Count of Monte Cristo: The End

[osprey_archer]

I finished The Count of Monte Cristo! Confetti falls from the sky, trumpets blast, we all slam down our glasses like Thor and shout, "Another!"

Well, maybe not another just yet. But now that I've discovered Dumas, I would like to read The Three Musketeers in the not-too-distant future.



MERCEDES AND EDMOND ARE FOREVER SUNDERED, WOE IS ME. The scene where Mercedes begs Dantes for her son's life made me so invested in them as a pairing, and it seems so unfair that the book ends with no indication that Mercedes will ever be anything but miserable and filled with guilt over what she feels is her great crime in marrying Fernand. "If I believed that God had given me free will, what would remain to save me from despair!" she cries, and Edmond can think of nothing to comfort her.

ALL I WANT IS YOUR HAPPINESS, MERCEDES. AND THAT IS ALL THIS BOOK HAS REFUSED TO GIVE ME.

The vengeancing is complete. Villefort's wife poisoned his entire family, ending with herself and her son (after Villefort threatened to expose her crimes to the public). Villefort, broken by that misfortune, goes mad, and in between his madness and the death of his eight-year-old son, Dantes is struck with a moment of doubt: Has he gone too far in his quest for revenge????

But then he goes to visit the Chateau d'If and there, on the site of his former miseries, he decides that he hasn't, really, or maybe just a little bit. In any case, he has enough doubts that he is uncharacteristically lenient with Danglars: he has the man kidnapped by bandits, nearly starved, and extorted out of almost all his money, but he lets him go in the end.

IDK, though, I think Dantes did go too far with Villefort: so many innocent people died just to punish him, and even if Villefort deserved to watch everyone he loved (or at least was vaguely fond of; how much can a Villefort love?) die all around him, they didn't deserve to die. It bothers me that Dantes, even in his comparatively humble state in the final chapters, doesn't think about that at all.

Oh, and! Dantes reunited Morrel and Valentine at last! After Morrel takes poison (which is in actuality Dantes' miracle drug that makes people look dead for a while without actually dying, but Morrel doesn't know that), proving to Dantes with his willingness to commit suicide that he deserves his future happiness.

This seems like an odd and rather cruel way to test someone, and also what was Dantes going to do if Morrel showed up on Monte Cristo all "Now that the first flush of my grief is passed, even though I am still really sad I actually don't feel like killing myself after all. Thank you for saving me from myself, Count!" Did Dantes intend to tell Valentine "Nah, you can't be with him after all"?

So really I found the ending somewhat less satisfying than the rest of the book, but nonetheless it was a wild and awesome ride and I'm glad I took it.

Comments

[evelyn-b.livejournal.com]

ANOTHER! :D

Poor Mercedes. The worst thing she can be said to have done is marry a man she didn't "really" love after her almost-husband was disappeared, which is only a sin in the first place if you are an idealistic novelist. It's not like she wasn't smack in the middle of a culture where opportunistic marriages are the norm. But of course it wasn't the norm for her, when she was twenty. Poor Mercedes. I can see them both being a little -- stunted? stopped? prevented from growing in certain ways? by that terrible arrest on the threshold of their wedding. I would totally read fix-it fic where they work it out somehow. Or ridiculous issuefic where Mercedes meets Eugenie and Louise and the rest of the female cast for a groovy 70s-style consciousness-raising session.

Danglars' "punishment" is so weirdly anticlimactic in a way. He's arguably the most loathsome of Dantes' original antagonists, but he doesn't get spectacular drama OR horror and pity, just a lot of dudes charging him one MILLION francs every time he wants breakfast. Maybe he doesn't deserve the top-shelf drama, since he wouldn't appreciate it anyway.

Everything from Villefort's madness to the end was a little bit downhill for me, though I liked the visit to the Chateau d'If a lot. But I can't complain. It was still 900+ pages of the purest entertainment ever whipped up by the hand of man, so I have no regrets.

[osprey-archer.livejournal.com]

POOR MERCEDES. I would totally read either of those fix-it fics. Or maybe a melded fix-it fic where Mercedes meets Eugenie and Louise and the consciousness raising allows her to realize that she doesn't deserve to suffer forever, but should go after what she wants, and conveniently Dantes is back in town and Haydee is... um... married to someone else maybe.

Yes, I think Villefort's madness was the last really high point; the visit to the Chateau d'If is deliciously atmospheric, but I feel like it sort of skirts around the issue of vengeance: really such a good idea?, so it's not as great as Villefort running around his garden trying to dig up his son who is lying dead in his wife's boudoir.

I wonder if Valentine and Morrel ever visit him. Probably he just thinks that Valentine is another hallucination, though. :( I actually feel pretty bad for Villefort; what he did to Dantes was terrible, but the punishment seems disproportionate, especially given that Danglars gets off with a still-sizable amount of money and gray hair.

Do you want to read The Three Musketeers sometime in 2017? It won't be for at least a month, because there's a particular bookstore where I'm planning to buy it and I won't be there till February. And in fact I might need more than a month's recovery time before I dive into another Dumas anyway...

[evelyn-b.livejournal.com]

Sure! I also need a break from Dumas, but I'm tentatively down for some Musketeers later this year. Just let me know.

I kind of want a TON of Monte Cristo fanfic now. Valentine and Morrel visiting poor cracked old Villefort is something I would read, too.

:(

Also, let's just assume Mercedes is happy later, within a year of the end of the book the clouds roll by and the sun comes out.

It's interesting how the punishments cash out. Danglars is the least sympathetic of the four, I'd even venture to say by a long way, and he gets off - financially still a little better than he started, not dead, not mad, less one wife and daughter, but it's not like he was all that passionately attached to them in the first place. Danglars seems to be a cold character who benefits from the warmth of others - from Fernand's hot-headed jealousy in the beginning, and arguably from Dantes' guilt about going too far at the end. I find that interesting. . . idk.

eta: what I mean, if this makes any sense at all, is that Danglars seems to be protected by his coldness in a way the others aren't.

[osprey-archer.livejournal.com]

It would be such an epic meeting! I bet Valentine cries when they see her father. Do they adopt Villefort and care for him in his madness? Does he remain mad forever, or does he come back down a bit once the first shock is over? Although even if his madness becomes less florid, he's still going to be a sad broken man.

Agreed, Mercedes is totally happy later. She joins a nunnery and finds succor in performing good works and also maybe some wacky hijinks with her fellow nuns.

I agree totally about Danglars' coldness protecting him; even if Danglars had gotten the Fernand or the Villefort treatment, it would have rolled off him like water off a duck's back. His wife and his daughter reject him after he is publicly shamed? Eh, he never cared all that much about wife, daughter, or the public. His whole family dies around him? Ditto. And also I think he'd flee the country as soon as he realized there might be a poisoner in the house; he's certainly not going to risk his own precious life.

His very badness makes it impossible for Dantes to punish him as effectively as he did the others.

[summercomfort]

yeah, I didn't want to spoil the ending for you, but high-school-me definitely threw the book (hefty library tome as it was) when I got to the end. In the "wtf is this wait and hope shit, why aren't Dantes and Mercedes having sweet kisses forever" way.

Also, I remember liking The Three Musketeers far less. It's mostly wacky highjinks, without the dose of melodramatic angst and overall vengeance arc. (And let's not even get started on Man in the Iron Mask. Why did I read that? Oh yeah, because I love identity angst. Which the book failed to deliver on.)

[osprey-archer.livejournal.com]

DANTES AND MERCEDES 5EVAH, I don't understand Dumas' cruel decision not to give this to us. Would they have a desperately tempestuous life together? PROBABLY, but I still want it anyway.

I've heard mixed reviews of The Three Musketeers, but no one seems to like The Man in the Iron Mask. Oh Dumas. I guess we all have off days.

[thisbluespirit]

I liked the ending! It was obvious Dantes and Mercedes couldn't be together, and they'd had their satisfying big exchange - and I liked the OTT drama of Edmond reclaiming himself instead of punishing Danglars. Which is kind of unfair on everyone else who was actually less bad, but I still liked it.

Mercedes will, I'm sure, recover in time and make a great nun. She probably will do better not being married to a drama llama who might try testing her devotion every so often because of their history!

[osprey-archer.livejournal.com]

Dantes would come up with the most ludicrously bizarre tests of devotion, it's so true.

Hopefully Mercedes will actually enter the nunnery rather than spending the rest of her life in Papa Dantes' old house, probably telling herself that it's 100% her fault that he starved to death, just like everything else is 100% her fault. OH MERCEDES.

[thisbluespirit]

Don't worry; life won't let you spend all your time obsessed with regret or revenge. That's what Dantes found, and so will Mercedes. Albert will recover himself and provide her with adorable grandchildren. Plus, if she does go into a nunnery, that should keep her busy with charity and routine and options for forgiveness. I can't help but think even so she would be much worse with Dantes who would also remind her of her mistakes. And she of his misfortune and his misguided revenges.

[littlerhymes]

I kinda feel Mercedes is better off without someone as, hmmm, let's just say it MESSED UP as Dantes, but otoh she deserves a spectacular ending so IDK. Anyway these posts have been a delight. It's such a great book! (I used to re-read it once every couple of years but then I started buying too many books, sob.)

[osprey-archer.livejournal.com]

If there had been some glimmer of hope in Mercedes' ending, I think I would be okay with the non-Mercedes/Dantesness of it, but I really needed that glimmer of hope. Instead she's just DESPAIRING and repeating "Edmond, Edmond, Edmond" as he goes away without a backward glance. She hasn't even entered a nunnery yet, so I can't even hope that she'll find succor with her new nun sisters! She's just sitting in Dantes' father's old house blaming herself for everything!

[littlerhymes]

He was clearly saving all the Mercedes happy feels for the sequel he was GOING to write about her amazing post-Dantes life!

Somewhere in the multiverse this book exists, I'm sure of it.

[osprey-archer.livejournal.com]

It's in the infinite library of the multiverse! Obviously. Which also contains completed versions of the novels Jane Austen and Charlotte Bronte left incomplete on their deaths, and various and sundry other delightful tidbits.

[evelyn-b.livejournal.com]

The thing is, as a human being in the real world I agree with you 200%, but as a reader of melodramatic adventure fiction, if Dumas had tried to sell me Mercedes/Dantes, I would have bought it. I would have been happy to buy it and to rejoice in it and to think no more of it. Because Dumas already sold me on the return of the Pharaon, and what was that if not foreshadowing for the certainty that all things are possible?

[littlerhymes]

Ha, Dumas could probably sell me a bridge, let's face it!

Idk tho, I guess I also really like the melodramatic possibilities of "we can never go back and be the people we once were let's tragically part" etc etc.