What happens in the book The Scarlet Pimpernel?

Question

From Beging To End

Answer 1

It's a good rattling read - some of the language is a bit dated but basically, it's a romantic thriller. You should read it - it's not at all difficult.

Don't rely on the films, not one of 'em follows the plot of the book, neither does the musical.

Basically, Sir Percy Blakeney is a wealthy Englishman married to a French actress on the fringes of revolutionary politics. She was tricked into ratting out some French aristocrats to the revolutionary government, who guillotined them. He was madly in love but went right off her when he found out.

Everybody thinks he's a brainless idiot who only cares about his clothes but secretly, he's the Scarlet Pimpernel, a daring hero who rescues people before they get their heads chopped off and brings them back to England where he lives with Marguerite who is gorgeous and allegedly very intelligent, though she never shows that in the book.

A French agent comes to England and blackmails Marguerite into helping him catch the SP, because he's got some dirt on her brother. Marguerite finds out something about a rendezvous and tells the agent, only realising too late that SP is really her husband who isn't as dim as he's been making out. She chases him to France to warn him but gets captured (I told you she acts dim) but he rescues her, and the aristocrats and they all escape to England. Percy and Marguerite are back in love and there are half a dozen more books on the same theme.

Although it is *very* pro-English, it was written by a Hungarian woman.

The Scarlet Pimpernel is a wild flower, and the hero of the book leaves a little drawing of it wherever he goes as a sort of signature.

Answer 2

The Scarlet Pimpernel is by far the best known not only of Orczy?s works but also of stories set during the French Revolution, although the Hungarian-born novelist wrote many more historical novels and a number of sequels to this 1905 novel. It has been dramatised and also filmed a number of times with great success and is a fun if not always historically accurate or wholly convincing story. The novel tells of the mysterious and much spoken-of League of the Scarlet Pimpernel. This group is led by the cunning and noble Sir Percy Blakeney who with accomplices risks life and limb rescuing the innocents caught up in the Reign of Terror in Paris. His disguises and other inventive ways of eluding capture stretch to his anonymity even amongst the English. It is an entertaining yarn, as suited to children as adults but none the worse for its simplicity.

Answer 3

'The Scarlet Pimpernel' written by Baroness Orczy tells the adventures of an English nobleman, who poses as the foppish Sir Percy Blakeney, but he is really the leader of the League of the Scarlet Pimpernel - a daring master of disguise.
The 1905 novel tells of how he rescues aristos about to be guillotined during the French Revolution. He loves and marries Lady Marguerite St. Just , who was once a Republican and a supporter of the Revolution, but he basically persuades her to his cause and the brutality of the Terror. A Revolutionary agent tries to blackmail her into revealing the Pimpernel's identity.
A historical romantic adventure!

Answer 4

The characters spend about 2/3s of their time asking each other just what the heck is a "pimpernel" and why the one that has been dragged into their lives is scarlet.

The other 1/3 of their time is taken up by a plot that has a beginning, mid--passage and an ending, sometimes called a resolution.

Answer 5

The French are arresting and beheading the aristocracy. The Scarlet Pimpernel rescues them. The French cannot catch him. He gets the girl.

Answer 6

If you don't want to read it for yourself, then go to the bookstore and get the Cliff's Notes!

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