Quote:
Originally Posted by gmw
But the story of the The Scarlet Pimpernel has survived intact, its modern reputation reflects pretty much exactly what the story actually is. Perhaps it is that it was written so much closer to our own time that it better reflects our modern mores.
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I don't see as big a difference between the theme and execution of Scarlet Pimpernel and Musketeers, with the 60 years between them at a time when the world changed more slowly, than I do between Scarlet Pimpernel and now, over a hundred years later. In fact, I think TTM has aged far better; the people are flawed but real, and not just paragons in the heroic mode.
The Scarlet Pimpernel seems very much of its time to me, a typical turn of the last century romance. I was thinking along those lines and that the apotheosis of that type of novel was probably
The Prisoner of Zenda when I realized that they were the inverse of each other;
SP has one man in a dual role, and
PoZ has two men as a single person. The biggest difference, though, is that PoZ was contemporary, albeit set in a fictional country.