The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas

[Tulius Hostilius]

Yes to be fair to Dumas I am applying very modern morals to something written over 150 years ago set around 400 years ago.

Precisely!

I think that today we rarely read “old” books in its original form because we, as human beings, have the tendency to transplant our society norms to what we read.

The morality, immorality and amorality concepts change over the years. And we cannot judge Dumas or his four heroes without forgetting that. He is a writer of the XIX century trying to recreate the XVII century.

Unfortunately I never had the possibility to read the original version, in a good Portuguese translation, just a short one that I truly enjoyed. But I often read “old” books and documents with shocking sentences according to today’s concepts. Generally the racial, social, gender and violence issues are the ones that seem more different to today’s readers.

 

[MWagner]

It makes me wonder what aspects of modern fiction will seem shocking to the sensibilities of the readers of the future. We might assume it's our residual sexism and bigotry. But I would be surprised if that's the case. Social norms evolve in unanticipated ways.

 

[Teresa Edgerton]

However, the nineteenth century when Dumas was writing was not an era when the manners and morals of the people were shocking by our standards. They would be shocked by us.

And of course Dumas is fantasizing about what he thinks the period of the musketeers was like. I doubt he did a lot of research. Is it accurate? I have no idea.

But French novels were a by-word for raciness among the English and Americans of the 19th century. OK for grown men to read, but not proper reading for the impressionable minds of children and females, because even when they were not about people with loose sexual morals the heroes and heroines didn't have good Victorian values. I imagine that most modern readers would find most of those books rather dull. But Dumas managed to make the The Three Musketeers fun to read, even though the style is old-fashioned* to us now, and even though the main characters are such cads and scoundrels even by our more liberal standards that it is a wonder that we can sympathize with them. Yet he pulls it off.

____
*Not that this is a barrier for all of us, and some of us might even find an old-fashioned style a recommendation. Still, even many who don't usually like 19th century novels enjoy The Three Musketeers.

 

[Tulius Hostilius]

Humm, try to read something about Africa exploration in the late XIX century, or even in the XX, sometimes the way the white explorers refer to the black Africans can be shocking. Both about man and women.

Probably “in Darkest Africa” can be a sample of this:
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/43654/43654-h/43654-h.htm

The Three musketeers may seem choir Boys near some Stanley’s men.

And overall, from what I recall (and read), Dumas writings don’t seem to have shocking historical errors. Let us recall that today we have different perspectives about history, historical fiction and the XVII century. But the amoral musketeers may eventually be a good historical detail. And the historical fiction was very in demand (even among women) since Sir Walter Scott and the growing importance of the Romanticism.