge than we did, but all the same, we both spent much of the book at sea about just what exactly was going on.

And part of it is perhaps the fault of Robespierre. (He’s been blamed for everything else, so why not this too?) This is the second giant tome that I’ve read that deals largely with the character and actions of Robespierre (the other was Colin Jones’ nonfiction work The Fall of Robespierre), and they both have this same central problem that you never really feel that you understand the man.

A Place of Greater Safety gets closest when a feverish Robespierre daydreams about his vision of the perfect cottagecore future, where grave and contented citizens emerge from pleasant but non-luxurious lives on self-sufficient farms to reasonably debate the issues of the day on marble colonnades. He despises bloodshed, but if bloodshed is the only way to achieve this beautiful future, well, isn’t it his duty to set aside his personal abhorrence of bloodshed in favor of the good of the country? For he believes fervently in civic virtue, the selfless devotion to one’s country above all petty personal considerations.

But he is not so fervent in this belief as Saint-Just, who plays in this book the part of the devil masquerading as the angel on Robespierre’s shoulder, pushing him toward ever more violence by appealing to his highest ideals. How, Saint-Just demands, can you truly claim to have the Revolution’s best interests at heart when you continue to protect your friends Danton and Camille? They are both corrupt men who have taken bribes, and both are calling for moderation right when moderation will lay us open to invasion from counterrevolutionary powers.

(Robespierre is often cast in histories of the French Revolution as The Worst. Mantel suggests that perhaps, in fact, Saint-Just is The Actual Worst.)



To be honest, I felt Mantel let Robespierre off the hook just a bit too much, not only in giving him his own personal Mephistopheles in the form of Saint-Just, but in giving him a sympathetic personal motive for finally turning against Danton. Babette Duplay, a girl Robespierre has come to regard as a little sister, falsely accuses Danton of rape. (Robespierre of course swallows this hook, line, and sinker, but the reader knows it’s a lie because we’ve already seen Babette, in another situation, threaten to use a false rape accusation to get what she wants.)

It seemed to me that this was putting a finger on the scale, and it would have been a stronger book and a more powerful tragedy if it were Robespierre’s own tragic flaws that led him to betray Danton, and in betraying Danton also betray his own best friend Camille.



However, in one thing the book was an unqualified success: I now want to read more nonfiction about the French Revolution. Does anyone have recs?

Comments

[asakiyume]

My dad always says the devil never tempts you with things you don't want, only with things you do, so it makes sense that Mephistopheles-Just tempts Robespierre with his highest ideals. Laughing a little at the cottage-core future with the marble-colonnaded discussion spaces. The thing about so many people's ideal visions is that they contemplate everyone settling down and enjoying the particular picture they paint. "... and no one would be into grunge or death metal, and everyone would enjoy sober conversations and..."

[osprey_archer]

Yes, in the perfect future, everyone will agree that cottagecore with marble colonnades are just what they want! Whereas in the fallen present, even people like me who find a certain idyllic appeal in Robespierre's vision are apt to get hung up on details, especially given Robespierre's general difficulty to grasp the point of "fun." Are we allowed to tell jokes and laugh loudly as long as we do it away from the colonnades? Can we have fancy little cakes as long as we make them in our idyllic cottage kitchens, even though fancy little cakes are not technically wholesome fare for solemn citizens? Can people make up annoying and probably somewhat bawdy lyrics mocking the current government to the tune of serious patriotic hymns about love of country?

At this point Robespierre may well throw up his hands in dismay.

[asakiyume]

Exactly!

[rachelmanija]

Yes, that does seem to be a common problem. "In our perfect cottagecore future there will be no wood-burning stoves/death metal/sex toys!"

[asakiyume]

And before you know it you're guillotining the people who don't like quite the right flavor of bardcore music or who insist on wearing linsey-woolsey when OBVIOUSLY we should all be wearing straight linen!!!

[osprey_archer]

Listen, mixed fibers are of the devil, it says so in the BIBLE. Those linsey-woolsey wearers know that they're flouting the will of God!

[asakiyume]

Cue executioner and crowd turning dangerous eyes on Robespierre. ... That's why they executed him, right? I seem to recall from World History. WEAR LINEN, MAN!!

[osprey_archer]

This is the stuff they don't teach you in history class! Gotta dig up the REAL cause of Robespierre's death (mixed fibers) from the INTERNET.

[asakiyume]

The truth is out there!!!

[osprey_archer]

Fight to the death between the anti-wood-burning-stove faction and the people who are like "Can you even call it cottagecore if there are no woodburning stoves! Get thee hence!"

[rachelmanija]

Oh boy... I think false rape accusations are my ACTUAL WORST trope, even more than surprise pregnancy.

[osprey_archer]

Truly I did not appreciate that suddenly showing up out of left field. We don't get any insight into why she did it, either. Did she come up with the idea on her own, under the impression that by forcing Robespierre to act against Danton she would be Saving the Revolution? Did Saint-Just browbeat her into it? Does she just want to watch the world burn? Who can say!

[troisoiseaux]

Did she come up with the idea on her own, under the impression that by forcing Robespierre to act against Danton she would be Saving the Revolution? Did Saint-Just browbeat her into it? Does she just want to watch the world burn? Who can say!

IIRC, I read it as an effort by Saint-Just at al. to force Robespierre's hand. But yeah, it's just...... ergh. This book is... frequently kind of weird about women?

[osprey_archer]

By about halfway through I was BEGGING one of the women to actual go ahead and have an affair. Take Camille to bed, Annette! Lucile, have a fling with one of the dozen men flinging themselves at your feet! Eleonore, have you considered finding a man who is actually interested in you, rather than Robespierre. Why is it that in litfic the only on-page sex scenes are so awkward? The part where Eleonore lies naked in Robespierre's bed and Robespierre's like "guess I gotta sleep with her. No way around it" and then he does and they both hate it.

Manon at least gets to have an emotional affair with Buzot, but PLEASE let one of our POV ladies sleep around at least a little bit.

[troisoiseaux]

The part where Eleonore lies naked in Robespierre's bed and Robespierre's like "guess I gotta sleep with her. No way around it" and then he does and they both hate it.

It's SO painfully awkward but the last time I re-read A Place of Greater Safety I ended up absolutely losing it over this part because it reminded me of an article I'd read about a French politician who had an affair and defended himself by saying, basically, "Robespierre was a virgin and look where that got him."

[osprey_archer]

OH THE FRENCH.

[skygiants]

yeah, it REALLY is. I remember finding this a sharp contrast with Wolf Hall, where she often seems to be pushing herself (successfully!) to find the most interesting possible characterization for the women in the story whereas in APOGS it feels like she knows to do this for the men but has NOT yet accessed that skillset for the women.