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Personification
Definition of Satire
Satire is the use of humor, irony, sarcasm, or ridicule to criticize something or someone. Public figures, such as politicians, are often the subject of satire, but satirists can take... read full definition
Satire is the use of humor, irony, sarcasm, or ridicule to criticize something or someone. Public figures, such as politicians, are often the subject of... read full definition
Satire is the use of humor, irony, sarcasm, or ridicule to criticize something or someone. Public figures, such as politicians... read full definition
Chapter 16
Explanation and Analysis—Presiding Magistrate:
In Chapter 16, Dumas describes Chancellor Séguier, the cardinal's servant who conducts an intrusive search of the queen's chambers for incriminating evidence about her affair with the Duke of Buckingham. Séguier's history is rife with situational irony that Dumas uses to satirize the way power worked in the Ancien Régime:
After three months, either because the devil gave up the struggle or the monks succumbed to exhaustion, no one knows which, the penitent [Séguier] returned to the outside world with the reputation of having suffered from the most terrible case of demonic possession that had ever been observed.
After leaving the monastery he entered the legal profession and eventually succeeded his uncle as presiding magistrate of the High Court.
According to Dumas's description, Séguier entered the monastery after a "stormy youth" with the hopes of reforming. The monks are unsuccessful in reforming him. Dumas jokingly describes Séguier's failure to suppress his sexuality and the monks' fatigue as they try and fail, day and night, to exorcise him. Dumas even suggests that Séguier got a perverse enjoyment out of the monks' violent exorcisms, to the point that he started calling for their "help" at more and more frequent intervals. In this passage, Dumas states that no one knows whether the demon or the monks gave up first. Given how stubborn the "demon" seems to have been, there is a strong tongue-in-cheek implication that the monks kicked him out of the monastery unreformed so that they could finally get some rest.
The bawdy comedy of this entire backstory serves to make Séguier look bad. If he is really still possessed by a demon (or at the very least unable to temper his own desires), Dumas imagines that his readers will see him as terribly unfit to hold a position of power. And yet, ironically, as soon as he leaves the monastery, he immediately takes advantage of his family connections to become "presiding magistrate of the High Court." He now works directly for the cardinal. Dumas was writing in the 1840s, about half a century after the Ancien Régime in France was replaced by a republican government and a more democratic social hierarchy. There were still debates going on about the best form of government. Dumas satirizes the way the old system gave power to people solely on the basis of their families, regardless of the fact that many of these people were utterly unfit to wield such power.
Related Themes:
Chapter 29
Explanation and Analysis—Love and Money:
Dumas satirizes the idea that love transcends all in Chapter 29, when Porthos uses pathos to convince his mistress, Madame Coquenard, to give him money. He lets her see him offering holy water to Milady to stir up her jealousy, and then he uses his words to nudge her into acting on it:
["]Deep in my heart, I still have tender feelings for you. But, as you may or may not know, the campaign will start in two weeks, and I’m terribly concerned about my equipment. I’m going to my family’s estate in Brittany to get the money I’ll need.” Porthos paused to watch the final struggle between love and avarice in Madame Coquenard, then he went on: “The duchess you saw in church is also going to Brittany. She has land that borders on my family’s. We’ll travel together; a journey always seems much shorter when you share it with someone.”
Porthos does not really mean to go anywhere with Milady. At this point, he doesn't even know her. He and the other musketeers have run out of money trying to foil the cardinal's plot against the queen and the Duke of Buckingham. Now, they are looking for creative ways to afford the equipment they need for the military campaign the king is starting. Porthos has come to the church specifically to get money out of Madame Coquenard. He knows that she is miserly, but he also knows that she is possessive of him. He lies to her, telling her that he is going to his family estate in Brittany for money. He doesn't say outright that he also plans to get money from Milady, but he implies that they would be a suitable match for marriage. Their family estates, he claims, border one another, so a marriage would allow both families to expand the borders of their land. He implies that they will spend a great deal of enjoyable time in one another's company on the journey there. Madame Coquenard is left worrying that Porthos is going to end up marrying Milady and leaving her without a lover besides her husband. Porthos thus pushes Madame Coquenard into a "struggle between love and avarice" (avarice meaning greed), forcing her to feel that she will lose Porthos to Milady if she does not make it worth his while to abandon his plan to go to Brittany.
This scene is comical because it highlights how important money is to both Madame Coquenard and Porthos. Madame Coquenard is willing (if begrudgingly) to pay to keep Porthos's amorous attention trained on her, and Porthos is willing to admit that his love is all about money. Characters in the novel are constantly making political and financial decisions based on love and personal feelings. Through these characters who are so blatantly allowing money to determine their decisions in love, Dumas satirizes the idea that love transcends worldly concerns. For Porthos and Madame Coquenard, as with everyone else, love, money, and politics are all part of the same game.
Related Themes:
