The Three Musketeers (Criticism)

Criticism

Kelly Winters

Winters is a freelance writer and has written for a wide variety of educational publishers. In this essay, she considers modern elements of Dumas's writing style in The Three Musketeers.

The Three Musketeers is still read and loved today, despite the fact that it was written over 150 years ago. Most work from that time has been forgotten, but Dumas's style, largely shaped by his originally publishing the story as a serial, is remarkably fresh and modern.

The style and structure of the novel were shaped by Dumas's need to write it as a serial, or, as the French called it, a feuilleton. Each week, a chapter would appear in the newspaper, ending on a suspenseful event, with the note, "To be continued in our next edition." This kept readers hooked, and it kept them buying papers.

Unlike some other writers of his time, Dumas could not afford to begin his story with a lengthy description of his characters' family background and personal history. A more traditional novel might explore d'Artagnan's family's past and explain why his father, a nobleman, had fallen on hard times, but Dumas doesn't bother. He dives right in. In the first pages of the novel, d'Artagnan has already left home and his bizarre-looking horse is already creating a ruckus in the market of the town of Meung. Readers find out later why he has left home and who his family is, but this is secondary to the action: he meets the man who will be his nemesis throughout the novel, the mysterious "Man from Meung."

Knowing that readers might not remember from week to week where he had last left off the story, Dumas recapitulates at the beginning of each chapter, telling readers the time, date, and place of the action.

Another aspect of the serial structure that affects the telling of the story derives from the fact that readers did not have the concentrated span of time necessary to delve into the psyches of complex characters. Thus, the characters don't change or grow much over the course of the novel. Although their fate may change, as when d'Artagnan is made a Musketeer and then a lieutenant, their personalities do not: they remain as they were when they were introduced in the first chapter. D'Artagnan remains quick-witted, energetic, and proud; Athos remains melancholy; Porthos remains strong and flamboyant; and Aramis retains his almost effeminate looks and his desire to join the Church. The Cardinal is evil through and through, although he does come to a truce with the Musketeers, and Milady similarly begins evil and stays that way, never learning from the consequences of her actions. These types of "flat" characters are a necessary part of serial fiction; their unchanging traits and appearance help readers remember them when picking up the story after some time has lapsed.

In addition to his strikingly modern technique of beginning the tale in the middle of the action, leaving out slow-moving background information, and ending each chapter on a cliffhanger, Dumas's style of dialogue also seems remarkably fresh to the modern ear. His dialogue is fast paced and often witty, despite the fact that it was written over 150 years ago by a man who lived in a society very different from modern times.

For example d'Artagnan gets in trouble with Porthos when he runs into him, gets entangled in his cloak, and notices what no one else has seen: Porthos's magnificent gold shoulder-belt is only gold in front, where it's visible. Under his cloak, it's plain fabric, revealing that he's a showoff and a braggart but is not really as well off as he would like others to think. Porthos asks d'Artagnan what he's doing, and d'Artagnan replies, "I'm very sorry, but I'm in a great hurry. I'm running after someone." Porthos angrily demands, "Do you always leave your eyes at home when you run?" D'Artagnan replies, "No, and my eyes are so good that they sometimes see things other people don't see," a sly dig to the embarrassing plainness of the back half of Porthos's shoulder belt. This of course angers Porthos, and the two schedule a duel.

In another amusing bit of dialogue, d'Artagnan gets in trouble with Aramis when he picks up a handkerchief Aramis has dropped. The handkerchief belongs to Aramis's mistress, and since one of her husband's friends is standing by, Aramis is not anxious to admit that she gave it to him. D'Artagnan insists that it belongs to Aramis, prompting Aramis to challenge him to a duel for embarrassing him. At the duel, Aramis doesn't want to tell the other Musketeers what the fight is about, so he says, "I'm fighting him on theological grounds," and the quick-witted d'Artagnan agrees, "Yes, we had a little dispute about a certain passage in St. Augustine."

In other cases, the dialogue sounds remarkably similar to conversations in modern movies, as when d'Artagnan bullies a stranger, asking for his travel permit:

I want your travel permit. I haven't got one and I must have one.

Are you mad?

Not at all. I simply want your travel permit.

Let me pass at once!

No, Sir, said d'Artagnan.

And he stood barring the stranger's way.

In that case, Sir, I shall have to blow your brains out!

Another aspect of Dumas's style that gives it a modern feel is his use of short paragraphs, often only one or two lines long. This is in striking contrast to many other nineteenth-century works. A glance at the literature of the period usually shows lengthy paragraphs, sometimes a page long, with little dialogue. Dumas broke up his scenes into short, quick actions and stretches of fast dialogue, which makes the book read very quickly, like any modern "page-turner."

Part of the reason he did this may have been that he was not paid by the word, like many other writers (such as Dickens), but by the line. Thus, he would be paid three francs for the sentence, "Yes, I did see the Queen, at the Louvre," which would have covered one line. However, he could break up that line into six, for example:

Have you seen her?

Whom?

The Queen!

Yes.

Where?

At the Louvre!

By doing this, he could make eighteen francs, or six times as much, for the same amount of work. His characters frequently interrupt each other and ask short questions, which are replied to with one-word answers that require more questions to get the full information. They then interrupt the answers, making for even more lines.

Although Dumas may have hit on this technique in order to make more money, it had the side effect of making the story read very rapidly. Modern writers use the same technique, not because they're paid more — even in Dumas's time, editors wised up to this trick and refused to pay for one-word lines — but because they know it keeps readers in the story. Pick up any modern detective story, suspense thriller, or bestseller, and the same pattern of short paragraphs, a great deal of dialogue, and short lines will most likely appear on the pages.

His style of dialogue also appears realistic. In real life, people do interrupt each other, and they rarely give a full explanation of anything when asked a question. A fatal flaw of much nineteenth-century fiction, and bad modern fiction, is dialogue in which people explain too much:

As you know, Robert, my father has held this land since the late 1600s, when his ancestor came over from Ireland with only a few pennies in his pocket, married a rich Virginia girl, and used her fortune to begin raising horses.

This sort of thing is deadly for most readers, who will close the book in boredom.

It's impossible to know now how much of The Three Musketeers was the work of Auguste Ma-quet, Dumas's collaborator, and what exactly Dumas did for the work, but it's easy to guess. Typically, Maquet would draw up an outline of events, characters, and scenes, which Dumas would bring to life with dialogue, humor, vivid description, and breakneck action. This method of working is common today in television and film production, where a writer's original work is often drastically rewritten to cut out any slow parts and fill it with action and intrigue.

Dumas, who used collaborators for most of his work, was very open about the practice; in fact, he wanted to have Maquet's name printed along with his as the author of the serials, but the newspaper editors objected, saying that Dumas's name alone would sell far more copies than those of Maquet and Dumas together. They refused to print Maquet's name, leaving Dumas open to accusations that he abused his collaborators, making money off their work and doing little of his own. However, even in his own time, these accusations didn't go far. At a trial aimed at determining who was the true author of The Three Musketeers, Maquet presented his version along with Dumas's, hoping that it would convince the judge that he was the real author. Instead, his version was so colorless and lifeless compared to Dumas's that the case went nowhere. All of Dumas's collaborators have been forgotten, and none of their own work is still read, proving that Dumas's talent was the spark that brought the stories to life.

Source: Kelly Winters, Critical Essay on The Three Musketeers, in Novels for Students, The Gale Group, 2002.

What Do I Read Next?

• Dumas's The Man in the Iron Mask (1848 – 1850) tells the tale of a mysterious political prisoner in the late 1600s.
• Dumas's Twenty Years After (1845) is a sequel to The Three Musketeers and continues the story of d'Artagnan, Athos, Porthos, and Aramis.
• In Dumas's The Count of Monte Cristo (1844 – 1845), Edmond Dantes is falsely accused of treason and arrested on his wedding day. He escapes to seek revenge.
• Victor Hugo's The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1831), set in fifteenth-century Paris, tells the story of a deformed bell-ringer who falls in love with a beautiful woman.
• Gaston Leroux's The Phantom of the Opera (1910) is the tale of a disfigured man who falls in love with a beautiful singer.