“Every time I read a book by Alexandre Dumas, I get the impression of living an episode of France’s history.” – Aurélie Moureaux. How did French author Alexandre Dumas (1802–1870) manage to create stories that still make history come alive and transport readers from every age into 16th to 19th-century France?
Considering Dumas’ origins shows his curiosity and passion for education. His father, General Thomas-Alexandre Dumas, was the first man of colour to be a brigadier general in France. Napoleon had promised to take care of his son in the case of his death but never kept this promise. It becomes evident that Dumas experienced betrayal, poverty, and racism due to his mixed heritage early on. Indeed, later, he started creating novels in which themes of betrayal, justice, and revenge were central.
Despite his struggles, Dumas showed rigorous determination to depict history as accurately as possible. To achieve this, he spent hours researching. “[W]hile making researches in the Royal Library for [his] History of Louis XIV., [he] stumbled by chance upon the Memoirs of M. d’Artagnan” (Dumas), who would later be the protagonist of Dumas’s The Three Musketeers. Once an established author, Dumas used the money he earned to upgrade from reading travel reports to travelling himself and experiencing the places in which he made his characters come alive. The Count of Monte Cristo was written during this time, which explains its captivating vividness of geographical descriptions.
After having accumulated a significant amount of information (either through reading, collaborating with historians, or travelling), he started to turn words into literary worlds that allow readers to get fully immersed. Psychologists call this “transportation.” In his novels, Dumas made use of cliffhangers, vivid descriptions as mentioned above, and he combined fast-paced adventures with emotional character development, giving his works profound depth. Dumas’s success is due neither solely to his research nor to his talent, but to his ability to merge both.
The French teacher quoted earlier is not the only one to experience his transportation. Famous Scottish author Robert Louis Stevenson (1850–1894) claimed to “have read Bragelonne,” referring to The Vicomte of Bragelonne by Alexandre Dumas.
Philosopher Richard Rorty stated that “our society needs texts that [..] show us how to feel the experience of others,” which is exactly what Dumas was capable of. He made history endure through literature, all the while creating literary history himself.
On a personal note: Please read The Count of Monte Cristo and do not be intimidated by the page count. It is worth every single page.
Photo by The Cleveland Museum of Art on Unsplash