Zusammenfassung
Zusammenfassung von Der scharlachrote Pimpernel
Für wen es gedacht ist
For readers who love fast plots, secret identities and romance with real tension, and anyone who enjoys history as costume drama, daring rescues and disguises.
Worum es in diesem Buch geht
The Scarlet Pimpernel is an adventure novel by Baroness Orczy, first published in 1905. It grew out of a stage play she wrote with her husband, Montagu Barstow, and the novel soon outran it. Orczy was born in Hungary and raised partly in England. She wrote for readers who wanted romance, danger and a clear line between heroes and villains.
The story is set in 1792, in the worst months of the Reign of Terror in France. The guillotine is working every day in Paris. Aristocrats, priests and anyone who looks suspect are being rounded up. In England, a band of young gentlemen is secretly smuggling the condemned out of France. Their leader signs his notes with a small red flower, the scarlet pimpernel. Nobody knows who he is. The French government wants him caught, and all of London society wants to guess his name.
At the center is a marriage in trouble. Marguerite St. Just was the cleverest actress in Paris. Now she is the wife of Sir Percy Blakeney, a rich English baronet with a taste for fine clothes and empty jokes. Between them lies a wall of silence, and a French agent sees a way to use it. The book gives you chases, disguises, a ticking clock and a love story that has to be mended. It begins at a gate in Paris, where the guards are about to be fooled.
In dieser Zusammenfassung
- 1Paris in the grip of the TerrorFree
- 2A rhyme, an inn and a mystery
- 3A brilliant wife and a husband who bores her
- 4The League and its secret oath
- 5Chauvelin arrives with a demand
- 6Marguerite searches for a hidden name
- 7Love, trust and the cost of silence
- 8Orczy's view of the Revolution and its limits
- 9How the story is told: disguise, speed and wit
Punkt 1 von 9
Paris in the grip of the Terror
The novel opens in September 1792 at one of the gates of Paris. A crowd has gathered there, and the mood is ugly. Each day, the guillotine takes dozens of lives, and the people at the barrier come to watch the carts and cheer. Orczy describes a city run by fear, where a neighbor's whisper can send a family to the scaffold.
The soldiers at the gate are under orders. Nobody may leave Paris without being searched, because aristocrats are trying to flee. The sergeant in charge is proud of how thoroughly he does his work. Then a cart comes through, and the guards let it pass. Soon afterward they learn what they have missed. A group of the condemned has slipped out under their noses, and the only sign is a small red flower drawn on a scrap of paper.
This opening does two jobs. It shows the danger in the clearest way. These are real lives on a short fuse, and the Terror is not a distant event. It also introduces the hero by what he does rather than by what he looks like. Before we meet any person with a name, we meet a trick that has made a nation of soldiers look foolish.
The scarlet pimpernel is a real wild flower, small and red, and Orczy makes it a signature. In the story, the man who uses it becomes a legend in both countries. The French call him a criminal, and the English whisper of him as a hero. Orczy uses this split to build mystery, because nobody can say who he is or where he will strike next.
From here the book crosses the Channel. The narrator moves us from the noise of Paris to the quiet comfort of England, and the contrast is deliberate. Orczy wants the reader to feel how thin the line is between safety and the knife, and how much it depends on a few brave people who work in the dark.
That’s 1 of 9 key points.
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Questions about Der scharlachrote Pimpernel
What is The Scarlet Pimpernel about?
It is about a secret English hero who rescues people from the guillotine during the French Revolution, and about Marguerite, a clever wife who is forced by a French agent to help hunt him.
Is The Scarlet Pimpernel a true story?
No. It is fiction, published in 1905 and set in 1792. The Reign of Terror is real, but the Pimpernel, his League and the plot are Orczy's invention.
Is The Scarlet Pimpernel hard to read?
No. The style is brisk and the chapters are short. The plot is easy to follow.
Why is it called The Scarlet Pimpernel?
The scarlet pimpernel is a small red wild flower. The hero uses it as his sign on his rescues and on the messages he leaves, and it gives both the man and the book their name.