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The Count of Monte Cristo – Reading Guide 6 (Pages 252-298)
1.
On page 253, while the Count of Monte Cristo, Villefort, and Madame Villefort are discussing the Count’s new house at
Auteuil, the Count says, “‘If you don’t come, I’ll be forced to believe there’s some sort of gloomy legend attached to that
old house, which remained uninhabited for twenty years.” To what incident might the Count be referring? (PLOT)
2.
Make an inference about what caused the misinterpretation of the telegraph signals on pages 254 and 255. Justify your
inference. (INFERENCE)
3.
a.
What do we find out about Madame Danglars’ history on pages 257 and 258? (PLOT)
b. What do we find out about “Andrea Cavalcanti” on pages 257 and 258? (PLOT)
c.
How are Madame Danglars and “Andrea” related? (PLOT)
a.
What is the Count of Monte Cristo’s scheme at the dinner party? (PLOT)
4.
b. Explain how the following kinds of irony are used during this scene (IRONY):
dramatic irony –
situational irony –
5.
What lie does Monte Cristo tell on page 262? (PLOT)
6.
On page 265, Caderousse tells Andrea that they “left the prison of Toulon without asking permission.” What does he
mean? What literary device is he using? (LITERARY DEVICES)
7.
What does Madame Danglars think of her daughter, Eugénie? (CONFLICT)
8.
Describe Baron and Madame Danglars’ relationship in detail. (CONFLICT)
9.
Why is Danglars interested in Andrea Cavalcanti? (INFERENCE)
10. How does Villefort discover that the Count of Monte Cristo is lying about finding the grave of a baby? (PLOT)
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How do you suspect Valentine’s grandfather (Monsieur de Saint-Méran; Valentine’s deceased mother’s father, and
Villefort’s father-in-law) really died? (INFERENCE)
b. How does Valentine’s grandmother (Madame de Saint-Méran) die? (PLOT)
11. If you were Valentine, would you choose to run off with Maximilien and live in poverty, or stay and marry Franz? Explain
your reasoning. (EVALUATION)
12. On page 259, Dumas describes the feast that the Count of Monte Cristo lays out for his guests: “The meal was
magnificent. Monte Cristo’s effort were directed more toward satisfying his guests’ curiosity than their appetite. It was
an Oriental feast which he offered tem, but Oriental in the manner of Arabian fairy tales. All the different kinds of
fruit which the four corners of the world can send to fill Europe’s horn of plenty were piled high in Chinese vases and
Japanese bowls. Rare birds with the brilliant part of their plumage, monstrous fish lying on silver platters, every wine
from the Archipelago, Asia Minor, and the Cape, contained in decanters whose exotic shapes seemed to add flavor to
their contents – all this passed in review before the astonished eyes of the count’s guests.”
Earlier in the book (page 214-5), Dumas describes his Greek slave, Haydée: “It was noon; the count had set aside an
hour to be spent with Haydée. The young Greek occupied an apartment completely separate from the count’s and
furnished in the Oriental manner: the floors were covered with thick Turkish carpets, the walls were hung with
brocades and in each room there was a wide divan with piles of cushions to be placed according to the will of those
who used them. Haydée was lying on the floor on blue satin cushions, leaning back against the divan while her softly
rounded arm encircled her head. Her pose, quite natural for a woman of the Orient, would have been somewhat
affected for a French woman. Her face represented Grecian beauty in all its perfection of its type, with its large, soft
black eyes, its straight nose, coral lips and pearly teeth. And over all this was the bloom and freshness of youth:
Haydée was no more than nineteen or twenty years old.”
Dumas is writing about a set of stereotypes that many of his contemporaries (people living at the same time as him)
had of the world beyond Europe, called “Orientalism.” Read the article on Orientalism by the Arab American
National Museum on the next pages, and answer the following questions:
a.
What would the Arab American National Museum think of these selections from The Count of Monte Cristo?
(Answer in a developed paragraph – at least five sentences.) (SYNTHESIS)
b. Consider what you know about Alexandre Dumas’ background (he was the descendant of slaves; he was
subjected to racism in French society). Why do you think he chose to include racial stereotypes in his writing?
Elaborate in your answer. (AUTHOR’S PURPOSE)
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“What is Orientalism?”
from the Arab American National Museum, http://www.arabstereotypes.org/why-stereotypes/what-orientalism
"Orientalism” is a way of seeing that imagines, emphasizes, exaggerates and distorts differences of Arab
peoples and cultures as compared to that of Europe and the U.S. It often involves seeing Arab culture as exotic,
backward, uncivilized, and at times dangerous. Edward W. Said, in his groundbreaking book, Orientalism, defined it as
the acceptance in the West of “the basic distinction between East and West as the starting point for elaborate theories,
epics, novels, social descriptions, and political accounts concerning the Orient, its people, customs, ‘mind,’ destiny and
so on.”
According to Said, Orientalism dates from the period of European Enlightenment and colonization of the
Arab World. Orientalism provided a rationalization for European colonialism based on a self-serving history in which
“the West” constructed “the East” as extremely different and inferior, and therefore in need of Western intervention
or “rescue”.
Examples of early Orientalism can be seen in European paintings and photographs and also in images from
the World’s Fair in the U.S. in the 19th and early 20th centuries.
The paintings, created by European artists of the 19th and early 20th centuries, depict the Arab World as an
exotic and mysterious place of sand, harems and belly dancers, reflecting a long history of Orientalist fantasies which
have continued to permeate our contemporary popular culture.
France colonized Algeria from 1830 to 1962. From roughly 1900 to 1930, French entrepreneurs produced
postcards of Algerian women that were circulated in France. While Algerian women are portrayed in these
photographs as if the camera is capturing a real moment in their everyday lives, the women are actually set up in the
photographer’s studio. As demonstrated in Malek Alloula’s book, The Colonial Harem, these photographs were
circulated as evidence of the exotic, backwards and strange customs of Algerians, when, in fact, they reveal more
about the French colonial perspective than about Algerian life in the early 1900s. This is an example of how Arab
women have been exoticized and eroticized for the pleasure of the European male voyeur, as these photographs make
visible French colonial fantasies of penetrating the harem and gaining access to Arab women’s private spaces.
The World’s Fairs in Chicago (1893) and St. Louis (1904) helped to reinforce Orientalist imagery in the
United States. The crossover from European to U.S. Orientalism can be seen in the images from James Buel’s
photographic book that catalogued the 1893 World’s Fair in Chicago. This publication includes photographs of
recreated Arab streets, accompanied by captions that capture the Orientalist thinking of the time. For example, the
caption that accompanies the image “Egyptian Girl in Street of Cairo” refers to the “peculiar manners of the
Egyptians,” and her “unsightly disguise.” In addition to being written about as an object on display, her characteristics
are described as belonging to a backwards culture.
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Veils, Harems, & Belly Dancers
Over the last century, women have been represented in U.S. popular culture primarily as harem girls, belly dancers,
and oppressed veiled women.
According to Amira Jarmakani in Imagining Arab Womanhood, the veil, the harem, and the belly dancer are cultural
mythologies that purport to represent the realities of Arab and Muslim women through sweeping generalizations that
rob these women’s experiences of their diversity and historical context. She claims that these images masquerade as
accurate portrayals of Arab and Muslim women’s lives.
Veiled women and belly dancers are two sides of the same coin. On the one hand, belly dancers code Arab culture as
exotic and sexually available. Portrayals of Arab women as sexually available position them as existing for male
pleasure. On the other hand, the veil has figured both as a site of intrigue and as the ultimate symbol of oppression.
As a site of intrigue, the veil has been represented as a forbidden zone [….] As a symbol of oppression, the narrative
about the veil is powerful and comes in many forms – such as stories about “honor” killings, female genital
mutilation, forced marriages and forced veiling. These stories have been circulated and consumed with such frequency
that Arab culture and the religion of Islam have come to be seen as inherently oppressive to women. De-veiling and
liberating oppressed women have become part of the American cultural imagination.