Ratings

Content Ratings based on a 0-5 scale where
0 = no objectionable content and
5 = an excessive or disturbing level of content

Guide to Rating System

LANGUAGE

VIOLENCE

SEXUAL CONTENT

ADULT THEMES

Ratings Explanation

Language:  Only a handful of some common profanities–“Damned Brits! Damned Aristocrats!”, hell, and some variations in spelling of such (“demmed”, “demmit”, “Lud” for Lord, etc.)

Violence:  French aristocrats are being beheaded by “Madame La Guillotine” on a daily basis, however, the most gruesome details of beheadings come in the description of blood being splattered on the onlookers.  Two Englishmen are attacked in a pub and taken hostage. A few scenes of men being beaten up, tied up, shackled, gagged and bound, etc.

Adult Themes:  Ale and beer drinking at the pubs. Lady Blakeney has inadvertently condemned the Marquis de St. Cyr and his family to death by guillotine, and this weighs heavily on her conscience. Monsieur Chauvelin threatens and intimidates Lady Blakeney. He vows to behead the Scarlet Pimpernel. Lady Blakeney, accompanied by Sir Ffoulkes in search of her husband, is mistakenly assumed to be having an affair by a pubkeeper. Derogatory reference to Jews (the “despised race”); the author takes no pains to hide her own prejudice in describing a dirty, dissheveled, and stooped elderly Jew and how the soldiers were eager to give him a beating.

Synopsis

In the year 1792 under Robespierre’s Reign of Terror, the French Revolution wages on and a bloodthirsty regime of citizen soldiers is sending hundreds of aristocratic men, women, and children to the guillotine. Their only hope of rescue lies in the cunning and courage of one Englishman: the Scarlet Pimpernel, a master of disguises whose calling card is a tiny, star-shaped crimson flower, and who deftly evades the French Government time after time while bringing the near-victims to safety on England’s shores.

Across the Channel in London, the Scarlet Pimpernel is the talk of the town. Stories of his adventurous rescues have reached a crescendo, but the dashing hero’s identity is an enigma to all but a handful of gentlemen, co-conspirators who savor the thrill of the perilous rescue from the guillotine’s bloody clutches. Meanwhile, Sir Percy and Lady Marguerite Blakeney are the darlings of British Society; the wealthy and gentrified Sir Percy plays well the part of the dimwitted fop, but has somehow captured the heart of this beautiful French stage actress known as “the cleverest woman in Europe”.  Their passionless relationship has dwindled under the shadow of misunderstanding. But when a French spy named Chauvelin terrorizes Marguerite into discovering the true identity of the Scarlet Pimpernel, the Blakeneys find themselves at the center of a deadly political intrigue that will test their love and loyalty.

When the Baroness Orczy first attempted to publish this debut novel, she was met with rejection. Not until she and her husband turned the book into a hugely successful London play did publishing houses take notice of The Scarlet Pimpernel. First published in 1905, the dashing hero literally paved the way for future “superhero” protagonists whose pretense of fumbling, unsuspecting fool-by-day keeps the masked-avenger-by-night’s identity a secret (think Superman or Zorro, i.e.) Ms. Orczy’s narrative can be a bit wordy in parts, but overall, this story lacks nothing in the way of intrigue, romance, adventure, and suspense. A very entertaining read.